Tamara Trodd - "Lack of Fit: Tacita Dean, Modernism and the Sculptural Film

Trodd, Tamara. "Lack of Fit: Tacita Dean, Modernism and the Sculptural Film." Art History 31 3 (2008): 368-86.

Tamara Trodd's 2008 journal article offers an interesting position on where the artist Tacita Dean's 1996 film Disappearance at Sea fits within the Modernist model of "sculptural film". Thus far the medium of film has a relatively short life compared to other mediums within Fine Art's history. It is therefore understandable that it may still find itself "obliged to follow an imperative to be anti-narrative" as follows the idea that film within a gallery setting should act as a sculptural model rather that the more typically cinematic one of narrative.

Reflecting on exchanges within Wednesday's reading group and a subsequent chat with Sean I cannot help but wonder how Tacita Dean would feel were she to read this or other articles that attempt to decipher her work. Sean and I agreed on mutual frustrations at our practices being lumped into various categories that must abide by specific guidelines or which alternately are expected to present a clear conceptual or critical reading. I imagine that Dean might not feel such frustration given Trodd attempts to understand her work as opposed to labeling it. Whereas some art critics might manipulate words to show Dean's work as fitting starkly within a modernist sculptural element, Trodd describes Dean's film as functioning on a level that is not merely sculptural but also "literary, narrative and theatrical".

While good art criticism explores art as opposed to labeling it, I fear it may be impossible for an artist to escape frustrations of being misunderstood or of their work being shrouded in theoretical "art wank". For example, Dean clearly chose the location and surroundings of her film in response to tragic events that had occurred there and therefore her work carries indisputable themes of narrative. However, Trodd has still  attempted to understand Dean's film in terms of offering "exemplary musing upon the failures of modernist technological and political utopias..". Scary stuff! Whilst there is every chance that Trodd has hit the nail on the head here I'd say there is equal chance that Dean's thinking in approach to Disappearance had nothing to do with these concepts. I recall my studio supervisor, James Cousins reflecting last year upon the one occasion where a critic had actually written something valid about his work. James may have been referring to Ruth Watson's essay of his 2009 exhibition Signal in which she describes James as being one of many contemporary "artists who investigate concepts of what painting can be" (Watson, 2009). The beauty of Watson's comment is its simplicity.

It may be that academic literary pretensions are just an inevitable part of art criticism despite the ability of a scattered few being able to articulate the occasional clear and simple point. I dare speculate that much of this comes from the critic's fear that unless they surround the work in fancy prose the outside world will simply not take it seriously. Interestingly, this fear could be said to come from the same place as those rigid demands of what can pass for film within the gallery setting.

Given Dean's nomination for the prestigious Turner Prize it would seem unnecessary for artists to fret and seethe over lofty or pretentious guidelines such as the anti-narative one prescribed to the medium of film. After all, the boundaries of Fine Art have been torn wide open ever since the rise of conceptual art in the sixties. Given the seemingly limitless possibilities that the "concept" provides artists with, how can one honestly place sculptural restrictions on the medium of film within a gallery space. Farce, I tell you!


References:

Gow Langsford Gallery., Watson, R. (2009). Fast paint and interference: James Cousins' Signal  and the deterritorialisation of the image. James Cousins: Signal. Auckland: Gow Langsford Gallery.