Street to the Elite: The Characters and Scene of P a r a d e , pp. 73-85.
She maintains that what she calls the "modernist
framework" analyses the art object in terms either of its relationship to a particular movement in art history or as part of a monograph. For works of art made for the theatre, such an approach, according to McQuillan, is inadeguate on the one hand, and inappropriate on the other. She suggests that the approach demanded by the
"modernist framework" has, in fact, been responsible for the scant attention that has been given to art made for a theatrical context during the post-World War I
period.30 McQuillan notes the need for a more
comprehensive approach, one that encompasses into its dialectic "the multitude of theoretical, social,
political, psychological, and of course visual pressures exerted upon the artist and his conception of art."3X Axsom, although writing on a less theoretical level, has approached his specific study from a standpoint similar to that of McQuillan. He has highlighted the need to consider a cross-disciplinary context, as well as the need to engage in a formal analysis. This dual approach has provided his point of entry for his challenging
analysis of P a r a d e .
Secondly, as indicated again by both McQuillan and
Axsom, along with the dominance of a formalist approach
30 McQuillan, p. 20. 31 McQuillan, p. 19.
to an artist's theatrical commissions, there has been a related lack of critical attention to the wider
production context for which the art works were made. Referring specifically to Rauschenberg's work for the Cunningham piece Travelogue, Kardon has pondered whether an artist's contributions to a theatrical collaboration belong to the history of art or the history of stage design.32 In fact, they belong to both. But just as importantly, artists' theatrical commissions also belong to the history of the particular performing art with which they are associated. The art objects have been produced as part of a collaborative, cross-disciplinary endeavour, and need to be examined as such.
Some of the more recent written material that does consider an artist's theatrical commissions within a collaborative context often ignores not so much the fact of its cross-disciplinary context, as the catalogues of Baer and Rothschild amply demonstrate, but the wider, theoretical context surrounding collaboration. The issues that emerged with the publication of Michael Fried's article "Art and Objecthood"33 in 1967, for example, have scarcely been addressed in studies of
32 Kardon, p. 2.
33 Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," Artforum, 5, No. 10 (June 1967), rpt. in Minimal Art: A Critical A n thology, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: Dutton,
artists' theatrical commissions. Fried argued that authentic works of art are those that are not
theatrical, that is those that do not assume the
presence of a beholder and whose authenticity resides within the object itself. Following the approach of his mentor, the influential critic and historian Clement Greenberg, Fried advocated art that was true to its medium, and that, unlike theatre, did not borrow from other media. His assertion that "theatre is now the negation of art"34 was followed up by the suggestion that what he referred to as the "contemporary modernist arts"35 which, in addition to painting and sculpture included music and poetry, were in fact faced with "the need to defeat theatre."36
Those who have critically considered the debate
predicated by the writings of Fried as it might affect art made in a theatrical context have pointed out that Fried, the formalist critic, both privileges the art object, and perpetuates the myth of the creative genius working in isolation. David Shapiro, for example,
stresses the extreme position of Fried who, Shapiro suggests, is unable to contemplate whole areas of art history because his aesthetic lacks the notion of
34 Fried, "Art and Objecthood," p. 125. 35 Fried, "Art and Objecthood," p. 146. Fried, "Art and Objecthood," p. 146. 3 6
collaboration, a notion that "has functioned though sometimes repressed, as a central mode of aesthetic production."37 Similarly, Henry Sayre, in his The Object of Performance,3S also takes Fried's anti
theatrical stance as a starting point for an examination of aspects of American art and performance in the
seventies. Sayre focuses strongly on the idea that art forms of the seventies were both performance oriented and anti-establishment and had their origins in a
heritage that did not privilege the art object. Then, Rosalind Krauss has looked at specific items of
sculpture made for performance in order to suggest that Fried's very understanding of the nature of the art object was insufficient and based on what Krauss refers to as "an idealist myth".39
Much of the published material dealing with artists' theatrical commissions is unsatisfying and without a strong analytical framework. In part, this situation
37 David Shapiro, "Art as Collaboration: Toward a Theory of Pluralist Aesthetics 1950-1980," in the
catalogue Artistic Collaboration in the Twentieth Century, Cynthia Jaffee McCabe, Robert C. Hobbs and
David Shapiro (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984), p. 46.