Boris Groys

Courtesy New Museum

Boris Groys giving a talk for the New Museum’s "Night School" series, January 31, 2008

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Yes, historically, design precedes art.

And then art arises to criticize or undo design?

Art is first of all a part of design — it is a part of the design of the new life, the new society, the new aesthetic dream. But art is also capable of demonstrating the ambiguity of design. If we seek to build a new society, a new religion, even a new product, then we have a new vision. We have a perspective and a future. But in the moment, the future gets lost; what remains is art. If you look at Malevich or Russian constructivism or Bauhaus, their paintings and objects are all parts of wonderful projects of a better world; but at the same time they are only combinations of quadrangles and triangles. And that means that the project already failed, before being realized. Art is about success and failure at the same time. Design needs to be successful. But art — that is, 20th-century art, modern art — accepts failure. The main topic of modern art, and postmodern and contemporary art, is failure. It’s the impossibility of doing art, in fact, and art constantly demonstrates this impossibility, this failure of its own project. Art is the other side of design, the other side of utopia.

How does conspiracy theory fit in?

The fact that something is designed already produces in the spectator some suspicion that the thing itself is bad, because if the thing were good enough it would not need this supplement of design. If something is mediated, there is a suspicion that there is some manipulation behind it, some interest or strategy, and maybe even some danger. So people begin to dismantle the designed surface, looking for cracks in it.

This is also a strategy of modern art. Modern art is about cracking the surface of things. It begins with cubism and constructivism – indeed, the whole practice of art in the 20th century shows things being undone. Why is that? People don’t do this because they are angry or aggressive. It’s because this design surface provokes mistrust and suspicion.

If design gives rise to conspiracy theory, which gives rise to art, what gave rise to design in the first place?

Design emerged from a certain kind of religious understanding of nature. If you assume that nature is something like design made by God, you can take the position of God and start to make your own design.

And then to extend the analogy, what does art give rise to?

To philosophy, metaphysics, maybe even a kind of negative religion. To trying to look through the things to find something like a hidden core.

You’ve also argued that art is the most democratic of institutions. How so?

You can ask why this kind of radical 20th-century modern art is not very popular. I think it is because it represents interests that are imaginary, or virtual. Politics is about the representation of interest groups — different segments of a population, different communities, different identities. But what identity is represented by Malevich’s Black Square or by Duchamp? No identity at all. Malevich even said that he didn’t like his own work. What he represents is a possibility, an imaginary interest, a fictional desire. He opened the space of democracy beyond the existing borders of representation, beyond the borders of a nation or state, and this opening was an opening for the future. This vision beyond the horizon of contemporaneity is, I think, something that makes art unique.

And how exactly is that democratic?  

Because it opens the way to something beyond any ordinary represented interest. It offers a chance for somebody to take a step beyond the existing system of representation and to say: “I am not represented by all of that, I am represented by Duchamp.” It gives a chance to go beyond any existing system of representation, including the dominating system of democratic representation.

Can art itself become a kind of design? Do you have a problem with, say, slickly produced artworks?

Yes and no. Everything depends on context, of course. If you do some design within the context of the art system, as Warhol did or Jeff Koons does, then it is ironic from the beginning. So it is, in its conception, failed or unsuccessful design. It’s not a real design project, so I don’t see any problem there.