Reflection, Atmosphere and
the Crisis of Art Appreciation
in the Social Media Era

Christian Boltanski: Storage Memory
Power Station of Art, Shanghai
25.04.18 – 08.07.18

Translated by Duncan Hewitt

Christian Boltanski’s Shanghai solo show, Storage Memory, is distinguished by its ‘reflective nature and atmosphere’. These distinctive characteristics reveal – from the three perspectives of the artist, art history and the audience – the problems facing contemporary art: the crisis of art appreciation in the social ( media ) era, and three types of contradiction.

At first glance, Boltanski’s works and the way the exhibition is staged seem to present a frightening experience. Although the types of material he employs to make his works are varied – for example, the dead people’s clothes piled up in a mound, the black and white photographs of babies or the old biscuit tins in the form of an altar – they all use similar motifs, and create a gloomy, dark, even terrifying mood in the venue.

The motifs of the artist’s work relate to death and fate, and in particular to the traumas humanity has suffered as a result of historical and political disasters. The tons of dead people’s clothes piled up into a mound are a metaphor for the victims of Nazi concentration camps, while the crane, which symbolises fate, grabs the clothes then drops them again, as if the Jews, who see themselves as God’s chosen people, are being tossed into hell by Hitler and the hand of history. On a conveyor belt on a large scaffolding frame, the black and white photos of babies circulate constantly, suggesting that the fate of these infants – who are born equal, whose appearance is not yet distinct, and whose eyes are heavy with sleep – is entirely decided by unknown quantities and chance, which are as indifferent as a machine.

Photographs of victims of the Second World War, displayed in the style of a Christian triptych, are placed on an altar made by stacking up old biscuit tins and other similar everyday items; the faces of the people in the photos have been blurred by the artist, so it’s very hard to distinguish their specific individual features. This is precisely because, in a massacre, death is everyone’s death – this is a denunciation of the fact that, in a massacre, death is universal and inevitable, a denunciation of its indiscriminate nature.

Behind Boltanski’s Storage Memory and the terrifying experience it brings us, from his early works to his most recent – whether photographic, installation or video works, and regardless of their size, from tiny little metal figurines to a tall crane – all are characterised by sombre and mournful reflection. On the one hand there is contemplation of his childhood experiences, but it also reflects the mood of post-war Europe. More than this, however, it reflects the contradictions of modern art.

When the modernist painter Édouard Manet reproduced postures, structure and certain details from Titian in his work, he established his own art on the logic of art and painting itself, and displayed the modernist’s characteristic sense of individuality and love of knowledge – particularly by basing his art on archive material. Like the modernists, Boltanski, through his appropriation of the triptych, the altar and the everyday biscuit box, and by adopting the construction of atmosphere associated with minimalist sculpture, can also be said to have based his artistic form on art history and tradition.

At the same time, the themes of Boltanski’s work, and even the vast quantities of materials he uses in his creative process, include elements that go beyond artistic aesthetics and the ‘art for art’s sake’ formula that was the goal of the modernists – and indeed may even contradict them. Rather than focusing purely on aesthetic pleasure and visual aspects, there are reflections on historical disasters, political issues and destiny. In Boltanski’s works, these form an underlying, basic foundation of meaning.

In fact, this ‘contradiction’ also suggests the contradiction between the artist’s use of emotions and experiences in his creative approach, and his desire to use serious rationality to reflect on his work. The construction of atmosphere ( or to put it another way, ‘theatricality’ ) is actually a classic expression of this contradiction.

By means of creating an atmosphere ( theatricality ), the artist brings the audience a sense of terror and depression, thus highlighting social ( non-artistic ) issues such as historical and political disasters, as the subject of rational reflection. This type of approach has attracted criticism, but ‘criticism of theatricality’ in itself also reveals a certain ‘contradiction of criticism’. The lighting in the gallery for Storage Memory is dim, and the huge photographs of people and old clothes float in mid-air like ghosts, sending a chill of fear down the spines of visitors.

Such theatricality – as associated with minimalist sculpture – was criticised by Michael Fried in the 1960s.¹ The critique of theatricality holds that the audience’s presence at the exhibition is like that of the audience in a theatre – they gain a sense of experience through their interaction with their surroundings, rather than purely from focusing on the visual aspect; it argues that this type of theatrical atmosphere is not purely art – it is a means of highlighting the artistic aspects, of encouraging people to appreciate art.

For Boltanski, however, creating a depressing atmosphere and environment is designed precisely to enable more people – in particular, ordinary members of the public – to discover the rational reflection behind the emotional experience. Yet paradoxically, it’s precisely because of the exhibition’s powerful atmosphere that the works – from the giant mound of clothes and the giant drapes showing human figures and human eyes, to the neon light tube installation with the messages ‘start’ and ‘stop’ – have all become ‘famous tourist sights’ for the audience to take photographs and selfies in front of. This contradiction may seem highly ironic: an artist reflects painfully on the tragedies of humanity, racking his brains in an attempt to create a work which, thanks to its emotional approach, will awaken the audience’s profound reflection – yet in the end it becomes a place to check in on social media, take group photos and upload social media posts. To put it rather more simply, the artist originally hoped, by creating a sense of depression, darkness and fear, to awaken the audience’s reflections on, or memories of, history, politics and destiny – but it has become more of a backdrop for checking in, taking group photos, and editing and showing off pictures. Thus the ‘memory’ of travel and social media has obscured the memory of history and disasters.

In this case, ‘the critique of theatricality’ is not without reason. However, criticism of ‘theatricality’ faces another problem: on the one hand, artworks or exhibitions that do not seek to create an atmosphere but prefer to emphasise focus – such as exhibitions of modernist masters – cannot, in the social media era, actually avoid the fate of becoming locations for ‘checking in’. On the other hand, if you don’t create an atmosphere, you are effectively voluntarily giving up on making use of emotions – perception and feelings – which are the brain’s faster, more direct operating system to attract people’s attention, and thus promote the rational and reflective cognitive system. Cognitive science has shown that emotions or feelings are one of the dual-process models of cognition.²

Thus, from the perspective of art history and art criticism, the second kind of contradiction – epitomised by Storage Memory and the creation of atmosphere – is the contradiction of the critique of theatricality, and the creation of atmosphere itself. It is not theatricality that has damaged artistry – at the most, it has accelerated its erosion. Yet at the same time theatricality is also an effective means of attracting attention.

Boltanski uses emotional experience and the construction of an atmosphere to communicate his rational reflection on themes such as history, politics and destiny. Yet the critique of theatricality criticises the creation of atmosphere; this demonstrates the contradictions within this critique itself, but also, and more importantly, suggests that this critique may have neglected a bigger contradiction and crisis, one which is more fundamental – the crisis of art appreciation in the social media era. Artists use emotional and experiential methods to display rational reflection ( which conforms to cognitive and biological mechanisms ) in order to attract the audience’s attention; yet the audience’s attention has been affected by the mechanism of online social media, thus undermining the emotional expression of serious reflection ( theatricality ).

This means that no form of art is powerful enough to resist being eroded by the visual mechanism of social media. If we can say that, in the critique of theatricality, critics ( mistakenly ) see focus and artistic autonomy as the victims of atmosphere, then we can see from Boltanski’s Storage Memory that ‘theatricality’, or atmosphere ( and the historical reflection that lies behind them ), are themselves the greater ‘victims’ of this era and its visual mechanism.

Consequently, one of the important tasks for artists and critics, rather than pointing the finger at specific aspects of artistic creation – such as whether there should be any atmosphere, or how much atmosphere – is to focus on a question that is more deserving of reflection: While seeking, as far as is possible, to attract the greatest number of viewers to engage in reflection – by means of feeling and appreciating the artworks and exhibition – can we also, to the greatest extent possible, resist the erosion of art’s unique character by the visual mechanism of this era? In other words, at a time when various visual mechanisms, such as that of the social media era, have eroded the audience from every angle, how can we preserve, to the greatest extent, aesthetic judgement and emotional response in the appreciation of art, without losing rational and critical function? If we don’t do this, the various contradictions revealed by Storage Memory will result not only in a crisis of art appreciation, but also in a fatal crisis for art itself.

1. Michael Fried, ‘Art and Objecthood’ ( 1967 ), in Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998, pp. 148 – 72.

2. See Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2011; Jonathan St. B. T. Evans and Keith E. Stanovich, ‘Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing the Debate’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 8, no. 3 ( 2013 ), pp. 223 – 41.