Catherine Millet: By the way, what is a work of art?
A work of art is a series of photos of police officers taken during demonstrations, fished online and grouped together with the same invitation to the public. To give the name of any person recognised in the photos among the representatives of the forces of order. But a work of art is also a cheese, a sausage or a wine. Provided they take the liberty of defying Europe's recommendations. How?
In an article that is both fun and profound, Catherine Millet proposes an angle of definition of the work of art that owes as much to Duchamp as to Rauschenberg. She situates herself in that "space between life and art" where the American neo-Dada painter liked to work. From this clever observatory, she compares a work of art with other non-artistic productions from the point of view of the law. The high priestess of Art Press is thus interested in the cheeses of Tristan Cordier's Épicerie fine, the wine of Vincent Durieu and the sausages of Bernardo Franco, all of which do not comply with the Brussels agri-food directives. The law is defied if they are grocery products. But what if they are works of art?
Art has the right to dare to do here what is forbidden to life. This territory is its own. This freedom from the law helps to define it. Art has more freedom than it imagines. Catherine Millet reminds us, in this regard, that a work of art is one of the rare consumer products today whose labour value counts more than anything else in its price. Does this awareness authorise all unconsciousness?
In the Rauschenbergian space "between life and art", Paolo Cirio's photographic coping of cops in demonstrations achieves as much freedom as it defends. What's the point of breaking the anonymity of the police in response to the new modes of identification by facial recognition if it is to turn the spectators into informers. But doesn't art photography have a duty to integrate into its works the problems opened up by the meaningful uses of photography today, with the aim of transforming society by cutting back on its freedoms, like a cheese that has had its flavour removed by standard maturing?
But are Cirio's photo montages works of art? According to Millet, for this to be the case, Duchamp's law that "It is the viewer who makes the work of art" must be respected. Epicurean aesthetes will savour anti-European cheeses bought in an art gallery as still lifes. But is it really "making" a "work of art" in the sense of Duchamp to throw on the net the identity of a human being recognised on a photograph in the process of obeying the orders of his hierarchy? And to get a simple pleasure from it as a "viewer"?
Photo: portrait of Catherine Millet
RXM