When viewing the paintings of Renaissance artists in the Uffizzi Gallery, one should note that these masterpieces were created in an era of fierce struggle between ideologies in art. The Renaissance was an arena of hostility, not only between artists, but between their patrons\u2009\u2014\u2009the Medicis, the Borgias, the d\u2019Estes, and the Vatican. Thus, the paintings hanging on museum walls are mimetic residues of these conflicts and projections of warring ideologies. Yet, when placed together, they amazingly reconcile, \u201cforgetting\u201d all about past wars and about the ideologies that generated them. The museum is thus a model of \u201cparadise,\u201d in which each object is at peace with other objects, eternalized through a series of curatorial rituals, and therefore consigned to oblivion, or to recontextualization, which essentially amounts to the same thing. The paradox, however, is that in such a \u201cparadise,\u201d sedimental ideologies are reactivated by the throngs of visitors from all over the world, and this motley audience is an embodiment of ideological variety. Today, warring ideologies no longer meet on<\/em> a museum wall, but in front <\/em>of it. Hence, the \u201cvisitors in paradise\u201d re-ideologize that which was resting in the arms of a museological Morpheus. Like any paradise, the museum space is whole and indivisible, but the viewer who invades it ushers in the virus of difference. That is why in the \u201cideal\u201d museum the only image to be shared with the public should be the sign \u201cNo admission.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In his installation Darkness<\/em>, (Vinzavod, Moscow, January 28, 2007), Andrei Monastyrsky mounted a text on the wall, opposite the entrance. The space in between was large enough to ensure that the viewer couldn\u2019t possibly read the text without standing in close proximity to it. But any attempt to approach the wall automatically made the light switch off, thus plunging the viewer into a sudden darkness and prohibiting him\/her from reading the text.1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Having heard about this prior to my visit to Vinzavod, I brought a flashlight with me and managed to decipher the \u201ccrypt.\u201d Weeks later, I admitted my guilt and promised not to reveal the content of the text. Curiously, a quite similar \u201cflashlight approach\u201d was undertaken by Ahmet \u00d6\u011f\u00fct in his exhibition Wherever I go I see your shadow behind me<\/em> (Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 2011). <\/span> This brings to mind the idea of the \u201cdark museum,\u201d a museum devoid of lighting, where the viewer can come in with a small flashlight and illuminate only fragments of artworks, as he or she moves through the halls. In this way, the works are protected from \u201cvirus\u201d carriers, and the carriers themselves are protected from ideological inferences, since the fragment makes it impossible to arrive at any conclusion, or even to identify the artwork accurately in its totality. Thus, the paradigm of the \u201cdark museum\u201d could be read as a new opportunity for non-ideological vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To follow up on the notion of the dark museum, it is appropriate to compare two \u201ccave\u201d allegories: Plato\u2019s and the one retracted in the works of Cicero. For Plato, the twilight image of the \u201ccave\u201d is optically and ontologically impotent. It is, in the language of Heidegger, a world of inauthentic being, while the space beyond the cave is by definition filled with \u201cthe light of truth.\u201d Cicero\u2019s model of the \u201ccave,\u201d on the contrary, reconciles its dwellers to artificial lighting devised for the socialization of darkness. Cicero, like the stoics, insisted on the autonomy of inside-the-cave vision, needing no outside affirmation. The whimsical play of shadows on the walls of the cavern is the world of art, with its luminescent illusions and glittering self-deceptions that obscure the shining of the universal (platonic) light.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - The \u201cdark museum\u201d is, thus, the birthplace of art history, its \u201cnative land.\u201d I\u2019m grateful to the editors of Esse<\/em> for letting me know about Winckelmann\u2019s \u201crituals\u201d in Rome.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Flesh and the Ideal<\/em>, Alex Potts mentions that Winckelmann used to give guided tours of Rome at night to fashionable visitors. Apparently, Winckelmann would present the Apollo of the Belvedere to his guests in total darkness, and he would then talk about the sculpture while illuminating it with candlelight. As Potts argues, the Apollo\u2019s body would be fragmented as Winckelmann approached it to light up certain parts of the sculpture. These parts looked like they were caressed (if not \u201cmolested\u201d) by a candle-power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The side effect is the \u201cblur\u201d\u2009\u2014\u2009the inability to distinguish between art and life. Everything has become creative: work and leisure, fear and trust, violence and retribution, exchange and deceit. Our perception\u2009\u2014\u2009not only of the outside world, but of ourselves\u2009\u2014\u2009is hopelessly artified, not to mention the fact that the mentality and terminology of art have taken root in every sphere of life, without exception. Art has been replaced by \u201ccreativity,\u201d and creativity at present has no Other. If, given the circumstances, one were to imagine a person who, from the moment of birth, was known to be completely devoid of the creative reflex, such a mythical character would have undoubtedly become an important cultural phenomenon. Both that person\u2019s biography, as well as the person itself, would become museologically objectified and absorbed by the culture industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As is known, the principal pathos of Adorno\u2019s Aesthetic Theory<\/em> has to do with its author\u2019s desire to prevent the transformation of autonomous art into the culture industry. Such a transformation is undergone by every artistic phenomenon which leaves the zone of de-reified activity. Given the inevitability of reification (Verdinglichung<\/em>), the goal of the critically thinking artist is to delay it. However appealing, Adorno\u2019s arguments have, for the most part, lost their effectiveness. The reason for this is the expansion of the culture industry into the sphere of the optical unconscious, as well as the instantaneous mimetic exchange (mimetic reciprocation) between them inspired by new technologies. That which Adorno regarded as non-identical to the culture industry turns out to be contaminated by it even before the moment of reification. Due to the mass media, and also to the phenomenon of instantaneous exchange, the temporal gap between art and its Other has ceased to exist. Having reached this state, art (read autonomous art) has reached its own death, which like everything else, is no longer its Other. A more optimistic view is that \u201call is not yet lost,\u201d art is dead but the theme itself is art. The most surprising is a display of indifference towards art\u2019s integration into the culture industry, an event that I find reminiscent of a funeral wake. This funeral wake has already become a \u201cnew\u201d style, and can go on forever, generating cycles and repetitions, as well as requiring the creation of suitable props and sets. Such is the soil in which the new art will bloom, the art of mourning art. This era may turn out to be longer and more \u201cfruitful\u201d than all the preceding periods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Museum is not only a depositary and exhibition space. It is the result of institutionalizing collective judgments about artistic production and criteria that guided the acquisition of its outcomes. With the passage of time, we admit that \u201cbecause it\u2019s good art, its place is in the Museum.\u201d Another answer was provided by Marcel Duchamp. Thanks to his readymade(s), everyone realized that \u201cif something is in the Museum, it is art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the dark museum epitomizes the \u201cblur,\u201d the negativity of the symbolic function (e.g., repression of the signified and neglect of contextual referents) is not easy to grasp. It is far more visible in a well-lit exhibition space, where it manifests itself indiscriminately, sparing neither artistic nor curatorial work. Artists act as curators, and curators as artists, in relation to their respective projects. The economy of their collaboration attests to the fact that the work of curatorial art utilizes contributions of group show participants the same way artists use raw materials. From their standpoint, the entire group show (including the curator\u2019s concept, the wall text, and so forth) is an extended frame around his or her piece, and the bigger the exhibition, the more baroque it may seem as a frame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of the above can be extended (figuratively, as well as literally) to a variety of value-contexts, kept (somewhat artificially) in the shadow\u2009\u2014\u2009in order to avoid or minimize an encounter with the Other. According to some Russian artists, translatability of their work is the Radamanthus\u2019 touch, as a result art becomes identical to its market value. In their view, true art\u2019s placement within the walls of a well-lit Museum causes the destruction of the symbolic depository of apodictic values\u2009\u2014\u2009the destruction of the dark museum. These artists\u2019 concerns are shared by poets, whose verses owe their salvation to the fact that every idiomatic text is a \u201csuitcase with a dual bottom.\u201d The world is penetrable, but not entirely: the instinct of self-preservation makes it less transparent than we would like. In \u201cLiving On\/Border Lines,\u201d Jacques Derrida comes to the conclusion that \u201cthe text [visual or lexical] survives only when it is both translatable and untranslatable… even within the bounds of the same language.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Jacques Derrida, \u201cLiving On\/Border Lines,\u201d in Harold Bloom et al.<\/em>, Deconstruction and Criticism<\/em>, London, UK: G. Hartman, 1979, 102.<\/span> Apparently, it relies on the existence of \u201cblind alleys,\u201d autochthonic zones that make the translatability of the text partial and thus preserve its life. This probably explains the stubbornness on the part of the Russians, as they try to preserve the opaqueness and impenetrability of their contextual referents\u2009\u2014\u2009stubbornness, rife with misconceptions abroad. The problem, however, is that they chronically over-secure their \u201cstocks,\u201d while forgetting that true art<\/em> and true poetry<\/em> can never be fully translatable with or without their help. That is why it makes no sense to exacerbate the difficulties of translation or re-contextualization (which are one and the same). To support these observations, I will recall my visit to Moscow in 1987. One day, Margarita [Tupitsyn] and I attended a dinner party and met the artist Eduard Steinberg, who attacked us (quite literally) for \u201cinterpreting Russian art in the West in such a way that it became more comprehensible to Western audiences.\u201d In Steinberg\u2019s words, we \u201cundressed the sacred\u201d and \u201cserved it on a platter.\u201d Perhaps, he overestimated our achievements: despite our efforts, Russian art (largely) is still there, in the dark museum. One way or another, I am still amused and equally annoyed by visiting artists from Russia, who couldn\u2019t care less if they are continually misunderstood outside of their native context. Conversing with curators and critics in Germany, France, or the United States, they would refer to the inhabitants of the dark museum and elaborate on related issues, without paying attention to the fact that almost no one can guess what they are talking about or why. Most of them carry this dark museum on their shoulders (in their heads), tirelessly transporting it from point \u201cA\u201d to point \u201cB.\u201d And not only the artists of the 1960s, but also those of the younger generation, including the Moscow conceptualists. The latter aspire to the same mentality, albeit in different proportions and with an assumption that, in small doses, translation is, in fact, quite possible. Spared from demolition, thedark museum continues to go on. Is it nomadic paradise or nomadic Bastille?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regardless of our response, we are stuck in the double bind of two museological paradigms, nocturnal and diurnal\u2009\u2014\u2009a twilight situation in which anyone can be an artist, and anything can be art. To accentuate my points, I will (once again) entertain the idea of the dark museum. It seems obvious that the walls of the Holland Tunnel (between New York and New Jersey) aptly fit this theme. For, if artworks adorned the tunnel\u2019s walls, commuters would have a chance to view them in passing, provided that the eye of the beholder didn\u2019t have enough time to snatch their essence. However discouraging, this is precisely the message that today\u2019s art conveys to the viewer. And the viewer to art.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/72_AC01_Mikhailov_Susi-and-Other-scaled.jpg\")
Susi and Others<\/em> series, early 1970s.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/72_AC01_Ogut_ThePigeon_Spirit3-scaled.jpg\")
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The Pigeon-like Unease of my Inner Spirit<\/em>, 2009.
Photos: Jann Averwerser & Paula Court, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/72_AC01_Ogut_ThePigeon_Spirit1-scaled.jpg\")
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