埼玉大学紀要（教養学部）第49巻第２号 2013年

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ars vivendi reclaimed: On the virtue of the body in “neo-pre-Modernist” art practices

Kikuko TOYAMA＊

Introduction

Ever since the end of Art stories, it seems that we have been at a loss, feeling unsure what to

expect from artistic practices. The modern notions of the autonomous (context free and

self-expressive) works of art, as well as Western-dominated art institutions that have colluded

with them, have been widely criticized, and yet, an effective alternative system still remains to

be established.

In quite a few cases, however, we can observe a growing interest in the pre-Modern or

non-Western traditions, as if they could open an alternative path, a way out of the impasse.

Around the 1960s and 1970s, when the so-called contemporary art of our age (or postmodern

art, if you prefer) formed its basic structure, a certain crucial shift appeared in a variety of art

practices: overtly stepping out of the mainstream formalist-modernism, artists tried all kinds of

methods in an attempt to reconnect with the long-lost “totality” or the broader scheme of the

arts of living, seeking in particular “to retrieve the dimension of the spiritual.”1 Most of the

time, they did so through their own interpretations of “Asian” or “Native” traditional cultures,

or anything outside the Modern-West, resulting in a sort of spiritual syncretism. As Philip

Corner recalls, “I can’t see any place where the whole twentieth-century sense of substituting

art for religion was more manifest than in this [early sixties] scene. Everything from Zen to

transcendental meditation to Native American outdoor ritual was used as a model.”2

A more recent tendency towards such a pre-Modern revival, or what Thomas MacEvilly calls

neo-pre-Modernism, seems to have developed from the same kind of hybrid spiritual

commitment. According to MacEvilly, neo-pre-Modernism is among the options that

“post-Modernism has proffered as a corrective to Modernist exclusionism,”3 but at the same

time it might remind us that a rather strong aspiration towards channels of spiritual

communication already existed (the pre-modern in the modern, primitive modern), although it

was marginalized and regarded as secondary or “impure” by the ideology of (inward looking)

formalist modernism. And even today, inside and outside the institutions of modern art where

everything has turned into aesthetic commodities, the view of art as magic and of the artist as a

medium or a shaman, still survives (or perhaps even secretly flourishes).

However, one might ask, would it not be too optimistic, too naïve, to believe that art could

＊ とやま・きくこ 埼玉大学教養学部教授，美学・芸術論

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function as magic again, could restore the hidden treasure of the ancient past or pre-modern

society, considering its magico-religious origin had already been abandoned centuries ago in

favor of “autonomous,” that is, siteless, homeless, collectable works of art? True, one can no

longer assume her/his rootedness in one specific place/community/culture the way one may

have been allowed to in the past traditional society, since the transcendental dimension, a

prerequisite for such social solidity, has been gone for a long time now. Given that the

post-Modern neo-pre-Modernist position, within this de-centered, Bodenlosig cultural climate,

is inevitably regarded as problematic, to the extent that in some cases “religion,” “mysticism”

and “spiritualism” appear only as appropriated (to get some reputation or to get another fund),

and an artist as a shaman, as a “mediumistic being,” becomes half a joke, as long as you are an

“insider” (professional) artist, not an “outsider” artist! Even with such new conceptual devices

as “site-specificity,” a new genre of public art, community-based art, “relational art” and so on,

the efficiency and credibility of their discourses needs to be proven in each case.

Another complicated issue involved in the neo-pre-modernist position is known as an

appropriation, or a misreading of the Other’s culture. Artists from the West have been

reaching out to the domains of non-Western or ancient people, subjugated and nearly extinct

Native people, the “primitive”, the insane, children, women, namely of their Others, as if no

place for “channels of spiritual communication” were left within their thoroughly “enlightened”

advanced nations… so that their attempts, even the most serious ones, tend to be rather

quickly captured within a skeptical framework of “primitivism,” “Orientalism,” “colonialism,” or

a reversed ethno-centrism.4

We, as non-Westerners, still have to follow the West in many respects; I believe that a

political and cultural imbalance still exists. However, as Cynthia Freeland suggests,5 the

diasporic hybrid situation has come to pervade since the late 20th century; we all move around

between different cultures (and now almost instantaneously via IT media). A fixed, stable

center vs. exploited, misinterpreted margins – this asymmetrical scheme is thus no longer valid.

And so is the notion of authentic, pureblood culture. If cultures from all over the world have

become more or less equal in resources and methods, interfering with one another and

constantly in a state of flux, then an eclectic or syncretistic approach has to be tolerated – or

even recommended as something realistic.

In any case, with all these unsolved problems, perhaps it is no use to dream about returning

to the idealized past. Yet, once in a while, we might see some little germs about to spring up,

decomposing the current frameworks of ART and restoring the arts of living, which certainly

must have a much older origin than ART itself. In this paper, I would like to examine such a

possibility, focusing on how the artist’s body has experienced a drastic change from the 1960s,

1970s and on.

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1)Changing bodies: in non-dance = expanded dance

Around the 1960s, the medium-specificity of modernist art began to lose stability and a

generic notion of Art formed a common basis for new practices. Allan Kaprow predicted it in

his own interpretation of the “legacy of Jackson Pollock” in 1958: “The young artist of today

need no longer say, ‘I am a painter’ or ‘a poet’ or ‘a dancer.’ He is simply an ‘artist.’ All of life

will be open to him.”6 At the same time, the contents of labor, of work, in the process of art

making went through a fundamental change, and thereby the “artist’s hand” disappeared (not

entirely, of course, but at least among the supposedly advanced art discourses). It seems that a

number of people then began to share Marcel Duchamp’s outspoken disdain for “the artist’s

touch,” for “all that work of the hand.”7 Conventional craftsmanship, embodied intelligence and

skillful bodies faded away, and as pointed out by Robert Smithson, “As ‘technology’ and

‘industry’ began to become an ideology in the New York Art World in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s,

the private studio notions of ‘craft’ collapsed.”8 In other words, the artist’s primary capital for

poiesis became no longer accumulated within her/his own body, as a physically internalized

technique, but rather externalized in the form of technology.

On the other hand, according to Sally Banes, “a decidedly anthropological turn of mind”

occurred during the same period, bringing about the era of counterculture in the late ’60s,

which introduced diverse bodily practices of non-Western origins. The “everyday practices of

non-Western societies (from the martial arts of T’ai Chi Chu’uan and karate to macrobiotic diets

to Hindu guru devotion)” joined “the tenets of already influential non-Western daily practices

(like Zen Buddhism),”9 and in addition, “somaesthetic” practices, namely, various kinds of body

work, therapy, meditation methods developed as well (Feldenkreis method, Alexander

technique, Mabel E. Todd’s kinesiology, release work, to name only a few). Surely it was also

the era of the psychedelic, of the altered state of consciousness experienced widely and perhaps

too easily via drugs. All political issues concerning the “natural” (and sexual) body must also

be taken into account. Although these conflicting problems make it hard to generalize,

somehow and sometime, the body rediscovered then as “a conscious body that imbued corporeal

experience with metaphysical significance, uniting head and body, mind and gut,”10 indicated a

path towards the spiritual dimension, proposing a non-dualistic perception of the mental and

the physical, which is characteristic of Zen philosophy, as well as of other spiritual trainings.

Fading craftsmanship, disappearing trained bodies and the emergence of bodily cultures from

different sources – such complications concerning the human body, in fact, seem to have become

most visible in the American avant-garde dance of the same period. Postmodern dancers,

namely, the dancers related to the Judson Dance Theater in New York and grouped through

Robert Dunn’s workshop and its direct and indirect influence of “Merce Cunningham / John

Cage circle,” went extremely far with their experiments and widely interacted with

contemporary artists of various fields in the ‘60s. The basic stance of the Judson people was,

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as Trisha Brown recalls, non-dance11, as they preferred ordinary everyday movements to

stylized “dancy” ones; thus their work was regarded as “dance without technique” or “Brillo Box

in dance.”12 Anything, any kind of human movement could be framed as dance, except

“technical dancing”! With this egalitarian strategy of inclusion, they distanced themselves

from the context of mainstream Western art-dance (ballet and modern dance) altogether, and at

the same time, quite a few of them also approached other alternative body techniques, whether

non-Western traditional ones or non-artistic therapeutic ones, both of which lay emphasis on

“bodily awareness” and experiencing your own body internally.13

At this point, we should mention Anna Halprin’s Dancers’ Workshop (1955-) in California.

Before (and after) Dunn’s choreography class in New York, its core members (Simore Forti,

Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton) participated in Halprin’s Workshop. There,

according to Forti, what she calls “the dance state” (a state of deep concentration) was induced

often by simple body movements and introspection: “It could be just walking around in a circle

and focusing on the sensations in your body. The sensation of one part moving against another.

Of momentum – of different parts, of the mass. And being satisfied to stay focused on those

sensations for – oh, fifteen minutes. And then a lot of impulses start to come.” “Maybe I

could compare it to certain meditational states, or state in which you arrive at certain

concentration and then it’s not an effort to do what you’re concentrating on doing, because your

whole system is flowing in that direction.”14

In such “meditational” “dance state” (or a “musical state”) brought about by “concentrated

self-witnessing,” as Forti describes, “your system is geared to performing,” and “all your motor

intelligence is blossoming.”15 This seems to have been incorporated into Steve Paxton’s basic

exercises for Contact Improvisation, a method for duet (or group) dance which is now

well-known and practiced world-wide, and which originated by Paxton through various sources,

including his own encounter with aikido as well as his experiments with some of the Judson

members. Particularly noteworthy is the “stand” exercise (or “small dance” as he later named

it), that is, simply “standing and observing the body.” Paxton wrote: “Standing still is not

actually ‘still.’ Balancing on two legs demonstrates to the dancer’s body that one moves with

gravity, always. Observing the constant adjustments the body makes to keep from falling

calms the whole being. It is a meditation.”16 It is therefore not so much about focusing on

kinaesthetic sensations when we move around, but rather, about concentrating on even more

subtle somatic sensations, “our feeling of the muscles of the body when they are quiet, or the

sense of ‘being,’ if I may propose such a sense,” through which we come to learn that, as Paxton

says, “the consciousness can travel inside the body”. In the entire process of improvising, too,

“the consciousness was to hang in with the body, during real time, and stay alert. It should be

a witness.”17

The exploration of this “awareness of the present physical reality,” of keeping the mind

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relaxed and alert by observing simple bodily movement so as to be most receptive, attentive to

the body’s present moment, the space around it, and gravity affecting it – this state of

meditation will lead you where to go, how to move. Practitioners of Aikido, standing

meditation of Zen, or of Vipassana meditation, are surely familiar with this (Paxton learned

them all). Also, some old Chinese (and Japanese) martial arts, traditional breathing exercises.

According to a Japanese master, “Standing, that’s it. Standing still and looking inside the body.

As you are standing still, numerous parts of the body began moving autonomously. Observe,

and be aware of them,” – and that is the best exercise to keep the body receptive.18 Or even, it

might be possible to find affinity with the body of the Noh actor – most of the time standing or

sitting still and performing only minimal gestures when “dancing” – its intensity coming solely

from the actor’s concentration on somatic sensations.19

These bodies are not so much expressive or talkative as they are non-expressive and receptive,

and thus foreground the function of receiving, or “listening,” if we follow the preferred analogy

to martial arts and meditation trainings.Deborah Hay is another exemplary case. After

working with Cunningham and the Judson group, she learned T’ai Chi Chu’uan, through which

she developed her bodily awareness, a sense of skin and a sense of “cosmic” flow. With simple

breathing exercises, Hay realized how subtle movements could affect a state of consciousness.

Bill Jeffers, in his comment on her outdoor solo performance, uses almost Taoist terminology:

“she becomes empty and the dance enters her.” “The process of emptying, of becoming hollow

and then listening is the dance that Deborah does.”20 Quieting and emptying the mind,

reaching the egoless state that is responsive even to the most subtle change of energy and just

being in flow with, or “geared to performing.” This might remind us of “the fasting of the

mind” teachings of Chuang Tzu: you rest “the hearing of the ears,” distance yourself from “the

hearing of the mind,” and when “the hearing of the spirit [chi]” takes place, you have “freedom

from all pre-occupation”; then “the spiritual intelligences will come, and take up their dwelling

with us.”21

The quiet, meditational state established by self observation was not only valued as a

preparatory stage for “improvisation” or choreography. Perhaps it was more commonly

understood among dancers related to Judson, as a method effective in achieving a peak

performance (or “entering a zone” so to speak). According to Gus Solomon jr., for instance,

what he learned from Cunningham was opposite to the teachings of Martha Graham and other

modern dancers, that is, how to achieve “technical control” through a “dance from stillness.”

“Graham dancers would get themselves into a state of high anxiety to dance well. I, on the

other hand, spent rehearsal time between run-throughs lying in a corner, deep-breathing,

finding inner calm, becoming still.”22 And moreover, in such representative pieces of the

Judson group as Mind Is A Muscle (Rainer) and Accumulation (Brown), “neutral” doings of

tasks or task-like movement without any visible dance technique could somehow be compared

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to a moving meditation (like T’ai Chi Chu’uan), which calms down and tames the mind through

certain bodily awareness. The following passage that Janice Ross says about Halprin, seems

true to many of the Judson postmodern dancers as well: “The human body, which customarily

had to be made extraordinary in order to become an art medium in dance, was now being made

noteworthy by virtue of its physical ordinariness doing task procedure movements.”23 Their

non-dance projects produced dance pieces that didn’t look like dance at all, with no “dancy”

movements and no fancy techniques; yet by doing so, they expanded the potential virtue of

dance to cover all those ordinary bodies, walking, running, standing and the very basics of

ordinary life. Hay could say, therefore: “The dance is any moment when I am clearly in the act

of doing just what I am doing.”24

2)Silent art, or expanded music?

As I roughly mentioned before, during the 1960’s dominant art media such as painting and

sculpture became less distinct, and the artist’s asset, which had been medium-specific and

bodily internalized, became less valid. Instead, some artists, such as Forti, Rainer, and Robert

Morris (or Oldenburg, Dine, and Warhol) began crossing multiple media, bringing about an

inter-art situation.

Unlike the case of dance and performance, where the body is regarded as the primary

medium, discourses on visual arts normally pay only little attention to the artist’s body in the

work process (with the exception of Harold Rosenberg’s argument for “action painting”). Forti,

however, from her own experience, talked about a certain continuity between the painting body

and the dancing body.25 What interests me here is a seemingly parallel shift observable in

both media; just as Cunningham’s instruction to “dance from stillness” suggested a different

kind of dancing bodies, a break away from Graham dancers’ inclination to “dance from a ‘state

of high anxiety’,” so emerged painting bodies entirely different from those of Action painters

such as Pollock and De Kooning – closer to Newman and Rothko, yet perhaps even more

mechanical looking ones.26 Instead of ecstatic, uplifting, highly anxious bodies, came quieting,

relaxed and yet alert ones. Along with a much fetishized painterly touch and “ego-saturated”

brushstrokes, the “artist’s hand” was found guilty, and had to be substituted by more

anonymous tools, like in the case of Frank Stella who utilized the housepainter’s method.27 It

was, therefore, not a simple choice between “going for mechanization of the work process” and

“returning to handwork” that was happening in the visual arts of the ‘60s, but both aspects

compounded there at once, and an unprecedented processes of art-making came out of it,

unprecedented but quite often inspired by non-Western or pre-modern traditions.

Ad Reinhardt has been regarded as an ultra reductionist, with his “pure painting” leaving

nothing that is not of essence (to him). While he became a “nearly canonical” figure for the

young artists of the ‘60s through his constant writing on the “Art-as-Art” dogma, Reinhardt

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maintained a proud independence among artists of his own generation (calling himself “the

Great Demurrer in a time of Great Enthusiasmus”28). Having incorporated his own

interpretation of Eastern art practices, he repeated “the last painting,” in the same size, the

same color and in the same “imageless, formless, formularless” form. Rose framed it as “an

effort to retrieve the dimension of the spiritual”: “Because the cruciform image requires time to

focus, and requires an act of focusing so demanding that it changes the state of the viewers’

consciousness, the black paintings reflect some of the values of the Eastern cultures Reinhardt

became progressively involved with as his revulsion with the function of art in the West grew.”

These are “icons without iconography,” or something similar to “the hypnotic patterns of Islamic

decoration or the abstract diagrams of tantric Buddhism,” Rose said, as they could open up a

path into a spiritual state, “a state of contemplation which may be defined as meditative.”29

Furthermore, not only could the products function like a mandala chart for the spectator,

inducing a meditative state, but also for him, the process itself, the process of painting the

“preformed and premeditated” same diagram again and again, had a crucial meaning. In an

article “Timeless in Asia” (1960), he wrote, “The creative process is always an academic routine

and sacred procedure. Everything is prescribed and proscribed. Only in this way is there no

grasping or clinging to anything.”30 And it was not just for him, but for anyone willing to go

through the same process, like playing the same score or traveling the same route. Asked by

Bruce Glaser, “Why don’t you have someone paint them for you?” he replied, “Someone else

can’t do them for me. They have to do their own for themselves. … I’m merely making the last

painting which anyone can make.”31

The painting process itself thus was supposed to function as a purification ritual, a little bit

like copying a sutra, or chanting a hymn? Stephanie Rosenthal compares it to “the kind of

purifying process familiar from alchemy, a ‘process of cleansing and bringing back’ in which

‘matter is transformed with the aim of achieving spiritual knowledge’.” Repeatedly working

on the primordial darkness, an original state of materials to be transformed, may have been a

method for the artist “in order to experience the present in a pure state, uncontaminated by the

past and the future.”32

Agnes Martin, another isolated and often misunderstood abstract painter (and a great writer,

too), is said to have been seriously influenced by “Ad Reinhardt’s reductive, programmatic serial

black monochromes and his interest in Eastern art and mysticism.”33 Like Cage and

Reinhardt, she “first encountered Buddhism in the late 1950s in the lectures of D.T. Suzuki at

Columbia University, and also became interested in the writing of two Taoists, Lao-tzu and

Chuang-tzu.”34 As a half hermit in the desert of New Mexico, Martin incorporated

transcendentalist ideas as well. She was certainly no less dedicated, working on pictures day

after day for many decades, each one mostly made out of grids or horizontal lines on a 5×5 or 6

×6 feet(1.5×1.5 or 1.8×1.8m) square canvas. They are far from the last paintings, since she

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pursued a blissful, egoless state, an “untroubled mind,” via her daily practice of painting.

In her interviews, lectures, and writings, Martin spoke of happiness, serene beauty, and

tranquility, and they were indeed her favorite themes for her work. For her, inspiration,

another important theme, would come as “moments of happiness” whenever the “mind is not

clouded over with thoughts.” “It is an untroubled mind. Of course we know that an

untroubled state of mind cannot last. So we say that inspiration comes and goes but really it is

there all the time waiting for us to be untroubled again.”35 Some relate it to her personal

psychological problems. Timothy Robert Rodgers argues, “Martin’s obsessive need to

reproduce happiness, for example, at a certain point begins to read as a personal failure to

consistently experience happiness. … The act of painting for Martin becomes the antidote, the

anti-depressant that reassures the artist that happiness will be and can be re-experienced.” 36

However, it seems equally possible to argue that, through her persistent efforts, Martin did

find “a mechanism for serenity that is fine-tuned and ever-ready”37; with this mechanism

embodied in her work process, she pursued the state of “empty mind,” untroubled and

unclouded, so as to hear the voices of inspirations, which she believed spring from an unknown

part of her mind (“When I set out to do a painting, I ask for an inspiration. And I follow it”38).

If so, her “choice of calm over chaos” links her painting body with the line of “receiving / hearing

bodies” and – we might also say – her silent art with musica, the arts of Muses from the ancient

times. If inspiration is “pervasive”, then “it is there all the time waiting for us to be untroubled

again”, and one needs only to practice the “fasting of the mind” to respond to it. Through his

student Gita Sarabhai, Cage learned that the function of music in India was “to sober and quiet

the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences.”39 That’s also the fasting of the

mind.

Florence Pierce also lived and worked in New Mexico, “in the harsh but beautiful desert.”

Although she studied with Emil Bisttram and joined his Transcendentalist Painting Group in

the late 1930s and the early ‘40s, it was not until the early 1990s, already in her seventies, that

Pierce reached her own “transcendental” art. With her characteristic use of resin poured on

plexiglass, which she discovered almost accidentally, her work, as another case of “the silent

art” is at times associated with Martin. With Martin, Pierce shared her respect for various

spiritual traditions, “including theosophy and transcendentalism, Native American rituals, and

various Eastern religions and philosophies.”40 As Lucy R. Lippard observes, “The Buddhist

principles of contemplation, of conscious breathing, and acting in the moment inform her work

process, though Pierce says she is not a Buddhist.”41 The terms of Zen Buddhism, such as

“emptiness,” “emptying mind and space,” “void,” appear frequently in her own talk. “Working

is facing the void, or infinity. I no longer concern myself with design. It’s not about anything.

It just is…”. “My works are contemplative. They’re about stilling the mind.”42

While Pierce, like Martin, having moved to New Mexico at some point in her life, seems

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committed to her personal sense of place (“The longest love affair I’ve had in my life has been

with New Mexico,” she said)43, the Japanese artist, On Kawara, has consciously chosen to live a

life of a diasporic hybrid in its literal sense, keeping his interests alive both in eclectic religious

thoughts and in cutting-edge sciences and technology. One of his persistent themes is a

“transformation of consciousness,” as embodied in series such as I Got Up, I Went. Known as a

forerunner of Conceptual Art, Kawara, nonetheless, retains his painting body, since he regards

the process of making the Date Paintings, his most well-known series, as still on-going, among

his core works, “a form of meditation, a routine conductive to the loss of ego.”44 The Date

Paintings, also known as the Today series, originated from his encounter with the prehistoric

Cave Paintings of Altamira in 1963; as a painting of the date on which it was made, he set

certain rules, format, and manual technique, still followed. “If the painting is not finished by

the end of the day, by midnight, it is destroyed.”45

Recently, 7 pieces of Date Paintings from the first week of 1997 (January 1st to 7th) have been

traveling all over the world, but not in a normal setting like museums or art galleries, but in

kindergartens! In this on-going project Pure Consciousness (since 1998 in Sydney)46, showing

the paintings to kids may not be the point; it is perhaps more about giving occasions for his

paintings to share the same place with the kids, to breathe the air and lively vibrations

radiating from them, if “childlikeness” represents “your spiritual health, your spiritual

wholeness,” as is put in one of the texts published for this project (Avignon 2002, some

paragraphs quoted from International Foundation, www.osho.com): “Meditation would not have

been needed if people had remained in their essential childlikeness.” Meditation as medicine,

as a spiritual regimen. So the artist paints daily, repetitiously, like cleaning a room,

conducting a religious service. According to Jonathan Watkins, “Like a mantra, it encourages

concentration on a simple act towards a one-ness, a direct relation, with the world.”47

Making a picture or painting is not, of course, the only form to practice meditation/medicine

in visual arts. The German artist Wolfgang Laib is a prominent example, clearly showing us

how the artist’s bodily involvement with the work process would matter outside conventional

art-making. His choice of organic materials – the pollen (pine, dandelion, buttercup), the milk,

beeswax, rice, and marble – leads to his characteristic body posture and movement. Having

observed the artist installing a Pollen Square, Dider Semin describes this in details: “After

having carefully inspected the floor, Laib poured jars of pollen onto a square of transparent

paper, as much as was necessary to cover the surface. He opened each jar, then turned it with

a deft gesture which was self-assured yet almost brusque,…,” and “having placed the pollen

into a sort of pocket of muslin, Laib taps it softly with the back of his hand or with a spoon, a

few centimeters above the ground, in order to observe the movement of the tiny flakes which

float to earth in an initially imperceptible mantle. … This micro-climate dictates to Laib the

course of his progression in each piece – squatting or on his knees, his back to an infinitesimal

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breeze so that the movements of the air never come into conflict with his own.”48 Yet, this

installation process is merely part of a longer, painstaking work process (gathering of pollen for

half a year, preserving, installing, removing, and reusing).

As McEvilly points out, the performative aspect of his work certainly resembles a “priestly

rite,” and may well reveal his inclination towards various religious traditions from the West as

well as the East (Rumi, Francis of Assisi, and Indian philosophical traditions including both

Buddhist and Jain). “The famous image of him crouching in a field of flowers and gently

brushing pollen from individual blossoms into a jar is reminiscent of the Jain practice of sitting

down gently so as not to hurt the grassblades, or stirring water gently so as not to knock about

the micro-organisms in it too much and so on.”49 Repetition is also a key here, “… for the act of

doing something again and again brings about a state of equilibrium and intense concentration

bordering on meditation.”50 A view of a silent stillness, that is so striking in Laib’s pieces, lasts

only a few hours, and the materials he likes demand delicate and daily care (quite visible, here

again, somewhere between housework and religious service). On a milkstone piece, Clare

Farrow writes: “before the milk begins to evaporate into the air, leaving behind a pale yellow

residue of fat that must be wiped from the stone before the milk can be poured again. It is a

concentrated time, a period for contemplation.”51

Another aspect of Laib’s work could be its function for tuning a space, affecting its vibrational

state, so to speak. Again, it’s a little bit like cleaning and purifying a room. He believes in

that power of his art, saying, “If you have a milkstone or a pollen piece in a private space, the

life around, in that space, has to be changed.”52 The invisible energies emanating from organic

materials, and the way these materials are treated by the artist, could they effect, McEvilly

asks, “any sentient being in its range, whether trained or untrained, human or non-human?”53

Rei Naitou, an installation artist from Japan, would certainly answer yes, as the receptivity of

subtle energies, chi, invisible yet palpable vibrational force, lies at the base of her pieces. In

One place on the earth (1991), therefore, you are requested to be alone inside the tent; if

someone else is there, the space cannot be the same, Naitou says54. Another case is that you go

into a large, vacant space, a building of a former power plant with a high ceiling (13.5m×25 m×

14.5m) and wait to see what’s in there; nothing but almost unnoticeable events -- drops of water

falling down once in a while, in different spots, and 3 fine strings pulled tightly somewhere, so

“you have to quiet your mind and stay still.” “You may not notice, but still, when something is

there, it affects the mind.”55 Naitou often refers to the old Japanese customs and Shintoist

notions. Picking up those spiritual traditions, it can be said that she attempts to excavate the

ancient mind, obsolescent yet still alive even today.

These cases that I have gone over quickly, they all seem to rely on simple, repetitious,

concentrated work, physical operations not so different from the task-oriented movements, so

as to achieve a certain “transformation of consciousness.” “I have poured the milk and sifted

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the pollen so often but the experience always remains new,” says Laib.56 Each one has to go

through the process by oneself, involved physically. “Someone else can’t do them for me,” says

Reinhardt. Although these artists may not be “traveling inside the body” in the same manner

as dancers, they do focus on what they do with what they have, with no festive excitement, but

as a quiet daily routine and often a life-time commitment. So Pierce says: “I start every day by

just looking at a blank square. There are mental states that come from the stilling of the mind,

the quieting of the mind.”57 While super powerful amplifiers exist everywhere now, playing

“visual fanfare”, they mostly set themselves within limited, humble procedures, which would

better suite subtle ambient energies they care about. So Martin says: “Inspiration is pervasive

but not a power. It’s a peaceful thing. It is a consolation even to plants and animals.”58

Not very concluding conclusion

Generally speaking, the environment we live in today tends to be already too spoiled to keep

the wisdom of bodily practices from ancient traditions. As suggested by “flatbed picture

planes,” which Leo Steinberg found marking a critical postmodern shift from “nature to

culture,”59 our cultural climate is more and more overloaded with highly mediated and

pre-edited sense data, visual and audio representations, with which we can do nothing much

but let them go, faster than ever, and stop responding. And moreover, our bodies now function

okay only when connected with the external tools and prosthetic devices, so that these

expanded (cyborg) bodies overshadow conventional skills and trainings, and all embodied

intelligence die out.

Placed in this context, some neo-pre-modernist options appear either too escapist, or a real

challenge. Perhaps both. If their choice of alternative paths could lead to a return to the

older form of “art of living,” they are approaching not only non-Western traditional cultures of

somatic disciplines but also the origins of the West, the ancient Greek and Roman philosophy,

for which an art of living, namely, a long-term purification process of taking care of yourself

both mentally and physically must have come first, before initiated to the truth.60 This idea of

science as a divine domain perhaps continued in pre-modern practices of (spiritual) alchemy

that Reinhardt might have picked up, “as a spiritual transmutation inseparable from scientific

work in the laboratory.”61 The arts of living, once pervasive, and forgotten. A basic

preposition of neo-pre-modernism (disseminated by Cage’s and Beuys’s lineage), the shifting

“from art of self-expression to of self-alteration,” and even “to art as magico-therapeutic,” should

be understood as a revival of this old stage, typified perhaps in the case of Laib,

“artist=medicine man,” whom McEvilley links with “ancient physicians from an era before the

professions separated from one another, like Empedocles of Acragas, who was simultaneously a

poet, a medical doctor, and a wonder worker, without much distinction among these roles.”62

In the end, as the development of information technology accelerates, we all seem drowning

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in cyber-space with too easy access to cultural resources from all over the world, thus floating

inevitably as a homeless, diasporic hybrid, and a stable “ground” no longer exists outside the

past nostalgia. The body, however, still remains “the enduring reality,”63 and part of the

common ground for everyone, no matter how many times encroached on by technology. If art

today is struggling to overcome her birth trauma, by turning to non art, to non dance, and if her

critique of modernity is allowed at least for some credibility, the crucial point must be

non-dualistic evaluation of “the rootedness of consciousness in the physical body.” 64

Originally presented at Peking University, on August 9, 2010, and expected to be included in

the Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Aesthetics, which has not been published

yet (and I have no idea when and if it ever comes out).

1 Barbara Rose, “Editor’s Note,” in Art-as-Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, ed. Barbara Rose (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p.82. 2 Interview with Philip Corner, September 17, 1988, cited by Sally Banes, Greenwich Village 1963: Avant-Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), p.250. 3 Thomas McEvilley, “Medicine Man: Proposing a Context for Wolfgang Laib’s Work,” Parkett 39 (1994), p.105. 4 Suffice it to be reminded of the critical debate evoked by such exhibitions as “Primitivism” in Twentieth Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984) and Magicians of the Earth (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1989). See also Alexandra Monroe, “The Third Mind: An Introduction,” in The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1869-1989, exh. cat. (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2009), p.24. 5 Cynthia Freeland, But Is It Art? An introduction to Art Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 6 Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Art News (October 1958), anthologized in Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelly, expanded edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p.9. 7 Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant Garde (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), p.24. 8 Robert Smithson, “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects,” Artforum (September 1968), anthologized in Smithson, The Writings of Robert Smithson: Essays with Illustrations, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979), p.83. 9 Banes, Greenwich Village, p.247. Also see Minoru Tada, Bukkyou Touzen: Taiheiyou wo Watatta Bukkyou [Buddhism spreading eastward: Buddhism crossed over the Pacific Ocean] (Kyoto: Zenbunka kenkyujo, 1990). 10 Banes, ibid., p.235. 11 “A Conversation with Trisha Brown and Klaus Kertess,” in TRISHA BROWN Early Works 1966-1979, Japanese Edition [SCAN Art Series No.2 DVD](Tokyo: PROCESSART, Inc., 2006). 12 See edited transcript of a lecture given by Michael Kirby, in Contemporary Dance, ed. Anne Livet (New York: Abbeville Press, Inc., 1978), p.162, and Noёl Carol, “The Philosophy of Art History, Dance and the 1960s,” in Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything Was Possible, ed. Sally Banes (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), P.82. 13 Ramsay Burt, Judson Dance Theater: Performative Traces (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p.57. 14 Cited by Sally Banes, Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance [Revised second edition] (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), pp.23-24, 34. 15 Ibid., p.35. Also see Burt, Judson Dance Theater, p.61. 16 Steve Paxton, “Fall after Newton Transcript,” first published in Contact Quarterly (Fall 88), and included in a booklet for Contact Improvisation Archive: DVD#2 Magnesium/Peripheral Vision/ Soft Pallet (VIDEODA/Contact Collaborations, Inc., 2006). 17 Steve Paxton, “Improvisation is …,” Contact Quarterly (Spring/Summer 87), p.16, and “Drafting Interior Techniques,” Contact Quarterly (Winter/Spring 93), pp.62-63. 18 Tatsuru Uchida, Watashi no karada wa atama ga ii [My body is clever] (Tokyo: Bungei-shunju-sha), pp.52-53.

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19 Tadashi Nishihara, Zeami no Keiko Tetsugaku [Zeami’s philosophy of practice] (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2009), p.182. 20 Bill Jeffers, “Leaving the House; The Solo Performance of Deborah Hay, The Drama Review 23, T 81 (1971), pp.79-86. 21 My reading is based on Hidemi Ishida’s interpretation of Chuang Tzu (4 - Man in the World, Associated with Other Men) in Ki no kosumoroji: Naibukansatu suru shintai[Cosmology of Chi: The body’s internal observation] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2004), pp.50-63, and James Legge’s translation (http://oaks.nvg.org/zhuangzi4-.html). 22 Gus Solomon jr., “Dancing in New York: The 1960s,” in Reinventing Dance in the 1960s, p.109. 23 Janice Ross, “Ann Halprin and the 1960s: Acting in the Gap between the Personal, the Pubic, and the Political,” in Reinventing Dance, p.30. 24 Cited by Bill Jeffers, “Leaving the House,” p.80. Also see the edited transcript of an interview with Deborah Hay, in Contemporary Dance, pp.122-130. 25 Burt, Judson Dance Theater, p.57. 26 See Roger Copeland, “Merce Cunningham and the Politics of Perception,” in What Is Dance?, eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen (Oxford, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp.307-324. 27 Jones, Machine in the Studio, pp.124-125. 28 Irving Sandler, American Art of the 1960s (New York: Harper & Raw, 1988), p.46. 29 Rose, “Editor’s Note,” p.82. 30 Ad Reinhardt, “Timeless in Asia,” Art News (January 1960), anthologized in Art-as-Art, p.218. 31 Ibid., pp.12-13. 32 Stephanie Rosenthal, Black Paintings: Robert Rauschenberg/Ad Reinhardt/Mark Rothko/Frank Stella (Munich: Haus der Kunst, 2006), p.42. 33 Karen Moss, “Art and Life Illuminated: Georgia O’Keeffe and Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce,” Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce, exh. cat. (Newport Beach, California: Orange County Museum of Art/ London: Merrell, 2009), p.32. 34 Ibid., p.44. 35 Agnes Martin, Writing/Schriften, ed. Dieter Schwarz (Winterthur: Kunstmuseum Winterthur/Cantz, 1992), p.62. 36 Timothy Robert Rodgers, “Agnes Martin: Portrait of a Mind,” In Pursuit of Perfection: The Art of Agnes Martin, Maria Martinez and Florence Pierce, exh. cat. (Santa Fe: Museum of Fine Arts, 2004), p.24. See also Rogers, “Mapping an Internal World: The Art of Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce,” Illumination, pp.94-97. 37 Holland Cotter, “Agnes Martin: All the Way to Heaven,” Art in America (April 1993), p.149, cited by Rogers, “Agnes Martin: Portrait of a Mind,” p.24. 38 Joan Simon, “Perfection is in the Mind: An Interview with Agnes Martin,” Art in America 84 (May 1996), p.88. 39 Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, p.99. 40 Moss, “Art and Life Illuminated,” p.12, p.39. 41 Lucy R. Lippard, “Traveling Light: Florence Pierce,” In Pursuit of Perfection, p.70. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., p.71. 44 Jonathan Watkins, “Survey: Where ‘I Don’t Know’ Is the Right Answer,” On Kawara (London and New York: Phaidon, 2002), p.82. 45 Ibid., p.78. 46 Ibid., pp.104-105. 47 From a text written by Jonathan Watkins in the booklet published for the opening of Pure Consciousness project (Sydney 1998). 48 Didier Semin, “A Piece by Wolfgang Laib at the Centre Pompidou,” Parkett 39 (1994), p.74. 49 McEvilley, “Medicine Man,” pp.106, 107. 50 Clare Farrow, “WOLFGANG LAIB: More than Myself”, Parkett 39 (1994), p.78. 51 Ibid., p.80. 52 Cited by McEvilly, “Medicine Man,” p.106. 53 Ibid. 54 Rei Naitou, Naitou Rei <Bokei> [Rei Naitou <Matrix>] (Tokyo: Sayu-sha, 2009), p.56. 55 Ibid., p.46. 56 Cited by Farrow, “WOLFGANG LAIB,” p.78. 57 Cited by Lippard, “Traveling Light,” p. 70. 58 Martin, Writing/Schriften, p. 62.

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59 Leo Steinberg, “Other Criteria,” Artforum (March 1972), anthologized in Steinberg, Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp.55-91. 60 See Richard Shusterman, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chapt.1, “Somaesthetics and Care of the Self: The Case of Foucault, ” in which Shusterman draws our attention to Michel Foucault’s later work, considering him as an “exemplary but problematic pioneer in a field I call somaesthetics, a discipline that puts the body’s experience and artful refashioning back into the heart of philosophy as an art of living,” p.15. 61 Rosenthal, BLACK PAINTINGS, p.42. 62 McEvilley, “Medicine Man,” pp.104-105. 63 Yvonne Rainer, “Statement,” The Mind is a Muscle program, Anderson Theater, New York, 1968. 64 Banes, Greenwich Village, p.235.