'Websites Are The Art Of Our Times'

I've recently been looking at the web-art projects by Miltos Manetas, an artist who I discovered earlier this year when exploring the whitneybiennial.com project [blog #1]. I am interested in his work because I like how he often uses relatively simple design aesthetics (in Flash usually) to convey clever and complex ideas. Take for example the work A Portrait of Joseph Kosuth, 2006 (above) – the artwork’s title is first of all both misleading and ironic – in the place of the subject or sitter (Kosuth) there is instead text in parentheses stating – ‘This is not a Joseph Kosuth’. Something tricky is going on here – I can sense there are multiple layers to this work and it’s going to bug me if I don’t get to the bottom of them.

First of all, A Portrait of Joseph Kosuth clearly references the appearance of Kosuth's Art as Idea as Idea series (example right is Meaning , 1967), which were also characterised by white text upon a black background. So, I suppose Manetas’ work could be seen as a sort of symbolic portrait that pays homage to the art of Kosuth - it being in the style of Kosuth while not actually being a Kosuth, as the text suggests. But there are certainly other potent references in this work too. When I first saw it, a mixture of confused thoughts swelled in my head: Joseph Kosuth' - so it’s a conceptual work? But he's referencing Rene Magritte too right, so it is also somehow a surrealist work? - Can that even exist? I suppose it does now... Huh?

The link to Rene Magritte is through his work entitled Le Traison des Images or The Treachery of Images (1928-1929) more commonly referred to as 'Ceci n’est pas une pipe' or 'This is not a pipe.' (left) Magritte's works were often witty and amusing explorations of representations of objects to get us thinking about how we perceive works of art. At first the text stating ‘this is not a pipe’ in The Treachery of Images seems to be a contradiction, seeing as there is a pipe in the picture. The point is that the pipe is not a real pipe but merely a representation or image of a pipe. The text in Manetas’ work tells us that his work of art is not a Joseph Kosuth, even though it may appear to be because it relates in every way to Kosuth’s work.

So it’s evident that Kosuth and Magritte produced quite different works in terms of style, but both similarly sought to explore the existing boundaries and nature of art, and make us question what we are looking at. Manetas' work seeks to follow on with this tradition. In his essay Websites Are The Art of Our Times, he states that websites are 'today's most radical and important art objects.' He believes that the web is not just another type of "media" but mostly a "space", wherein a website should be thought of as having physical presence - as a "web entity". Each web entity is a work of art in itself - at least I think that's what he means. I find his writing quite confusing.

So like Magritte and Kosuth, Manetas is asking us to re-examine and question what we believe constitutes art – to explore our entrenched expectations of art, and viewing habits and to critically engage with art. They all advocate for a reassessment of existing art-boundaries. Manetas would describe this exploration as the 'Telic spirit', which he describes in his essay if you are interested. The Telic Spirit describes a new way of thinking, or a new way of seeing and conceptualising and making sense of new media languages, and art for that matter; looking through their primary functionality and into their potential for expressivity. In a way, I suppose you could see Manetas' A Portrait of Joseph Kosuth as a manifestation of the “Telic spirit”.

I think Manetas thinks both Magritte and Kosuth would be proud this work and his interest in exploring the web as a new and exciting space for art and art production, as if he is carrying on a legacy for art that they both were also interested in. I don't think I've really discussed all that I really wanted to about this work and its complex associations, but right now my mind has gone blank, so I'll have to leave it there.