Chris McAuliffe — Stieg Persson-Manet’s Leg

Time and again, Stieg Pers­son and I have talked about Manet. What kind of mod­ernist was he, what is his rel­e­vance to us today? Now, in Sculp­ture 1992 — Manet’s Leg, Pers­son has his own lit­tle piece of the mas­ter. Manet’s leg was ampu­tat­ed as he endured the final stages of syphilis. Persson’s imag­ined his­to­ry of Manet mate­ri­alis­es him in the present at the moment of his pass­ing. A tal­is­man recon­sti­tut­ed in the antipodes, the lega­cy is trans­port­ed as a fetish object to be wor­shipped by a mod­ernist car­go cult. But the mod­ernist mas­ter is not rep­re­sent­ed in his myth­ic great­ness but in his mor­tal­i­ty, frag­ment­ed and dis­eased, just as his mod­ernist lega­cy has decom­posed and been cor­rupt­ed.

Sculp­ture 1992 — Manet’s Leg is part of a per­son­al his­to­ry, but, like all the work in this exhi­bi­tion, it reflects on the his­tor­i­cal­ly prob­lem­at­ic sta­tus of mod­ernism in Aus­tralian art. The bur­geon­ing his­to­ri­og­ra­phy of mod­ernism in Aus­tralia art has mapped a num­ber of pos­si­ble posi­tions for artists and crit­ics. There is the mod­ernism we had to have; the var­i­ous his­tori­cist imper­a­tives which insist that Aus­tralian artists pro­duce a ver­sion of Euro­pean or Amer­i­can mod­ernism. These gen­er­ate tales of impor­ta­tion, emu­la­tion or par­al­lel devel­op­ment. The trag­ic mode of art his­to­ry appears in sto­ries of the mod­ernisms we nev­er had (self-loathing laments at the Philis­tine provin­cial­ism of Aus­tralian cul­ture) and the mod­ernisms we almost had (so near but yet so far). On the oth­er hand, there have been cri­tiques of the mod­ernisms we didn’t want (the cul­tur­al nation­al­ists’ argu­ments against import­ed or imposed dis­cours­es). Only recent­ly have more mea­sured his­to­ries been writ­ten; the sto­ries of the mod­ernisms we did have. These trace the for­ma­tion of a crit­i­cal region­al­ism through Aus­tralian artists’ manip­u­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al dis­cours­es.

These his­to­ries of the local and inter­na­tion­al incar­na­tions of mod­ernism need to be tak­en into account when dis­cussing Persson’s work, but know­ing this doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make inter­pre­ta­tion any eas­i­er. The first prob­lem is that the more care­ful­ly we plot the vicis­si­tudes of mod­ernism in Aus­tralia, the more frag­ment­ed the field becomes. We are left with a myr­i­ad of nar­ra­tives, each fig­ur­ing mod­ernism through dis­cours­es of his­to­ry (per­son­al and nation­al), local­i­ty, and cul­tur­al aspi­ra­tion. This, I think, is why Pers­son seems to offer us mod­ernism so ambiva­lent­ly. His prac­tice is not so much about declar­ing a defin­i­tive posi­tion with regard to mod­ernism as it is about stag­ing the prob­lem of mod­ernism for an Aus­tralian artist of his gen­er­a­tion. This gives rise to the sec­ond dif­fi­cul­ty. In the rush to make easy dis­tinc­tions between mod­ern and post­mod­ern, art crit­i­cism has left no room for inter­me­di­ary posi­tions. As a result, Persson’s work, which nei­ther embraces nor aban­dons mod­ernism, is left to drift.

What lies behind the pieces in this exhi­bi­tion is Persson’s expe­ri­ence of the mod­ernisms avail­able to Aus­tralian artists in the late ‘70s and ear­ly ‘80s. Pers­son stud­ied paint­ing at a time when one hege­mon­ic ver­sion of mod­ernism (the for­mal­ism espoused by Clement Green­berg and his antipodean acolytes) was being pushed aside by an equal­ly hege­mon­ic and total­is­ing ver­sion of post­mod­ernism. The shift in the bal­ance of pow­er, how­ev­er, was not so clear. While vig­or­ous crit­i­cism of for­mal­ism had been devel­oped in Aus­tralia and abroad in the late ‘60s, and alter­na­tive prac­tices devel­oped through the ‘70s, the Green­ber­gian par­a­digm still had its adher­ents. It remained entrenched in respect­ed, main­stream crit­i­cism; was still a key com­po­nent of the styles of the more suc­cess­ful local artists; and con­tin­ued to be part of the art school cur­ricu­lum of the time. In addi­tion, and this still holds today, for­mal­ism could still be seen as cogent­ly address­ing the oper­a­tions of paint­ing (espe­cial­ly sur­face and space) despite the fact that these obser­va­tions of for­mal oper­a­tions had been turned to his­tor­i­cal­ly and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly ques­tion­able ends. More impor­tant­ly, cri­tiques of for­mal­ism often point­ed to its nar­row read­ing of mod­ernism and its elim­i­na­tion of prac­tices that ran counter to its canon. This raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there was still some­thing to be found in mod­ernism.

Giv­en this sce­nario, it was pos­si­ble that Aus­tralian artists of the late ‘70s might choose to con­tin­ue to explore the his­to­ry of mod­ernism with­out declar­ing an alle­giance to for­mal­ism and with­out propos­ing its post­mod­ern suc­ces­sor. This is the deci­sion that Pers­son made. But hav­ing made that choice, the prob­lems mul­ti­ply. How could he con­tin­ue an engage­ment with mod­ernism when it was being swept aside very pub­licly by the new post­mod­ern van­guard? It was not pos­si­ble to express unqual­i­fied sup­port for mod­ernism, but nor was it pos­si­ble to jet­ti­son it. The prob­lem, then, was to avoid both homage and pas­tiche, to artic­u­late a crit­i­cal dis­course in and about mod­ernism.

The solu­tion that Pers­son has devel­oped involves com­bin­ing a vari­ety of lan­guages so that the view­er can active­ly trace the rhetorics of mod­ernism; its oper­a­tions, its mar­gins and its exclu­sions. The works, then, embody the dilem­ma that I have described. In each case, it is a mat­ter of think­ing what kinds of mod­ernism are being deployed, what works and what does not, what is appro­pri­ate and what is not, what is per­mis­si­ble and what is not. This is done to achieve nei­ther res­o­lu­tion (the estab­lish­ment of the suprema­cy of one mod­ernist posi­tion) nor rup­ture (the col­lapse of mod­ernism into irrec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ence). In a sense, the uncer­tain his­to­ry of mod­ernism in Aus­tralia (the fail­ure to ade­quate­ly emu­late Europe, the fail­ure of for­mal­ism to pro­vide the mir­a­cle cure), allows Pers­son to be more of a spec­ta­tor than a par­tic­i­pant. Each of his works asks what mod­ernism might be for an Aus­tralian artist; an artist work­ing in a cul­ture which seeks out the post­mod­ern with­out even being sure of what its mod­ernism was. The point is not to pro­pose the redun­dan­cy of all mod­ernisms on the basis of the pass­ing of one ver­sion (for­mal­ism). The point is not to leave mod­ernism behind with­out hav­ing ade­quate­ly explored it, and not to com­pound the error by leap­ing imme­di­ate­ly to a reac­tive ver­sion of post­mod­ernism. Persson’s work con­sti­tutes a series of exer­cis­es in dis­cur­sive pos­si­bil­i­ty (legit­i­mate and ille­git­i­mate, func­tion­al and dys­func­tion­al mod­ernisms), rather than an affir­ma­tion of a mas­ter nar­ra­tive — mod­ernist or post­mod­ernist. I empha­sise this because it is often not recog­nised just how heav­i­ly involved in mod­ernism many con­tem­po­rary post­mod­ernist Aus­tralian artists are. And it is indica­tive of the sim­plis­tic read­ing of artis­tic prac­tices in Aus­tralia that, in spite of the post­struc­tural­ist admo­ni­tion against mas­ter nar­ra­tives, post­mod­ernism was pre­sent­ed as just that in the first half of the ‘80s. Pers­son has an indi­rect engage­ment with mod­ernism as a region­al prob­lem­at­ic. This is dif­fer­ent from many oth­er young artists at this time who marked the prob­lem­at­ic sta­tus of mod­ernism more blunt­ly (if not crude­ly) through strate­gies of pas­tiche and frag­men­ta­tion. (And dif­fer­ent again from those who dealt with the prob­lem through nos­tal­gia and revival­ism.)

I think that the key tac­tic that Pers­son uses to work out his uncer­tain posi­tion is col­lage. Like the mod­ernist col­lag­ist, he com­bines a num­ber of dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als, visu­al con­ven­tions and spaces on the one sur­face. Unlike the mod­ernist, how­ev­er, I don’t think that he invites us to retrieve or recon­sti­tute a dom­i­nant code (rep­re­sen­ta­tion) from among the sev­er­al pre­sent­ed. In addi­tion the lay­ers are metaphor­i­cal as well as mate­r­i­al and con­ven­tion­al. Paint­ing 1992 — Crush, is built on a mono­chrome field, a sign for reduc­tive abstrac­tion. Two nudes are paint­ed on this field; one fac­ing ‘into’ the fic­tive space of the can­vas, the oth­er fac­ing ‘out’ towards the real space of the view­er. These rep­re­sent­ed fig­ures estab­lish form and pic­to­r­i­al space, but also invoke the 19th cen­tu­ry insis­tence on the body as the site of mean­ing and the pin­na­cle of artis­tic prac­tice. How­ev­er, since they are derived from a pho­to­graph, they speak of the grad­ual dis­tanc­ing of the artist from the real in the age of mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion. The chro­mat­ic and tonal ‘rever­sal’ of the fig­ures as a colour pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tive exag­ger­ates this para­dox­i­cal loss of the real. The orig­i­nal ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry pho­to­graph depicts two young African girls, sig­nalling the voyeuris­tic eroti­cism and ‘prim­i­tivism’ that per­me­at­ed mod­ernism. Final­ly, since the pho­to­graph was used by Matisse, in lieu of actu­al mod­els, as the basis for a sculp­ture, it intro­duces the peren­ni­al debate as to the rel­a­tive mer­its of paint­ing and sculp­ture, as well cit­ing a canon­i­cal mas­ter of moder­ni­ty.

Beyond these ini­tial lay­ers, with their allu­sions to rep­re­sen­ta­tion, abstrac­tion, the body, desire, prim­i­tivism, mas­tery and mod­ernism, are the col­lage ele­ments, lit­er­al and sim­u­lat­ed. Here, a series of mod­ernist oppo­si­tions are artic­u­lat­ed: the real ver­sus the rep­re­sent­ed; trans­par­ent illu­sion­ism ver­sus self-reflex­ive dis­play of means; abstrac­tion as dec­o­ra­tive pat­tern and as non-objec­tive for­mal con­struc­tion. The mod­ernist hier­ar­chy of legit­i­mate and ille­git­i­mate prac­tice is act­ed out. If there is a dis­cur­sive insta­bil­i­ty evi­dent in these oppo­si­tions, the for­mal rec­ti­tude of the paint­ing per­haps com­pen­sates for it. All the com­po­nents of the paint­ing are pre­sent­ed frontal­ly and cen­tral­ly, anchored to the upper and low­er edges of the can­vas; the con­flict is resolved, for­mal­ly at least. Here, anoth­er mod­ernist rhetoric is tabled — paint­ing as prob­lem solv­ing.

If the paint­ing allows me to recog­nise and reit­er­ate received ideas about mod­ernist art, it also reminds me of the awk­ward faults con­cealed beneath the sur­face of that author­i­ta­tive dis­course. This ques­tion­ing of mod­ernism is still accom­pa­nied by an accep­tance of some of its tenets. The Euro­cen­tric and patri­ar­chal dis­cours­es of mod­ernism, the hier­ar­chy of media, the arbi­trary dis­tinc­tions between dif­fer­ent modes of pic­to­r­i­al lan­guage are all revealed yet the flat frontal­i­ty of the paint­ed sur­face and the com­po­si­tion­al solu­tion of axi­al sym­me­try still appeal, sal­vaging some integri­ty for the paint­ing. This, I think, sug­gests some­thing of Persson’s rela­tion­ship to mod­ernism: con­scious of its fail­ings, he can­not ignore its suc­cess­es.

In Paint­ing 1992 — Large Maraud­ing, for exam­ple, mod­ernism beck­ons wel­com­ing­ly, only to dis­in­te­grate on clos­er exam­i­na­tion. A flat, frontal­ly ori­ent­ed space is eked out of a lat­er­al­ly divid­ed sur­face The ver­ti­cal stripes in each of the two sec­tions increase their width in oppos­ing direc­tions; left to right above, right to left below. Oper­at­ing on for­mal­ist prin­ci­ples the stripes in the paint­ing acknowl­edge, and to an extent respect, the flat­ness of the can­vas even as spa­tial play is intro­duced through the fig­ure ground rever­sal of stripes and pat­terns and their opti­cal motion across the can­vas. But, in for­mal­ist terms, the pat­terns are ille­git­i­mate in that they have more than a pure­ly for­mal func­tion. They are dec­o­ra­tive, sym­bol­ic and his­tor­i­cal­ly spe­cif­ic; they mean at a lev­el oth­er than that of form alone. The paint­ing works (as a for­mal exer­cise, as a kind of mod­ernism) only up to a point. When the repressed returns the paint­ing mutates into … what? A med­i­ta­tion on the ide­o­log­i­cal lim­its of for­mal­ism; a reflec­tion on absent visu­al tra­di­tions; a metaphor for the artist’s uncer­tain, love-hate rela­tion­ship with mod­ernism.

In Stieg Persson’s new works, mod­ernism is reg­is­tered not mere­ly as a for­mal activ­i­ty, but as his­to­ry. Paint­ing 1992 — The Field, speaks of his­to­ries of mod­ernist style, of Aus­tralian art, and the his­tor­i­cal present. The title refers to the exhi­bi­tion of the same name which, in 1968, attempt­ed to graft inter­na­tion­al for­mal­ist abstrac­tion onto Aus­tralian cul­ture, only to see it with­er on the vine. The image is based on a work by Lar­ry Poons, one of the mas­ters of colour field abstrac­tion. But when the sys­tem­at­ic play of for­mal units in the mod­ernist orig­i­nal is recon­fig­ured as ran­dom, the integri­ty of the for­mal­ist sur­face breaks down. As is the case with Persson’s zips and stripes, the pat­tern­ing ele­ment is not neu­tral; con­tent, oth­er than form itself, is rein­tro­duced. Dalkon shields drift across the still ground of the paint­ing. Sin­is­ter sym­bols of a failed repro­duc­tive tech­nol­o­gy; they allow the pol­i­tics of gen­der, pow­er and med­ical tech­nol­o­gy to intrude into the apo­lit­i­cal, tran­shis­tor­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy of for­mal­ism. This rein­tro­duc­tion of mean­ing is not a mat­ter of knee-jerk anti-for­mal­ism, but a reminder of how prob­lem­at­ic the appar­ent absence of the social-his­tor­i­cal present in for­mal­ist art was. And all of these cita­tions — style, exhi­bi­tion, pol­i­tics — are part of the artist’s own his­to­ry, his attempt locate his posi­tion in the past as it per­sists in the present.

Chris McAu­li­ffe 1992

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logue
Stieg Pers­son
Manet’s Leg
City Gallery, Octo­ber 1992
ISBN 1 875303 03 0