Maximalism as a Cosmopolitan strategy in the art of Ruth Novaczek and Doug Fishbone

Abstract

This article looks at the work of the experimental filmmaker Ruth Novaczek and the artist Doug Fishbone to think through the relationship between the cosmopolitan imagination, Jewishness and the visual arts. The author suggests through her analysis of their artwork that both artists proffer a cosmopolitan subject that arises out of their Jewish subjectivity. The author does this in different ways, discussing the artworks both in their various forms as well as the subject matter within the films. The author thinks through two recent publications on the cosmopolitan and art by Marsha Merskimmon and Nikos Papastergiadis to discuss what is at stake in the cosmopolitan in relation to the two artist case studies. Central to her argument is a maximalist tendency that goes against the usual current paradigmatic trend of the ‘long look’ that was first articulated by the influential André Bazin as more real than the dialectical editing techniques argued (and performed) by Sergei Eisenstein. But neither is she arguing for a return to Eisenstein. Maximalism, as offered by the work of these artists, signifies an excessive overloading that allows the viewer to insert themselves into the narrative of the work through the editing, the collage and in the density of the range of the material. Finally, the author brings the formal discussion into dialogue with the explicit meaning developed by the artwork. Each of these artists proffer an unstable subject that is profoundly formed out of their Jewish and Diasporic subjectivity. This arises not just out of the formal structural scaffolding of the work but in terms of the subject matter within the work. They both explicitly use Jewish cultural references as normative navigational tools in the work and as a way of forming their cultural worlds. These references range from dialogues of Jewish characters in cinema, to Jewish jokes and use of Yiddish or Hebrew. Importantly Jewish religion or ritual is absent. For both of these artists the Holocaust is a backdrop but not as way to valorise a victim status, but as a way to reach out to a wider humanity and to understand its legacies. This is done through multi-positionality and the questioning of what a ‘home’ might be outside of an attachment to a nation-state or a singular geographic location and embracing that estrangement. In sum, the author argues that the work offers a reiterative provisionality as a refusal to judge or to know the world; instead there is an attempt to incorporate its complexities and range into the vision of the work, challenging the viewer to identify what is at stake in the work and in the subject.

Keywords:

• Maximalism
• lens-based art
• experimental film
• Jewish identity
• cosmopolitanism

Notes

1. October is a journal of Art History, Theory and Criticism.

2. Krauss, “Video: The Structure of Narcissism,” 50–64.

3. Garfield, “Towards a Re-articulation,” 99–108.

4. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory and Debord, The Society of the Spectacle are two key texts that inform the idea of art as critique that has been the prevalent force for many decades in art. In addition, many Modern forms of art, such as Dada, have established a critical manifesto in the earlier parts of the twentieth century. Finally, the idea of an avant-garde in art, which is much discussed and commonplace in relation to modernism, particularly assumes a critique on previous art.

5. Buchloh, “The Politics of the Signifier,” 7. See also Garfield, “Towards a Re-Articulation of Cultural Identity,” 99–108.

6. Such as From Generation to Generation, http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/generation, or Golem, http://www.jmberlin.de/main/EN/01-Exhibitions/02-Special-Exhibitions/2016/golem.phpNormal Kleeblatt, curator at the New York Jewish Museum is a notable exception, with a number of groundbreaking and critical exhibitions about contemporary Jewish and Other identities, such as Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities (1996).

7. Judy Chicago, a prominent pioneering feminist artist, has this on her website explaining her “Jewish themes:” “As a result of the investigation of their Jewish heritage that Chicago and Woodman undertook during the Holocaust Project, Chicago became interested in Jewish themes. Since then, she has created a number of works, including a series of prints based on a recent translation of the Song of Songs along with a number of Judaic ritual objects. These include designs for tallit bags; a unique matzoh cover celebrating the women associated with Passover; and a personal Haggadah for use by the Seder group that she and Woodman have participated in for over twenty years.” http://www.judychicago.com/gallery/jewish-themes/jt-artwork/

8. Bohm-Duchen and Grodzinski, Rubies and Rebels.

9. Garfield, “Playing With History,” 320–39.

10. Baskind, Jewish Artists and the Bible. I would consider the particularism of the Bible, as in Baskind’s book, as part of the dilemma of mining one’s particularity for celebratory purposes. The issue of the absence of Bible stories in Western art is to do with the importance of Greek mythology as the ideal of Western civilisation in opposition to the Hebraic, as outlined by Arnold, Culture and Anarchy.

11. Levy and Sznaider, “Memories of Europe,” 160.

12. Merskimmon, The Cosmopolitan Imagination, 7–8.

13. Ibid., 64.

14. Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 80.

15. Cheyette and Marcus, Modernity, Culture and “The Jew.” Cheyette and Marcus use the same argument with regard to “the Jew” as the paradigmatic other in modernity. “The Jew” as paradigm elides real Jews.

16. Papastergiadis, Cosmopolitanism and Culture, 9.

17. Fishbone later worked with a Nollywood director as an actor in a bone fide Nollywood film entitled Elmina (2010) but launched the film at Tate Britain (as well as the director launching the film in the usual Nollywood cinema distribution).

18. Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 187–94.

19. Harbord, Rethinking Film Studies, 72.

20. Mercer, Cosmopolitan Modernisms, 125.

21. Ibid., 126.

22. Papastergiadis, Cosmopolitanism and Culture, 91.

23. Ibid., 92.

24. This distinction is complicated, as Novaczek did her practice degree at Central St Martins.

25. Papastergiadis, Cosmopolitanism and Culture, 89.

26. Beck and Sznaider, “Unpacking Cosmopolitanism,” 383.