Crit: Tony Fouhse: Fragment #3

David reviewed this book for us a while ago, and I have been sitting on my copy for a good long time while I get over this horrific cold. But at least here I am.

I've been working my way through an older edition of Hanson's text on Art History, which mainly covers European Art History, but I'm still learning a lot in spite of it all. One of the big things I've learned is that for most of history Art has been about illustrating a pre-existing story.

I like to say "it's all comics! It was always comics!" and that's not far off. Ancient Art illustrated maybe a hunt, whether one that happened or one that was hoped-for, who knows. Later Art told stories of myths and legends, battles and kings. It all existed to support a story that everyone already knew, at least in outline. Trajan's Column illustrates Trajan's career, preserving it, filling in the details for people who only knew part of it, or whatever. You can't actually see a lot of it, because it's very tall, so it's not obvious who the story is for.

A painting of the Annunciation tells the story of the angel coming to tell Mary that God has a little job for her. Perhaps the painting comments on the story, illuminates it, whatever. But people know that there's a girl, there's the angel, there's no Jesus hanging around, probably an Annunciation.

The stories exist beforehand, the Art recapitulates it.

The idea, specifically, that Art should "stand alone," that it should somehow contain within itself its own meaning, is very very new and in fact fairly dicey. This is the Art that I, and presumably most of us, have been brought up to think of as Real Art. The idea is that we, as normal members of society, ought to be able to look at the thing and make meaning from it, quite apart from any specific pre-existing story.

This is really really hard, and maybe an untenable position. It's certainly something I struggle with.

Photographs, as I have remarked endlessly, do actually have an easier time with this, acting as as portals to another place and time. The meaning we make of a (ordinary, essentially documentary) photograph is to imagine the story that contains the frozen moment of time. This action is, I have long maintained, fundamentally how we interact with (ordinary, essentially documentary) photographs.

This does lead us to the essential problem with photography as art, though, which is that maybe this isn't Art in the modern sense at all. Maybe it's just documentary storytelling. Is there any meaning beyond the fairly literal story one tends to fill in around the reality presented inside the frame? Is that Art? Does that do the Art thing of enlarging us, of making is feel, or evoking some kind of quasi-spiritual response, or whatever else it is that you might want Art to do to you?

Which leads us, ever so slowly, to Tony's latest book.

David gave you the rundown on the structure of the thing, so let me just amplify that its a very very simply constructed book but exquisitely made. There's a precision to it that I like a lot, and which completely eludes me in my own efforts. It's a really really nice object.

It's also unambiguously Art in that modern sense. It's not leaning on any previous story, it's not illustrating anything. It is self-contained, or at least capable of being self-contained (it also contributes to the larger ongoing project.)

This book has crystallized something that's been noodling around the edges of my brain for a while now. It's possible for a photograph to be a highly inadequate portal to another time and place, and that can be a really good thing. None of Tony's recent photos really fit my preferred model for a photo, none of them really "transport you to a place" in any meaningful way. They're too narrow. They're a peephole into somewhere else, a peephole you cannot really pass through. You're given a fragmentary, up close, view of something that you can't understand, that you're not meant to understand.

The term I've used in the past is "semiotically rich"; there are photos that beg to be interpreted, which are rich in signs, but which decline to offer you any help.

A photo of a dog running down the street dragging its leash invites the question "where is the owner?" and it places you on the street, looking back up the street for the owner. It's a portal.

Tony's photos are a something else. A bunch of wires. A fuzzy photo of a hand. An open can. They invite no single coherent question, they transport you nowhere. The questions are vague and multiple. You're invited to interpret these things, but there is no specific guidance.

There are plenty of photographs of nothing out there. The MFA community seems fully devoted to making these things, and they's not at all what I'm talking about. A photo of a non-descript signboard, a random field, a highway overpass, no. Those are not semiotically rich.

What I mean is what might be technically called a floating signifier. These are photographs that urgently signify, they are half of a "sign," but what they signify is left open. They're not complete enough as photos to give you the signified, the referent, you have to make that up yourself.

In groups, they behave like a tarot card spread. Just as the Death Card or whatever you like signifies with urgency, but leaves open what exactly it signified, so do Tony's photos. The spread, however, can be interpreted in some depth, although ambiguity never really leaves the scene. You can construct not a reality into which one is transported, but nevertheless a larger meaning of sorts. A "vibe" if you will, a sensation, and emotional state.

In a lot of ways Tony's latest reminds me of Frédérick Carnet's "last first day" which you can still access by way of this link (you'll have to click a little), and a little of my own thing, Jesus Fucking 2020. I don't mean that they're the same in content (although there are overlaps, possibly this method lends itself to a certain darkness) but that they're the same in terms of method. Katrin Koenning seems to do the same sort of thing, but in a lighter tone (although her latest work seems to be leaning increasingly dark, sigh.)

This business of nudging you to interpret the tarot spread is what makes this format shine as an example of the modern conception of Art. There's no underlying story, the thing stands alone, but it does urge you into what a nerd would call a "dialog" with the work, It urges you to find you emotional response, it urges you into the Art-state in which you are enlarged, or made to feel something. The MFA photos of nothing don't have a story, but neither do they urge you into any response, they're dead objects that cannot be bothered to signify, because the people who make them have no idea what that would even mean. They just know they're supposed to photograph boring shit.

I'm kind of excited by this, because it's brought into focus something that has been, apparently, nagging at me. This is a thing I have noticed but not been able to make sense, of. It's a thing that I like a lot, but which doesn't fit into my (previous?) model for How Photos Work.