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Introduction
international biennials, triennials, and so on. These exhibitions should not
be mistaken for mere sites of self-presentation and glorification of the values
of the art market. Rather, they try time and again to both create and demonstrate
a balance of power between contradictory art trends, aesthetic attitudes,
and strategies of representation—to give an idealized, curated image
of this balance.
The struggle against the power of ideology traditionally took the form
of struggle against the power of the image. Anti-ideological, critical, enlightened
thought has always tried to get rid of images, to destroy or, at least, to
deconstruct them—with the goal of replacing images with invisible, purely
rational concepts. The announcement made by Hegel that art is a thing of
the past and that our epoch has become the epoch of the Concept was a
proclamation of victory of the iconoclastic Enlightenment over Christian
iconophilia. Of course, Hegel was right at the time to make this diagnosis,
but he overlooked the possibility of conceptual art. Modern art has demonstrated
time and again its power by appropriating the iconoclastic gestures
directed against it and by turning these gestures into new modes of art production.
The modern artwork positioned itself as a paradox-object also in this
deeper sense—as an image and as a critique of the image at the same time.
This has guaranteed art a chance of survival under the conditions of
radical secularization and de-ideologization—in a perspective that goes far
beyond that of being a mere commodity on the art market. Our allegedly
postideological age also has its own image: the prestigious international exhibition
as the image of the perfect balance of power. The desire to get rid of
any image can be realized only through a new image—the image of a critique
of the image. This fundamental figure—the artistic appropriation of iconoclasm
that produces the paradox-objects we call modern works of art—is the
subject, either directly or indirectly, of the essays that follow.
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