The return to objects in current art practices seems an almost natural outcome of the ebbing wave of relational art. Yet the question remains as to whether objects had really disappeared from the landscape of the 1990s and early 2000s, or had we simply refused to acknowledge them? The last Qu\u00e9bec Triennial proposed that we take a nuanced approach to the issue, by bringing emerging artists who foreground objects and materials (Jacynthe Carrier, Mathieu Latulippe, Julie Favreau) into dialogue with artists like Massimo Guerrera, who have embodied the relational art movement in Qu\u00e9bec, yet for whom objects and know-how are no less present.1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Cf. Johanne Sloan\u2019s article in the Triennial catalogue, which analyzes the work of Val\u00e9rie Blass, BGL, and Michel de Broin: Johanne Sloan, \u201cEveryday Objects, Enigmatic Materials,\u201d The Qu\u00e9bec Triennial 2011: The Work Ahead of Us<\/em>, (Montr\u00e9al: Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art contemporain de Montr\u00e9al, 2011), 325-335.<\/span><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
I would like to consider a few recent works that share many similarities in the way they approach the question of the object, particularly the question of commodity fetishism, which has been the subject of renewed interest in recent years. Commodity fetishism is certainly the most spectacular aspect of the real or assumed return to objects in the past decade, culminating in some million-dollar sales of neo-pop art pieces during the art market boom of 2006-2008. Emblematic works of the period, to recall just a few, include Damien Hirst\u2019s For the Love of God<\/em>, a skull inlaid with thousands of diamonds, which sold for 100 million dollars in 2007; Takashi Murakami\u2019s exhibition at the MOCA in Los Angeles the same year, which presented bags the artist had designed for the Louis Vuitton luxury brand; and Guilty<\/em>, the yacht that Greek-Cypriot collector Dakis Joannou commissioned Jeff Koons to decorate in 2008. The surprising thing about these productions\u200a\u2014\u200aaside from the outrageous sums they fetch\u200a\u2014\u200ais the forthrightness with which they transform themselves into merchandise or luxury goods. They seem in fact to have forgone any critical function, content simply with the power of fascination they hold over collectors.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - I commented on this phenomenon in 2008: see Jean-Philippe Uzel, \u201cTrickster Objects in Contemporary Art,\u201d translated by Ron Ross, in Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Saint-Gelais, ed., The Undecidable: Gaps and Displacements of Contemporary Art<\/em> (Montr\u00e9al: Les \u00e9ditions esse, 2008), 179-190.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Surprisingly, whether directly or indirectly, these works have gained some theoretical legitimacy with authors who, in the wake of the \u201ciconic turn\u201d in visual studies,3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - For a very good overview of the subject, see Keith Moxey, \u201cVisual Studies and the Iconic Turn,\u201d Journal of Visual Culture<\/em>, Vol. 7 (2), (Spring 2008), 131-146.<\/span> have recently become interested in the presence of images and objects and their effects on the spectator. Such an author is W.J.T. Mitchell, who, in What Do Pictures Want? <\/em>(2005), radically questions critical approaches to the image and directs his interest towards how images live<\/em>, how they desire<\/em>. At the start of his second chapter, devoted to objects, Mitchell evaluates the work of Jeff Koons and Allan McCollum in light of Marx\u2019s famous passage on the \u201cfetishism of commodities.\u201d We recall that in this text, written after visiting the first World\u2019s Fair in London, in 1851, the author of Das Kapital<\/em> is amazed at the \u201cenigmatic character\u201d of commodities, in which he sees \u201ca very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.\u201d He remarks that an ordinary object of everyday use, like a wooden table, \u201cso soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than \u2018table-turning\u2019 ever was.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Karl Marx, \u201cThe Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof,\u201d in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy<\/em>, Vol. I, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, edited by Frederick Engels [1887] (marxist.org: Marx\/Engles Internet Archive, 1995, 1999), Section 4 of Chapter One, www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1867-c1\/ch01.htm.<\/span> One might say that all of Marx\u2019s work consists in deconstructing this mysterious power of commodities by demonstrating that behind the fetish lies the iron law of capitalism and the logic of exploitation. And one might suppose that Marx engaged in this demystification with all the more conviction for having himself experienced the enchantment of the merchandise at the World\u2019s Fair. Whatever the case may be, his iconoclasm marked the social sciences throughout the twentieth century, right up to the sociological criticism of Pierre Bourdieu, ever wary of fetishes, especially the fetishes of art.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - He thus declared \u201cWarhol\u2019s Brillo boxes and Klein\u2019s monochromes owe their value and their formal properties solely to the structure of the field.\u201d Pierre Bourdieu, \u201cGen\u00e8se historique d\u2019une esth\u00e9tique pure,\u201d Cahiers du Mus\u00e9e national d\u2019art moderne<\/em>, Paris, No. 27 (Spring 1989), 104 (Our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n