The Assignment: Look at Allan McCollum’s work Plaster Surrogates shown at the beginning of this chapter and explain its relationship to Modernist art and theory.

Collection of Forty Plaster Surrogates, Allan McCollum, 1982-1984, enamel paint; image via MoMA the Museum of Modern Art.

Trevor Starke (1980) said about the Surrogates: ‘…the way in which the Surrogates reframe the experience of viewing art raises numerous questions: How to engage with ‘paintings’ from which all the content has been emptied and in which formal variation has been reduced to minimal difference? How to distinguish between the authentic and the preformed, between the genuine and the artificial? And, if these objects are surrogates, then what are they surrogates for?‘. I agree with those questions and looked up the answers, reflecting on the Surrogates. The best way to understand the idea is to listen and read what the author says about his artwork. I found two interviews of Allan McCollum as very comprehensive ( see bibliography).

As McCollum explains, ‘..The Surrogates, via their reduced attributes and their relentless sameness, started working to render the gallery into a quasi-theatrical space which seemed to ‘stand for’ a gallery …. and the views became performers and so forth… I theatricalized the whole situation. 

In his interview on YouTube (Art21, Extended play) he said:’ you play a social game… I must understand what the gallery is, what the show room is. A simple decision of the painting is winded up with how is my painting is in the world, in the universe, where I fit. … I was very influenced by the Fluxus art, where the goal was to take away a mystery of being an artist, to devalue the mystique“. 

McCollum also said that he was ‘annoyed’ by the fact that owning and Art is a privilege of rich people, he insisted that the Art should be affordable and available to anyone, because of this he produced a large quantity of the Surrogates and never destroyed his moulds so anyone could do more of such new items. 

In his interview to D.A.Robbins (1984), Allan McCollum mentioned: “..In the way I reduce all the paintings to a single ‘kind’, to a universal sign-for-a-painting; the gesture can be read as an ironic mimicry of modernist reduction, for instance, or as some kind of reference to the relations between the modern Art and modern industrial production- people can make these associations“.

After reading and watching his interviews and some other art critics’ opinions about the Surrogates, taking into account what I have learned about Modernism while doing this whole Assignment 2, I find the following relations between the Surrogates and the Modernist Art and theory:

1. The Surrogates relate to Modernist Art because it is non -objective. As the author explained, he removed the content. He shifted the viewer’s focus from the content ( there is no object in the frame), reducing it to its most possible extent to the interconnected relationship between the viewer, his artwork, the gallery, the space around them, and the viewers. 
2. So, the Surrogates fully comply with Greenberg’s theory that Art should be viewed beyond its representational value. It should free from any social, religious, political and etc., agenda. In this sense, the Surrogates is the ideal art object because it is free from the objects, nothing is represented and they push the viewer to go beyond the artwork as itself and consider it within a complex surrounding structure; If there is no object in the painting, then nothing ‘hides’ the Art. This is what Allan McCollum said in his interview (D.A.Robbins, 1984): “What is it we want from art that our belief in ‘content’ works to hide from us”. Thus he thinks that the ‘content belief’ distracts the viewer’s attention from the core value of the Art. He also advocates for: ” We shouldn’t forget the moral purity of “pure form”, either, the ideal space of the ‘non-representational’. This statement is just in line with what Greenberg wanted us to do while viewing Art. 
3. “Handmade but standardized, Collection of Forty Plaster Surrogates integrates art and mass production, challenging conventional distinctions between these types of labour’; (Moma). As we covered earlier, one of the modern Art features is the usage of modern, industrially manufactured materials. 
4. Another relationship of the Surrogates unfolds through their ultimate flat monochrome look, their flatness, ‘utter flatness’, which is also a powerful feature of Greenberg’s theory of Modern Art. In this sense Allan McCollum continues to explore the flatness as Kasimir Malevich previously did it with his ‘Black Square’ – which was the first monochrome painting, by Aleksandr Rodchenko with his ‘Pure Red Colour’, ‘Pure Yellow Colour’, ‘Pure Blue Colour’, Robert Rauschenberg “White Painting’, “Elemental Paintings’. As it is very well explained in Robert Leverton essay (2015): ” … there is no doubt that the monochrome is the logical successor to the Suprematist and Formalist paintings … as the journey towards flatness that occurs (Rodchenko, Rauschenberg and Klein) reaches its peak in the monochrome as the purest moment in painting… If the ultimate expression of Modernism is a purely optical experience, how can such an experience be arbitrary?’.

We also had to ‘give a due consideration of the title and the medium and the way the individual elements are formed’. I think the best platform for reflecting on the title is the author’s comment (D.A.Robinson, 1984): “Yes, the artwork is a kind of fetish-a kind of substitute of the real power, or maybe I mean a kind of sign representing imaginary power… I’ve tried to design these surrogates to invite a fetishistic attachment, the kind of attachment one might develop to towards a literal sign…I make my work smooth and shiny, with any coats of enamel, to humanize them. Their corners are slightly rounded; they are small, they are nice and solid. One can carry them around; one can put them in a purse, one can wash them.’ It is an interesting phrase to me. I didn’t understand at the beginning why he said that to ‘humanize’ the object, he made it small, nice, shiny and smooth. Probably, we should understand the word ‘humanize’ to make it likeable by humans? He explains his usage of plastic as the main medium as a very artificial material. That was a nuance he needed to outline the theatricality/ artificiality of his installations with the Surrogates. Arranging his more than 2000 surrogates differently in different galleries, he discovered that they became a kind of stage property – ‘stage props”, which let to have this theatricalized performance with viewers as participants. I think that the wording ‘surrogates’ should be understood as something that can be used over and over again. Because of its reduced content, value can be reused endless times, and each time it can represent something new. They can  replace the paintings where the particular content always reduces semantical limits, artworks ‘performance’ value and potential.

Added after receiving my Tutor’s feedback. My self reflection on this exercise.

Part of my Tutors’s comment is below .

“‘Surrogates’” relation to Modernism is clear on a formal level, so  far as each element is concerned. However they comprise a multitude of parts which  is not a Modernist characteristic. Remember that Greenberg was looking at the work  of artists who produced individual, self-contained paintings. I would not place Fluxus  artists within Modernism. The former often collaborated which is profoundly different. 

OCA Formative Feedback: Page: 1 

from figures such as Pollock and Rothko. Their work often encompassed numerous  elements – such as performance, sound etc., and even audience participation. In  addition, mass production does not sit well with modernist art. Maybe you need to be  clearer about Modernism and modern/modernist.”  

I accept my Tutor’s notes about Fluxus Art and about mass production and modernism. However I still think that the Surrogates explored the relationship between modern art and mass production, mass consumerism. I agree with her that the overall meaning of the Surrogates is multilayered. I find my comments about the flatness and non-objectivity of the Surrogates as valid, as well as her additions in her feedback.

Bibliography: 1) Allan McCollum, Collection of Plastic Surrogates, 1982 (cast and painted in 1984), author unknown, [online] on http://www.moma.org [accessed on April 5th, 2021]; 2) Allan McCollum, Trevor Starke, 1980 [online] on http://www.allanmccollum.net [accessed on April 5th, 2021];3) Allan McCollum: ‘Surrogate Paintings’ & ‘Plastic Surrogates’/ Youtube, Art21 ‘extended play’, [viewed on April 5th, 2021]; 4) An Interview with Allan McCollum, D.A.Robins, [online] on http://www.web.mit.edu [accessed on April 5th, 2021]; 5) To What Extent is the Monochrome the Logical Conclusion to Modernist Painting?, Robin Leverton, 2015, [ online] on http://www.robinlevertonart.com [accessed on April 6th, 2021];