Parachute, 1 juin 1981, Été

[" -255 art contemporain 4$ été 1981/contemporary art $4 Summer 198 - f#SÉw| sillfi»» »à M mmmamSi VïfflSïs-as .¦ m ¦¦?its*» HH PARACHUTE directrice de la publication: CHANTAL PONTBRIAND conseil de rédaction : PHILIP FRY, RAYMOND GERVAIS, JEAN PAPINEAU, RENÉ PAYANT.collaborateurs: BRUCE BARBER, TONY BROWN, SYLVAIN COUSINEAU, DAVID CRAVEN, MARTHA FLEMING, RAYMOND GERVAIS, ROBERT GRAHAM, PIERRE LANDRY, DIANA NEMIROFF, RENÉ PAYANT, JEAN-MARC POINSOT, LOUISE POISSANT, GOLDIE RANS, ROBERT RICHARD, MARCEL ST-PIERRE, YANA STERBAK, DAVID TOMAS, JEAN TOURANGEAU, NANCY TOUSLEY.adjoints à la rédaction: SERGE BÉRARD, ANNE RAMSDEN traduction et correction: NICOLE MORIN-McCALLUM graphisme: ANGELA GRAUERHOLZ diffusion et publicité: FRANCINE PÉRI NET administration et secrétariat: COLETTE TOUGAS PARACHUTE, revue d\u2019art contemporain inc./ Les éditions PARACHUTE 2e trimestre 1981 (publication trimestrielle) PARACHUTE rédaction 4001, rue de Mentana Montréal, Québec, Canada H2L3R9 \t.institution\t $14.00 (Canada)\t$20.00\t\u2022 $20.00 (Europe, U.S.A.)\t$30.00\t $25.00 (par Avion)\t$35.00\t\u2022 d $25.00 (Canada)\t$33.00\t**\tml $35.00 (Europe, U.S.A.)\t$42.00\ty'\t.\t'\t.-r \u2022\t\u2018\t\u2022/\t, .\t\u2018» 1\t( $43.00 (par Avion)\t$52.00\t PARACHUTE C.P.730, succursale N Montréal, Québec, Canada H2X3N4 Té!.: (514) 522-9167 522-2611 vente au numéro Allemagne: 8.25 DM, Belgique: 150 FB, Canada: $4.00, France: 21 FF Grande-Bretagne: 2.40 L, Hollande: 10 FL, Italie: 4,000 L Suisse: 8,75 FS, U.S.A.: $5.00 US abonnement un an deux ans DISTRIBUTION: au Québec par Diffusion Parallèle, 1667 Amherst, Montréal H2L 3L4 521-0335 en Colombie britannique par Vancouver Magazine Service Ltd.2500 Vauxhall Place, Richmond, B.C.V6V 1Y8 (604) 278-4841 aux États-Unis par Bernhard De Boer, Inc., 113 east Centre Street, Nutley, N.J., 07110 en Belgique par la librairie Post-Scriptum rue des Éperonniers, 37,1000 Bruxelles en France et en Suisse par Argon diffusion, 43, rue Hallé, 75014, Paris, France, tél.: 327.66.17.(Numéro de commission paritaire en instance) PARACHUTE n\u2019est pas responsable des documents qui lui sont adressés ou non réclamés.tous droits de reproduction et de traduction réservés.© Parachute, revue d\u2019art contemporain inc.les articles publiés n\u2019engagent que la responsabilité de leurs auteurs.PARACHUTE est indexé dans RADAR.PARACHUTE est membre de l\u2019Association des éditeurs de périodiques culturels québécois.PARACHUTE est publié avec l\u2019aide du Conseil des Arts du Canada et du Ministère des affaires culturelles du Québec.dépôts légaux Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada ISSN: 0318-7020 courrier 2e classe no 4213 Imprimerie Boulanger inc., Montréal Rive-Sud Typo Service inc., St-Lambert imprimé au Canada/printed in Canada COUVERTURE: Ernesto Tatafiore, Maximilien Robespierre a d Craven E p - nliXii: ppps M L\u2019ART DANS UN CONTEXTE SOCIAL Il y a quelques années, Hans Haacke effectuait dans son oeuvre le passage d\u2019un intérêt pour les systèmes biologiques à un intérêt pour les systèmes socio-politiques.Il y a quelques années, Richard Martin faisait passer la musique contemporaine québécoise d\u2019un certain formalisme académique à une attitude plus ouverte et plus franchement subversive.Ces dernières années, la peinture, dans la pratique qu\u2019on en fait en Italie plus particulièrement, s\u2019est remontrée d\u2019attaque.Elle (se) joue à nouveau des institutions qui la cautionnent et la soutiennent, l\u2019histoire de l\u2019art, les musées, les galeries commerciales et les collectionneurs.Pour cette raison, elle suscite chez les critiques une nouvelle polémique.Il serait aveugle de croire à la récupération uniquement parce que le marché de l\u2019art s\u2019y accroche déjà et si fortement.Cette peinture, par l\u2019utilisation qu\u2019elle fait du contexte de l\u2019art, qui est co-extensif à la société, n\u2019est pas un objet de marchandise \u2014 malgré les apparences.Car objet elle l\u2019est si peu, ce en quoi elle se place dans l\u2019héritage d\u2019un art autre, celui que la critique des années soixante dénomma conceptuel ou dématérialisé (l\u2019ironie est pire encore!).Elle participe de ces \u201cattitudes\u201d devenues \u201cformes\u201d (se rappeler ici l\u2019exposition When Attitudes become Form, en 1969-70).De Hans Haacke à cette nouvelle peinture italienne (enfin, \u201cnouvelle\u201d c\u2019est beaucoup dire, puisque Ontani et Clemente se sont manifestés dès le début des années soixante-dix) il se dégage plusieurs attitudes envers le social.Selon la pratique de chacun, celles-ci sont plus ou moins accentuées, mais elles n\u2019en sont pas moins pour autant signifiantes.Plus une démarche se montre ouvertement politique, plus elle risque d\u2019être récupérable, classable, classique parce qu\u2019immédiatement identifiable, nommée.Alors, cette démarche ne surprend plus, n\u2019étonne plus.Le moteur de l\u2019art, n\u2019est-il pas l\u2019invention dont une grande partie consiste en une perpétuelle déroute?Sans doute est-ce pourquoi le plus ouvertement \u201cpolitisé\u201d de ces artistes qu\u2019est Hans Haacke, déclare-t-il que l\u2019efficacité de sa démarche dépend de son inscription au sein même du domaine de l\u2019art.Martin pour sa part questionne les fondements mêmes de l\u2019héritage classique.Par un intérêt marqué pour la création collective, il met en question la notion d\u2019auteur, l\u2019idée d\u2019Artiste.Ses concepts, ses matériaux, son instrumentation montrent une volonté de s\u2019écarter de la tradition, faisant usage de procédés électroniques sophistiqués, de même que d\u2019objets quotidiens.En conclusion, ce qui saisit dans l\u2019ensemble des travaux répertoriés dans les quatre premiers articles qui composent ce numéro, ressort de l\u2019immédiateté qu\u2019ils dénotent, l\u2019ici-maintenant toujours réitéré, reformulé, renforcé.Et ces espaces-temps, dans les différences qu\u2019ils suscitent, créent le lieu d\u2019où l\u2019art tire sa force.IiSbëPSï k Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece (open), 1432, panel,! Bavo, Ghent.Chantal Pontbriand ».H® it 1 m - ¦ ¦¦ » HANS HAACKE AND THE AESTHETICS OF LEGITIMATION by David Craven Dans le texte qui suit, l\u2019auteur traite de l\u2019oeuvre de Hans Haacke intitulée Wij jeloven aan de macht van de creative verbeelding (Nous croyons à la puissance créatrice de l\u2019imagination) exposée à Gand en 1980.Il en fait une analyse exhaustive et examine en détail les liens socioéconomiques entre cette pièce et le retable de Gand qui date du XVe siècle auquel Haacke réfère directement.Il nous décrit comment Haacke révèle dans Wij geloven.l\u2019engagement de l\u2019armurier belge Fabrique Nationale à vendre des armes à l\u2019Afrique du Sud tout en présentant chez lui l\u2019image du citoyen modèle.En se référant à la notion de \u201ccrise de légitimation\u201d de Jurgen Habermas, David Craven nous montre comment le travail récent de Haacke est centré sur \u201cl\u2019esthétique de la légitimation\u201d, moyen inventé par les multinationales afin de masquer leur implication dans certaines actions sociales et politiques.Il qualifie l\u2019oeuvre de Haacke d\u2019\u201cart anti-auratique\u201d parce que cet art réfère consciemment à sa propre aura tout en dévoilant l\u2019aura mystifiante qui entoure les relations publiques des corporations.The procurement of legitimation is self-defeating as soon as the mode of procurement is seen through.Jürgen Habermas To an important extent, Hans Haacke\u2019s art is a consideration of its context.As such, his work is often an incisive disclosure of the present circumstances in which art is given meaning.Haacke\u2019s art constitutes more, however, than a self-conscious interchange with the particular space in which his work is encountered.Rather, his art features an intentional use of context in the broader phenomenological sense of contex-tuality.Aspects of his work deal with: the cultural ambience or aura in which art is consecrated aesthetically, the consummative role of the perceivers who construct art\u2019s significance, and the political implications of both of these aesthetic dimensions as art is continually defined and redefined by society.In some of his works, for example, Social Grease (1975), Haacke has focused on the way \u201cpure\u201d and \u201cuseless\u201d art is used to purify corporate patrons and the values they represent.By confronting this system with the irony of appropriating its own modes of appropriation, Haacke has exposed how art becomes a legitimating agent for the contemporary economic order.In his new polyptych, Wij geloven aan de macht van de creative verbeelding (We believe in the power of creative imagination), Haacke focuses on the aesthetics of legitimation with a sensitivity and a subtlety rivalled by few other contemporary artists.My article is intended to advance the discourse initiated by Haacke, thus emphasizing its artistic scope as well as its critical rigor.In an effort to ground Haacke\u2019s art contextually even more than it has been already, I will proceed in two stages.The first section will discuss the interimage dialogue involving Haacke\u2019s polyptych and an earlier one, the Ghent Altar-piece, which Haacke has used as a set of counter-images for his own work.The second section will be an expansive critique of the contextuality connecting these two art works.A major aim of my article will be to consider how Haacke\u2019s polyptych intentionally and unintentionally addresses what Habermas has called \u201cthe legitimation crisis\u201d \u2014 a development which is as central to contemporary art as it is to the present social order.1 Most of Haacke\u2019s work since the late 1960s has fostered a greater awareness of art\u2019s social context, but We believe in the power of creative imagination (1980) is probably the most context-specific of all his works.First exhibited during the summer of 1980 in \u201cKunst in Europa na 1968,\u201d a show at the Museum van hedendaages Kunst in Ghent, Belgium, Haacke\u2019s work elicits direct visual analogies with the early Flemish polyptych for which Ghent is world famous (Plates 1, 2).Because it too is in an altarpiecelike format, though it is hung on the wall, Haacke\u2019s work recalls the format of the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, especially to anyone in Ghent.Nevertheless, to simply acknowledge that all art comes from other art, here as elsewhere, is to overlook the most significant issue involved, namely, why art works continually differ when they are directly connected.In this case, Haacke is able to exploit contrasts between his work and the other precisely because he has underscored specific historical connections between the two works.The altarpiece originated in the thirteenth century because of a change by the Roman Catholic Church in celebrating mass.Until the mid-fifteenth century, however, the altarpiece was only used infrequently in Flanders and Northern Europe.In a form specifically connected to Church ritual and with a content explicitly devoted to Catholic doctrines, the altarpiece was officially sacrosanct long before our secular, post-Enlightenment period enshrined it unofficially as High Art.Like all esteemed Western art works, the Ghent Altarpiece presently exists in a quasi-religious aesthetic aura, which has to a certain extent superceded the specifically religious associations.The aesthetic aura, or \u201ccultural nimbus\u201d as Adorno termed it, has been assaulted by the Dadaists and others because of its origin in the commodity fetishism of unique objects.Based on a cultic view of the rare, this auratic notion of art in turn serves, to quote Walter Benjamin, as a \u201ccultural alibi\u201d for the society which reifies everything in the name of exchange value.2 The aura engenders uncritical admiration, rather than critical discourse, for the art it enshrouds and the society which produces it.Emancipatory aspects of art are veiled by an aesthetic atmosphere that encourages escapism.New dimensions of experience created by art are channeled into a conventional appreciation which supports the old order, thus trivializing art\u2019s life-enhancing force.By recognizing that the sanctifying aura is not intrinsic to art but endemic to the present system in which art is viewed, Haacke has attempted neither to destroy the aura directly, nor to make \u201cpost-auratic\u201d art.Rather, he has undermined the aura by blatently calling attention to its social origin, so as to make it more familiar and less ineffable.Precisely because the format of the Ghent Altarpiece is religiously based, as well as aesthetically sanctimonious, Haacke has used a similar format to accentuate the auratic character of his own work.When added to the work\u2019s museum placement, its imposing scale, and its encasing glass frames, the altarpiece configuration of Haacke\u2019s work at first registers High Art adulation.Yet the irreverent content of his work quickly dispells the aesthetic reverence the format was designed to instill, as well as the auratic encounter which originally deluded us.In light of the humanist tradition within which the Ghent Altarpiece is generally seen \u2014 particularly its connection to Burckhardt\u2019s notion of \u201cdiscovering\u201d the material world \u2014 Haacke\u2019s antialtar art becomes a shocking inversion upon closer scrutiny.In contradistinction to the more aggressive Dadaists, though, Haacke has not so much created a social confrontation as recreated a contradiction of society.The time-hallowed format of his work frames modern images of inhumanity which historically situate the work and its \u201ca-historical\u201d frame.Above all else a conferral of distance, the aura is attenuated here by an intimate association with a debasing reality.Neither a collapsing anti-art as in the case of Dada nor what Habermas has too optimistically termed \u201cpost-auratic art,\u201d3 Haacke\u2019s work is an anti-auratic art which acknowledges that the aura has yet to be destroyed or transcended.Haacke\u2019s polyptych shows how Fabrique Nationale Herstal, a Belgian Arms and Munitions Corporation, uses the prestigious artistic tradition of Flanders to promote its own \u201cart\u201d of producing weapons.The cultural nimbus of works such as the Ghent Altarpiece is indirectly used to sublimate a corporation which profits from violent conflicts.As Haacke\u2019s work demonstrates, Fabrique Nationale equates its leadership in the manufacture of weapons with the onetime leadership of Flanders in creating art.Once the center of art, Belgium is now the center of arms.In a country where even the paper money features painters rather than politicians, Fabrique Nationale purports to advance this tradition of creativity.Not surprisingly, Fabrique Nationale now awards a \u201cBrowning Prize for Creativity in Design\u201dto legitimate its historical pretensions.In a remark advertised all over Belgium as well as in three panels of Haacke\u2019s polyptych, Fabrique Nationale seems to affirm its present activities by implicitly endorsing the past: \u201cWe believe in the power of creative imagination.\u201d Thus, the historical evolution of Flanders into Belgium seems to culminate very logically in the transformation of artistic creation into arms design.In this development, the tradition of creativity has obviously been inverted, however, so that destruction has become acceptable insofar as it is \u201caesthetically\u201d achieved.The emphatically regressive nature of this historical change illustrates Habermas\u2019 contention that the capitalist system can no longer generate itself from itself, so that an ideology of retrieval is implicit in the process of legitimacy.4 Far from being an advance, the \u201cart\u201d of Fabrique Nationale can be justified historically only by retreating to a past it now paradoxically destroys, even as it seems to reclaim it.Capable only of new products, Fabrique Nationale cannot generate new legitimacy for itself.Its only recourse is to a new use of an old legitimacy.Nevertheless, the extent to which there is a crisis in legitimation depends not only on the internal illegitimacy of the contradictory ideological case for corporate capitalism.Also of major importance is the degree to which this illegitimacy is generally recognized by the public.The potential for a legitimation crisis unquestionably exists, yet only in specific cases \u2014 such as in Haacke\u2019s art \u2014 has this crisis been realized so far.Haacke\u2019s anti-altar piece does not have a one-to-one correspondence of signifier to signified in its interimage relationship with the Ghent Altarpiece.Indicative of his self-conscious concern with expanding signification outside of this correlation is Haacke\u2019s use of eleven panels, along with three predella sections, as opposed to the twelve panels and no predella sections used in the interior of the Ghent Altarpiece.Just as the word \u201cpolyptych\u201d means \u201cmany paneled,\u201d so Haacke\u2019s work in light of the Ghent Altar-piece discloses a series of brilliantly revelatory correspondences.The gilded, yet otherwise reserved, frame of the Ghent Altarpiece is here replaced by a severe, blued brass frame which has a distinctly metallic sheen that is subtly reminiscent of a gun barrel.On the one hand serving as a parody of modernist reductionism, Haacke\u2019s brass frame also evokes ironic distinctions \u2014 carefully ignored by Fabrique Nationale \u2014 between the artist who brings things into sight and the gunner who sights things to eliminate them, between the artist who creates the world in a frame and the gunner who frames the world in his scopes to kill people.Both of these ironies are accentuated by the way Haacke has brought killings into focus within his frames by using photographs of South African violence.The outer panels of the Ghent Altarpiece depict the \u201cfirst parents,\u201d Adam and Eve, in two panels known as the earliest nudes of this size in Northern European art.While the Adam and Eve of Jan van Eyck are distinguished by their modesty about their nudity, the corresponding outer panels of Haacke\u2019s altarpiece feature advertisements which unabashedly proclaim Fabrique Nationale \u201cthe world leader in small arms and ammunition.\u201d Aside from the way the pristine appearance of Adam and Eve is connected to the advertisement\u2019s appeal to \u201c\u2018instinctual\u2019 anxieties,\u201d5 thus asserting cultural limits, another parallel is also present.By placing the gun ad on the left, to correlate with Adam, and the bullet ad on the right, to correlate with Eve, Haacke has given Genesis a new inflexion.Just as Eve supposedly came from the side of Adam the patriarch, so the bullets in the right panel are \u201cshot\u201d from the guns on the left.Thus, the guns are not merely phallic in a Freudian sense, but also representative of the violence presupposed by patriarchal dominion.The middle three panels in the upper register of the Ghent Altarpiece (there are only two registers in the Ghent Altarpiece interior) probably show a modified version of the Deësis, that is, the Godhead flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.6 In Haacke\u2019s triadic sequence of upper panels, a new trinity emerges with unexpected ties to the Christian concept depicted by the Van Eycks.All three upper panels in Haacke\u2019s work consist only of texts, because: \u201cIn the beginning was the word 6 DAT G A AT noor landen die met in oorlog zip (lochi Ale in principe .Moor dbn zou her wel kunnen gebeuren dor her Belgische leger her over neemr en via een russeniand zal geleverd worden.De Heer Reynvoer afgevaordigde von her A.C.V in de FN ¦ BRI inrerview 1975.FN i5 voor 29 35 procenr eigendorn von de Société Generale r.i< Belgique - Her wordr aangenomen dor her Delgisch Kornnki.e H \u2022 , \u2022 Vankoon Pans Amoury de Merode Graof Lippenr en de foe-'.v.\u2022,, Boël en Janssen de grootsfe aarsdeeihauders in de Société Gene-av de Belgique zijn ( The Economist looden lômoarr 1970 atory wise : dis- small ay tlif In Soweto (Johannesburg) 1976 FN-Drowning Prijs von de creativifeif gecreeerd ter geiegenheid von her Millennium von her Prmsbisdom Luik -jf FADRIQUE NATIONALE HERSTAL S.A.Wij geloven oan de mocht van de creofieve verbeeldlngskrachf In het Zuid-Af rikaonse leger 1977 Fi»irowning Prijs van de creativifeif gecreeerd rer geiegenheid von her Millennium van her Pmsbisdom Luik # FABRIQUE NATIONALE HERSTAL S.A.WIJ geloven oon de mocht von de creotleve verbeeldlngskrachf \u201cins- ew ifr jmth* liotlis deled iFreu- D * FN FAX.7,62 mm Wij geloven.1980, detail, centre left panel, 100.5 x 83.3 cm Wij geloven., 1980, detail, centre panel, 100.5 x 83.3 cm regls- , abably I # ! -v é i ;s# onceP' # t text5- (logos).\u201d The center panel, a correlative for the Godhead, lists the controlling shareholders of the Société Générale de Belgique, which owns 29.35 percent of Fabrique Nationale.Among these shareholders, according to The Economist, London (March 18, 1978), are the Vatican, the Belgian Royal Family and members of the nobility.Thus, the claim of Fabrique Nationale to be in the tradition of such works as the Ghent Altarpiece does have validity with respect to patronage.Jan van Eyck worked for the Roman Catholic Church, as well as for the Duke of Burgundy, even though a bourgeois merchant and Mayor of Ghent, Jodocus Vydt, made the final payments on the Ghent Altarpiece.Fabrique Nationale and Haacke\u2019s anti-altarpiece are also connected to the Roman Catholic Church, as well as to the Flemish nobility which has now become well-placed in corporate capitalism.Among the many contradictions which emerges from the patronage of Fabrique Nationale is the fact that Catholic priests and Bishops daily protest against the fascist use of arms this Vatican-backed corporation manufac- 7 WiJ VERKOPEN ooze A-apeos aon veroniwoordelijke regeringen Zodro zii de wopens in hun bezir hebben.zijn zij her die ze gebruiken.Wi hebben er mere mee re moken hoe ze uireindelijk warden gebruikr.' De Heer Fons Ni directeur FN (BfVT interview 1975) In Soweto (Johannesburg) 1976 ¥MSmwmng Prijs van de creotivifeit FABRIQUE NATIONALE HERSTAL S.A.Wij geloven oon de mocht von de creotieve verbeeldingskrocht FN EÀJL 762 mm Wijgeloven., 1980, detail, centre right panel, 100.5 x 83.3 cm ponsible governments.As soon as they have taken possession of their arms, it is they who use them.We have nothing to do with the use to which they can finally be put.\u201d8 The three large center panels, each is 100.5 x-83.3 cm, in Haacke\u2019s polyptych correspond roughly to the lower interior register of the Ghent Altarpiece.These three panels coolly document connections which the corporate spokesmen coyly avoid in the upper panels.In all three panels a photograph of a South African scene is superimposed over a silkscreened facsimile of the poster which advertises the Browning Prize for Creativity in Design.With only a one line caption identifying the location and date of each photograph, the connection between the \u201ccreativity\u201d of Fabrique Nationale and the destruction of life to which it leads is succinctly made.Two of the photographs show South African troops either firing at Black demonstrators or looking at Black casualties.Both are scenes from the Soweto riots of 1976 when over six hundred Blacks were massacred.The center panel shows South African security forces marching in rank during 1977, the year a large number of Belgian \u201chunting rifles\u201d was delivered to them.Furthermore, while Haacke\u2019s polyptych was being made, South African troops killed about forty people during the demonstrations in June 1980.The corporate promotion of apartheid is revealed here, as in Haacke\u2019s series concerned with the jeeps supplied to South Africa by British Leyland.The three photographs do more than just record the creative barbarism of political repression.By seeming to abstain from overt commentary, such as in Goya\u2019s May 3, 1808 or his Disasters of War, Haacke\u2019s photographs both sardonically realize the call by early advertising agents for \u201cscientifically\u201d presenting products9 and directly relate to the \u201cscientific\u201d observation for which Jan van Eyck was famous.Yet the reticence with which these photographs show how Fabrique Nationale products directly produce deaths provokes questions, so that the viewer is forced to reconsider the \u201cobjective\u201d interests of this corporation.Spectators are disallowed a \u201cdisinterested\u201d view of these weapons by the way Haacke uses apparent neutrality to expose the viciously self-serving nature of Fabrique Nationale posters.Even more revealing, however, is the way Haacke\u2019s photographs, as promotional ads, divulge the underlying origins of consumerism and the values with which consumers are indoctrinated in order to perpetuate consumption.As early publicity agents stated, advertisements were a response to the \u201ccrisis of social control,\u201d10 and in multinational capitalism guns frequently implement that control whenever economic repression alone is inadequate.Haacke\u2019s panels make clear why corporate figures could consider consumerism, especially in connection with values like those propagandized by Fabrique Nationale, \u201cthe answer to Bolshevism.\u201d11 tures.7 Flanking the center panel of shareholders in Haacke\u2019s work are two panels which record cynical remarks, worthy of Popes like Julius II or Leo X, by Mr.Reynvoet, the representative of the Christian Labor Union at Fabrique Nationale, and by Mr.Fons Ni, Director of Fabrique Nationale.In the left upper panel, Mr.Reynvoet remarks of the weapons: \u201cIt goes to countries which are not in a state of war (laughs).Well, in principle.But then it may happen that the Belgian Army takes it over and it is delivered by way of an intermediate country\u201d.In the right upper panel, Director Fons Ni responds without mock-innocence: \u201cWe sell our arms to res- By showing troops whose faces are generally hidden, Haacke\u2019s panels underscore the inhumanity of the aggressors.Unlike the more random looking compositions on the right and left, the center panel pictures troops marching in an orderly way \u2014 a way which further accentuates the dehumanization which militarism means for the troops themselves as well as for the liberation fighters they kill.The soldiers fill 8 the compositional space so that they constrict our view formally, as they move to restrict opposition by reestablishing old political limits.Furthermore, these military photographs, in conjunction with the corporate advertisements, link the army and the factory.The deathly Irony of this connection extends far beyond the production of weapons for the military, however, since as Hobsbawm and others have noted, the model for modern industrial organization was the army.Richard Arkwright\u2019s early code of factory discipline in the eighteenth century was predicated on military order to such an extent that industrial expansion has been characterized as a \u201clarge-scale military operation.\u201d12 Significantly, Haacke\u2019s work discloses a more fundamental connection between these two institutions than mere organizational parallels.In this polyptych it is clear that while the army was the model for factories, factories in turn produce arms in need of armies.The capitalist mode of production needs workers repressively organized like armies to manufacture weapons for armies which organize repression.As Walter Benjamin noted, mass reproduction is especially aided by the reproduction of masses.Yet this system produces opposition along with its commodities, since the humanity denied in the factory is also the main thing denied by troops outside the factory.As recent studies emphasize, corporations which produce peaceful items are as dependent on armies as are the corporations which supply arms.Multinational corporate expansion generates militarism which in turn cyclically regenerates corporations, with the whole process being promoted by the mass media.Under no circumstances do corporate advertisements address, as Haacke\u2019s work forces the viewer to do: the dehumanized conditions for those who make the products, the loss of humanity by those who enforce their use, and the inhumanity with which entire countries are victimized.The impressive scope of Haacke\u2019s polyptych makes it a correlative to the vision of totality embodied in the Ghent Altarpiece.An Allerheiligenbild (\u201call saints picture\u201d), the Ghent Altarpiece deals with the ultimate beautitude of all believing souls.13 The center panel on the lower register, the largest painting in the polyptych, shows the Lamb of God being paid homage by the Community of Saints from the four corners of the globe, with the Fountain of Life being located in the foreground.Flanking panels on the right depict the Holy Hermits and the Holy Pilgrims.Comparable panels on the left show the Just Judge (a panel stolen in 1934 and never recovered) and the Knights of Christ.The biblical text for this ensemble is found in Revelations V and VII.Conversely, Haacke\u2019s polyptych is a striking revelation of those who are lost, rather than those who are saved.In addition, his work shows how economic sacrifices are literally demanded from the four corners of the globe to continue multinational corporate expansion.The Knights of Christ have become the soldiers of consumerism, while the Just Judges have been replaced by the iron laws of a purportedly absent deity named laissez-faire economics, whose presence nevertheless brutally appears in Haacke\u2019s panels.Instead of using the Just Judges panel intertextually, as Camus does in La Chute to show the absurdity of judgments, Haacke uses this panel in an interimage dialogue to show the injustice of judg- ments daily made by corporate capitalism.As a coda to his polyptych, Haacke has three predella panels at the bottom of his work.The use of these panels, which distinguishes his polyptych from the format of the Ghent Altar-piece, shows how Haacke self-consciously incorporates floating signifiers into his piece.In working for an upper middle class clientele, as well as for the nobility, Jan van Eyck reconciled the mannered elegance used for depicting the upper classes with the graphic directness reserved for the middle and lower classes to arrive at a new and \u201call-embracing \u2018naturalism\u2019.\u201d14 As such, his paintings focus on middle class values less directly than do works by earlier contemporaries like the Master of Flémalle.Haacke\u2019s predella panels re-emphasize the incipient rise of the middle class as expressed in early Flemish painting.Just as fifteenth century Northern artists explored the quaintness of non-aristocratic life through genre and particularly genre rustiglia, so the predella panel was suitable, because of its small size, as a format for the new middle class intimacy.15 Haacke\u2019s three predella panels update this earlier tradition by depicting modern bourgeois intimacy, namely, close-up views of rifles.With details that impart intricate knowledge, yet in clinically presented diagrams that engender detachment, Haacke\u2019s panels of arms underscore a further stage of Western history \u2014 the cleavage of public and private space.As Benjamin has shown, the middle class interior became not only a private universe, but also a personal fortress during the nineteenth century.16 Haacke\u2019s predella panels testify to the continuation of these unreconciled but interdependent aspects of modern capitalism, thus elucidating a connection that is disavowed for reasons of legitimacy.Private existence in the bourgeois tradition, particularly as advanced by the exclusivity of corporate concerns, presupposes a public use of arms to consolidate the private gains on which this life style is based.Public space is the hunting ground for those who view life based on private interests.As a final and unorthodox, but very effective note, Haacke caps the altarpiece formally by a banner with the logo of Fabrique Nationale.This flag, with its black velvet ground and silver letters, is both ominous and obtrusive.Its serifed Gothic letters allude to the aristocratic connections of this corporation.Yet these archaic letters are incongruous with the coolly modern and uncialed typography which has been silk-screened from posters onto Haacke\u2019s panels.Thus, continuity and discontinuity are very clear; however, the connection between chivalric banners in fifteenth century Flanders and modern flags for armies supplied by Belgium is revealing.Both types of banner symbolize the institutionalization of aggression and the social glorification of combat.As Huizinga and others have noted, Western culture has long admired the soldier as a knight-errant, \u201cthe representative of unhampered freedom in ideal directions.\u201d17 Haacke\u2019s altarpiece graphically shows the real consequences of this \u201cideal freedom,\u201d especially insofar as corporate expansion is connected to this old military myth.THE CONTEXTUAL INTERCHANGE As this article has already intimated, Haacke\u2019s work deals with much more than how Fabrique Nationale misuses the past.His art of profound demystification has also disclosed some seldom acknowledged connections between his altar-piece for corporate capitalism and the protocapitalist context of the Ghent Altarpiece.These links give Haacke\u2019s polyptych a social pertinence much beyond the interimage discourse already discussed.Because of the way Haacke\u2019s altarpiece is so context-specific, it becomes contextually expansive in a revealing manner.History clarifies and is clarified, but never simply contained by his work.The conspiracy of circumstances Haacke creates would conspire against his own art as propaganda if he merely attacked these circumstances in a onedimensional assault.Because of the way Haacke seems merely to focus on the aesthetic ambience, as well as the social context that conceives it, he is able to make the aura and its contextuality self-disclosing.By creating an important interchange with the Ghent Altarpiece and its context, Haacke has also drawn the Van Eyck work into a state of contextual disclosure in relation to his own piece.The subtle social and economic links between his art and the Ghent Altarpiece suggest even greater implications for both.One question in particular looms very large: to what extent is Haacke\u2019s altarpiece, that is, its own context enshrined as art \u2014 a direct outgrowth of the social values conveyed by the Ghent Altar-piece?It would be crude reductionism to see either Haacke\u2019s work or the Ghent Altarpiece as mere reflections of an economic infrastructure.Nevertheless, it would be even more implausible to deny that any profound connections with the general economic order exist.Neither artwork is reducible to social or economic developments, yet both works express significant aspects of these developments.In light of the period connections already discussed in each work, it is clear that a further explication of contextuality will lead to an understanding of more expressions of contemporary history in both works.The European world economy \u2014 from which multinational corporate capitalism evolved ¦ \u2014 started emerging during the fifteenth century, that is, contemporary with the rise of early Flemish painting as advanced by the Van Eycks.Immanuel Wallerstein has discussed the origin of the European world economy as an economic system, not a political one, which loosely connected the Flemish-Hanseatic trade network with the Christian Mediterranean system, as well as with the New World and Eastern Europe a little later.18 This rudimentary alliance was increasingly possible from 1450 on because of the new division of labor, the new state machinery, and the rise of the modern class system \u2014 all of which extended and presupposed a transition in the mode of production from use value to exchange value.19 A significant difference between this new European world economy and earlier world empires was the redefinition of economic and political relationships started in the fifteenth century.In this new order, economic decisions became oriented towards the world economy and political decisions became directed towards the specific states within this system.Thus, while political energy was used to secure monopoly rights, the ideological basis for this world expansionism was statism.Flanders was central to this new development in 9 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.The international economic ascendency of Antwerp, as the main world market, over Bruges, as the national market, also represented the unprecedented establishment of one city state as the world\u2019s money mart \u2014 a position which Antwerp maintained until it was replaced by Amsterdam in the late 1500\u2019s.Besides being the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan society in Europe, the Flanders of the Ghent Altarpiece was an acknowledged world center for the arts.When Philip the Good (1419-1467) \u2014the Duke of Burgundy and Jan van Eyck\u2019s major patron \u2014 moved his court in the 1420\u2019s from Burgundy to Flanders, he did so for economic reasons.20 Philip\u2019s decision to move from feudal Dijon to the bourgeois cities of Flanders was as momentous for the arts, as it was for the world economy.Panofsky has summed up the effects of this shift on art by noting that it was conducive to the \u201cnational consolidation\u201d of Flemish painting and to the \u201crepatriation of Flemish genius.\u201d21 Thus, the statism so important for the developing European world economy was also very significant for Jan van Eyck, who lived most of his mature life in Bruges, and for the creation of the Flemish tradition in painting.In this sense, Haacke\u2019s linkage of the Ghent Altarpiece with Fabrique Nationale divulges an economic development connecting the two, which has little to do with purportedly related uses of creativity.Statism, the ideological basis of the protocapitalist world economy beginning in the fifteenth century, is still being used by corporate capitalism.Fabrique Nationale, for example, simultaneously seeks to expand on the world market, while emphasizing its state heritage in order to achieve legitimacy.It does this within the country whose system it exploits for international gain \u2014 a gain which is then advertised as a national achievement in keeping with its Belgian heritage.Furthermore, the altarpiece format of the Ghent panel paintings was unusual in Flanders and Northern Europe before the early fifteenth century.The use of the altarpiece was directly connected to, among other things, the rise of a middle class which increasingly commissioned these prominent public artworks for conspicuous consumption.This class broke with the aristocratic preference for small illuminated manuscripts used in private.Even though he was a valet de chambre to the Duke of Burgundy, Jan van Eyck generally worked for an upper-middle class clientele, as Panofsky has observed.22 Just as the altarpiece format expressed the tastes and aspirations of the new bourgeoisie (as well as the nature of Church ritual, etc.), so this bourgeoisie itself was a major reason for the new European world economy and for the prominent position of Flanders in it.The formation of the middle class was both a reason for and a result of the new division of labor.Revealingly, Haacke\u2019s altarpiece again elicits a connection between the Ghent Altar-piece and the emergence of the capitalist world economy on which multinational corporations now depend for their very existence.Hence, the use of the Flemish past by Fabrique Nationale does have some plausibility as a subterranean connection between the \u201ccreative imagination\u201d of the bourgeois who commissioned early Flemish art and that of the corporate executives who now re-commission this art as a legitimating agent.The real link is between those who used this art in the fifteenth century and those who appropriate it now, between bourgeois patrons such as Jodacus Vydt and the corporate directors of Fabrique Nationale.There is also another connection between period uses of the Ghent Altarpiece and the aim of modern advertisements as underscored by Haacke.Both possess a didactic purpose, as opposed to the critical intent of Haacke\u2019s work.The Ghent Altarpiece projects directly and allegorically a Christian view of the world established by the Roman Catholic Church and upheld by Flemish society.Fabrique Nationale ads promote a notion of commodity exchange and the world economic system on which it is based through pretensions to creativity.Both sets of images glorify institutions and the systems underlying them.Although the veiled ingloriousness of Fabrique Nationale is obviously more offensive, the link this corporation has with the Vatican is also clear, even though priests like Ernesto Cardenal are major opponents of multinational corporations.The Ghent Altarpiece now presents, as Huizinga has aptly shown, a view of fifteenth-century Flemish culture that is at odds with the chronicles and documents of this period.In effect, the aura-encased Ghent Altarpiece promotes an auratic notion of its own historical context \u2014 a context Haacke\u2019s anti-auratic art does much to demystify.The extremely violent tenor of Flemish culture would hardly be suspected, if the static and harmonious art of Jan van Eyck were our only source of knowledge concerning this period.In discussing the Burgundian festivities \u2014 which were the only times the Ghent Altarpiece interior was open to public view \u2014 Huizinga further observed: \u201cIt is hard to imagine a more absolute contrast than that of these barbarous manifestations of arrogant pomp and the pictures of the brothers Van Eyck.with their sweet and tranquil serenity.\u201d23 Fabrique Nationale and corporate capitalism are based on such savage contradictions that the possibility of veiling them has become ever more difficult, so that a profound legitimation crisis, as unveiled by Haacke in his polyptych, seems more likely in a general sense.Significantly, fifteenth-century Flanders went through a social transformation that strained the process of legitimation and led in painting to what Panofsky has termed \u201cdisguised symbolism.\u201d The transition from a local precapitalist economy to an international protocapitalist economy was inextricably connected to a dramatic redefinition of the Christian attitude towards the physical world.The fifteenth century in Europe, which has been labeled the discovery of the world and of man, gave rise to a dramatic increase in pictorial \u201crealism\u201d epitomized above all by Jan van Eyck.Similarly, poverty went from being an apostolic virtue to a social shame, as every aspect of Flemish culture experienced the tense synthesis of a new materialism with old spiritual precepts.Early Flemish art, like all other dimensions of society, was characterized by what Huizinga has called a startling worldliness in other-worldly guise.Resulting from this historical development was an increasing acceptance of the material world accompanied by an insistent effort to elevate spiritually this new secularity \u2014 in other words, an effort to legitimate this new tendency in old terms.As all details of ordinary life were raised to a sacred level, all that was sacred was relegated paradoxically to an ordinary level.The Ghent Altarpiece, though less than Jan van Eyck\u2019s other works, expresses brilliantly this contemporary situation.Paintings by Jan van Eyck embraced nature to a degree unprecedented in European art, yet these pictures simultaneously consecrated all aspects of life in an unparalleled manner.Thus, the contradiction occurred that Flemish art was internationally famous both for an all-embracing naturalism and a peculiar piety, a novel secularity clothed in a regressive spirituality.The nature of the legitimating process in fifteenth-century Flanders, however, was fundamentally different from the one now used by corporate capitalism.Flemish culture was undergoing a transition from one historical epoch to another, which gradually transformed anachronistic values as they were stretched to sublimate new developments.Conversely, corporate capitalism as represented by Fabrique Nationale is trying to disallow the historical transition from one economic order to another, even as it pretends to be a mere extension of what preceded it.As Haacke and Habermas have demonstrated, in art and in Critical Theory: corporate capitalism must now remove participatory involvement from semi-democratic ideologies in favor of authoritarian patterns remaining from pre-bourgeois tradition.Bourgeois culture as a whole is not able to extend itself.It needs revivals of older world views in order to avoid the further realization of the emancipatory ideas which allowed its own development.As such, the corporate capitalism disclosed by Haacke\u2019s altarpiece cannot be called the logical extension of fifteenth-century culture, however much the two are connected.At present, corporate capitalism exploits its past to deny historical progression, while claiming \u2014 for reasons of legitimacy \u2014 to progress beyond past history.As Max Raphael has observed of art in general, so we can say of the Ghent Altarpiece in particular: it is a storehouse of possibilities awaiting a progressive consummation, even though multinational corporations presently use the artwork itself to defer such a consummation.Haacke\u2019s polyptych discloses the ideological appropriation entailed in the contemporary process of legitimation.Insofar as his work discredits the auratic containment of the Ghent Altarpiece, Haacke\u2019s polyptych is an extension of the Flemish art whose emancipatory dimensions he has renewed.The Ghent Altarpiece expresses \u2014 among other things \u2014 significant historical advances which, as Haacke has deftly shown, can be fully realized only through historical progression, not through the suppression of history.At present Benjamin remains correct.There is no work of art which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.Nevertheless, the very way Haacke has affirmed this situation in his polyptych is precisely what allows us to know that circumstances could be otherwise.¦ NOTES 1.Habermas, Jürgen, Legitimation Crisis (1973), translated by T.McCarthy, Boston, 1975.It should be emphasized 10 Photo: Hans Haacke irg,: In Scwerc ( jofccnnésbufg) 1976 nuMuout NjnoNAit Ntwm 5 * fA3W««£ HATtONALt HOWtAl ¦ ftÿîi'Iï mm ¦ /'v'V' ;'>« ' \" US*» s s\t7 -is,.î'i.'V .:.: mm ¦r 'Smm.¦ §1 \u2022\u2022* *l ses fV?4w.Wkê 'i r.~~\u2014-\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 h Nef ZüK^'Afrikoony?kNj«* 1977 In Soweto ( Johannesburg) 1976 rN- von àe etearivimlf FABRIOUÏ NATIONALE HERSTAt iA* Wij geloven aan de macht van de creative verbeeldingskracht, 1980, 11 silkscreen panels and flag, installation view, Ghent, Belgium that this critique was done in the early 1970s, when the legitimation crisis seemed to be in a more advanced stage than it now appears to be in.2.\tWhile Adorno and Benjamin both realized that the aura was connected to commodity fetishism and cultural enshrinement, they differed on this issue in a significant respect.Adorno saw the aura more as the result of a type of perceptual encounter connected to social values, whereas Benjamin saw the aura more as something intrinsic to the art object yet destructible through mechanical reproduction.Hence, Benjamin optimistically predicted the destruction of the aura through photography \u2014 something which has not happened, as Haacke and others have noted \u2014 while Adorno saw that this was impossible because of the socially determined basis of the aura.Only after society has been significantly changed will the aura be transcended, the art demystified.3.\tHabermas, p.79.4.\tIbid., p.77.5.\tEwen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness \u2014 Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, New York, 1976, p.38.6.\tThe best discussion of the iconography of the Ghent Altarpiece remains the one by Erwin Panofsky.See his chapter on this work in Early Netherlandish Painting (1953), vol.I, New York, 1971.More recent discussions of this iconography, such as Van Eyck: The Ghent Altar- piece by Elisabeth Dhanens, New York, 1973, have not disproved the fundamental ideas my article takes from Panofsky\u2019s treatment.7.\tIn a pamphlet accompanying his polyptych, Haacke quotes Armies and Weapons, an international military journal, as stating that Fabrique Nationale arms have been used \u201con a large scale in all the more recent wars and guerilla actions\u201d (page two).8.\tThe translations for these quotations are from Haacke\u2019s pamphlet (page eight).9.\tEwen, Stuart p.34.10.\tIbid., p.13.11.\tIbid., p.88.12.\tMumford, Lewis, TechnicsandCivilization (1934), New York, 1963, p.84.The connection of multinational corporations and military repression has been extensively documented by Noam Chomsky and Edward S.Herman in a two-volumed study entitled The Political Economy of Human Rights, Boston, 1979.13.\tPanofsky, p.212.14.\tIbid., p.2.15.\tIbid., p.70.16.\tSee the section entitled \"Louis-Philippe or the Interior\u201d in Walter Benjamin\u2019s Charles Baudelaire, A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, translated by Harry Zohn, London, 1973.Also, see Richard Sennett\u2019s The Fall of Public Man, New York, 1978.17.\tHuizinga, Johan The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924), New York, 1954, p.77.18.\tImmanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, New York, 1976, p.47.19.\tWhile Wallerstein tends to see the unifying principle of the world economic system as the search for market profits by capitalists, with the division of labor resulting from it, Ernesto Laclau contends that the world economy is capitalist to the extent that the law of motion of the capitalist mode of production \u2014 that is, the fluctuations in the rate of profit \u2014 is the law which articulates the system as a whole.Hence, Laclau\u2019s critique, which involves a progressive transition of various non-capitalist modes of production to economic systems, permits the coexistence of various non-capitalist modes of production within the capitalist system.See Ernesto Laclau, \u201cFeudalism and Capitalism in Latin America,\u201d in Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, London, 1977, pp.42-50.20.\tPanofsky, p.144.21.\tIbid., 22.\tIbid.23.\tHuizinga, p.250.David Craven is an art critic and assistant professor at the State University of New York at Cortland.11 nmm- : g; ARTIST AS CORPORATE CRITIC an interview with Hans Haacke by Tony Brown Au cours de cette interview, Hans Haacke nous parle du passage, dans son oeuvre, d\u2019une préoccupation pour les systèmes biologiques à une préoccupation pour les systèmes sociaux et politiques.Par le biais de l\u2019art, Hans Haacke fait la critique de l\u2019ingérence des corporations dans la politique et il nous parle de la réticence des musées américains à montrer son oeuvre.Il discute avec Tony Brown de sa façon de faire de l\u2019art (esthétique, matériaux, recherche, approche critique), de sa perception de son public, de la portée de son oeuvre dans le domaine politique et de sa conscience des dangers que représente la récupération.Il nous fait, pour finir, la description détaillée de son oeuvre récente Upstairs at Mobil: Musings of a Shareholder, 1981, et nous entretient de ses tendances politiques et des raisons qui ont motivé sa décision d\u2019être artiste plutôt que politicien.Tony Brown: You had worked with physical phenomena, plants and animals for a number of years.What were the reasons that made you decide to shift from systems in nature to social and political systems?Hans Haacke: After reading Von Bertalanffy\u2019s General Systems Theory I became acutely aware of the interconnectedness of everything.In fact, the world cannot be divided up into departments, to be studied separately like the parts of the body were in the anatomy of the nineteenth century.All things hook up and affect each other; there is no break between the social world, the physical and the biological world.Having first dealt with plants and animals, it was only natural that I would eventually include the social world.T.B.: Which of your works were important in making the shift to social systems?Was this shift a conscious one on your part?H.H.: To a certain degree it was conscious.I remember that the assassination of Martin Luther King shook me up quite a bit.A short time afterwards I was to give a talk on my work.I felt the need to preface it by saying that my works, which until then had dealt exclusively with physical and biological systems, should not be construed as tacitly condoning a social organization in which King\u2019s murder is a natural event (my current work does not require such disclaimers).T.B.: You mentioned that you had been influenced by a text on biological systems.When you came to the realization that you wanted your work to be more directly related to social concerns, did you start to read texts on political science or sociology?H.H.: No, not immediately.However, I had been reading the political sections of newspapers since I was in high school.Politics have always interested me, but I did not see the need or the means to incorporate it into my work.There were other events as well that contributed to my politicization: the war in Vietnam and the race riots in the U.S., also my participation in the Art Workers Coalition in New York.T.B.: What effect did the Art Workers Coalition have on you?H.H.: Working with the Art Workers Coalition taught me a lesson or two about museums and the art establishment as it relates, or, for that matter, does not relate to the world around.It made me more attentive to the specific nature of the art public.T.B.: In our culture the emphasis is placed on the notion of specialization; your attempt to deal with the interconnectedness of things is in complete contradiction with that notion.In a way you are attempting to operate as a Renaissance man.This is a tremendous task as the amount of information now available in all the areas you are working in makes it virtually impossible for any one person to effectively gain a comprehensive view of all these things.H.H.: It is true that I am a little wary of specialization, although I know that, as you say, the amount of information to be digested in each area of study is so immense that one cannot play Renaissance man.However, I think it is unwise for an artist to plunge into specialization except perhaps specialization in the use of a particular medium.An artist, like most other people, draws from a multifaceted experience and should respond to it correspondingly.T.B.: Has it become increasingly difficult for you to show your work since you shifted from systems in nature to socio-political systems?Was the Guggenheim\u2019s cancellation of your show symptomatic of most galleries\u2019 reactions to your work?H.H.: It is very difficult in the U.S.to find a museum ready to show my stuff.That does not mean that I am totally locked out.Although it may appear to be the last thing to expect, there are, in fact, a few commercial galleries prepared to exhibit my work, even at the risk of offending some of their clients.University galleries are another outlet.In spite of the similarity between trustees who run universities and those in charge of museums, university galleries are fortunately more insulated from their immediate control, so that their exhibition policies are not necessarily affected.T.B.: In this country most people are aware of your work not from your shows but from publications.Have you ever considered trying to do catalogues, publications, or trying to get involved in more mass media oriented communication?H.H.: It is very difficult to get things into the mass media.For one thing, I do not have the financial resources for that, and for another, the mass media, particularly in the States, are rather closed to this kind of stuff.The publishing world is probably a little more liberal and libraries are more open to opinions that deviate from the norm.There is, however, an important element that we shouldn\u2019t overlook: when we insert such products into the art context, if, for example, they are shown in museums or commercial galleries, they acquire what Walter Benjamin described as an \u201caura\u201d.Although Benjamin thought that in the world of technical reproduction this aura would be destroyed, it is, in effect, as strong as ever or possibly even stronger.I believe this aura is part of the materials with which I am working.It provides the \u201cenergy\u201d on which my things ride, while at the very same time, my work is putting this peculiar socio-psychological phenomenon into critical perspective.At least I hope it operates in such a dialectical fashion.T.B.: So you recognize that you rely on the same mythical structure that you attempt to deconstruct?H.H.: Yes, absolutely.In a truly dialectical sense there is an unavoidable contradiction.The impact these things may have relies to a considerable degree on the mythical power of the context in which they appear.Clearly, only after they have received the blessings of the art world institutions does a book or a catalogue with reproductions attract readers.To catch people\u2019s attention and to retain it is not an easy task.T.B.: Do you rely on or use the art context in any other way?H.H.: Yes, for example, I used it as the appropriate foil for exhibiting a quote by David Rockefeller in which he speaks about art as a useful instrument to further business goals.When such a statement is taken out of the context of the business world, of which Rockefeller, of course, is a major and highly visible exponent, and then injected into the art environment, it clashes with the generally held values and assumptions of the people of that world.Result: not only is Rockefeller\u2019s credibility as an art patron put into question, but also, by extension the legitimacy of his role in the world at large.T.B.: Do you think of your work as kind of assisted readymades?H.H.: Yes, that is one way of talking about them: removing something from one context, inserting it into another and thereby changing its meaning.I rely on some of the techniques which were developed by the Dadaists and Surrealists.T.B.: Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if one of those corporate people were to stand next to one of your quotation plaques for a photograph and smile and then publish it in one of their promotional jobs to imply that here is an artist who is showing their statement and therefore validating it within the art context?What happens to your meaning?H.H.: I believe it doesn\u2019t do much damage because in the world in which these people move my approval or disapproval does not matter.They are, in fact, not my audience.T.B.: Who then is your audience?H.H.: In this particular case the audience is all those people who are unfamiliar with the corporate rationale for the support of art.It was quite interesting to observe how people at the gallery reacted.Reading the quotes they became visibly angry at those good corporate citizens who were clearly trying to dupe them.T.B.: So you are aiming at basically the same 13 Porhops Pno most Importent #pg]p 7§opop Jo?Pip inoroaooclInlorosI oMnlormillonal oow/oliono in Pip aria la Pip almost IMBsgs fltvtrslty of pyojoote viïüoh aropoaalblo, TPpip projopPs mn be Palloyeb 1© a eornpany\u2019a apoelfie bu-arneaa goals and eon return dividends Jay oui oJ proportion lo Pie aolua] InvesP/ienl required cP Douglas Dillon ¦¦¦¦¦¦ M 'p/-' I V' - On Social Grease, 1975, excerpt (1 of 6 plaques), photoengraved magnesium plates mounted on aluminum, each plaque 76.2 x 76.2 cm.Collection Gilman Paper Company, New York.Photo: Walter Russell liberal constituent that big business is?H.H.: Yes.The attempt to use art for corporate ends is carried out in an ideologically more or less liberal and educated segment of society.These people are relatively young, with a large proportion of students among them, who are likely to move into positions of influence within the foreseeable future.Most in this group \u2014 with the exception of the students \u2014 are economically at ease if not wealthy and belong either personally or through social and family relations to those whose opinions matter in the political arena.T.B.: How effective do you think your statements are compared to the influence of people like Mobil Oil?H.H.: It is hard to measure.I would probably have to conduct a poll.But even then, the real test would be an assessment of that particular public\u2019s attitudes in five or ten years from now, at a time when such influences, if they played a role, can no longer be traced to their origin.Corporate advertising is in a similar bind when it comes to finding out if it was worth its money.Nevertheless, there are some comforting indications that my stuff did not go unnoticed.When corporate art support is being discussed, I am occasionally invited or my works are quoted.I also lecture and there is a bit of coverage in magazines and books.Miraculously, the lockout by the museums did not succeed in getting the discussion of these issues off the agenda.It would be ridiculous, though, to picture myself as the Lone Ranger.Corporate behavior is suspect to a great number of people.And it is also clear that many elements have to come together to affect the drift of society.Art is only a very small enterprise within the consciousness industry.T.B.: You stated that you collaborated with the Art Workers Coalition.Do you collaborate with any other groups?H.H.: Frequently, in the course of my work, I need the help of organizations that have been monitoring areas of interest to me, as for example, the conduct of multinational corporations in South Africa.There are a number of research organizations, church groups and others, sometimes with a leftist touch, which do very thorough work.Our interests often run parallel.I am quite happy to give them what I have discovered and in turn I am very grateful for what they have to offer.T.B.: Let\u2019s get back to something you previously talked about in your attempt to demystify the gallery system, the role of the artist, and unmask the corporate relationship to art.Do you not, in the end, alienate the liberal viewer who comes to the gallery with the expectation of having a certain experience?H.H.: No, I don\u2019t believe the situation is quite the way you describe it.True, liberals do not go to galleries and museums with the expectation of having their noses rubbed into things they don\u2019t normally associate with art.On the other hand, liberals are the kind of people who are potentially sensitive to social ills.They are in a terrible bind.Naturally, they perpetuate the capitalist system and some of them also profit from it handsomely.But the liberal mentality, with its humanist ambitions and vague ideas about social justice and its often sentimental sympathy for the underdog, is fraught with guilt feelings.I think one can reach them on that level, and it is at this level that they potentially shift allegiance and break with the corporate view of the world, particularly when they realize that they are also being fooled and exploited for the gain of a small minority.But then there are also people who are quite happy to discover that there are artists whose views are similar to their own, that their need for sensuous and intelligent stimulation can be gratified without having to forget about their ideological convictions, that there is indeed an art for them as well.My work is not done with a clenched fist nor, I hope, is it so dry that it isn\u2019t fun to look at.I like it to have enough of a \u201cculinary\u201d element \u2014 in the sense that Brecht used the term \u2014 so that it is provoking critical thought while being pleasurable.T.B.: As you did with your Tiffany piece?H.H.: Yes, that is a good example.There are a number of clues which are fun to decipher.The appeal to peoples\u2019 senses and intelligence is important.Otherwise it remains dull lecturing and they turn off, and for good reason.T.B.: Could you give me an example of a recent piece where you set these clues up for the viewer?H.H.: Let\u2019s talk about one of my new Mobil pieces.Already the title Upstairs at Mobil: Mus-ings of a Shareholder is full of allusions.It refers to Mobil\u2019s sponsorship of the popular series Upstairs Downstairs on the Public Broadcasting Service, one of those Edwardian programs which Mobil uses to ingratiate itself with the public and indirectly promote its fortunes in Congress.The title also implies that Mobil occupies the position of the master, whereas the rest of us are busy in the servants\u2019 quarters.For afficionados of Mobil\u2019s op-ed page advertisements, the Musings of a Shareholder recall Mobil\u2019s own \u201cMusings of an Oil Person\u201d which appear regularly in The New York Times and elsewhere.The piece itself consists of ten panels, each a photoetched facsimile enlargement of a tenth part of my Mobil stock certificate.I bought ten shares for this purpose.Pasted into each panel is the corresponding segment of the original certificate.This accomplishes several things.It 14 MXXON\u2019^ mippojî Pi îh© bM pp'p/pp 1/)p a?ls m §PPfe] j-yMeiffil, And îl Metopss telP cipnilmip ]p Mg sHpb, ft na$da a JDP7P MPTlpalsd PnMTPniPsnL J\\Bs)Wll XhlpMl/ On Social Grease, 1975, excerpt (1 of 6 plaques), photoengraved magnesium plates mounted on aluminum, each plaque 76.2 x 76.2 cm.Collection Gilman Paper Company, New York.Photo: Walter Russell authenticates the facsimile enlargements and it plays on the magic of a piece of paper which represents part-ownership of a multinational corporation.Cutting up this piece of paper is somewhat akin to scratching out the eyes of a person on a photograph and to the destruction of money.The funny thing is, however, that irrespective of the certificate\u2019s mutilation, my title to the ten shares is not put into question.I continue receiving dividends.In case the piece is sold, the collector would become the owner of the ten cut-up parts of the certificate, but he would not become the beneficiary of the stock.If, however, he were more interested in the stock, he could reassemble it.Naturally that would destroy the piece for which he would have paid more money than the ten shares are worth.0 Then, of course, there is my legitimation for speaking as an \u201centhusiastic\u201d stockholder.I pretend heaping praise on my company for all those neat tricks (which I name) to extract more money out of the public in order to engage in all it|8f those devious manoeuvers to manipulate fÈ\tnational and international policy and for brain- washing people into believing that all this is ijs:\tdone for their own benefit.My inversion of private motivations and corporate policy as it is discussed only among peers into a publicly pronounced position undercuts the image of the responsible corporate citizen that Mobil spends so much to project.The natural behaviour of a large corporation that public relations is meant to disguise, reveals itself when a gung-ho shareholder speaks about his or her interests.The text itself is full of intriguing allusions, puns, and invitations to extrapolate.It is quite beautiful that Mobil\u2019s Pegasus, the symbol of poetic inspiration, appears in one of the medallions on the certificate.There is also the image of a topless lady with flowing gowns carrying a torch.She clearly solicits multiple and intriguing interpretations.An art world in-group joke: like other i nstruments that are to represent property, the Mobil stock certificate incorporates some impressive precursers of pattern painting.I chose handwriting rather than printed lettering for my own text in order to give it the character of a personal testimonial.It also pokes fun at all those handwritten confessional messages in recent \u201cconceptual\u201d art.The scribbling further violates the original stock certificate.It also \u201cruins\u201d the rather impressive etchings.(The facsimile had to bedone as an etching because this is the medium of the originals).And on and on.T.B.: The context you have chosen to work in is capable of censoring work in a very subtle manner, for instance things can simply be purchased, or any opposition can be bought out.In other words, the work can quite easily be coopted.How do you deal with this issue?H.H.: Let me say generally, that the fear of cooptation can be terribly debilitating.T.B.: Then this isa problem for you?H.H.: No, it is no longer a problem for me, but it was some years ago.T.B.: With which work?H.H.: When the Gilman Paper Company was interested in buying the quotes on the use of art for corporate ends.At that time I had to think very specifically about this problem.Before that it was only a hypothetical question.Co-optation occurs when the intentions with which our action is taken are reversed in practice, and one serves, in fact, the opposing interests.As all such questions, often raised in heated theoretical debate, need to be answered in terms of a concrete situation, I looked at the probable result of the sale to the Gilman Company collection, and I found that my fear of cooptation was not justified.T.B.: Did you stipulate how the piece could be used?H.H.: All works that I sell are sold under the so-called Siegelaub contract which stipulates that once every three or six years I can borrow the work for an exhibition, that the owner cannot reproduce the work without my written permission, that it cannot be exhibited outside the private collection without my consent, and in case of a resale, that I receive fifteen percent of the profit if a profit is realized.After some reflection I recognized that the work on the company\u2019s walls did not lose its meaning and possible effectiveness.It was not taken out of circulation either, because it is still being reproduced in books and catalogues and articles.Although most people have never seen it, the piece is known by a great number \u2014 the same way that most people have never seen an original Tatlin or Duchamp but still have definite ideas about them.If it were not so, we would not be talking about it now.T.B.: The difference though is that the real thing is being viewed by the business sector not the liberal.H.H.: That particular company keeps its collection in the offices.The employees get to see it every day.They read there, for example, that art is suitable for building morale and loyalty among employees.In a funny way, then, the explanation of why corporations are fond of art puts that very collection into perspective.I like to believe that it plays a bit the role of a Trojan horse.The collector himself is possibly intelligent enough to be aware of this and becomes, in a twisted way, my accomplice.Things are not one-dimensional.15 AV.bits problems with the oil glut, prior to 19/S, were hoffghf Shelved by the Arab or Z/nhpiHfPi 'l'H/'tik 'pi**'?k *>.> .Sr o\u2018\" pü afrqM.Aa dUtdf the ap prpfjt* ViS.Not ter found itself 'tykCy/fot of ex+nx jÇàJjr U^