Victor Burgin on Dematerializing the Art Object: Capitalism, Critique, and Conceptual Space

A reflection on Victor Burgin’s art theory, semiotics, and the enduring value of rereading images in a capitalist art world.

Revisiting Victor Burgin and the Art of Rereading Images

Recently, I found myself reflecting on how formative Victor Burgin‘s lectures were during my Art History studies at UC Santa Cruz in the 1990s. Burgin—a conceptual artist and theorist trained in psychoanalytic thought—introduced our class to the world of semiotics, Lacanian psychoanalysis, linguistics, memory studies, and the intriguing concept of “teletopology.” He spoke in a calm, intellectual London accent—reminiscent of David Bowie’s—not just soothing, but layered with meaning.

For his course, I wrote a paper analyzing the work of Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto as portrayed through Wim Wenders‘ film Notebook on Cities and Clothes.. It was a creatively rich time in my early 20s: sitting in a dark, Italian-style café, drinking pint glasses of coffee, reading Baudrillard and Virilio. contemplating the layers of meaning in visual and cultural texts.

In the piece TateShots – Burgin states:

“I felt that there were already enough photographs in the world. There’s no point in making any more images – What we need to do is re-read the images we already have.”

This idea resonated deeply, especially in light of the Tacoma Art Museum’s curatorial practice—juxtaposing its Haub Family Collection of Western American Art with contemporary works and critiques. Their exhibitions exemplify Burgin’s call to reinterpret and recontextualize the visual archive.

On the Dematerialization of the Art Object

Burgin also addresses the conceptual, creative act as well as something that has for him evolved from photography, to the moving image, to 3D computer modeling – as each relates to an understanding of a psychological object or space.

In TANK Book Talks with Leslie Dick he brought up a particular provocative view about the parameters of the art object, particularly when we are wanting to challenge the confines and limitations of capitalism. He describes the ambition of 60’s conceptual art and Lucy Lippard and others’ goals to “dematerialize the art object” out of “flight from the commodity form.” Burgin critiques how contemporary art has increasingly become “a parking lot for money” for the elite—arguing that the market’s grip has “entirely wiped out contemporary art.” He raises questions about capitalism’s impact on meaning-making, and what remains of artistic autonomy under such conditions.

Conceptual Objects and Psychological Realities

He then goes on to describe the relative immaterialality of digital art objects, when considered through through an understanding of the ‘psychical object’ having as real a reality as any other form of reality. From psychological theory he describes how a fantasy can have as real of an impact on the body as a real event. He describes how there can be (art) objects without physical materiality. He then goes on to describe in scientific terms then how the associated network around a conceptual work becomes a characteristic of that work. “So you define an object in terms of all its dimensions, all its aspects.”

Burgin goes further in discussing epistomological studies about objects being the spatial intersection of multiple disciplines or perspectives. There’s object, complex object, and integrative object. This ‘contemporary’ object is temporal because the perspectives, contexts, projects brought to it in one period of time will all change during another period of time. Burgin feels this understanding is incredibly important to the process of art criticism.

On this Father’s Day, the first since my father has passed, I think about these things in lieu of our experiences discussing art, the art making process, and the art analysis process.

Art is never just about an isolated final result – the process of ideation, of researching and reacting to others approaches and takes, of note-taking and discussing, of experiencing a work within a particular dynamic moment in time….the process of building up of ideas and working off of earlier ideas….all these are just as important to understanding the ‘complex art object’ as the material final result. An absence of any particular materialized final result does not negate the network of creativity involved in building the conceptualization or approach. The lines between philosophic or psychoanalytic theory and artistic theory are thin….yet of only one the market requires a physical manifestation.

Charles Peterson’s Nirvana – Photography & Performance at Tacoma Art Museum

In collaboration with Seattle based Minor Matters Books and curated by Michelle Dunn Marsh comes a selection of gelatin silver and pigment prints by photographer Charles Peterson, on view at the Tacoma Art Museum until May 25, 2025.

Born in 1964 Peterson watched his uncle develop film in his grandparent’s basement, sparking an early fascination with photography. He went on to contribute photos to his high school yearbook and newspaper, and later study photography in college.

Peterson became the unofficial photographer for SubPop Records and was embedded in the Seattle music scene. His closeness to the scene is evident in many of the photographs, revealing an intimacy in his capture of emotion and expression. His work can be found in the following books: Screaming Life – 1996, Pearl Jam: Place Date – 1998; Touch me I’m sick – 2003; Charles Peterson’s Nirvana – 2024.

As you enter the exhibit there is a warning to not take photos or video. You’ll find inside an installation recreating Peterson’s photo lab to your left complete with inspiring rock and punk photos on the wall. Accompanying this experience is a mixed tape of Nirvana music, including many noisy experimental b-sides which can be heard broadcast across the exhibit.

A stage diver captured by Charles Peterson at a Nirvana show at the University of Washington in 1990. (Photo courtesy of Charles Peterson)

It’s worth reflecting on his work by way of previous punk photographers like the Bay Area’s Murray Bowles who photographed punk bands Operation Ivy, Green Day, Crimpshrine, Dead Kennedys and others at places like the all ages club the Gilman Street Project.

A show at the On Broadway, San Francisco, 1983. (Murray Bowles)

Like Peterson with the Seattle music scene, Murray Bowles was deeply embedded in the Bay Area punk scene for decades. He was a deep fan of many bands and knew many closely. His technique was one of a documentarian, holding his camera above a mosh pit, without looking through the view finder. There was element of chance, of capturing a chaotic moment. Bowles wasn’t just taking shots of bands, but the whole crowd. Peterson also wanted to photograph the audience, “I didn’t want to just get a head shot of the lead singer. I wanted to get the experience, make you actually feel like you’re there.”

These techniques are similar to that of street photographer Garry Winogrand who would walk down the street holding his camera ajar, taking random, uncomposed shots of humanity. He would take hundreds of photos at a time, and later identifying which ones he wanted.

*Los Angeles, California, 1969 © Garry Winogrand. Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco*

Winogrand was influenced by earlier photographers like Walker Evans who captured depression-era America, often called the father of documentary photography.

A Miner’s Home, vicinity Morgantown, West Virginia. 1935

Winogrand was also inspired by Robert Frank who captured post-war America with an intense, expressive, penetrative style.

“Trolley — New Orleans,” 1955.Credit…Robert Frank, via Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

In contrast, the Bay Area’s Murray Bowles chose not to dwell on deeper, darker moments of the punk scene, although he could well have. Bowles work was full of movement, anarchic but upbeat. Bowles was a computer programmer with a deep love of the Bay Area punk scene. While not being especially introspective, his work was embraced as exemplifying the ‘freedom and joy’ of the punk scene.

A stagediver at a GBH show in the early 1980s, from ‘If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, Why am I in the Pit?’. (Murray Bowles)

Peterson was undoubtedly inspired by earlier punk photographers like Bowles whose photos often made their way to album covers, press releases, and Maximum Rock and Roll issues back in the 80s. But in contrast, Charles Peterson was able to combine this energetic, spontaneous quality with artistic training and a level of intimacy built up from working closely with the band over the years. Peterson was able to go deeper, especially with bands like Nirvana, making his work more emotionally poignant.

Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain at Rebar in Seattle in a 1991 photograph by Charles Peterson.

Kurt Cobain Reading Festival 08 30 1992 Photo by Charles Peterson

Peterson’s art school training allowed him to meet the emerging music moment of Grunge with unique photographic techniques, like using a handheld flash and long exposures to show trails, communicating a new degree of intensity and dynamism. These visual approaches inspired a whole new generation of rock photographers in the 90’s.

Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain in Seattle on September 16, 1991. Photo: Charles Peterson

Curator Michelle Dunn Marsh sets up the multimedia selection of prints, photos, and photo lab installation in dialogue with photos, sculptures, and videos by 6 other artists including Sylvia Plachy, Nicholas Galanin, Jeffrey Michell, and Peterson’s professor Paul Berger. She tracks his work amid a soundscape of textured Nirvana noise and examples of other photographers to build a narrative journey.

No photos were allowed – you will have to visit to experience her curation first hand!

Visit the Tacoma Art Museum on Wednesdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (free admission 5-8 p.m.); Fridays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sundays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed Mondays and Tuesdays). Admission is $18 adults, $15 seniors (65+), $15 military (active duty or retired with ID), $10 youth 6-18, and free for TAM members. For more information, call (253) 272-4258 or visit www.tacomaartmuseum.org.

Will the early 90’s be lost like tears in the rain?

I saw on Twitter a poignant post recalling the early days of the internet, how there is little record of it all due to defunct websites and bit rot…describing it as all lost, like tears in the rain.

It’s a reference to the death monologue given by the dying android Batty in Bladerunner. Reflecting upon early 90’s and 80’s indie culture, small businesses owned by Gen-X shopkeepers, many of these disappeared as well, during waves of recession and rent increases. There was no Yelp back then, no local foodie magazines propped up by investors. There might have been a fleeting reference or xeroxed photo in a 50 cent zine, but beyond that this was a undocumented zeitgeist that disappeared before much could be recorded for posterity.

Decades of attention were showered upon Boomers and the 60’s. There were documentaries, retrospective exhibits. It pains me as a trained archivist that the punk to early 90’s era received comparatively sparse attention. Outside of noxious Newsweek articles about Generation X, where are the archives? Yes, there are musical documentaries and biographies, but outside of those that made it big, where are the digital records?

These days we have an excess of data due to millennials documenting everything with Instagram, Twitter, Yelp. It is impossible now to live and create without leaving a digital trace.

My generation spawned flyers, zines, diy comics, cassette mixed tapes, but how much has survived? If some had been been digitized, have them been tagged? Indexed? None of these records are searchable.

Online you can find thousands of iterations of viral memes from the last two years. It reminds of trying to read one’s social media news feed beyond yesterday. Online blogging platforms only show you posts from the last two weeks. What does this say about our value of history?

Many in my generation prided ourselves on being indie and underground, but much history was buried when bigger businesses took over and everyone went online. To counter historical homogeneity we need proof of the other narratives. Loft living did not begin with dot com tech workers for example, it started with artists living in unheated warehouses, filling giant open spaces with 50’s style kitchen furniture, Xmas lights, art school sculptures, graffiti and yes, code violations. There were cottage industries that sprung up around the late 80’s, early 90’s rave culture. Clothing, diners like Hell’s Kitchen on Haight St. that were as known for its collection of vintage toys hanging from the ceiling as for lack of service and cleanliness. I do not argue these factors (as well as drugs) did not contribute to this vanishing, but I mourn the lack of photos.

When I lived in Santa Cruz there was a small cafe across the street from a comic book store on Water St. The cafe owners were an older, quiet Gen X couple that reminded me of Kim Gordon and Michael Gira. They collected vintage, mid-century modern furniture and coffee mugs. They served Peet’s coffee in French presses. There were large art magazines around and 80’s era experimental art. I loved going there to escape the crowds of students and/or hippies elsewhere, but sadly they did not get enough traffic to survive. This was the other nail in the coffin for these special places, as the post-Reagan economy became more cut-throat, unique businesses had to play a numbers game or fail.

It makes me envious of Europeans, who not only experience businesses lasting a lifetime, but some have lasted over a century. I don’t have the space to explore the effect of this late Capitalist churn on the American culture and social psyche, but we basically have no permanence. Cafes and restaurants I took my son to when he was a toddler no longer exist and that’s just a handful of years. There used to be cafes and restaurants in my hometown that existed for 40-50 years. We’d meet there during holidays, it was a kind of psychic touch stone. A chance to step back into that stream in time. How can one go back ‘home’ when everything is gone?

Photographs help, telling stories help – but when there are no records and you no longer know anyone who remembers these places, what then?

This is what motivates archivists and historians.

Before you Instagram one more acai bowl or tumeric latte – go through your old zines, flyers, photos and digitize them. Upload them, tag them, GPS-tag photos of businesses that used to exist. Date-stamp them with the year, or best estimate. Don’t let these memories be lost like tears in the rain.