Anthony McCall：Solid Light
Tate Modern
27 June 2024 – 27 April 2025
“I find that I am now asked a particular question that used not to come up: ‘Are you making sculpture or are you making films?’ The way that this question is phrased puzzled me for some time, for it seemed to me that my installations have to be viewed as both, to be fully appreciated. I have personally found it useful to group art into three sets of practices: the sculptural, the pictorial, and the cinematic.”–Anthony McCall
「我發現現在有人問我一個以前從未提出的問題：『你是在創作雕塑還是在拍電影？』這個問題的表述讓我困惑了一段時間，因為在我看來，要完全欣賞我的裝置作品，必須把它們同時看作雕塑和電影。我個人認為，將藝術分為三類實踐是有幫助的：雕塑的、繪畫的和電影的。」–安東尼·麥考爾
Portrait of Anthony McCall at Hepworth Wakefield. Courtesy of the artist, Sprüth Magers, and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles. Photo by Darren O’Brien/Guzelian.
Anthony McCall (1946) has lived in New York since 1973. The major aspect of his aesthetic development occurred in the loft spaces of this city, but more recently has become associated with refined gallery spaces, so the genesis of the work has shifted according to technology. He has also experienced long periods of withdrawal from the art world. His early work was founded on performance, and then sculpture linked to film as part of a series of restless shifts taking place due to a reconfiguration of the durational aspect of the experience of the object of attention. Part of this encounter was a resistance to over simplified naming related to doing. Everything was qualified with yet another ‘and’. In part this was due to a rejection of craft connotations related to art activity. What was being sort out was not only new forms of objects but also new modes of naming what they might be. In most instances this generated a mood for the least condition of both the thing in question and the structure that accompanied its designation. Minimalism went hand in hand with language games or semiotic structures.
Minimalism had introduced ways of thinking about the art object beyond the idea of something being-in-itself. Formalist critics viewed this as a repudiation of presence through the linking of the art object with temporal extension or what was deemed to be theatricality. This in turn undermined the possibility of aesthetic autonomy whereas for the anti-formalists this was the promise of an extended field of encounter based upon the principles of hybridity and performivity. The experiments of an earlier phase of Modernity served as a template for this paradigmatic shift that had introduced new technologies into the service of aesthetic radicalism. The appeal to the emerging wave of the minimalist was that industrial design techniques, new materials and processes, systems methods of organisation, phenomenological theories of perception, structuralism, and deconstruction. It was in this milieu largely focussed upon New York, Los Angeles, and London and with this the growth of new art spaces stripped of art connotations. This introduced both an experimental ethos and democratic aura. Anthony McCall developed his language as part of a generation that aspired to the possibilities of an expanded work of art. He would utilise principles that linked light forms, with moving image technology, installation like presentation, immersive modes of address, drawing and participation. There wasn’t a ready-made language for this mutation of mediums which his experiments had opened out, nor a clear commercial template which would provide commercial leverage. Although not esoteric in its rhetoric, it was still an art form for a limited public because the language was sparse, severe, and sophisticated. For makers such as McCall, the term ‘difficult artist’ was invariably applied. But then something endured and the accumulation of admirers led to exposure to a new generation who desired aesthetic density and with this the idea of an art that has endured the textures of periods and styles.
This exhibition at the Tate Modern is an installation of four light sculptures with additional drawings and film documents. The space itself might be viewed as a unified aesthetic experience which opens out to the movement of bodies in space. The motion between one work to another is marked by subtle transformations in the experience of light forms which amounts to a dialectical unfolding of the body within spatialised light forms. The feeling generated is that of slowness, and at times, an almost meditative stillness. It is difficult to imagine any greater degree of reduction, the drawing is refined, the technology precise, and the scale is considered. Even though the installation invites a playful participation, it sustains a majesty of reception, and as part of this, disavows any literary or decorative tonalities. There is a sense in the exhibition (which is linked to other major exhibitions), that its time has come. The drama of the work is that it stays true to its experiment, and never departs from the initial drawing form or schema. A form of art that is close to the pure expression of the idea, a feature that renders it close to a Platonic ideal or if not this then the possibility of a reflection upon Kant’s notion of schematism. This sustained purity of means is a rare attribute in a world committed to restless turnover of minds and styles.
Anthony McCall（生於1946年）自1973年以來一直居住在紐約。他的美學發展主要發生在這個城市的閣樓空間，但近年來，他的作品更多地與精緻的畫廊空間聯繫在一起，因此作品的生成方式隨著技術的變化而變化。他還曾長時間遠離藝術界。他的早期作品以表演為基礎，隨後通過將雕塑與電影結合，作為一系列不斷變化的一部分，這些變化發生的原因是對觀眾體驗客體中的時間性部分進行了重新配置和調整。他抵制對藝術實踐進行過於簡單的命名，認為這種命名方式不足以涵蓋作品的複雜性。為了避免這種簡單化的命名，他傾向於使用「和」來不斷補充和擴展對作品的描述。這種做法部分上是因為他拒絕將藝術活動僅僅視為一種單純的工藝，他認為藝術應包含更多維度和內涵。他不僅在追尋新形式的藝術對象，還在探索為這些對象命名的新方式。大多數情況下，這種探索營造了一種極簡的氛圍，以最簡潔和基本的方式描述對象及其命名結構。在這種氛圍中，極簡主義與語言遊戲或符號學結構交相輝映，共同塑造了他的創作。
極簡主義引入了一種超越藝術對象本身存在的思維方式。形式主義批評家認為，極簡主義通過將藝術對象與時間的延展或戲劇性聯繫起來，否定了藝術對象作為獨立存在的「在場感」或「存在感」。這種方式進而削弱了美學自主性的可能性，而對於反形式主義者來說，這預示著一個基於混合性和表演性的擴展交互領域的到來。現代性早期階段的實驗為這一範式轉變提供了模板，引入了服務於美學激進主義的新技術。極簡主義新興浪潮的吸引力在於它融合了工業設計技術、新材料和工藝、系統組織方法、現象學的感知理論、結構主義和解構主義。這種氛圍主要集中在紐約、洛杉磯和倫敦，同時催生了新的藝術空間，這些空間被剝離了傳統的藝術內涵，更加註重展示和體驗藝術的新方式。這種氛圍引入了一種實驗精神和民主氣氛。Anthony McCall作為一代藝術家中的一員，致力於擴展藝術作品的可能性。他將光的形式與動態影像技術、裝置式呈現、沈浸式表現、繪畫和參與結合起來，成為他的原則。對於他所開創的這種媒介變形，沒有現成的語言，也沒有清晰的商業模板可以提供商業槓桿。雖然其語言不算神秘，但由於語言簡潔、嚴肅且複雜，這種藝術形式面向的觀眾仍然有限，不是大眾都能輕易理解和欣賞的。像McCall這樣的藝術家經常被標籤為‘難懂的藝術家’。儘管如此，這種藝術形式依然得以堅持，並逐漸積累了一批崇拜者，使其得以被渴望美學密度的新一代人所接觸，並由此產生了一種經歷了不同時間和風格的持久的藝術觀念。
這次在泰特現代美術館的展覽是一個由四件光雕塑組成的裝置，此外還有一些繪畫和電影文獻。展覽空間本身可以被視為一個統一的美學體驗，呈現出身體在空間中移動的過程。觀眾在作品之間的移動過程中，光形式的體驗會發生微妙的轉變，這相當於身體在空間化的光形式中辯證展開。整個體驗帶來一種緩慢的感覺，有時甚至接近冥想般的靜謐。很難想象有更大程度的簡約，繪圖精緻，技術精確，規模考量周詳。儘管這個裝置邀請觀眾進行趣味性的參與，它依然保持了莊嚴，並因此避免了任何文學或裝飾性的基調。展覽中有一種感覺，與泰特其他大展一樣，即其時機已經成熟。作品的戲劇性在於它忠實於實驗性質，保持了最初的繪圖形式或設計方案，從未偏離最初的概念和結構。這是一種接近於純粹表達理念的藝術形式，這一特徵使其接近柏拉圖式的理想，或至少是對康德圖式概念的反思。在一個不斷翻新的思想和風格的世界中，這種手段的純粹性非常罕見，且尤為珍貴。
Text by Jonathan Miles
Translated and Edited by Michelle Yu
