Goff in der Wueste/Goff in the Desert (Photography and Beyond, Part 7)

摘要

Modern architecture, like the Greek ruins in a painting by Nicolas Poussin or Claude Lorrain, has challenged contemporary artists to hone their metaphors and ways of looking. Thomas Demand's Bauhaus steps or Christopher Williams's Arts Club stairway evoke the now receding "appropriationist" moment in art of the 1970s and 1980s when the practice of ringing variations on Old Masters was commonplace. Yet, the importation by conceptual artists of examples from one art form into another is peculiar, and that this has largely involved classic modern architecture is very peculiar indeed. Perhaps the most baffling resurgence of this tendency is the current rage to adopt the crispest of iconic modern monuments-those by Mies van der Rohe in particular-as subjects for studying their seemingly opposite qualities: imprecision, vague effect, shimmer, atmosphere, and afterimage.