Plate art, if it can be called that, can be impressive and profound. There is no better example to prove that point than two exhibitions almost 30 years apart by Los Angeles conceptual artist, John Knight. Since the early 1970s Knight has dedicated his practice to mapping the intersections of art, design and institutional power through a series of spatial interventions and graphic maneuvers. Following closely on the architectural implications of minimalism, Knight belongs to a generation of artists that has consistently addressed the ideological valences of constructed space.
The first exhibition Museotypes took place in 1983 at the The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago and was comprised of 60 bone-china, gold-trim, 10 1/2 inch, eggshell-colored dinner plates, presented like a limited-edition commemorative series. Each contained regal purple-blue images of the extant architectural footprint of a different art museum. Knight did not represent the particular museums by their most familiar image, such as their actual facades, as they might be represented on actual commemorative plates. Instead, the abstract configuration of the floor plan served as a ready-made code or symbol. In Museotypes Knight fused various visual traditions, art and non-art, in order to question contemporary art practice.
The second exhibition Autotypes, took place in 2011 at the Greene Naftali gallery in New York, the artist’s first solo show in that city. Again, Knight used plates but revisited the the museum in an age of cultural expansion that he unlikely could have predicted three decades ago. In the last several years it has become necessary for museums to expand, not simply to house their ever-growing collections, but also to stake their claim in a global tourist trade characterized by spectacle and speculation alike. In his set of commemorative plates, Knight offered a variety of graphics depicting a varied collection of extensions and new building wings. Omitting the footprints of the original historic buildings, Knight depicted these expansion projects both lost in space and lacking a center, a collection of eccentric shapes deflated of spectacular power. Drawing a radical equivalence between all these buildings, Knight showed them to be less-exceptional feats of mastery than the result of a standard, repetitive demand. Together, the plates functioned as a strange collection of formal glyphs, a lexicon of the morphology of our time that binds together graphic and product design with the autonomous practice of architecture.
For the installation of this project Knight used Greene Naftali’s main gallery to house a sign advertising the exhibition. The sign bears the neologism Autotypes, a suggestive coinage that hints at a productive model informed by an unreflexive desire to create and expand. The installation of the plates themselves had been tucked away in two smaller rooms in back. Only a single vitrine containing a stack of plates emblazoned with footprints of the Guggenheim Museum’s ceaseless expansion is displayed in front. Somewhat precarious, the stack carried a faint echo of the Tower of Pisa as well as the original Guggenheim uptown. Removed from the wall and returned to their use value, these plates appeared to be frozen on the brink of yet another celebration.
The work was acquired by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and was exhibited last year. Anne Lakeman, a writer for DesignBlog, a research project of the Rietveld Academy, sees the work as Knight’s critique of the desire to expand and to create:
“Walking through the high white corridors in the Stedelijk Museum, you notice the colorful museum posters on the left wall. On the opposite wall, there are four rows of five plates. Because of the white background, they do not pop out, but blend into the surrounding. With the by-mass-production created set of porcelain plates he creates an opening for a critical discussion of the changing role of the museum as a marketing tool for city branding within the ever-expanding spectacle of mass tourism. Because the plans of the original, historic structure are omitted, the blueprints of the additions are isolated, showing the uniformity of museum architecture.”
Her commentary was interesting but even more so was the action that she took. She decided to trace the history of the Stedelijk Museum since its beginning in 1895 when A.W. Weissman designed its Neo-Renaissance home to its present day with the 2012 Benthem Crouwel extension, perhaps the ugliest new museum building in recent times, derisively nicknamed the Bathtub. She wrote, “when this huge white thing was added to the Museum square, near to where I went to school for six years, I had to process this.”
She expanded on John Knight’s work with three more plates. On one of the plates she drew the old floor plan of the Stedelijk museum. On another she drew the floor plan of the museum’s extension from 2012 and on one plate she did her own take on the Bathtub. “Apparently in this research, I started with trying to be a participant in an interesting discussion on museums and their expansions and ended up in ceramic therapy.”
No comment yet from John Knight.
Garth Clark is the Chief Editor of CFile.
Above image: Installation View of John Knight’s Museotypes exhibition at the The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago. October 2 – November 9, 1983.
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Plates from John Knight’s Museotypes exhibition at The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, 1983. Each graphic element is the footprint of a major art museum.
Installation view from John Knight’s Autotypes exhibition at Greene Naftali Gallery in 2011.
Installation view of John Knight’s Autotypes at the Stedelijk Museum, 2013.
Anne Lakeman, a writer for DesignBlog, a project of the Rietveld Academy, as part of her critique made her own Autotypes, three plates that trace the growth of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Visit the Greene Naftali Gallery
Visit John Knight’s page at the gallery
Read the full review by Anne Lakeman
Plate art…. ????? – Is it only art when you place a design on a very ordinary industrial plate and then justify it with the usual turgid artspeak so beloved by contemporary artists, critics and curators. Oh – then of course you must display it in an interesting linear arrangement that removes any reference to the functional potency of the form .