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Umberto Eco's The Open Work

The Hermetic

Or

The Hermeneutic

Anne Collier. 8 x 10 (Lynda). 2007

Anne Collier. 8 x 10 (Jim). 2007

Anne Collier acknowledges the gap between her understanding of a pair of photographs of seascapes as “quasi-portraits” of her parents and the viewer’s understanding. In Reflection she positions herself in the image as a way of introducing the viewer to her history, moving from the hermetic to hermeneutic.

Anne Collier.Reflection. 2003

Below is an except from a conversation between Bob Nickas and Anne Collier regarding these works.

The Artist is Present
Or
I’ll Be Your Mirror

Marina Abramović and Ulay. Nightsea Crossing.

Similarly, Marina Abramović presents another mirror device in The Artist is Present.
In this performance, Abramović sits in a chair for the duration of gallery hours. Opposite her is an empty chair. This empty chair can be viewed as the ellipsis.

What is clear is that the possibility of sitting with Marina has ignited in the public imagination the idea that one can do more than passively experience works of art, that one can be part of a work of art for as long as one is willing or able.

I have been told that museum visitors in general stand in front of art works for an average of 30 seconds. At MoMA, some have chosen to sit across from Marina for hours; one young woman sat for the entire length of a day’s performance, frustrating many others waiting their turn in line. Others have returned to sit multiple times. By rough estimate, visitors sit for an average of 20 minutes. (Arthur Danto)

Completion
Or
That Which is Opposite the Ellipsis

A wonderful addition to Abramović’s work are Marco Anelli’s portraits of each person as they sit before the artist, in essence completing the work.  These serve as one of the better descriptions I have seen of this work.

Photo by Marco Anelli. © 2010 Marina Abramović

Umberto Eco. The Open Work.

Note:  all of the scanned passages, images, and citations in this post are from

Eco, Umberto. The Open Work. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1989.

Collier, Anne, Reid Shier, Robert Nickas, Jan Verwoert, and Mark Soo. Anne Collier. North Vancouver, B.C.: Presentation House Gallery, 2008.

Abramovic, Marina, Arthur Danto, and Chrissie Iles. Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. New York: The Museum Of Modern Art, New York, 2010.

—Gene Pittman

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A passage . . .

written by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, in a 1986 essay titled “The Posters of Lawrence Weiner,” provides the inspiration as well as an analogy (in regards to how Weiner utilizes the ellipsis) for how Re:,* a new series of posts, will unfold:

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Above: Weiner’s use of the ellipsis as “a fragmentation prohibiting closure and perfection . . . .”
Above Left: Poster for Galleria Sperone (Turin, Italy, 1973)
Above Right: Poster for Modern Art Agency (Naples, Italy, 1973)

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Buchloh describes Weiner’s use of the ellipsis as a “rhetorical device” that is used as a “strategy of . . . removal . . . .” Elaborating further, he then defines the ways in which Weiner has implemented this idea (this “strategy”) in formal and “perceptual” ways:

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A removal of an amount of earth from
the ground
The intrusion into this hole of a st
andard processed material

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Above Left: One of Weiner’s statements, from his seminal publication Statements (1968), demonstrating “the fracturing of the . . . word by unconventional and illegitimate word-and syllable breaks . . . .”
Above Right: Poster for Gewad (Gent, Belgium, 1982), demonstrating “the fragmentation . . . of the . . . rectangle by removal cuts . . . .”
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Note: Unless specified otherwise, all of the scanned passages, images, and citations in this post are from Lawrence Weiner: Posters, November 1965–April 1986. Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design; Toronto: Art Metropole, 1986.

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* Re: . . .

is a new series of posts, an evolving “conversation” between regular and guest contributors of the blog, where each subsequent post, crafted in response to the content of the preceding post, further adds to the depth and interconnectedness of the larger conversation.

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