Prime Objects and Body Doubles

Author(s): Suzanne Anker

Source: Art Journal, Vol. 68, No. 4 (WINTER 2009), pp. 99-104
Published by: College Art Association
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In an age of historical amnesia,media spin,photo hoaxes, and dilute art criticism,

what passes as innovation in the artworld s parlance is, to say the least,question
able.What, then,qualifies as "the inventive,"particularly in an experimental system
such as visual art? If thepractice of art is seen as a dynamic of changing attitudes,
to
perspectives, and aesthetic desires, artistsmight well turn George Kubler's notion
of "prime

objects"

Suzanne

Anker

for one

answer.1

generative

Prime

in Kubler's

objects,

formula

tion,may be considered thematerial by-products of alterna

tivepropositions thathave been previously neither statednor

possible. Are such speculative solutions the creative engines

often driving theontological structureof objects,works of
art included?Or to pose thequestion inmore cynical guise,

Prime Objects and

Body Doubles

do

such

at a time

even matter

suppositions

interrogative

"art fairs are the new

when

disco"?2

Kubler posits an analysis of art in termsof influx and output, a pulsating

system revealing the shape of time.Not content to discuss divisions in styleas

an overarchingmethodology in his theory,he instead examines the evolution of

formal eruptionswithin a systemicflow of duration. Reconsidering themore
traditional conception of arthistory in biological metaphors, such as style
or

as a type of
species,

considered

developments

as

explained

patterns,

growth

Kubler instead turns to the physical sciences forhis metaphorical model of art
a
history. In thismodel he citesMichael Faraday's electrodynamics as system of
and

relay points,

impulses,

their sequences

as time-based

operating

elements.3

With this schema for articulating thehidden, yet perceptible relations between
objects and processes, it is no wonder that the conceptualist,Minimalist, and
earthworks artistsfound resonance with his theories. ForMel Bochner, Carl
Andre, Robert Smithson, Sol LeWitt, and Alice Aycock, to name a few, theunder
lying attributesof space and time, in Kubler's sense, became a constituent element
in their work.

Kubler's definition and, hence, articulation of a prime object is closely aligned

with the concept of the prime number. Inmathematics, a prime number has the
unique quality of an integratedwhole
divisible
not
1.See George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks
on theHistory of Things (New Haven: Yale Univer
sityPress, 1962), 39^5.
2. Anthony Haden-Guest quoted inPeter
Schjeldahl, "The Temptation of the Fair," The New
Yorker,December 25, 2006, available online at
www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/25
/061225craw_artworld.
3. Kubler, 9.
4. For more on prime numbers, especially the
number I, see David G. Wells, PrimeNumbers:
TheMost Mysterious Figures inMath (Hoboken, NJ:

Wiley, 2005), 13-15 and 29.

5. Kubler, 39.
6. See Norbert Wiener, /Am a Mathematician
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964), 135-36. For
more on emergence, see meeting notes of the
Emergent SystemsWorking Group, BrynMawr
College, available online at http://emergent.
brynmawr.edu/emergent/EmergentSys
temsMeetingl.

by another

disruption

be divided

2 or

by

in that it remains an integer immune to

For

number.

3 or 4, etc. without

example,

whereas
a fraction,

creating

the number

7 can

the number

6 can

be evenly divided by both 2 and 3.4 Kubler notes, "Prime numbers have no divi
sors other than themselves and unity; prime objects likewise resistdecomposition
in being original entities."He also observes that "prime objects resemble the

prime

numbers

the appearance
antecedents,

of mathematics
of either.

and

their order

no

because

. . Their
.
in

conclusive
as

character

history

is

is known

rule
is not

primes

explained

to govern
by

their

enigmatic."5

As in emergent systems,discrete changes in form aremagnified through

temporal variables, inwhich a dynamic, yet unpredictable, pattern develops.What
emerges

from

an

interaction

is

something

extra, not

conceivable

as a

planned

attribute.Although the concept of emergence reaches back toAristotle'sMetaphysics,

the quality can be defined as something that self-organizing and complex adap
tive systemsproduce.6 As an elemental concept in evolutionary biology, particle

physics,

and market

actions.

In a Kublerian

economies,
sense we

is a way

emergence
can

look

at

prime

to

explain

objects

as

novel
belonging

ideas

and

to a class

of objects sharing similaritieswith emergent systems and processes. For example,

99

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for artistscoming to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s,questions concerning the
Gestalt perception ofwholes (as in the 1966 PrimaryStructures
exhibition at the

JewishMuseum, New York City) were reflected in both art-criticaldiscourse and

the turningof sculptural forms into objects displacing space. In addition, an

interest in ecologically inspired artworks employing integratedbiological com

patibility and sustainabilitywere initiated as part of an inquiry intomaterial
and

processes

as ends

their behaviors

in themselves.

As prime objects become visible to the externalworld and enter into its
a host

domain,

and

of replications

even mutations

to generate.

begin

Like

the

Xerox of a Xerox, or turkeyrollmasquerading as turkey,replications begin to

swerve and erode from theirprime progenitor, creating a debased form of the

original until another prime object emerges. For example, one can find the
Minimalists concern for site-specificwork employed in Soho's currentwindow

displays. From the inclusion of video and light to serial repetition, these formal
qualities have been appropriated by the fashion industry.For Kubler, thehistory
of things "is intended to reunite ideas and objects under the rubric of visual
forms

. . ."7He

objects

connected

views

as

this methodology

to a

temporal

a broader

encompassing

sense. Hence,

video

installation

sense

of

and window

display would share the statusof being part of a common visual form and, thus,
the shape of time.

Jump to present times.ArthurDanto has stated that the condition of art in

the present tense can be termed "objective pluralism." In this formulation, there

are "no
historically

mandated

pluralism

"Objective

as I understand

in . . ."And,

for art to go

directions

itmeans

he

continues,

. . there are no historical

that.

or
possibilities truer than any other. It is, ifyou like, a period of artistic entropy,
historical
ogy

disorder."8

of invoking

Danto

nonlinear,

's analysis

is also

self-organizing

in

with

keeping

Kubler's

For Kubler,

systems.

methodol
histori

however,

cal frames proceed over significant intervalsof time, and it is through extended
temporal thresholds that change occurs. Like Danto, Kubler keeps his directive
open

to include

of historical

starts and

determinism

stops

in any direction.

are forever with

On

us. Most

the other
catalogue

hand,
essays

concepts
are written

with the inclusion of sequential influences, as ifby tracinghistory's timeline,

one

can

construct

a linear

evolution.

For example,

can one

historicize

the work

of Richard Serrawithout paying homage to theRussian Constructivists?

The Originality

of the Avant-Garde

and Other

Modernist

Myths

In the same era that saw the birth of surrogatemotherhood, a substitutive

method of gestation, the painting surrogatewas conceived by Allan McCollum.9
7. Kubler, 9.
8. Arthur Danto, "Art after the End of Art," inThe
Wake of Art: Criticism,Philosophy,and the Ends of
Taste (New York: Routledge, 1998), 123 and 124.
9. On surrogacy, see SurrogateMotherhood: Politics
and Privacy,ed. LarryGostin (Bloomington:
IndianaUniversity Press, 1990).
10.Anne Rorimer, "Self-Referentialityand Mass
Production intheWork of Allan McCollum 1969
1989," inAllanMcCollum, exh. cat. (Eindhoven:
Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum,

1989).

Employed as a night janitor in an office building in downtown Manhattan,

McCollum would gaze into the empty offices across streetsevocative of desolate
as
Paintings
canyons.He talks about the circumstances behind his series Surrogate
in
other
the result of his opportunity to "look into the office spaces housed
on thewalls." Although he
buildings across theway and see paintings hanging
couldn't quite make out their content, he began thinkingof such paintings as
anonymous objects thatfunctioned primarily to fillwall space. He went on to

derive an object that "seemed to symbolize a painting: itwas a frame, amat and
something

black

inside."10

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Casting this iconic recipe in hydrostone and thenpainting the internal sur
faces of the objects with black enamel, the artist arranged the pictures as gallery
installations in a nineteenth-century salon style.Grouped as sets of small, repeti
tive squares and rectangles,McCollum's surrogate paintings have a decidedly
cool air about them, satirizingpainting as a fetish-commodity.Also revealing an
in ideas

twist concentrated

ironic

ture initiated
they stand

of abstract

about

considerations

for in a mass-mediated

objects

such

surface

veneer

specialized
culture.

As

this ges

and Minimalism,

painting

as "art"

and what
as

representing

closely as possible the object of desire, a surrogate is a stand-in or substitute. Is a

substitute,

or a look-alike

surrogate,

Can we conceive of theMcCollum

or

the

of a pattern

beginning

yet another

form

of Kubler's

replications?

surrogates as a debased form ofMinimalism

that changes

a cultural

As

direction?

surro

meme,

gacy has leaked into cultural and social norms far removed fromMinimalism's
Gestalt

Do we

aesthetic.

or, on

motherhood,

view

surrogate

the other

as a

motherhood
an

it become

has

hand,

form

degraded

of

for reconfig

opportunity

uring traditionalbeliefs? How shall such patterns of imitation be viewed in art,

culture, and the social world?
In 1936
Walker Evans photographed the Burroughs family,sharecroppers in
Alabama.

Depression-era

Signature

of the artist,

pieces

the photographs

portray

familypoverty-stricken,yet poised and proud. The pictures record in documen

taryform a time inAmerican history before television andmega-shopping malls.
In the empathetic framing and intense black, white, and gray tones of one pho

tograph, a father,amother, and several children gaze directly into the camera's
recording lens. In 1979 Sherrie Levine rephotographed severalEvans photographs

from an exhibition catalogue (FirstandLast) and exhibited themunder the collec

tive titleAfter
Walker Evans.
Although each of Levine's images is as true a likeness as
any reproduction
to assume

a casual

generates,

surprise,

a conscious

effort not

of the installation

in fact, an exhibition

that this was,

the viewer's

view

recasting
to

the context

Evans within

plagiarize,

but

would

of Evans works

rather

lead

the observer
the

from

of appropriation,

to make

the ease

evident

1930s. To
namely
of "fram

ing" as the simple title suggests, can in fact generate new layersofmeaning.
Invoking
made"
ization

not

based

of another

lapsed

the boundaries

Levine's

goods,
art has

but was

been

Levine's

"ready

itself a recontextual

critically

acclaimed

by

as one that "reflects themechanism of the art system,built

such

expressions

of recontextualization,

on manufactured

artist's work.

Susanne Holschbach
around

maneuver

the Duchampian

art was

as

authorship

between

Evans's

and

originality

signature

. . ."" Levine's

style and her own,

work
calling

col
into

question just those qualities the criticshad celebrated in it.

In 2001 Michael Mandiberg scanned the same photos, and created the
websitesAfterWalkerEvans.com

and AfterSherrieLevine.com

to disseminate

the

imageswhile making an ironic comment on how we assess images in our digital

age.AtAfterSherrieLevine.com, one finds a selection of these images, linked to

I I. Susanne Holschbach, "Sherrie Levine: After

Walker Evans," available online at http://www.
medienkunstnetz.de/works/after-walker-evans/.

high-resolution, exhibition-quality digital files thatcan be downloaded and

printed. A certificateof authenticity for each image,which one prints and signs,
is attached to the site, along with directions on how to frame the
image so that
itwill fulfill the certificate'srequirements.With the
image's URL built into the
title, the pictures

are

locatable

and

downloadable

by anyone

who

sees or reads

about them. By distributing the images online with certificatesof authenticity,

101 artjournal

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Mandiberg makes them accessible to any piker, dolt, or Joe Schmoe. For
create imageswith "cul
and AfterWalkerEvans.com
Mandiberg, AfterSherrieLevine.com
tural value,

economic

value."12

Its Imitations?Family

then

in

to visual

speak

of signature

parallels

photos

Levines

are not.13

Resemblances

art also

of contemporary

Examples

the "original"

However,

the Evans

while

protection,

copyright

Art and

tude,

little or no

but

are under

if not

repetition,
time's

style. Concerning

in exacti
arrows

criss-crossing

within the continuityof visual tropes, several examples can be considered: Cubo
Futuristworks by Kazimir Malevich and the "tubism" of Fernand Leger, the

metal treesof Robert Lobe and Roxy Paine, the abstractions of Paul Feeley and
Philip Taaffe, the animal carousels of Bruce Nauman and Michael Joo, and the

narrative paintings of JudithLinhares and Dana Schutz. It is thiskind of visual

rearticulation that resuscitatesnagging questions about the concept of originality
in art and market-driven

aesthetics.

Influences in visual art can also be regarded as extended lines of historical

narratives,

from personal

emerging

and

history

private

obsession.

exu

Schutz's

berantly bold paintings, ranging from the grotesque to a self-effacingplaybook,

present figures in quirky architectural spaces. Transfusedwith eccentric color and
scripted by imagination, Schutz s powerful paintings are at once unrecognizable

yet somewhat

familiar.

Linhares's
mythic

as

describable

paintings,

and private.

Art-historical

of fairy-tale

reworkings

subjects

as Cezanne's

such

creatures,

Bathers and

are both
into

forays

the revival of flower paintings meet Jack and Jillor a cameo appearance from a
Big BadWitch. By twisting childlike images into an amalgam of girls gone bad,

her work reverberates in pigmented saturation and gives a kick in the pants to
perspectival space.Working in this self-styledmanner since the 1960s,Linhares's
work

has

intersected

with

and narrative

expressionistic

idioms

in the

embedded

history of painting.

In reviewing a 2006 Linhares exhibition at the Edward Thorp Gallery in

New York, RowinginEden,theVillageVoicecritic JerrySaltz points to a comparison
between
The

Linhares
ghost

and

Schutz:

of Dana

ities exist between

12.Michael Mandiberg, "Second Statement,"

available online atwww.aftersherrielevine.com/
statement2.html.
13.See JonathonDelacour, "Appropriation Art
andWalker Evans," February 7, 2009, post to

"The Heart of Things," http://weblog.delacour.

net/photography/appropriation-art-and-walker
evans/. More currently,Shepard Fairey's "appro
priation" of an AP photograph as the source of
hisHope Printscontinues to raise questions con
cerning authorship, fairuse, and intellectual
property inthe arts.

14. JerrySaltz, "Dawn's Early Light," The Village

Voice,March 31, 2006, available online atwww.
villagevoice.com/2006-03-28/art/dawn-s-early
light/.

recent work

Schutz's
these

artists,

but

hovers

over

the differences

this exhibition.
are

significant.

Similar
Schutz's

color is sunburned, strange, and more original; Linhares's ismore like

meringue. Schutz sworld ismanic, formal, and fought for; the structureof
her work is almost sculptural; Linhares's ismythic, airy,and executed in an
easygoing but adept manner. Schutzmay only be 29, but I believe her work
has helped freeup Linhares, aswell as a number of other somewhat older
artists (including Cecily Brown).14
This visual parallel has caught the eye ofmany viewers, inwhom
resemblance"

of stylistic

Painternycblogspot.com,

concerns
a chat

has
room

generated
for artists

its own
to voice

dialogue.

the "family
At www.

their opinions

about

painting, the artworld, rocket careers, grad school, and the like, twenty-nine
pages of comments concerning the JudithLinhares-Dana Schutz correlation
appear.The

entries

are written

anonymously,

and

some

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are worth

noting:

...

said

Anonymous

...

someone else "steals" (inadvertently)

funnyhow artists get ignored until
career.
makes
While
Schutz
entire
interestingpaintings... I
[sic] their
would prefer theweird experience of Linhares anyday....
the fantasy

. . .

said

I also think thata lot of the love comes from thehatred of Schutz.
said

Imageworship

. . .

. . .Youmean a
jealousy of Schutz. She is a great artist, I highly doubt she is
Linhares.
off
Maybe there is a touch of influence but beyond that
ripping
. . .

nothing

. . .

said

Anonymous

... At Dana Schutz's second show, the Fredone, I

approached her to ask if
she knew a painter named JudithLinhares. She absolutely did and knew her

work.15

In themedia and press, the dialogue took on a lifeof itsown. In JenniferRiley's

Rail review of Linhares's 2006 show, the criticprovides a brief history of
Brooklyn
Linhares's influences: "Much has been written of herWest Coast upbringing and
education, her kinshipwith Symbolist painting, Outsider art, and Surrealism, her
interest
Painting'

in 'Bad Girl'

behavior

and her

at the New

exhibition

inclusion

Museum

in

in Marcia

1978."16 Two

Tucker's
years

'Bad

landmark

earlier,

in a 2004

Index
Magazine interview of Dana Schutz by PeterHalley, the reader had been
greetedwith similar descriptive language:
Peter:Well, someone could say your paintings are ugly in the sameway [as
the German

Expressionists].

Dana: I suppose so. People generally use three labels formy work?bad
painting, outsider art, or folk art?and theyall irkme. Bad painting doesn't

botherme asmuch, because I know people reference it as a label for certain

work

in the

'70s.17

ShallWittgenstein's notion of "family resemblances" be invoked?Are questions

concerning the relative relationship of aesthetic concerns being investigatedin the
context
what

of long-

factors

or

affect

short-term

historical

the emergence

of how

inheritance,
we

come

taking
to value

into consideration
contemporary

art

objects? Bringing art to public view operates as a form of cultural consensus

arising from the social, political, and economic interestsof the supporting agen
cies. Are there any underlying systemic rules bywhich we can assess art objects
in the current epoch? Beside surface appearance, what else is at play here?

15.See entry dated March

18,2006, atwww.

painternyc.blogspot.com/2006/03/judith-lin
hares.html.
16. Jennifer
Riley, "JudithLinhares," BrooklynRail,
April 2006, available online atwww.brooklynrail.
org/2006/04/artseen/judith-linhares.
17.Dana Schutz interviewwith Peter Halley,
Index42 (February 2004), available online at
www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/dana_
schutz.shtml.

Double

Play

In an essay entitled "Art after the End of Art" published inArtforum

in 1993,
Danto raises the question about the surfacingof styles and attitudes a second
time around.

He

quotes

all great, world-historical

a passage
facts and

by Karl Marx:
personages

remarks

"Hegel
occur,

as itwere,

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somewhere
twice. He

that
has

forgotten to add: the firsttime as tragedy,the second as farce."Danto goes on

to say that
Iwould clearly rather see in the repetition a ratificationof historical neces
sity than a farcical reenactment?not the only reason I prefer being a fol

lower of Hegel than ofMarx. But in truth I am a follower of neither, for I

don't especially believe in historical repetitions. If anything, I suppose, I am
a follower ofWittgenstein, who held that themeaning of a sentence is often

a function of the role itplays inwhat he termed a "language game," so that

the same sentence has differentmeanings if repeated on differentoccasions.
Or, better, I am a follower of Paul Grice and his thesis of "conversational
implicature,"which says, simply put, that to understand what someone

means by an utterance one must fill in the conversation inwhich

and

uttered

see what

movement

the sentence

of thought

it is

advanced.18

We can extrapolate that in various ways we judge an artist'sbody ofwork in this

manner.

see a

To

an artist's

single

propositional

or

artwork
stance

on

period

alone

tell us very much

doesn't
since

image-making,

there

is no

about
of

anchoring

movement in time,backward or forward,nor a sufficientperiod of duration.

times

Many

artists

traverse

one

another's

territory, knowingly

or not. How

can

signature stylebe interpreted in an age of historical entropy?Does itnot carry

with it a broader range of possibilities? IfKubler's frame of reference is an invo
cation of the prime object, how can this concept be employed out of the
entropic remains of our current time?Will the emergence of othermodels of
visual knowledge be factored into historical time, global space, and transdisci

plinary

consciousness?

Consumption of objects has become away to embrace cultural value. But

the question remains as to the function of art as a critical fiction, a cultural entity

manifesting symbolic values in historical time. For Kubler, cultural artifactsand

can occupy

their copies

the same

historical

epoch.

Distinctions

can nevertheless

be made between a prime object and its replications. But the copy has become a
discourse

in itself, a filter or filler

for accepting

the status quo.19

In an age of his

torical entropy,how does the copy interfacewith subjectivity,authenticity,and

epistemic value?What epistemological underpinnings and models of artpractice
are

penetrating

current

discourse?

To what

extent

do

originality

and

authorship

matter? Or, on the other hand, have we all been appropriated bymedia

spin?

Suzanne Anker isa visual artist and theoristworking at the intersectionof art and the biological sciences.
Her 2009 exhibitions include The Hothouse Archives, InstituteforCultural Inquiry,Berlin; The Glass Veil,
Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charite, Berlin; Corpus Extremus, ExitArt, New York; and Inside
is
(Artand Science), at the Cordoaria, Lisbon, Portugal. Her 2009 publication Visual Culture and Bioscience
distributed by D.A.P. She ischair of the fine arts department at the School of Visual Arts inNew York.
18.Arthur Danto, "Art after the End of Art,"
Artforum,
April 1993.
19.See Rosalind Krauss, "The Originality of the
Avant-Garde: A Postmodern Repetition," inArt
afterModernism: RethinkingRepresentation,ed.
BrianWallis (New York: New Museum of
Contemporary Art; Boston: Godine, 1984), 27.
For a fullerdiscusson of appropriation, see

Yve-Alain Bois et al., Endgame: Reference and

Simulation inRecent Paintingand Sculpture (Boston:
Instituteof Contemporary Art; Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1986).

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