Fraser is an artist who first became well-known for Museum Highlights<\/em> (1989), an unusual guided visit of Philadelphia\u2019s Museum of Art in which she diverted attention away from the exhibited works, directing it instead towards the museum\u2019s auxiliary spaces (ticket counter, cafeteria, washrooms, etc.) The artist first conceived of her artistic practice as a service\u2009\u2014\u2009educational, or even contemplative\u2009\u2014\u2009for which she could be remunerated, yet without creating any object with a market value that could subsequently be produced and resold.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - In this regard, see Andrea Fraser \u201cWhat\u2019s Intangible, Transitory, Mediating, Participatory, and Rendered in the Public Sphere?\u201d October<\/em> 80 (Spring 1997):\u2009111-116.<\/span> Fraser revised her position around 2000, having realized that museum establishments were henceforth looking for major, ambitious shows likely to generate revenue. With invitations from museums becoming increasingly rare, Fraser faced the fact that she had to sell work and become part of the art market in order to survive: \u201cThe first impulse was probably, well, if I\u2019m gonnahaveta<\/em> [sic] sell it, I might as well sell it. The first impulse was to perform an extreme literalization of the old metaphor of selling art as prostitution, of the artist as prostitute, and it was rooted in what felt to me like a very painful choice between continuing to be an artist and betraying what I believe in as an artist.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Andrea Fraser interviewed by Yilmaz Dziewior, \u201cInterview with Andrea Fraser\u201d in Andrea Fraser. Works: 1984 to 2003<\/em>, ed. Yilmaz Dziewior (Cologne: Dumont, 2003), 99.<\/span> Fraser explains how she got the idea for her Untitled<\/em> (2003) project as follows. The artist asked the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York to find a collector willing to be part of the project but whose identity would remain hidden. For the sum of $20,000 US, half of which would be paid to the gallery in commission, the collector purchased the opportunity to have sexual relations with the artist, an act which would be filmed and transformed into a 60-minute unedited video work in an edition of five numbered copies, the first of which would belong to the collector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Seen in this way, Untitled<\/em> reveals the most basic mechanisms of the way the art market works\u2009\u2014\u2009a way of working in which artists depend on galleries and collectors, who are the real holders of power. In any case, this was how the work was understood by many who saw it as a rather simplistic and superficial attempt at gaining attention. Among them, Elizabeth Kley wrote: \u201cArtists perennially complain about having to prostitute themselves for their work, but Andrea Fraser has turned that clich\u00e9d lament into humdrum blue-chip art, sadly and somewhat sordidly taking so-called institutional critique to a possible terminus of institutional self-congratulation.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Elizabeth Kley, \u201cThe Elephant in the Room: Andrea Fraser,\u201d Art News <\/em>103, no. 8 (September 2004): 146.<\/span> This acerbic criticism squarely rejects Fraser\u2019s assertion while going as far as to question her motives. It reduces the work to a show-stopping gesture and refuses to contextualize it. Others were more nuanced and felt that by attacking art and its treatment as a commodity, Fraser was making an ironic\u2009\u2014\u2009if not na\u00efve6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - \u201cThere may be some […] na\u00efvete operating in Fraser\u2019s work, peering from behind the verbiage of a brand of thinking known as \u2018institutional critique\u2019.\u201d Guy Trebay, \u201cSex, Art and Videotape,\u201d The<\/em> New York Times<\/em>, June 13, 2004, A20.<\/span>\u2009\u2014\u2009gesture7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - \u201cAndrea Fraser combined […] the artist as the material of service with an ironic critique of the market when she slept with an unnamed collector […].\u201d Steven Henry Madoff, \u201cService Aesthetics,\u201d in Artforum <\/em>47, no. 1 (September 2008): 169.<\/span>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, as soon as the artist began work on the project, the statements she made dealt largely with the affection she had developed for the collector, and this to the point of overshadowing the critique of the art market: \u201cWhile I suppose many people will still see it in terms of prostitution, I think prostitution remains much more a metaphor in Untitled<\/em>. If prostitution can be evoked as a metaphor for the reduction of all human relationships to economic exchange, I think Untitled<\/em> works even more powerfully in the opposite direction. That is, it transforms the economic exchange of buying and selling art in a very human relationship.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Dziewior, \u201cInterview with Andrea Fraser,\u201d 100.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is to say that despite the critique Fraser has aimed at institutions since the 1980s, her own perception of art and artists remains bound to a Romantic concept in which art holds a particular status that cannot really be tainted by its need to enter the institution or the market. In this way, Untitled <\/em>is less an attempt to coldly expose the market mechanisms of art in order to point out their artificiality than a demonstration of what the general public, and more particularly the group consisting of collectors, look for in consuming art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Fraser, one should rather consider Untitled <\/em>as a personal quest to discover just how far the bond between artist and collector can go, or indeed how far a collector might implicate himself in his desire to possess a work\u2009\u2014\u2009to understand in every sense of the word. Strangely, in speaking of the collector, Fraser minimized the importance of his financial involvement in the project in favour of speaking of his personal, or even bodily investment in the art: \u201cWhat the collector paid for Untitled <\/em>was much more than money. He \u2018paid\u2019 with his body and his presence and by taking a huge and very personal risk\u2009\u2014\u2009a risk much greater than mine in every way. It\u2019s something I find very moving and really quite courageous.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span> Fraser takes up this point again in an interview with Guy Trebay, worrying that if the collector were discovered, his reputation would be at risk. Trebay remarks that Fraser\u2019s affectionate connection to the collector compromises the critical force of the work and marks her as a hooker with a heart of gold.10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Trebay, \u201cSex, Art and Videotape,\u201d A20<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the artist\u2019s lead, some critics attempted an affective analysis of Untitled<\/em>, yet they seemed ill at ease, sketching out a few lines of excuses to justify their interest in the work.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - See, among others, George Baker, \u201cFraser\u2019s From\u201d in Andrea Fraser. Works: 1984 to 2003<\/em>,ed. Yilmaz Dziewior (Cologne: Dumont, 2003), 73.<\/span> Isabelle Graw wrote in Artforum<\/em>: \u201cDid you like it?\u201d I was repeatedly asked, and I found, even to my own surprise, that I had to answer yes, I liked it very much.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Isabelle Graw, \u201cAndrea Fraser. Hamburger Kunstverein,\u201d Artforum <\/em>42, no. 4 (December 2003): 140.<\/span> Such statements give the impression that, in Graw\u2019s view, it might have been more pertinent, or at least more favourably perceived, not to have liked Fraser\u2019s work quite so much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The disparity between affective interpretations and those interested solely in market mechanisms revealed by the work can be explained by the marked difference between its conception and its realization. Fraser explains: \u201cThe \u2018idea\u2019 may evoke specters of exploitation, sensationalism and coldly critical or cynical artistic calculation. But the video is just two people having sex\u2009\u2014\u2009an everyday occurrence that is quite simple and also much more complicated.\u201d13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - Dziewior, \u201cInterview with Andrea Fraser,\u201d 100.<\/span> In the video, there is nothing to suggest a commercial transaction: the human relationship between the artist and her collector is the focus of the work, while the very opposite dominates the formulation of the idea. If we understand the work as an act of prostitution in the traditional sense, the collector and the gallery play the role of exploiter. And yet, Fraser too could be accused of using the collector by making him pay to appear in a work of art. One could say that the collector, by participating in the project, saw himself as enjoying far more than the chance to acquire a work of art. By becoming intimate with the artist in this way, he experienced the act of creation exactly as the artist herself did. The opportunity to be part of this particular elite that artists represent must certainly have been worth the risk for the collector, who ultimately took on the role of the unclothed emperor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In this manner, depending on how much the viewer knows,14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 14 <\/a> - One should note that the work has still not been presented in an exhibition as a video, which has certainly affected its reception and the discourse surrounding it. For example, in the exhibition Pop Life: Art in a Material World<\/em>, organized by the Tate Modern in London in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and presented from June 11 to September 19, 2010 in Ottawa, the work was displayed as a selection of photos taken from the video, accompanied by an explanatory text.<\/span> the work oscillates between instrumentalization and collaboration. Untitled<\/em>, like its catch-all title, seems to hinge on all of this. It is possible to see the work as a simple joke, yet it also seems to be an invitation to contemplate the sentimental value we lend to art. By taking an emotional position within a project that does not seem to lend itself to such, Fraser, voluntarily or not, highlights an attachment to the symbolic value of art, a value that goes beyond the mere economic dimension of works. One can imagine that the collector\u2019s motivations are similar, but given his anonymous silence, we are reduced to supposition in this regard. In other respects, some critics, by unfairly attributing venal goals to the artist, display an equally emotive posture by refusing to grant that an act of prostitution can be considered as a legitimate work of art. It seems that, in this case, denying the artist\u2019s emotional attachment highlights one\u2019s own,\u2009\u2009real,\u2009attachment to Art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [Translated from the French by Peter Dub\u00e9]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/73_DO06_Fraser_Untitled-3-scaled.jpg\")
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