Reconsidering Relational Aesthetics: Temporality, Exchange and Commodity Aesthetics in Recent French Art

First published in 1998, Relational Aesthetics is an extended essay by the French curator Nicolas Bourriaud. Relational Aesthetics considers how art of 1990s had the potential to facilitate relationships. In France, the text and exhibitions of ‘relational art’ were largely ignored. However, following its publication and translation into English, in 2002, Relational Aesthetics suddenly became the centre of contemporary art, with the terms ‘relational’ art and ‘relational aesthetics’ being banded around exhibitions, biennales and art writing across the globe. With this attention came criticism, predominantly from Anglophone scholars who focused on the theoretical misgivings of Relational Aesthetics. Rather than using the theoretical issues of Relational Aesthetics as its point of departure, this thesis focuses on ‘relational art’ and ‘relational aesthetics’ as a socio-historical product. Paying particular attention to these critiques and the conditions in which ‘relational’ art materialised, this thesis begins by contextualising Relational Aesthetics. This thesis then questions the concept of the ‘relational’ through a close reading of a ‘non-relational’ artwork, Jean-Luc Moulène’s Documents: 24, and 39 Objets de grève to assess the limitations of Relational Aesthetics’ focus on a narrow set of artistic practices. Returning to the Anglophone critiques, this project considers the notion of exchange in ‘relational’ art, again, paying attention to examples of ‘non-relational’ art by Matthieu Laurette to demonstrate the consideration of exchange in interhuman relationships facilitated in artworks of the 1990s. This project concludes by reconsidering Relational Aesthetics as a series of artworks and ideas that are responses to, and have shared interests, in challenging temporality through examining Pierre Huyghe’s L’Association des Temps Libérés. Using the term contretemps, this thesis proposes that ‘relational’ art and ‘relational aesthetics’ can be understood as spaces for encounter that disrupt the temporalities of the everyday. Thus, this project offers a reconsideration of Relational Aesthetics and ‘relational’ art practices as inherently linked to the context in which they were created, as an undoubtedly ‘French’ phenomenon of the 1990s.