Complexity and Criticism

It is a well-known secret that art critique these days is seldom critical. A form of art criticism that is able to reflect on its own judgment criteria, on the other hand, would be able to promote a specific sort of competence: it would make it possible to observe how an artwork is viewed, how it is perceived from a particular perspective, and it would put art professionals as well as art-lovers in a position to decide either for or against this particular point of view as opposed to those of other critics.¹
The idea behind this form of art critique is not to be introduced theoretically here but instead demonstrated practically on the basis of a work whose fascination the author is convinced of: Anatoly Osmolovsky’s »Rot Front – Leftover« (Fig. 1).

Concept
Looking at the misshapen bronze objects alone, they are difficult to identify; it is impossible to make sense of their origin or their purpose by relying on aesthetic perception alone. The artwork’s title supplies a vital clue: »Rot Front« was the greeting used by the Rotfrontkämpferbund, the paramilitary brigade of the German communist party in the days of the Weimer Republic. Part of this greeting was a raised fist, such as the one that can be seen in the »Monument to Ernst Thälmann« in Berlin (Fig. 2). The title »Rot Front – Leftover« almost automatically evokes associations with class-war monuments such as this one; ultimately, however it is more a matter of contextualization by the viewer or art critic. If we read what is written on the sides of the Thälmann monument’s base, it would have to be called »Rot Front – Ernst Thälmann,« although in actuality two parties are involved in this greeting: the working class greets its dead leader with the inscription in the red granite of the base, and he responds by raising his clenched fist in solidarity with the Red Front. The five bronze sculptures »Rot Front – Leftover,« created almost three decades later, represent »leftovers« in
two senses: they show the negative imprint of a fist, and also what remains today of the Red Front, the communist movement that was so influential throughout the twentieth century. This is roughly the idea cast here in bronze. The meaning cannot be derived immediately through the aesthetic experience of the work, but can only be inferred by bringing in the title as well. In contrast, the name of the Thälmann monument simply recites what can already be seen.
The conceptuality of an artwork is a fundamental criterion for its ranking in contemporary art. Works that do not present a substantive concept and are naive with regard to their intellectual context remain aesthetic platitudes. If, for example, Osmolovsky’s work did not bear its cryptic title, but instead was named »Abstract Forms,« or had sufficed itself with the unimaginative »Untitled,« then it would be more akin to avant-garde design. An excessively concrete title, however, would also have a fatal effect on the work. Let’s say it bore the unfortunate title »The Fist of the Artist« (which is not too far-fetched, seeing as Osmolovsky did in fact use the imprint of his own fist as a model). Although it would still formally remain a conceptual piece, the work would be ruined by such a title. The tension between perception and comprehension that is built up by every conceptual art work would be deflated here as a short-lived joke: the artist’s hand can in fact be recognized in the negative form of the sculpture. With its original title »Rot Front – Leftover,« the performative discrepancy is handled differently and put into a global, historical context of association. The work still retains its moment of surprise, but it aims at a different kind of humor: the proverbial sense of »historical irony.«

Content
The inner tension between what an artwork says and what it represents is a useful gauge of its conceptuality. However, it is not an indicator of quality per se, but simply a basic requirement for the success of contemporary art – one that guarantees that an artwork’s aesthetic content is not simply an illustration of a message that already exists in the medium of verbal communication. The Thälmann monument in Berlin certainly spreads a message, but it is one that can be perceived instantly, and the sculpture’s perception is not fractured by a concept, because this is inconsistent with the aim and purpose of propagandist art. Propagandist art, like popular art, benefits from a conceptually unencumbered aesthetic in order for people to relate to it on a mass scale.
The second indicator of rank in contemporary art is the aesthetic content it explicitly or implicitly articulates. Every age has major and minor topics of interest, relevant and irrelevant questions, private and public problems. Every work of art is meant to provide an example of how the topic it deals with is »utterly compelling.«
It is not new information that socialism as an alternative social order collapsed two decades ago. What Osmolovsky is more interested in is what people think about this historical event nowadays. His work is an allusion to the Red Front salute as a symbol of class war, while at the same time the bronze casts symbolize how all that’s left of this movement is an imprint – a clenched fist as a negative form with negative connotations. Artworks do not possess their social significance a priori, but rather as a potential for interpretation that unfolds during the course of their reception: for example when we make the connection between Osmolovsky’s »leftovers« and Kerbel’s Thälmann monument, which was supposed to be demolished after reunification, but in fact was only relieved of its propagandist inscriptions. Whenever I drive past this graffiti-smeared historical relic today, I see a sort of urban mirage – the »leftovers of the Red Front« scattered all over its plastered forecourt and red granite pedestal (Fig. 3).

Technique
A special quality of contemporary art is its moment of surprise; in Osmolovsky’s work it is the instant when one begins to identify the shapeless objects as form. This effect occurs only because the work operates in the avant-garde mode and presents something that has never been seen before. Everyone knows what a fingerprint is of course, but it is certainly rare to see one as an oversized object (Fig. 4). Until now there was no technology capable of enlarging such a highly irregular pattern and transferring it onto another three-dimensional object. In the past, this three-dimensional fingerprint only existed as an imprint on a piece of clay on a scale of 1:1. »Rot Front – Leftover« is a product of high technology that could only be created through the invention and diffusion of 3D scanners.
Although the sources for further »material progress« in the arts may well never dry up completely, for some time now they have nevertheless lost the power they once wielded to rewrite art history. The idea of the innovative and novel, which is indispensable to contemporary art, is not found anymore in how arts make use of media, but rather at the most in the way they articulate specific aesthetic contents through these media. Still, the aspects of material and technology remain imperative criteria for art criticism, since the aesthetics of every »material« wear out at some point through its deployment in the cultural realm. It becomes charged with discursive meanings that reflect the current zeitgeist, which immediately weakens the capacity of contemporary art to intervene in the prevalent self-descriptive patterns of society.²
Due to these unavoidable phenomena of deterioration, the classical material of bronze and the entire historical genre of sculpture were regarded as no longer viable for contemporary art. Without some sort of alienation, contextualization or an explicit break in style, the metal’s golden gleam embodies typical museum art or perfunctory kitsch.

Aesthetics
High-ranking works of art cannot be comprehended immediately through the mere aesthetic experience, at least not completely. They render themselves immune to aesthetic consumerism and through this resistance to perception they mark the border – one that is registered by connoisseurs of the scene, at least – between art versus fashion, design and the products of popular culture. This does not mean that an aesthetic experience is purposely avoided or its lack consciously orchestrated, which is a strategy of Conceptual art; the goal instead is to purposefully confuse.
»Rot Front – Leftover« offers a good example of this approach; the aesthetic experience evoked is ambivalent. On the one hand, the viewer perceives rather ugly, amorphous forms that from a distance take the shape of excrement and in unfortunate lighting display a color reminiscent of feces. On the other hand, when in the right light they shine matte gold and their orderly pattern of fingerprint lines becomes visible, they turn into a beautiful object. The exceptional aesthetic quality of contemporary works of art does not lay in their embodiment of intrinsic values of perception such as »beauty« or »grandeur,« but in the unique perceptual tension they create. For example, the extreme ambivalence between the attributes of beauty and ugliness that are both embedded here in one and the same thing make the »leftovers« an aesthetically interesting object, and this at a time when the culture industry is making use of every artistic strategy that art history has ever brought forward at least as professionally as the artists themselves.
A further instructive factor (which in itself is neither necessary nor adequate) in art criticism is therefore the aesthetic antagonism a work displays. Here as well, what is crucial is the contrast between the two extremes it seeks to unify. The aesthetic surface tension created can be so great that a dual, reversible image is created. Two contrary, incompatible viewpoints are generated: for example, making a piece of bronze beautiful and ugly at once – depending on whether it is viewed as excrement or natural ornament.

Reflexivity
One very fundamental aspect of contemporary art is its self-referential nature. There are various different ways in which art refers back to itself. Art can for example make reference to its own history by citing classics. Art is able to address the circumstances of its own existence in works critical of the institution itself. Art analyzes itself by reflecting on material that is specific to its field. All these forms of self-reference, which pertain to the institution, the material or the history of the arts, can have a more or less compelling effect depending on their own ranking and standards.
»Rot Front – Leftover« is exemplary in this aspect as well: we are dealing here with contemporary bronze sculptures that are simultaneously ancient archetypes of their genre. It is presumed that the first prehistoric »sculptures« originated by coincidence around the hearths of primordial humans, where they shaped damp mud with their fingers and discovered the following morning that these figures had hardened in the embers of the fire.³ This archaic sculptural gesture harking back to the origins of humanity is embodied in the monumental casting of a piece of clay that is pressed by a fist and oozes out from in between the fingers. It is a renewal of this tension between extremes that distinguishes Osmolovsky’s work: this is a work of art that is absolutely modern and yet is able to reflect the archaic origin of its own genre.
There is no other field that expresses the handcrafted character of the artwork as strongly as sculpture. Due to its natural proximity to artisanal products, but also through the strong fetish character that a sculpture possesses as an object of value on the art market, this handcrafted quality in twentieth-century art was placed under quarantine both by the artistic avant-garde and by advanced art theory. There was a tendency to prefer more open forms such as performance or installation, and thus the general disintegration of the workmanship category was declared. Osmolovsky’s »Leftovers,« which manifest a primordial form of artwork, manage however to resuscitate »works« in the traditional sense; that is to say, they are not pieces that seek to dissolve the boundaries of their genre and artistic concept. A »critical commentary« on the current art discourse such as the one made here would hence be a further factor in art criticism when determining an artwork’s rank. The question will always be raised of whether current art serves a generally accepted ideologeme of the scene or whether it intelligently subverts it – one recent example is the prejudice of automatically associating closed forms of artwork with sales-oriented, marketable art.

Polycontextuality
The work discussed here as an example can therefore be analyzed by looking at five different factors. It is a conceptual artwork that selectively attempts to intervene in social self-perception by utilizing advanced technology in order to create a communicative space of uncertainty. The work’s surprise effect is achieved not simply through its unusual form, which it uses to guard against an immediately comprehensible identification; it is also due to the way its aesthetic surface prohibits a direct aesthetic reaction. Furthermore, it contradicts the postmodern dogma that »open art forms« are the only works that are not conservative, by reflecting on its own genre as a sculpture. These general aspects on the basis of which we can examine contemporary art are also suitable criteria for a polycontextual art critique. It would certainly be in the interest of the author if other critics were to come to different conclusions from other points of view. The selection of criteria highlighted here lays no claim to completeness. What is vital, however, is that any alternative point of view that was suggested would make itself noticed and subject itself to comparison rather than remaining cloistered in subcultural jargon.
The type of polycontextual art critique that I have presented attributes a special quality to polycontextual artworks. Works such as Osmolovsky’s »Rot Front – Leftover« seem to suspend modern art’s entire history of intrinsic differentiation (that is, the step by step decoupling of work, medium and concept in artistic communication).⁴ In most cases, contemporary art does not exploit these freedoms won during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and instead tends to operate one-dimensionally: often the works are reduced to purely aesthetic art without any concept or content. Similarly, when artworks are focused on a specific topic, cultural studies topoi are all too often reproduced without any added cognitive value. When new media are used, artists generally invest most of their ambition in being the first to use the latest technology. And when contemporary art attempts to be decidedly »self-reflexive,« it often blindly and strategically follows an art discourse instead of making its own reflection visible.
While there was still ample room to increase artworks’ level of abstraction, when taboos of traditional “-isms” could still be broken, when new media were still new and the definition of art was being revised through the inclusion of non-art – back then, art critique still had points of reference on which to base its value judgments. Ever since this tendency to attempt to out-do the last big thing has reached its limits, the question has arisen of whether art critique can even come to any judgment at all anymore, and how this might be possible. Since there will never be a mandatory catalogue of criteria or a canon of values in the future, art criticism will need to legitimate itself from within. For this to happen, a minimum requirement is that it must avoid blindly applying criteria but instead make these criteria transparent. Today’s common practice of trying to convince audiences through rhetoric or intimidate them through discourse is completely anachronistic. Art critique’s role instead should be to provide a set of tools for observation through which an audience can form their own opinions. In this sense, polycontextuality could be said to be a meta-criterion in today’s art critique.