The Folly of Curating the World

David Balzer, Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else

Pluto Press, 144pp, £8.99, ISBN 9780745335971

reviewed by Julian Haladyn

The topic of curating has become an increasingly important part of how we define the development of cultural and historical discourses, especially around art, in the 21st century. In addition to David Balzer’s book, which has received quite a bit of attention, there have been a number of key scholars who have turned their focus to questions of curating and the manner in which acts of curation have become mixed up with acts of creation. Two notable examples are Claire Bishop’s Radical Museology (2013) and Terry Smith’s Thinking Contemporary Curating (2012), which both critically examine how the methodologies and practices of curating are affecting the ways we think of and define contemporary art history. ‘The curator is a condition of the contemporary,’ Balzer writes. And his conception of what he terms ‘curationism’ – ‘a play on creationism, with its cultish fervor and its adherence to divine authorship and grand narratives’ – fundamentally depends upon the idea of the curator’s act as one that necessarily has the ability to re-narrativise histories.

Much of the recent interest in curating directly relates to the major changes in the art world that occurred in the 1990s. This social turn, as Bishop describes it in Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012), marks the currently accepted emergence of the ‘contemporary’ within history. It is at this time that we see the rise of what is termed relational art, with its somewhat troubled companion relational aesthetics, which privilege the relations facilitated by artists and art objects over the experience of the objects themselves. As a result of this attention on the ‘relational,’ art historians and theorists have been required to extend the scope of their investigations to include the broadest range of activities relating to art, from the material and conceptual issues associated with its production to the political, economic and social contexts with which it interacts. Within the institutionalised space of the gallery we see, for example, Rirkrit Tiravanija serving food for viewers to eat (like a restaurant), Vanessa Beecroft presenting an array of women all dressed the same for viewers to look at (like a fashion show), or Carsten Höller building a slide for viewers to slide down (like a playground). This relational form of art, Balzer rightly points out, ‘was institutional from the start.’ While at many points he is critical of Bishop and her theories, his entire book clearly builds upon the ideas she proposes against the more romanticised visions of relational aesthetics as art’s merging with life. Balzer’s critical framework, especially his treatment of the institution of art, directly builds upon the existing discourse around curating – with his notion of curationism adding to this discussion a key component, which I will vaguely describe as the absurd.

For Balzer, many of the artists working today are acting within the paradigm of ‘curators,’ a process that, at its extreme, is an embracing of what he describes as ‘curating without curators.’ While not necessarily a bad thing, this idea seems to haunt the whole of Curationism, with its author at many points struggling to overcome the implications of the book’s central topic. I see this reflected in the way Balzer addresses curationism at the end of his book as something that ‘has forgotten the very root of “curator”: cura or care and, by extension, genuine curiosity.’ After taking the time to give us a history of the term in Part 1 of his book – ‘curatore means, essentially, caretaker’ – it is telling that in the concluding pages he admits his belief that we have ‘forgotten’ these roots when using the terms curator or curated. If we apply this definition to the quote at the beginning of this paragraph, we get the absurd idea of curationism as ‘caretaking without caretakers.’

There is something very informative about considering the condition of the contemporary art world from this perspective, particularly in light of the increased (and seemingly shameless) commercialisation of art under the flag of what is termed ‘postmodernism.’ And yet Balzer never quite manages to break from the discursive shackles. On the one hand, this book touches on a number of problems that are crucial to understanding the current climate of the art world: the rise of celebrity curators, the over-determined use of the words ‘curator’ and ‘art.’ On the other hand, the book itself participates in the methodology of ‘curationism’ that its author apparently opposes. I suspect this contradiction is inescapable when handling this inherently tricky subject matter. Perhaps one has to be part of this club in order to understand how to critique, for example, some of the absurdist claims made in the name of the ‘democratization’ (‘deprofessionalization’ in Balzer’s terms) of the ‘curator.’ Personally, though, I do not understand how anyone can discuss ‘celebrity curators like Alain de Botton, Pharrell Williams, Steve Martin, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus’ without acknowledging the absurdity of such an attribution.

It helps that Balzer grounds his study in HUO, that is Hans Ulrich Obrist, a curator of accepted legitimacy whose practice actively problematises the classification of his role as ‘curator.’ While such acts are celebrated in so-called postmodernity, much like the trend of celebrity curators it is important to ask what is behind such acts. In the prologue, ‘Who is HUO?’ Balzer provides an overview of Obrist’s career, his coming to curating and, in a sense, his move beyond the traditional understandings of what constitutes the role of a ‘curator.’ We again need to acknowledge the ludicrousness of describing sleep as ‘an accident’ that Obrist tells Ingo Niermann ‘outwits me again and again.’ (In a time when psychoanalytic scrutiny of a person’s statements or behaviours are no longer a fashionable mode of analysis, it is nonetheless exceedingly difficult not to read into this particular claim.) Obrist is positioned by Balzer as the spokesman – in many cases self-proclaimed – for this new mode of the ‘curator’ as a type of post-human visionary who is perpetually present, even when they are absent. But what happens when Obrist succumbs to sleep? This is not a question that seems to be considered – and, building upon what I understand Balzer’s use of Obrist to be, this leaves out or overlooks a core aspect of this new ‘curator’ as ‘both a totalizing example of contemporary art and an anomaly.’

Having posed these questions, how might we go about answering them? ‘My personal sanctuary,’ writes Balzer, ‘is, ironically, the museum, where, increasingly, curatorial and institutional interventions prevent quiet contemplation, compelling proscribed ways of looking and listening and encouraging superficial methods of engagement like smartphones and activity centres.’ The current re-narrativising of histories is enacted through these new ways of curating, which privilege people who need constant stimulation in order to, like Obrist, avoid the possibility of sleep – the quiet contemplation that Balzer mentions. In such a contemporary environment, have we forgotten the genuine curiosity at the roots of these activities? If so, then Balzer’s analysis is a welcome corrective.
Julian Haladyn is Professor of Art History at OCAD University, Toronto. He is the author of Boredom and Art: Passions of the Will to Boredom and Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés.