Brain O’Doherty, Irish art critic, in his writing ‘Inside the white cube’, discusses the ideology of the gallery space through a variety of art works since modernism age, and specifically discusses the Eye and the Spectator in the second chapter.
The constrains of language could be sensed during the reading, since the two opposite signified concepts sometimes intertwine, each going deeper and absorbing new meanings. To begin with, the author uses a series of metaphor to illustrate how arts, specifically paintings, were made so complicated and seemingly hard to grasp by some modernism artists. ‘Surface tension’ was translated from ‘deep space’. The author indicates the origin of the art form called collage, which developed from a lack of illusionism in the paintings, increasingly inspired by artist such as Picasso, and how collage affect the space we perceive.
The author uses Kurt Schiwitters’s Merzbau as an example, a room recognized as a collaged space, discusses the reciprocal value of this art piece, and how it resonate with (space of) gallery and the existence of gallery today. Since Kurt himself did have two extreme living ‘theatres’ – Merzbau, and the tiny little living space under the table in detention camp in Wright Island.
Looking back, the author have Picasso’s Still life on Chair Canning as example, stating that the multiple vanishing points and other twisted angles reveal the fact that humans actually live in the illusion that we thought we do have the picture of things we see, while probably that everything IS subject. To face the fact, or say, face the things seemed too familiar to us, we need to alienate ourselves from it at first. Art is being consumed and objectified, through which human nourish our nonexistent selves. It is likely that that’s exactly why people wandering in the spacious galleries, together with the Spectator Phantom.
Looking at present, we already have artists made art works directly from every life. Human-like sculptures presenting the human agony of couples, it must seems funny to the phantom that human needs to observe the Real through other’s eyes. Or say, with a bit more mercy, the whole act could provide a sense of ceremony, which formally alienate ourselves as well as connecting us back to our inner selves.
In the last part of the writing, the author discusses the fractured self and self-conscious given the circumstance that one viewing art pieces in gallery space. Overall, the author appears to be addressing his ideas that perception was a mere obsession in the recent human history to a broader audience who are interested in abstract art works, philosophy and spaces.
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