Brian O’Doherty Pgs. 63-113

Eric Smith

When Brian O’Doherty claims that, “gestures are a form of invention,” he speaks to the idea of assigning value to an art (69).   Of course it is true that when someone or an audience values a particular act or gesture, the ideas within can cause considerable movement in the grand arena of art.  Transforming a gallery space while navigating around the existing art, as Marcel Duchamp managed in his 1942 installation Mile of String, seemed like a catalyst for movements in the world of gallery art and likely spawned the idea of art installation.  However, I begin to question whether the Duchamp’s work is an original gesture, as O’Doherty has stated that “they [gestures] can only be done once, unless everyone agrees to forget them” (69).  Is the building of a grand temple or pyramid not the ultimate art installation housing all the forces of Earth and God?  Inside an Egyptian pyramid, all the services of nature are allowed to create their own works of art.  Spider webbing in amazing forms, wind and water sculpting away at stone, bateria slowly decaying a dead leader…all lead to a long term art installation.  But this is called something else, I suppose, because art installation is so very temporary in modern times.  The impermanence of art and the perversion of art built by the meager faculties of the human memory are troubling to the purist.  But what of the exploration of thought that comes out of rediscovering the gestures that resurface for exploration?  I am constantly going back to previous work in hopes that I will discover the missing key to make that gesture more than a “young project” and more of a future entity with purpose and intrigue.  In so far as O’Doherty seems concerned, I would be willing to speculate on the future that the art gallery will become no more than a place where consumers go to buy valued objects.  The art that is young and invigorating happens elsewhere in space and time.  Nevertheless, somewhere the gestures of thought will manifest and multiple to eventual die or evolve, and perhaps we will call these spaces which harbor these manifested ideas something else but resemble everything that came before.