Jeff Wall, Wittgenstein, and the everyday

Critical Inquiry

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 495-526

  Fried, Michael ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 61249465203     PISSN: 00931896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/513524     Document Type: Review

References (44)

1. See Jeff Wall: Catalogue Raisonné, 1978-2004, ed. Theodora Vischer and Heidi Naef (Basel, 2005), p. 339.
2. See Jean-François Chevrier, "Les Aventures de la forme tableau dans l'histoire de la photographie," in Photo-Kunst: Arbeiten aus 150 Jahren (exhibition catalogue, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, 1989), pp. 47-81.
3. Jeff Wall, "Restoration: Interview with Martin Schwander" (1994), in Thierry de Duve et al., Jeff Wall (London, 2002), pp. 126-27.
4. Wall's reference is to Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (1980; Chicago, 1986).
5. All three are reproduced and discussed in The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, ed. Colin Bailey et al. (exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2003).
6. See Fried, Absorption and Theatricality, pp. 48-49.
7. "Mindedness" is first and foremost an English equivalent for the German word Geistigkeit in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).
8. See Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge, 2002), p. 233 and "Hegel's Forms of Life" (unpublished essay).
9. My use of the term is also indebted to various essays by Robert Pippin and Jonathan Lear. See, for example, Robert Pippin, "Authenticity in Painting: Remarks on Michael Fried's Art History," Critical Inquiry 31 (Spring 2005): 575-98.
10. See Fried, Courbet's Realism (Chicago, 1990)
11. and Manet's Modernism, or, the Face of Painting in the 1860s (Chicago, 1996).
12. Wall, "Jeff Wall" (information leaflet, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam and Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam, no. 17, Sept. 1996), n.p.
13. Robert Enright, "The Consolation of Plausibility" (interview with Jeff Wall), Border Crossings 19 (Feb. 2000): 50.
14. I owe this formulation to Akeel Bilgrami.
15. See, in this connection, Fried, Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane (Chicago, 1987), pp. 42-45.
16. The link between absorption and realism will be a central theme in The Moment of Caravaggio, a book-in-progress based on the Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts that I gave at the National Gallery of Art in spring 2002.
17. "Jeff Wall: New Work" (press release, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 20 Sept.-2 Nov. 2002), n.p. The passage continues: "All seven pictures [in the show] depict moments or events from obscure, unswept corners of everyday life, covert ways of occupying the city, gestures of concealment and refuge, shards of hope and rationality, traces of failure and guilt."
18. Wall, "The Hole Truth: Jan Tumlir Talks with Jeff Wall about The Flooded Grave," Artforum 39 (Mar. 2001): 114; hereafter abbreviated "HT."
19. See Fried, "Shape as Form: Frank Stella's Irregular Polygons" (1966) and "Art and Objecthood" (1967), Art and Objecthood: Essays and Review (Chicago, 1998), pp. 77-99, 142-72.
20. See Jeff Wall, p. 393.
21. Peter Carter, "Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig," in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (London, 1996), 21:491.
22. The choice of the sculpture "must have been made at the last minute, obtaining the piece on loan from the Berlin garden in which it had already been erected" (Solà-Morales, Cirici, and Ramos, Mies van der Rohe, p. 20).
23. On Kolbe, see Ursel Berger, Georg Kolbe: Leben und Werk: Mit dem Katalog der Kolbe-Plastiken im Georg-Kolbe-Museum (Berlin, 1990), and Georg Kolbe, 1877-1947, ed. Berger (exhibition catalogue, Georg-Kolbe-Museum, Berlin, 1997).
24. In George Heard Hamilton's words: "The National Socialists approved of his technique quite as much as of his subjects, and after 1933 Kolbe extolled the virtue of health and joy through increasingly monumental and proportionately stereotyped nudes, scarcely to be distinguished from innumerable others, no more but no less competent, which are so conspicuous a feature of German academic sculpture. Nonetheless such work should not be allowed to conceal the rhythmic invention and technical perfection of his earlier figures" (George Heard Hamilton, Painting and Sculpture in Europe: 1880 to 1940, vol. 29 of The Pelican History of Art, ed. Nikolaus Pevsner [Baltimore, 1967], p. 326).
25. The two works (among others by the same artists) were juxtaposed in a marvelous small exhibition in Frankfurt-am-Main in 2002. See Léon Krempel, Rolf Lauter, and Jan Nicolaisen, Camera Elinga: Pieter Janssens begegnet Jeff Wall (exhibition catalogue, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main, 2002).
26. In Janssens Elinga's Interior, through the doorway at the left, a painter is at work on a canvas we cannot see; on the wall above the seated woman absorbed in reading, a mirror tilts downward so as seemingly to reflect a portion of the black-and-white paved floor of the room. Reflexivity in Wall's sense of the term is by no means solely a feature of modernist art.
27. Wall, "Photography and Liquid Intelligence" (1989), in de Duve et al., Jeff Wall, pp. 90-93.
28. In answer to the question of what exactly is left uncontrolled in his work, Wall remarks to Jan Estep: I think this "control" idea has become a kind of cliché about my work. I don't think I control anything anyone else doesn't control, or want to control. Art inherently involves artistry. I prepare certain things carefully because I believe that's what's required. Other things are completely left to chance. Anything that is prepared, constructed, or organized is done in order to allow the unpredictable "something" to appear and, in appearing, to create the real beauty of the picture, any picture. [Jan Estep, "Picture Making Meaning: An Interview with Jeff Wall," Bridge, 2003, www.bridgemagazine.org/online/features/ archive/000027.php] A further instance of this in Morning Cleaning might well be the flecks of light that here and there brilliantly "star" the black carpet. It's impossible for the viewer to know for certain what these originally were - imperfections in the carpet, bits of dust, or something else entirely? But the carpet would not appear comparably lightstruck in their absence, though of course it is also true that the brilliance of the flecks directly expresses the backlighting of the light-box medium - a doubleness that can be positively disconcerting in the instant when it is first recognized.
29. In my book-in-progress, the chapter on Wall and Wittgenstein is preceded by one on Wall and Heidegger's Being and Time, centered on a reading of Wall's After "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, the Preface (1999-2001).
30. From the start, cinema, or what Wall came to call "cinematography, " has been a major factor in his conception and practice of his art. Indeed throughout his catalogue raisonné individual works are designated either as "cinematographic" or as "documentary" photographs, depending on whether or not they were staged by the artist. In fact only one photo with figures, Pleading (1984; printed 1988), falls into the "documentary" category, though in a short discussion of Adrian Walker the editors comment that although "the work is designated as a 'cinematographic photograph' ... it could also be listed as a 'documentary photograph'.... This work is one that suggested the term 'near documentary' to the artist" (Jeff Wall, p. 339). I think it would be truer to Wall's categories to say that "near documentary" is for him a subcategory of the "cinematographic." See also Wall's remarks on " cinematography" in the important essay "Frames of Reference," Artforum 42 (Sept. 2003): 188-92; rpt. in Jeff Wall, pp. 443-47.
31. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value: A Selection from the Posthumous Remains, trans. Peter Winch, ed. Georg Henrik von Wright, Heikki Nyman, and Alois Pichler (Oxford, 1998), pp. 6e-7e; hereafter abbreviated CV. The passage is dated 22 August 1930. The original German reads: Engelmann sage mir, wenn er zu Hause in seiner Lade voll von seinen Manuscripten krame so kämen sie ihm so wunderschön vor daß er denke sie wären es wert den anderen Menschen gegeben zu werden. (Das sei auch der Fall wenn er Briefe seiner verstorbenen Verwandten durchsehe) Wenn er sich aber eine Auswahl davon herausgegeben denkt so verliere die Sache jeden Reiz & Wert & werde unmöglich. Ich sagte wir hätten hier einen Fall ähnlich folgendem: Es könnte nichts merkwürdiger sein als einen Menschen bei irgend einer ganz einfachen alltäglichen Tätigkeit wenn er sich unbeobachtet glaubt zu sehen. Denken wir uns ein Theater, der Vorhang ginge auf & wir sähen einen Menschen allein in seinem Zimmer auf & ab gehen, sich eine Zigarette anzünden, sich niedersetzen u.s.f. so daß wir plötzlich von außen einen Menschen sähen wie man sich sonst nie sehen kann; wenn wir quasi ein Kapitel einer Biographie mit eigenen Augen sähen, - das müßte unheimlich & wunderbar zugleich sein. Wunderbarer als irgend etwas was ein Dichter auf der Bühne spielen oder sprechen lassen könnte. Wir würden das Leben selbst sehen. - Aber das sehen wir ja alle Tage & es macht uns nicht den mindesten Eindruck! Ja, aber wir sehen es nicht in der Perspektive. - So wenn E. seine Schriften ansieht & sie herrlich findet (die er doch einzeln nicht veröffentlichen möchte) so sieht er sein Leben, als ein Kunstwerk Gottes, & als das ist es allerdings betrachtenswert, jedes Leben & Alles. Doch kann nur der Künstler das Einzelne so darstellen daß es uns als Kunstwerk erscheint; jene Manuskripte verlieren mit Recht ihren Wert wenn man sie einzeln & überhaupt wenn sie unvoreingenommen, das heißt ohne schon vorher begeistert zu sein, betrachtet. Das Kunstwerk zwingt uns - sozusagen - zu der richtigen Perspective, ohne die Kunst aber ist der Gegenstand ein Stück Natur wie jedes andre & daß wir es durch die Begeisterung erheben können das berechtigt niemand es uns vorzusetzen. (Ich muß immer an eine jener faden Naturaufnahmen denken die der, der sie aufgenommen interessant findet weil er dort selbst war, etwas erlebt hat, der dritte aber mit berechtigter Kälte betrachtet; wenn es überhaupt gerechtfertigt ist ein Ding mit Kälte zu betrachten. 〈)〉 Nun scheint mir aber, gibt es außer der Arbeit des Künstlers noch eine andere, die Welt sub specie äterni einzufangen. Es ist - glaube ich - der Weg des Gedankens der gleichsam über die Welt hinfliegt & sie so läßt wie sie ist, - sie von oben im Fluge betrachtend. [CV, pp. 6-7]
32. I was led to think about Hegel in this connection by Wall's reference to a passage in the Science of Logic on the question of infinity in "Into the Forest: Two Sketches for Studies of Rodney Graham's Work," in Rodney Graham: Works 1976-88 (exhibition catalogue, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1988), pp. 9-10.
33. The distinction between "good" and "bad" modes of objecthood is briefly introduced (without reference to Hegel) in my essay "James Welling's Lock, 1976," in Sarah J. Rogers and Fried, James Welling: Photographs 1974-1999 (exhibition catalogue, Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, 2000), p. 27.
34. See Wittgenstein, entry for 7 Oct. 1916, Notebooks 1914-1916, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. von Wright and Anscombe (Oxford, 1961), pp. 85-85e. My thanks to James Conant, Michael Kremer, and David Wellbery for (simultaneously) calling this passage to my attention.
35. In fact, he refers not to a second party but to a third one - as if he imagined the photographs having been taken by a member of a couple. Of course, this may simply be a slip, but just possibly it is something more. According to Maurice O'Connor Drury, who first met Wittgenstein in Cambridge, he was visited in Dublin by Wittgenstein and his young friend Francis Skinner in 1936 (six years after Wittgenstein wrote the notebook entry in question). The day after the two arrived, the little group went to Woolworth's for some purchases. "Wittgenstein noticed some cheap little cameras: 'What fun it would be to take some snaps of each other,'" Drury reports him as having said. "So he insisted on buying three cameras, one for each of us. Then he wanted to climb to the top of Nelson's Column to view the city from there. We took a lot of photographs but they didn't turn out very well" (Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees [Oxford, 1984], p. 137; hereafter abbreviated RW).
36. The exhibition, accompanied by a catalogue with the same name, was held from 6 June-14 Sept. 2003. My remarks about the coolness of ordinary photography were stimulated in part by Gregg M. Horowitz's response to my Trilling lecture at Columbia University in November 2005.
37. See Toril Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism (Oxford, 2006), in which these and related issues are treated with great subtlety and originality. I thank her for allowing me to read the book in manuscript.
38. J.C., "NB," Times Literary Supplement, 30 Jan. 2004, p. 14. Miss Andrews was a secretary with whom Wittgenstein shared digs. Norman Malcolm also writes of evenings spent with Wittgenstein at the movies in Cambridge in 1939: Wittgenstein was always exhausted by his lectures. He was also revolted by them. He felt disgusted with what he had said and with himself. Often he would rush off to a cinema immediately after the class ended. As the members of the class began to move their chairs out of the room he might look imploringly at a friend and say in a low tone, 'Could you go to a flick?' On the way to the cinema Wittgenstein would buy a bun or cold pork pie and munch it while he watched the film. He insisted on sitting in the very first row of seats, so that the screen would occupy his entire field of vision, and his mind would be turned away from the thoughts of the lecture and his feelings of revulsion. Once he whispered to me 'This is like a shower bath!' His observation of the film was not relaxed or detached. He leaned tensely forward in his seat and rarely took his eyes off the screen. He hardly ever uttered comments on the episodes of the film and did not like his companion to do so. He wished to become totally absorbed in the film no matter how trivial or artificial it was, in order to free his mind temporarily from the philosophical thoughts that tortured and exhausted him. [Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London, 1958), pp. 27-28] John King, another former student, testifies to Wittgenstein's distaste for British (as opposed to American) movies precisely on the ground of their theatricality. "The Mill Road cinema ... was the one he most favoured," King recalls, "and here he sat as far to the front as he could get, leant forward in his seat and was utterly absorbed by the film. He never would go to any British film; and if we passed a cinema advertising one he pointed out how the actors looked dressed-up, unnatural, unconvincing, obviously play-acting, while, in comparison, in the American films the actors were the part, with no pretence" (RW, p. 71). The advertisements Wittgenstein pointed out to King were of course stills, that is, photographs. Drury adds that Wittgenstein disliked all English and Continental films: "in these, the cameraman was always intruding himself as if to say, 'Look how clever I am.' I remember him expressing a special delight on the dancing of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire" (RW, p. 120).
39. See, in this connection, "HT" as well as Fried, "Being There," Artforum 43 (Sept. 2004) : 53-54, most of which consists in a discussion of Wall's Fieldwork: Excavation of the Floor of a Dwelling in a Former Sto:lo National Village, Greenwood Island, Hope, B.C., August, 2003, Anthony Graesch, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California at Los Angeles, Working with Riley Lewis of the Sto:lo Band (2003).
40. Thus Wittgenstein writes in the Philosophical Investigations: "The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things." And two paragraphs later: "Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is" (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe [Oxford, 1958], §§122, 124, p. 49e). Wittgenstein's claim that philosophy leaves everything as it is, is cited in Stanley Cavell, "The World as Things: Collecting Thoughts on Collecting," in Rendezvous: Masterpieces from the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Guggenheim Museums (exhibition catalogue, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1998), p. 88.
41. Cavell also mentions in this connection Heidegger's advocacy of "'letting-lie-before-us' as the mode of thinking to be sought in stepping back from our fantasies of thinking as grasping the world in fixed concepts" (ibid.). The reference is to Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York, 1968).
42. The importance of the everyday for the later Wittgenstein is a major theme in Cavell's writings. See, for example, Cavell, "Declining Decline," This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures after Emerson after Wittgenstein (Albuquerque, 1989), pp. 29-75.
43. On the everyday in a Kierkegaardian (also a Wittgensteinian) sense in the art of the great nineteenth-century German painter and draughtsman Adolph Menzel, see Fried, Menzel's Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin (New Haven, Conn., 2002).
44. On Louis's Unfurleds, see Fried, "Morris Louis" (1966-67), Art and Objecthood, pp. 100-131.