krauss response

Alex Mandel
1/17/10
Krauss Response

       Overall I found this article very difficult to follow because of its
complex structure and use of artistic vocabulary.  However one section
of the article  that had an impact on my was when Krauss was talking
about Richard Serra’s video called Boomerang, featuring Nancy Holt. In
the video Nancy is hooked up with a pair of headphones that are
repeating exactly what she’s saying with a minor delay. She describes
a world in her head where she is surrounded by her words and thoughts
and literally by herself. In Krauss’s article she details, “the prison
Holt both describes and enacts, from which there is no escape, could
be called the prison of a collapsed present, that is, a present time
which completely severed from a sense of its own past” (53).  This was
fascinated because as describes, “the prison” makes one question what
is real and what is false or simply repeated or replicated for the
viewer(s). In that way it relates to daily television where one has to
wonder whether they are being reflected in the TV characters and their
lives or whether the characters are reflected within us.
       Another fascinating subject that Krauss touched on was Johns American
Flag. I loved the thinking about the notion of a painting versus
simply an object hanging on the wall. Due to the piece not having
margins, it looked more like a flag or object hanging on the wall
rather than a painting. This is interesting because it makes one
question whether its being featured as a painting diminishes the
symbolism of the flag. Is the flag still a flag and the symbol of the
United States if it is no longer a flag but a painting? These are
fascinating questions being evoked by Johns work.