Branislav Dimitrijevic
THINGS, WORDS AND USEFUL DECEPTIONS
Think of the tools in a box: a hammer, a pair of pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a ruler, a glue pot, glue, nails, screws. Just as the individual tools function differently so do words. (Occasionally some similarity may be noticed, too.) Naturally, what seems to be confusing is the uniformity of their apearance when heard or seen handwritten and printed. For their application is not so obvious to the eye.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical investigations, *11.
on ungauged measures
Incomprehension of non-verbal, visual representation in relation to the linguistic conventions of the written or spoken word lies in our inability to deal with the need to definy visual art as a language analogous to the conventions of verbal communication. Many philosophers as well as linguists and semiologists have ultimately come to a somewhat resigned conclusion which , summarized by Umberto Eco, tells us that the very notion of sign holds no viability and justification when it comes to the "iconic character" of visual representations which, for him , are more closely connected to the basic mechanisms of perception than to explicit cultural habits. Such difficulties, as well as the paradoxical misconstrusions (like the remark about iconic signs not being firmly connected to "explicit cultural habits"), originate in a generally accepted notion that a sign is language-based. That is why superficial interpretations of visual representations are based either on verbal, literal way of reading which reduces visual art to the level of illustrating an already established and accepted text (origins to all are found in the Renaissance doctrine ut pictura poesis ), or on "aestheticism" used as an excuse to verbally bring about the working of visual arts’ formal aspects to which verbal communiciation is actually superfluous.
On the other hand, there are theorists who, like Nelson Goodman, can ostensibly be classified as a typical semiologist, and who had patience to recognize the cognitive capacity of visual representations and the ability for their understanding which although different to verbal communication, can be learned and comprehended. Goodman will only seemingly accept the convictions of the "iconoclastic" semiologists, who believe that visual representations are simply the impoverished "half-sisters" of language, saying that : "nonlinguistic systems differ from languages, depiction from description, the representational from the verbal, painting from poems, primarily through a lack of differentiation - indeed through density (and the consequent total absence of articulation)-of the symbolic system." However, according to W. J.T. Mitchell , one of the most comprehensive interpreters of Goodman, such "deficiencies" and "absences" are articulated by an unexpected term with a positive connotation and that is "density". Goodman illustrates the distinction between density and differentiation by alluding to the difference between a graduated thermometer and an ungraduated thermometer. A graduated thermometer reads the exact position of the mercury: it has either reached a particular grade on the scale or is read as close to it. The space between two grade demarcations on the scale is not taken for a unit of the system. Instead , the nearest grade is considered for reading. On the other hand, with ungraduated thermometers the uniformly set reading is impossible regardless of a grade: all is relative and approximate, and each grade on the scale of an ungraduated thermometer (which are obviously unlimited in number) can be used as a unit of the system. Any smallest gap in the mercury level can be taken for a different temeperature indication, but none of the differencies can be attributed a fixed reading. Thus a visual representation is read like an ungraduated thermometer: " every mark, every curve or swelling of a line, every modification of texture or colour, is loaded with semantic potential".
According to the abstract, semiotic jargon, a visual representation is formostly a two-dimensional picture. All examples, however rare they may be, are based on a "picture" or more specifically on painting as an art category - it is a reference point of any analysis. That is why Goodman's example is interesting for many reasons: it talks about an object which represents, object that has a diagram inscribed, but also an object in which a predominant role is played by the substance that is inside of it and its characteristics, in this case mercury and its capacity to dilate in heat and to contract in the cold. Therefore, in keeping with Goodman, the basic question becomes how to establish what such an object "does" as, according to him, "the relation between a picture and what it represents is assimilated by the relationship of a predicate and that which it relates to". And a predicate can relate to both the object and the subject of a sentence. However, this remark could be yet another trap, created by the picture theory based on an analogy with language, if it were not for the "materiality" of the sample, its "reality" connected to the cognitive aspects of visual representation through sensory perception of heat or cold and the visible dilation and contraction of mercury on the other hand. And "thirdly"- which is very desirable when it comes to scuplture (and also significant because of the Duchamp's view that "1 is unity, 2 is duality and 3 is everything else"), - knowledge about the very nature of mercury, particularly in cases when it is free from its glass container, and all which it normally does or can do. So an ungraduated thermometer registers the sensation we feel if we are in the same room with the thermometer, it represents the sensation but there is not a unified system which could define and classify the representation. Nevertheless, there is "density" which contains the relationship between the predicate, the object and the subject: density becomes more than a handy accessory, it becomes a "working system " which contains experiences and presents them in all their multitude.
In "The Romantic Adventures of an Adversary Rotarian" Monsieur Hazard (or Mr. Chance) said to Marcel Duchamp that "it should always be kept in mind that inaccurate and careless measurments are worthless and may often cause a waste of time and materials." While he was talking, "Mr Chance" absent-mindedly tweaked a thread loose from his waistcoat, and there was another, and another which he tweaked as well. It could well be that these three equally long pieces of thread, which had been discended horizontally onto a canvas producing three different units of measure and each precise by itself, were used for Duchamp's "Three standard stoppages". As much as this work is indicative of Duchamp's influence on 20th century art it can also be an indication of an orientation point for entering the world inhabited by the sculptures of Zdravko Joksimović, the world of measurments, linguistic and visual puns, natural resources and cultural raw materials…
In a 1995 interview, Joksimović mentioned density which is what objects of small dimensions talk about as does the working process itself, especially laminating or stacking up of wooden components in a sculpture. Density, which he mentiones in passing only seemingly, is recognized by Joksimović in the process not as piling up but as layering: "Soil, just like blood, either puts its past away or discloses it in layers…. each particle also bears a unit of time measure".This will surely be indicative of the ways some of his works are created, including that which, "for the moment without a good title", bears an emblematic name Sculpture (1991).However, the relationship between art and measurment, between natural and acquired measures, measuring of space and time, is most transparently revealed in a small, simple work entitled You must be somewhere (1992). It consists of two pieces of wood joined lengthwise or, simply put, two planks one of which, the narrower, has indented partitions, decimal points, like any regular and useful measuring meter. Nevertheless, this meter is useless not only as it lacks numerals which help diferentiate a measuring scale, but because the indented side is turned "inwards". It is connected to the other plank, which also has been intervened upon in the form of white lines but, only as much as was necessary to confirm and interprete some already existing, natural inscriptions of the material itself. Wood is a material that reveals its past by layers and density: rings and knobs represent "nongeometrical" but precise linear measurments of the age of the material, they are the already existing, "ready-made" measuring instruments. On the other hand, the way the natural measuring instruments are "culturary arranged" speaks of our inability to read them in full, so what Joksimović does here is just re-creating an "old" illusionist's trick by reading "pictures" into them.So what our eye can identify among those tinges is an eye with eyelashes, and a blazing, flying ball looking like a comet with a tail. By doodling and drawing outlines, like an idle schoolboy in a maths class, he is trying to find a shape, some sense in the beautiful but inexplicable tinges. Measuring is diffucult, and drawing lines is an escape from complexity, so a question crucial to Joksimović's work arises here: why should art be drawing lines and stacking of materials only, when it could deal with measuring, reading of measurements, gauged and ungauged, and all those other things that no one else is concerned about . That is why he said, in the aforementioned interview: "the museums which I find most important in Belgrade are the PTT Museum and the Railroad Museum, and also the Maritime Museum in Kotor during summer - I am more likely to go for a book on watches, aviation, mines, stories about craftsmen's life, than those on aesthetics…." Rather than taking this comment as a meditation on the end of aesthetics, or the end of art, it should be put into a context where it is clear that there is a need to view art in all its tension between functionalism and art for art's sake, between intentions and fixed meanings and between the form and the concept.
context
The enormous significance of the British sculptors who were in the limelight in the 80's , and their influence in redefining terms such as sculpture and object in today's art , is well known. Still keeping a critical distance in relation to the British conceptual scene of the 70's, but also Tuckerian and Caro's formalism in sculpture and particularly the then expresionist trends in painting, artists like Cragg, Deacon or Woodraw re-established sculpture bearing in mind the meaning of form, material and the working process itself. They also took into account iconographic and associative input avoiding self-reflecting formalism and dematerialized conceptualism. Simply put, these artists have set quite an ambitious goal of establishing "total" quality in sculpture which was to rely on many significant historical turning-points; that is, sculpture which will be ecclectic in its model and very homogenous in its final result. Andre's minimalism and Long's land-art, as well as Tucker's formalism and the tradition of surrealism and constructivism were all to be taken into account. The possible ways of sculpture forming have also been ecclectic with an insistence upon technical perfection of elements treated either by hand or with the use of machines, as well as of diverse possibilities of sculpturing, constructing, gluing, laminating, pivotting or just plain floor or wall arrangements and stacking of elements.
Making similar requests, although under different circumstances in relation to the developed post-industrial societies, brings somewhat disparate connotations about the relationship between art and its status in social classification. Belgrade sculptors who were born at the end of the 50's and at the beginning of the 60's (Joksimović, Krgović, Petrović, Apostolović and others) have recognized the potential of the expected post-socialist transformation and have set high standards characteristic of the world artistic scene.Their standards were quite different from those of society towards art, and also of some other artists towards their work from an earlier period but particularly those who were to come on the scene in the 90's. Because of this, many of these sculptors will, during the 90's, modify their basically formalistic beginings. With an expected dismissal of, and even cynicism towards, a society prone to irresponsibility and unprofessionalism, and the artists' standing within such a society they will redefine the status of object, technical perfection and the relationship between form and communication. They will create interesting combinations which will rely on very refined formalistic criteria and on the experience of both a local and international conceptual and neodadaist tradition, thereby connecting the formalist and conceptual mandate of contemporary artistic practice. There are two poles in today's art between which the works of Zdravko Joksmović can be placed, and that is somewhere between Martin Puryear and Haim Steinbach, between the final technical consequences of the new British sculpture and the total context-art of stacking and presenting of ( not only) bought elements, where he accepts neither the technicism of the former nor the "shelf-life" of the latter.
dingspiel
Joksimović's sculptures from the early 90's, such as W as in Woods (1992) or Sculpture (1991), show a crossing over of the distinction into the formalist and conceptual mandate of contemporary art. Apart from showing the skill in wood processing and connecting, both sculptures wittily rely on historical models such as Brancusi or Arp, but also on a redefinition of the meaning of ready-made and popartistic blow-up objects. Maybe it is W as in Wood that we can take to represent the quintessence of Joksimović's work because many of the elements that it contains will be found (sometimes more prominently expressed) in his other works. What becomes immediately obvious is that the sculpture owes its shape to Arpian morphology, but due to the utilization of wood it points to Nature and the question of its "end". The words in the title are playing a suggestive pun based on which the form, on the one hand , recognizes "stilization" of natural shapes, while on the other hand we read in it the cyrillic letter Ш (which in the Serbian language is the first letter in the word шума- meaning woods). In his works, however, one can always find something that can be interpreted as a deception of the viewer, but also as a praise of his ability to see and acknowledge, and of his potential awareness based on which one can form implicit narratives from which none of Joksimović's works is free. This cannot typically be said of sculpture appreciation which at first glance appears formalistic. So, the object which was used as a model for this work is a cello mute which the player uses to muffle string vibrations and to silence the instrument. The object assumes a fascinating appearance and even stranger, yet very specific, purpose by this enlargment, does not only make this form more monumental (having almost the importance of a memorial because the process is free of popartistic playfulness with the trivial) but expands many problems including "Lessinganian" relationship among the arts, and also generally visual representations of non-iconic fields like sound or its absence. Such mixed points of reference are pacified by the letter Ш (ш as in шума for w as in woods), being an onomatopoeic sign for silence. As Wittgenstein would put it "to imagine a language is to imagine a life form".
The question of language games in the visual arts is complicated by the previously mentioned readings of art forms which are based on linguistics. What Joksimović manages to achieve in his work is not "to get rid of" the narrative but to apply it in the world of "ungraduated thermometers". Unlike the visual arts being used as an illustrative correlate of verbal symbolism, this art uses language, its paradoxes, but also its poetics, in order to establish a specific system for sculptural interpretation which always takes materiality as the starting point of expression. Materiality in Joksimović is not a return to "truth in the material" but rather a disclosure of "untruth", a deception of a material, deception we find in language and in our verbocentral ability to read. Analogous to literature generally using images as its nurtured references (literature has actually degraded the image by mistifying it and saying that it is a meaning of a word), Joksimović uses words as a raw material for discovering various functions for an object while searching for the meaning through the object's exploitation in its contexts. As Wittgenstein would put it, the interpretation of words appears as their utilization within a language:"Dingspiel" instead of "Sprachspiel". The readibility of these works is thus not reduced, nor transferred onto self-reflective formalistic logics. It is rooted in the ability of sculpture and object to represent - not in the sense of naturalistic illusionism but in the sense whereby different types of communication and knowledge acquisition are incorporated into something that is basically a sculpting problem.
Lighthouse (1992) is such a sculpture. Firstly, the contrast between the object and the very title creates the first "useful misinterpretation": the reference here is not to the building but to its function.The sculpture imitates the lamp itself, an object, by using the limited language of sculpture which frees it from its main operational function. The surfaces of the circular wood belts are positioned under a different angle in relation to one another, and in their middle, in the "focus" of the sculpture, there is a small rosette made of four fragments that had been borrowed from a violin bridge and arranged in a circle. Sound, or its symbol, replaces light. An inversion of notions takes place, just as it does in some other works of Joksimović, Transistor (1992) or Square decades (1995) where, instead of the lenses of a pseudo-optical instrument, a doctor's stethoscope is found: an instrument that ought to be looked through is instead presented to us as a mute object which is actually only checking out our imagination, in much the same way as looking at the stars checks out the life within us.
It becomes obvious, at the first glance, that ready-made elements are often incorporated in even the most formally "pure" of Joksimović's work. Although there is aesthetic admiration of such objects as proclaimed by William Tucker in his The language of sculpture, what distinguishes Joksimović's use of ready-mades is primarily cognitive in nature. A taken object has the potential of being more communicative than a "modelled" one, which is to become, due to its spectre of possible conventionalized meaning, the "key" for understanding. Naturally, such a key guarantees not only one but rather more interpretations, and it represents an inversion of everyday logic, because the density of a system, which is based on an "ungraduated thermometer", is entered with a "graduated thermometer" and its problematic reliability. Such is the "rosette" in Lighthouse, or the Kodak spectre in the piece named A City of 1,5 Million Inhabitants (1994). This piece is related to a previous series of "terrain works" which were a kind of sculpturesque exploration of surfaces and their mapping (and also the moment when Joksimović's work, especially his pastels, is closest to one of its distant influences - Ben Nicholson) as well as to several later works in which certain geographical problems and symbols, such as map keys, become materialized. The fact that a key to the city that might be in question, the city that had crime inscribed in its geography by 1994 and clearly verified by medals, is a Kodak spectre made of such decorations is difficult to avoid.
There is also a key for the sculpture Boulevard (1995), made for the exhibition "Map Room ", which primarily renders a solution to the questions of sculptural compactness (that is a relation between the compression and expansion of dimensions):a long sheet of metal bent/compressed in a heavy circular/elliptical form, similar to an archer's target, makes us aware of one of the roles of art, to measure things under a condition which is not normally used. Nevertheless, such a condition is actually the most economical measuring condition, which is indicated by a "key" in the shape of a tailor's meter made of fabric and inserted in the centre of the object. On the other hand, the sheet metal starts coiling up its end in the opposite direction, thus revealing its potential for limitless transformations. Reversal of symbolism in the works of Joksimović is not often accidental. This invites us to also view the appearance of this sculpture as a possible metamorphosis of the mathematical symbol for infinity. Remembering , of course, Brancusi's Endless Column in Tirgu Jiu ( which Joksimović has cited in several of his smaller pieces), this work is one of those which reveal the humorous and relaxed manner of communication used by Joksimović in relation to some of his various pointers among which we find Duchamp, Brancusi, Nicholson, but also Tatlin, Gonzales and naturally Cornell. Here Brancusi is actually treated as if he were Duchamp (like Duchamp was treated by people, such as Tucker, as a formalist of a Brancusian type and his work was appreciated for its formal characteristics, that is as aesthetic objects), being recognized as a master of wisecrack, prank or "gimmicks" (as Joksimović would put it), terms so negated and disrespected in the art of modernism that they were often kept surpressed, being characteristics of emblemtic artists such as Brancusi. Endless column is an excellent spark of wit and it is such not only because it offers monumental materialization of an object pun, but also because it deals with the demistification of the origins of art (in this case an ordinary pillar used to support an arched doorway of a country house) by celebrating its freedom from functionalism. As was said by Brancusi, this is a pillar that has "only" a missing roof to support. What Brancusi showed here was that the loss of function of an object did not mean irresponsibility towards its "building origins" and its unavoidably precisely calculated statistics: the function is gone but all of its rules remain.
hand-made, ready-made
There are four of Brancusi's sculptures which, no doubt, had objects for models and thus they can be classified as the only four objects in his opus. All four sculptures are cups, carved in wood, simply devoid of their usual function by not having been hollowed out and thus absolutely unsuitable for containing substance of any kind. A question arises as to whether these pieces can still go on being classified as sculptures or are they, according to the postminimalistic meaning of the word, actually "objects". In contrast to Duchamp's ready-mades these objects are hand-mades, but like the former they change our perception of sculpture as a medium, of its origin and "ontological" status.They take us into an ambivalent and polysemantic world which does not recognize the usual confines normaly used for object classification -simplicity, originality, aural and historical qualities and autonomity based on which such objects are actually recognized as "art". Brancusi's jugs tell us about the ready-made as much as Duchamp's (all and nothing, with Duchamp being talkative while Brancusi is not).The possibilities for production and discovery are unlimited but the possibilities for creating combinations are extremely limited.The difference between Duchamp's and today's use of the ready-made is no longer the difference which was imposed by, for Duchamp unorthodox, admiration of his objects based on aesthetic criteria but rather a difference between Duchamp's way of understanding the uniqueness and "loneliness" of his ready-mades and today's need to multiply them, group them, choose and arrange them, thus creating a context as if they create a language. It is created in accordance with Jacobson's fundamental language operations, namely selection and distribution. An object is never alone, and if it happens to be alone that is because it is stripped of its environment, its language, becoming a mythically modernistic "autonom". Interpretation is thus "usage within a language", and so an object found or bought, new or second-hand, is not a ready-made because such a term implies conceptual affirmation of the very object (this object is art). What we have here is a conceptual affirmation of sequencing, role distribution of every single object, found or made, which upon entering a language game maintains both its existing and conventionalized characteristics and meanings.
If works by Zdravko Joksimović could be classified, typologically arranged, by the simplest distinction they would be divided into the "real" sculptures (the ones which show great "technical" effort, and where the materials used and the modelling skill bring them acclaim by many, including the scholastics) and the ad-hoc sculptures which were assembled from different elements regardless of their material and origin, but which nevertheless do take into account the material, the origins and the "already-made" functions. While so far we have primarily discussed the first category of his works, all that has been or could be said about them is also applicable to the second category, in much the same way in which Brancusi's cups are "ready-mades", too.This classification only adds to the confusion in connection with a case which is more complex than any classification and which is concerned with interpretation. Let us have a look at two pieces, one being made solely from ready-made components and the other made by hand with only one ready-made element, naturally in its perverted function as a "key to understanding", such as those we have already encountered.The title of the first is Steel life (1997) and it is made from a pair of impeccably ironed soft-beige trousers suspened from a hanger, having one leg almost entirely covered with small metal badges with different logos, emblems and symbols.When creating an interpretative narrative we can take both a complete impression as well as single components as a starting point.The impression it gives is of a "soft" sculpture but one with a clear structure, formal characteristics as well as associative levels: what kind and whose are those trousers ? As for the single components, each one is more responsible for telling us the story than the entire piece of which they are a functional part, and that is where Joksimović clearly demystifies his personal role, that of a classical artist in search for a formal coordination of components. The badges tell a complete new history of the country (especially the story of the "belle epoque" of the socialist self-management period) they allow all those big issues that an artist such as Joksimović would bashfully and carefully conceal: questions of politics, economy, identity. Today an encounter of a Strela-Valjevo badge with a Dr. Oetker, a Jugotranspot with a Moscow Olympics, many Tito's signatures and Utva aiplanes bear a greater significance to us than Lautréamont's meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine. A whole new world which has become a monument, but a monument which does not hold the universal status of a scuplture, is as when pointed out by Rilke in writing of Rodin: "a single thing that can exists on its own, a thing one can walk around and view from all sides, separated from the chance and the time which it comes from isolated and magnificent". Still, this is a piece that deals with language and context and contains within itself the density of the signs which are waiting to be decoded. The very title speaks of many confusions that Joksimović's works manipulate both on the linguistic and the visual plane. "Still life" means "nature morte", although some ill-informed translators into Serbian tend to literary translate it as "calmed down life" which in Joksimović's case quite fits the description. However, the title of this piece is not "Still life" but Steel life, which is "a life made of steel", thus an adequate desription of the material and also the very "genre": "steel nature".
In a text about Duchamp by Zoran Gavrić we are reminded of a thesis that a ready-made originates under the auspices of that functionalism course which existed at the beginning of the 20th century and which " not being satisfied by a mere transformation of applied arts, makes it its goal to replace an aesthetic, handmade object by industrial objects". In relation to another course of functionalism ("intellectualizing of a craftsman") Duchamp's ready-made shows the never resolved contradiction within functionalism towards art-craft and thus hits the blind spot: a "ready-made" brings into the light exactly what functionalism denies: the function of a name" (and naming, according to Wittgenstein, is a preparation for a description). As a special catch-phrase for the further course of this text there is a well-known anecdote about Duchamp who, being intrigued by such a contradiction after a visit to a Museum of Aviation, talks himself into asking Brancusi if he could make anyhing more beautiful than those machines.
Unlike the characteristic ad-hoc quality of works such as Steel life, or The Dog, the Tiger and the Swallow (1997), where the linguistic game is realized on a Cornellian-like stage, and Twins (1997) which is like a meditation on an object through manipulation of the nature and dimensions of its immediate context (the work is also a special homage to Magritte), the piece Balance (1997) explicitelly deals with the mentioned contradiction of functionalism found in industrial or handicraft objects. As with Brancusi's cups the starting point for this piece is a distorted answer to Duchamp's questions as to whether anything "more beautiful than those machine " can be made. A wood propeller here is not a "ready-made" (to a certain extent agreeing with Gavrić's remark that the only genuine ready-made can be a Duchamp) but a hand-made copy of an industrially produced "key" for an aircraft, a manually produced aesthetic object devoid of its function but not of its impeccable similarity. As if the user's manual for the ready-mades here were written in the Brancusian and not in the Duchampian manner because this piece is closer to Brancusi's cups than to Duchamp's snow shovel.
"The cup is a thing. What is the cup ? We say: a vessel, something of the kind that holds something else within it. The cup's holding is done by its base and sides. This container can again be held by the handle. As a vessel the cup is something self-sustained, something that stands on its own . This standing on its own characterizes the cup as something that is self-supporting or independent". According to Heidegger, quoted with a deliberate slip, (the word "jug" has been replaced by the word "cup") what we have here is not "an object of an act of presentation " but the results of practice and making processes: a cup is a container. A cup is not a container because it has been made but it is a container because it itself is a "containing vessel": the concept of a cup precedees the act of making it. On the other hand, as shown by Duchamp, the notion of an artistic work is paradigmatic and not essentialistic: it is subject to change, among which the idea about an object in contemporary art takes over the idea of an everyday object, and also the process and technology of its making, including the presentational capacities of these objects. Duchamp's ready mades are one of the key paradigms of modern art, Brancusi's cups are another.
The airplane propeller is an object which, following " the second course of functionalism", represents an object whose "industrial" function replaces its “aesthetic beauty" in the process of a continuous regeneration of aesthetics through admiration of function, that is, the object which if "standing on its own" represents an aesthetic object through the very appreciation of the function that it has been devoid of. It would be simple to say that by depriving an object of its function the object acquires the potential for being viewed solely as an art object (Brancusi's cups are "art" because they lack the capacity for holding liquid, Joksimović's propeller is "art" because it is not a part of an airplane which could make use of it).They are artefacts also with regard to the first course of functionalism, the "intellectualizing craftsman" because they are hand - made objects which consistently simulate a function and play with the above mentioned predicate of a sentence. On the other hand, the twist is in the "function" of the name, a cup or a propeller. The analogy between "viewing the aspect" and "experiencing meanings of words", as established by Ludwig Wittgenstein, corresponds to Joksimović's object conceptualization. Regardless of the "aesthetic" dimension of the sculpture and despite our awareness of its lacking function, we shall always identify it as a "propeller". The name we shall give it will differ from the name of the sculpture, which allows the sculptor to be not only a name giver but also to create a new function for its object, the function of a name. In Joksimović's case that is the "limit of his language", a language game in which conventional naming is replaced by giving names to conventional functions: the point in functioning of a propeller is to establish balance, but is balance possible ? In the literature about aircrafts we are told that a "built in" error, an imbalance between the two blades of a propeller, may be 5 gramms at the most, the 5 gramms which Joksimović places next to his object in the form of a very "unbecoming" and , in relation to the technical perfection of the object , an "unseeming" bag of black-pepper bought in a supermarket. A "ready-made" unit of measure introduced here is restoring and also, which is often found in Joksimović's work, undermining an easily assumed definition of sculpture as a disfunctionalized object. What we have here is, above all else, "tuning" and " enhancing" of those senses for which the objects loose function in order to become objects of aesthetic enjoyment. As said to Mr Chance, "we can go on improving the accuracy of our measuring equipment, but we cannot improve much the acuity of our senses". Joksimović here actually reveals our inability to perceive the bag of black-pepper in any other way than by asking the question of what it is doing there, or for the purists: what is it doing there spoiling the harmonious balance and the aesthetic experience of the wood propeller ? Naturally, it is there to confrim the balance, only we do not comprehend that through our senses but with the help of our awareness of measuring relations. Naming here resembles measuring. It is an "exquisite connection between a word and an object" and has an ambition of being precise but to become such it needs more than words and a ruler. More than anything else, what is required here is a relaxed acceptance of the versatility of linguistic games, diversity of probable congruity and fallacies among language, logic and reality, which is what Joksimović's attitude is about. Thouroughly and level-headedly he searches for meaning, and illusions of these meanings, within superficial and manipulative copying, accumulation and distribution of visual representation in modern culture and communication.
appendix: a pulsating torso, or , on breathing
The "type title" Sculpture for the 1991 piece already mentioned will emerge out of respect for the integrity and specific characteristics of the media despite its firmly programmed demystification. If this piece is seen as emblematic for the way Joksimović related towards his media in the beginning of the 90's, then a small wall piece is symptomatic of the somewhat changed work orientation of this artist, provoked not so much by a need for change as for enriching his "vocabulary" and also by his disturbing, personal, bodily experiences. The piece is named Torso (1997) and is a part of what I would provisionally call a "hospital cycle" of the artist, the moment when a certain "super-ego" barrier pushes forward and when an immediate experience, following a horrific 1994 road accident that he had been involved in appears, together with the experience of the war trauma that has surrounded us for the past few years. The question of a body representation posed by a sculptor who relies on the cognitive capacity of the artist and the viewer may be reduced to a physical investment of the body when working with a material, but the body investment which is closer to the working of a precision mechanic than it is to traditional sculpting or chiselling. Nevertheless, a somewhat unexpected twist in a piece like Torso (unexpected although all that has been said about the relationship between the object and the word in connection with Joksimović's earlier works applies here, too) is suggesting the need to redefine the basic, traditional motif in scuplture - the human body - to the same extent to which classic (primarily antique) sculptures appear to viewers who have been discovering them since the beginning of 15th century, and that is in the form of fragments, i.e.partial, or literally put , mutilated bodies. In the classical tradition a torso appears as the "essence" of a form where limbs had fallen off. Our evaluation of the antique form is based on a schizo-paranoid acceptance of a mutilated and dismembered body while in its original form the antique sculpture was actually a celebration of idealized wholeness and the perfection of the body. However, fragmentation that happened later complemented the formation of our psyche through a childlike perception of partial objects (mother's body): to a child objects are not clearly defined and secured in their detachment, the reality of the outside world is perceived through partial objects.
Of all dismembered parts of a body only the torso has a special place, being the only part which is not viewed as a fragment but as a "core", affirmation of a static bodily existance containing withing itself the vital functions. Torso is a sculpture made of terra-cotta, the material which in Joksimović's opus occupies a special place thanks to its unpredictability and dependancy on a range of process conditions in relation to which mistakes could be both fatal but can also bring a desired meaning. Apart from the differences which become apparent because the firing process is impossble to control, diverse manifestation of the material which may be detected not only visualy but tangibly and audibly are also introduced; as is the case with a smaller piece, made of two terra-cotta slabs connected latitudinally, which invites a viewer to discover, by tapping the material, the versatility noticable formostly in its density. Or, the piece Terra-cotta, Lead, Graphite (1994) where , although misguided by the title which leads us to believe that the three fields comprising this work correspond to the three materials mentioned, we discover that materiality does not appear only as "a form filler" (naturally, in Joksimović's materialism a substance does not equal a form, the form is a "culture" category) but represents multi-layerness (sedimentation) of a form, so terra-cotta represents the base, graphite the surface, and lead the differentiation of the field. With Torso the "deception" does not come from the relation between the name and the material, but from the appearance of the material itself which is "mimicry" here, (seems elastic), as is the motif itself in a way; a torso which due to the expressiveness of the material looks like a pillow or a packed-up parachute and due to its intense red colour looks as if its inside had been turned out, and in the final act manifests itself as a heart-pump equiped with all the channels for the fluid's free flow. The relation towards one's own body which pulsates, and in which the exchange of fluids occurring is particularly evident when the body is immobile or during times of transfusion and infusion, encourages one to question the basic functions of the body that has been deprived of its might provided by the limbs (which in Joksimović's case refers to difficult fractures of the pelvis and a shoulder, places where the torso and the limbs meet) and is now operating "only" as a life function (androgynous by character) and not as an index of power.
Joksimović does not approach the question of partial objects through macabre grotesque or repuslion of an abominable object (abject), which is characteristic of the art world at the end of the 80's and the beginning of the 90's. There is no horror of mutilation but above all a critical relation towards the instituionalization of illness (a body that is being controlled) and a questioning relation towards objectivization of a passive body is being established.The "core" of the body here (the torso) does not have a role in the "real world's" symbolic order (while, on the other hand, it bears a crucial role in art) because it is free from gesture and thrust in function of power, so the body (especially male) is symbolically non-existent. Thus a viewer feels a need to touch such an ambivalent object made of a material that itself is ambivalent in appearance. The only narrative that can replace the stillness of this object is the flow of a liquid, being the only confirmation of a life continuation. Although there is no liquid literally flowing out of Joksimović's Torso (despite it being classified as a "container" because of its hollowness), it is evident in another piece from the "hospital cycle" - A Heart, a Cactus and Ears (1996).It appears as if the concentration of meaning (at least that suggested by the title) were localized in only one element of this small wall installation (even though there is a tendency to ascribe the three words from the title to the three objects on the wall): the heart is represented by a heart-shaped cushion for holding sawing needles and pins (why not surgical needles, too,), the cactus symbolizes an organic "sum" of needles, and the ears are eyes of a needle (1). Thus, as often is the case with viewing Joksimović's works, here everything can be interpreted as a rebus: meeting with an accident (2), getting something done by the skin of one's teeth / having a narrow escape (3), stiching up a wound , or having an accident but somehow pulling through, too. Based on all this one could decide that the other two elements are secondary. Neverthless they are more of a prologue and an epilogue of a story that could be created here. "The mysterious object" in the upper right corner there is a pistol (a medium of danger restructured beyond recognition and "humour") while the liquid, that we rather tend to take for blood than for a fruit juice which has been saved for winter, is being collected in a jar.This "sweet" element is paradoxically the only "abject” in Joksimović's sundry production which is a result of a total artistic, intellectual and technical commitment but which Joksimović (the artist), can gently put aside when facing the truth of a Duchamp's remark that entered the title of one of the newer works: I love breathing better than working. The breakthrough of the body in his art justifies such a conclusion, by which Joksimović's anti-idealistic Weltanschaung and his self-confident concentration on the world of matter as the only reality that we all are facing - and not with something beyond - enriches one of Wittgenstein's "truisms": … there is not outside; outside cannot be breathed .
notes:
(1) - in the Serbian language the word used to describe the eye of a needle is ear
(2) - the Serbian equivalent reads getting pricked on a cactus
(3) - getting through the needle's eye in the original language
quotes:
• Lynne Cooke, "Redefining: The New British Sculpture of the 80's", Moment 15, July-September 1989, p.4-9. (translated by M .Milivojev)
• Zoran Gavrić, "Duchamp in Flijunt", in .Z. Gavrić, B.Belić (eds.), Marcel Duchamp - notes, interpretations, independent edition, Bogovadja 1995, p.345-360
• Nelson Goodman, Language of Art, Hackett, Indianopolis,1976
• Lucy R. Lippard (collated by), "The Romantic Adventures of an Adversative Rotarian, or Allreadymadesomuchoff", in. A. d'Harnocourt, K.McShine (eds.), Marcel Duchamp, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, p.117-124
• W.J.T.Mitchell, Iconology - Image, Text, Ideology, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1987
• Michael Newman, "From World to Earth : Richard Deacon and the End of Nature", e. S.Bann, W. Allen (eds), Interpreting Contemporary Art, Reaktion, London 1991, p. 177-204
• William Tucker, The Language of Sculpture, Thames & Hudson, London 1977
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation, Nolit, Beograd, 1969. (translated by K. Maricki-Gađanski)
• "Zdravko Joksimović", interview in the book by Zoran L. Božović The Belgrade Arts of the 80's and the 90's - conversations, independent edition, Beograd 1996