Jack Burnham was the most profound and farsighted writer on art and technology in the 1960s and 70s -- not to mention his importance as a theorist, critic and curator. Yet all of his books are out of print now, and many artists treading the paths he illuminated have never heard of him. How can that be?
At the conclusion of Beyond Modern Sculpture (1968) he had written:
"[The] cultural obsession with the art object is slowly disappearing and being replaced by what might be called 'systems consciousness.' Actually, this shifts from the direct shaping of matter to a concern for organizing quantities of energy and information...
"Deep-rooted drives lasting several millenia are not erased from the human personality overnight. Yet there is abundant evidence that the modern era of artistic expression through sculptured objects is drawing to a close. Taking the path outlined up to now, it would be logical to speculate on the quasi-biological nature of future art...
"[It] is generally acknowledged by scientists working in the field of bio-electronics that there are no qualitative physical differences between living and nonliving matter; both groupings represent, simply, an ascending scale of complexity in the organization of matter. Therefore organisms artificially created may possess consciousness. Their level of subjectivity and intelligence depends upon their creator's ability to simulate or improvise upon biological principles...
"Unless the world is substantially altered for the worst, the logical outcome of technology's influence on art before the end of this century should be a series of art forms that manifest true intelligence, but perhaps more meaningfully, with a capacity for reciprocal relationships with human beings...
"It also implies a gradual phasing out, or programmed obsolescence, of all natural organic life, substituting far more efficient types of life forms for our 'inferior' and imperfect ones..."
It's a full-blown Faustian vision. Burnham probably went overboard on the historical determinism angle - later editions of BMS dropped the claim that synthetic creations would make "all natural organic life" obsolete, and his later writings focus on the mythic and mystical aspects of art. But regardless of whether you agree that synthetic life is the next step in sculpture, it is undoubtedly true that Jack's outline of "systems esthetics" was a pivotal contribution.
Jack Burnham was my hero during the early 1970s, when I was a young artist just starting to write for Artforum and he was at the peak of his career. I was too poor to buy clothes back then, so Jack gave me his old US Army uniforms from the 1950s. I wore them proudly, since they had his name on the breast pocket. As a result, some people in SoHo probably thought that I was Jack Burnham. Unfortunately, I wasn't, but I would like to do something now to repay him for the support and inspiration he gave.
This site (online since August 2000 and most recently updated on 28 July 2009) aims to be a gateway to Jack's writing and to perceptive comments on his work by other people, whether the articles themselves are located here or elsewhere, online or offline. Many thanks to Barry Alpert, Edward Shanken, William L. Tchakirides and Lutz Dammbeck for information, suggestions and research which have helped to expand and improve this site. Your feedback, written contributions, ideas and new links are eagerly sought.
Jack Wesley Burnham Jr. was born in 1931 and lived much of his life in the Chicago area. He attended the Boston Museum School but graduated from the Yale School of Art with a BFA in 1959 and an MFA in 1961. From 1955 to 1965, sculpture was his primary medium, often including light. (A photo of a ceiling-mounted piece from 1968, made of electro-luminescent tape and aluminum channels, appears in Beyond Modern Sculpture). He was a Fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies in 1968-9. During his most prolific period as a writer, he taught art history at Northwestern University, eventually becoming chairman of the art department. In the 1980s he moved to the University of Maryland (College Park campus) and again chaired the art and art history departments. Now retired, he lives in Hyattsville, Maryland, immersed in Kabbalah.
JACK BURNHAM INTERVIEWS
Jack in 1993 - from Katrien Jacobs' film
"Willoughby Sharp Interviews Jack Burnham" in Arts magazine, Vol. 45, No. 2 (November 1970), pages 21-23. (A recitation of the text of this interview is available as artexcerptsn18 (first half) and artexcerptsn19 (second half) in a series of MP3 podcasts by Michael Ringland.)
Lutz Dammbeck interviewed Jack in 2002 for his documentary film The Net. Even though the interview was not in the film's final cut, he released a transcript and put on his website a German translation of an early version of our bibliography, as well as background notes, commentary, and a one-minute videoclip from his interview. Here is an enlarged version of the videoclip, in Shockwave Flash format, along with a slightly polished excerpt from the transcript.
COMMENTARIES and RE-EVALUATIONS
"Systems Aesthetics and the System as Medium," by Francis Halsall, on the website for Whitechapel Gallery's "Systems Art" exhibition and symposium (see below). This is an excerpt from Systems of Art, forthcoming from Peter Lang publications (2008).
"All Systems Go: Recovering Jack Burnhams 'Systems Aesthetics' " by Luke Skrebowski, Tate Papers, spring 2006. This essay is a revised/expanded version of Skrebowski's presentation at a graduate symposium on 19 September 2005 in connection with the exhibition "Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970" (see next two entries). Recordings of some of the symposium presentations from 17-18 September are available here.
Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970 (Tate Gallery, 2005), 224 pages, ISBN 1854375652. Exhibition catalog edited by curator Donna De Salvo; the show was at the Tate Modern Gallery in London, England (1 June - 18 September 2005).
"Jack Burnham and the Work of Art in the Age of Real Time Systems," by Charlie Gere - excerpt from an essay of the same name which appears in a 208-page anthology edited by Björn Norberg and Morten Søndergaard - published in 2005 in Europe by Informations Forlag under the title Get Real! Art + Real-time: History, Practice, Theory (ISBN 87-7514-110-8), and in USA by George Braziller Inc. (hardcover) and W. W. Norton & Co Inc. (paperback), under the title Real Time + Art + Theory + Practice + History (ISBN 0807615641). This anthology also includes Burnham's "Real Time Systems" (Artforum, 1969). These publications were byproducts of the "Get Real!" exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark, curated by Morten Søndergaard (15 April - 12 June 2005).
Flip Feij, who lives in Vlissingen, Netherlands, found this (signed) print by Joseph Beuys in the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht. Flip translates the German text as "Just let Jack Burnham eat something calmly, too". According to daistesja.de, this was one of a set of Beuys postcards published in Heidelberg by Edition Klaus Staek in 1974.
"The Shape of Things to Come," Beyond Modern Sculpture (and 3 other books) reviewed by James Ackerman, New York Review of Books (August 21, 1969) - access to full text online requires payment.
"Burnham's Burden: Art is Over...Again," by Corrine Robins in Art in America, pages 14-15 (March 1972). Ambivalent comments on Beyond Modern Sculpture, The Structure of Art, and "The Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems."
"Reaffirming Painting: A Critique of Structuralist Criticism" by Geoffrey and David Dorfman in Artforum magazine, Vol. 16, No. 2 (October 1977), pages 62-63.
A German-language synopsis of the "Software" show, the planning behind it and the works it contained - by Lutz Dammbeck, 2003.
Comments on and description of the catalog of the Software show, in French and English, by Vincent Bonin, Daniel Langlois Foundation, 2004.
"Notes on Jack Burnham's Concepts of a Software Exhibition," by Robert Mallory in Leonardo, Volume 3, Number 2 (1970), pages 189-190. Jack's reponse is listed below.
"Software Everywhere: Jewish Museum, NY, exhibition" by Dore Ashton in Studio International, Vol. 180 (November 1970), pages 200-202.
"Art and Information: 'Software' at the Jewish Museum" by Bitite Vinklers in Arts magazine, Vol. 45, No. 1 (September 1970), page 46.
PUBLISHED WRITINGS BY JACK BURNHAM
So far as I can tell, Jack's first appearance in print was not as an author but as an artist: a black and white photograph
of one of his geometric wall sculptures, entitled "Voyage of Cythera," was used to illustrate "The Midwest: A New Involvement" by
Louise Bruner in the April 1965 issue of Arts magazine, page 77. The photo caption indicates that this piece was shown at the Devorah Sherman Gallery in Chicago.
"Hans Haacke: Wind and Water Sculpture" in TriQuarterly Supplement #1, pages 1-24 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, spring 1967).
"Sculpture's Vanishing Base" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 6, No. 3 (November 1967). Note the similarity to the first chapter of Beyond Modern Sculpture...
"Plug-in" in ArtsCanada magazine, December 1968, page 34.
Beyond Modern Sculpture: The Effects of Science and Technology on the Sculpture of This Century (New York: George Braziller; London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 1968) hardcover = ISBN 080760450X, paperback = ISBN 0807607150. At least 50 reviews of BMS have been published. Some of those appearing in art periodicals were by Jay Jacobs in Art in America, page 113 (January 1969); separate reviews by Albert Elsen and Walter Darby Bannard in Artforum, pages 68-71 (May 1969); by Jay Lobell in Arts, page 10 (November 1968); and by Jonathan Benthall in Studio International, pages 148+ (March 1969). The final two sections of BMS were put online by James Coupe at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (University of Washington) under the title "The Future of Responsive Systems". Another group of excerpts in English and translated into Dutch have been put online by "Laat op de avond..." a TV program about tech-culture and politics
broadcast on VPRO in the Netherlands.
Art in the Marcusean Analysis - volume 6 of the Penn State Papers in Art Education edited by Paul Edmonston (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University, 1969).
"System and Art" in Arts and Society, Vol. VI, No. 2 (1969), page 195.
"Jack Burnham, Terry Fenton: An Exchange" in Artforum Vol. 7, No. 8 (April 1969), pages 60-61 - in which Burnham responds to comments made by Fenton in the January 1969 Artforum about "Systems Esthetics" and Fenton defends himself.
"On Being Sculpture" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 7, No. 9 (May 1969), pages 44-45. About the work of Mowry Baden.
"Real Time Systems" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1 (September 1969), pages 49-55. Reprinted in Great Western Salt Works.
"Art's End" - letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books, 20 November 1969, responding to James Ackerman's review of Beyond Modern Sculpture in the 21 August 1969 issue ("The Shape of Things to Come").
Spoken contribution to a vinyl gramophone disk issued as the catalog for "Art by Telephone," an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, USA (1 November - 14 December 1969). The disk contains excerpts from phonecalls in which the participating artists describe their proposals for the show to the curator, Jan van der Marck, in enough detail that the works could be created without the artist being present. Jack proposed a ceiling-mounted light sculpture to be called "Ultraviolet." The link leads to an MP3 file that contains the complete sound document (44 minutes).
"Dan Flavin Retrospective in Ottawa" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 8, No. 4 (December 1969), pages 48-55.
"Alice's Head: Reflections on Conceptual Art" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6 (February 1970) pages 37-43. Reprinted in Great Western Salt Works.
"Robert Morris Retrospective in Detroit" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 8, No. 7 (March 1970), pages 67-75.
"Comments on Mallory's Note" in Leonardo, Volume 3, Number 2 (April 1970), pages 265-266. A response to Robert Mallory's review of the "Software" show, in the same issue.
"Les Levine: Business as Usual" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 8, No. 8 (April 1970), pages 40-43.
Introduction to Donald Burgy's Art Ideas for the Year 4000 (published by the Addison Gallery of American Art, May 1970)
"The Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems" in On the Future of Art (New York: Viking Press, 1970), pages 95-122. Hardcover = ISBN 0-6705-2500-6, paperback = ISBN 0-6700-0308-5. James Coupe put this essay online.
"Dennis Oppenheim: Catalyst 1967-1970," in ArtsCanada magazine, August 1970, pages 29-36.
"Notes on Art and Information Processing," in Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art - pages 10-14; catalog of the "Software" exhibition curated by Burnham at the Jewish Museum in Brooklyn, NY (16 September - 8 November 1970).
"Problems of Criticism, IX: Art and Technology" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 9, No. 5 (January 1971), pages 40-45; reprinted in Idea Art: A Critical Anthology, edited by Gregory Battcock (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1973).
"Hans Haacke's Cancelled Show at the Guggenheim" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 10, No. 10 (June 1971). Reprinted in Artists, Critics, Context: Readings In and Around American Art Since 1945, edited by Paul F. Fabozzi, (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002.), ISBN 0130908983, pages 346-355.
The Structure of Art, with assistance from Charles Harper and Judith Benjamin Burnham (New York: George Braziller). Hardcover revised edition (June 1971) = ISBN 0-8076-0596-4, paperback revised edition (June 1970) = ISBN 0-8076-0595-6. Initial reviews in art periodicals were by Henry P. Raleigh in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 29, Number 4 (Summer, 1971), pages 541-542; Jonathan Benthall in Studio International, pages 48-50 (July 1971); and by Nicolas Calas in Arts, pages 27-29 (September 1971). See also the review by Carole N. Kaufmann in American Anthropologist, New Series, Volume 74, Number 6 (December, 1972), pages 1465-1466. The German edition: Kunst und Strukturalismus: Die neue Methode der Kunst-Interpretation (Köln: DuMont Schauberg, 1973), ISBN 3-7701-0645-8.
"Corporate Art" in Artforum magazine, Vol. 10, No. 2 (October 1971), pages 66-71. Review of the Art and Technology show at the Los Angeles County Museum.
"True Readymade?" in Art and Artists magazine, Vol. 6 (February 1972), pages 26-31.
"Duchamp's Bride Stripped Bare" in Arts magazine, Vol. 46, No. 8/9. Part 1 is on pages 41-45 of the April 1972 issue; Part 2 is on pages 58-61 of the May 1972 issue.
"Voices from the Gate" in Arts magazine, Vol. 46, No. 10 (summer 1972), pages 44-46 and cover. A kabbalistic interpretation of new sculptures by Robert Morris.
"Semiotics of 'End-Game' Art" in Arts magazine, Vol. 47, No. 3 (November 1972), pages 38-43. (Clement Greenberg responds in the December 1972 issue, page 94.)
"Objects and Ritual: Towards a Working Ontology of Art" in Arts magazine, Vol. 47, No. 4 (December 1972), pages 38-41.
"Contemporary Ritual: A Search for Meaning in Post-Historical Terms" in Arts magazine, Vol. 47, No. 7 (March 1973), pages 38-41.
"Les Levine and the Troubles" in Arts magazine, Vol. 47, No. 8 (April 1973), pages 56-59.
"The Artist as Shaman" in Arts magazine, Vol. 47, No. 9 (May-June 1973), pages 42-44.
"Mondrian's American Circle" in Arts magazine, Vol. 48, No. 1 (September 1973), pages 36-39.
"Nova Scotia: Answers for Academia" in Arts magazine, Vol. 48, No. 3 (November 1973), pages 55-57.
"Art and Technology" in the Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Future (Chicago, 1973), page 351.
Great Western Salt Works: Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art (New York: George Braziller). 165 pages, hardcover (September 1974) = ISBN 0-8076-0740-1, paperback (June 1974) = ISBN 0-8076-0741-X. Reviewed by Kim Levin in Art in America, Vol. 62, No. 6 (November-December 1974), pages 48-49.
"Huebler's Pinwheel and the Letter Tau" in Arts magazine, Vol. 49, No. 2 (October 1974), pages 32-35.
"Sacrament and Television" in Video Art, an exhibition catalog edited by Suzanne Delehanty, Institute of Contemporary Art, 17 January - 28 February 1975 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania/Institute of Contemporary Art, 1975) , ISBN 0884540146.
"Meditations on a Bunch of Asparagus" in Arts magazine, Vol. 49, No. 6 (February 1975), pages 72-75.
"Quality and the Art of Hitchhiking" in Arts magazine, Vol. 49, No. 8 (April 1975), pages 64-66.
"Steps in the Formulation of Real-Time Political Art" in Hans Haacke / Framing and Being Framed: 7 works, 1970-75 edited by Kaspar Koenig (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; and New York: New York University Press, 1975), ISBN 0-9196-1607-0. Reviewed by Robert C. Hobbs in Art Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (winter 1976-7), pages 176-180.
"Mary Beth Edelson's Great Goddess" in Arts magazine, Vol. 50, No. 3 (November 1975), pages 75-78.
"Ten Years Before the Artforum Masthead" in The New Art Examiner, Vol. 4, No. 5 (February 1977), pages 1 and 6-7. Reflections on the New York artworld, full of sharp insights and autobiographic detail.
"Patriarchal Tendencies within the Feminist Art Movement" in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 4, No. 10 (Summer 1977), pages 1, 8, 9 and 11.
Text for the catalog of a Sylvia Sleigh exhibition at the Turman Gallery (Indiana State University, Terre Haute) and the Dittmar Gallery (Northwestern University, Evanston), 1977.
"George Rickey" (book review) in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 5, No. 1 (October 1977), page 13.
"Metacritique and Misalliance: Living It Up in San Francisco" in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 5, No. 5 (February 1978), pages 10-11.
"Passages in Modern Sculpture" (book review) in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 5, No. 10 (July 1978), pages 4-5.
Introduction to Komar and Melamid: Two Soviet Dissident Artists, edited by Melvyn B. Nathanson (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979: ISBN 0-8093-0887-8).
Hans Haacke: Recent Work - essay in the exhibition catalog (Chicago, IL: The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 1979).
"Komar and Melamid, Post-USSR, Get Religion" in Art in America, Vol. 67, No. 1 (January-February 1979), pages 13-15.
"Painting Up Against the Wall" in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 6, No. 8 (May 1979), page 4.
"The Henry Darger Collection: Another Art Treasure Lost to Chicago?" in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 7, No. 1 (October 1979).
Interview with Vito Acconci in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 7, No. 8 (May 1980).
"Icons of the Prairie: Michael Brakke's photo-paintings" in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 8, No. 1 (October 1980), pages
10-11.
"Esoteric Sources of Duchamp's Dual Paradise" in the New Art Examiner, Vol. 8, No. 2 (November 1980), pages 6-7.
"Art and Technology: the Panacea that Failed" in Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture, edited by Kathleen Woodward (Madison, WI: Coda Press, 1980). Reprinted in Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, edited by John Hanhardt, pages 232-248 (New York: Peregrine Smith Books, and Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1986). Thanks to Michael Schippling for putting this key text online."
Contribution to Richard Lippold: Sculpture, - 64-page catalog of the exhibition "Richard Lippold Sculpture: A Retrospective 1950-1988 " at the Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA (November 1990 - February 1991).
NOTE: George Braziller Inc., the firm which published Jack's books, gave its archives to the Princeton University Library. According to the online catalog of the Library's Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, the manuscripts and correspondence related to Beyond Modern Sculpture, The Structure of Art, Great Western Salt Works and The Structure of Art (revised) are in C0795 Box 4.
RELATED LINKS
"Man-Computer Symbiosis," by J. C. R. Licklider, originally published in the IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11 (March 1960).
"Living Machines," by Brosl Hasslacher and Mark W. Tilden, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1996.
SymbioticA - "SymbioticA is the first research laboratory of its kind, in that it enables artists to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department... SymbioticA was established in 2000 by cell biologist Professor Miranda Grounds, neuroscientist Professor Stuart Bunt and artist Oron Catts. Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr from the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A) had been working as artists/researchers in residence in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology and the Lions Eye Institute since 1996..."
International Competition: Art and Artificial Life - sponsored annually by Fundación Telefonica (Spain); web pages in English and Spanish give the rules and entry deadlines as well as descriptions of winning projects from earlier years.
Online readings from Daniel Bisig's spring 2003 seminar, "Kunst und Knstliche Intelligenz" at the University of Zurich's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. While the seminar was in German, most of the readings are in English.
Mauro Annunziato and Piero Pierucci, "Human-Artificial Ecosystems: Searching for a Language," Plancton Art Studio, Rome. "In this paper we refer to several experiments where a community of artificial individuals, equipped with a personal neural network, autonomously develop a common set of symbol-meaning associations...."
Art and Biology - a special project of Leonardo Online. See especially the bibliography compiled by George Gessert.
"Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code" special issue (spring 1996) of the College Art Association's Art Journal, Vol. 55, No. 1. Ellen K. Levy, guest editor with Berta M. Sichel.
Eduardo Kac - see especially Robotic Art Chronology (Originally published in Convergence, Spring 2001, Vol. 7, No. 1, pages 87-111); "Origin and Development of Robotic Art," (originally published in Art Journal, Vol. 56, No. 3 ["Digital Reflections: The Dialogue of Art and Technology,
Special issue on Electronic Art," edited by Johanna Drucker], College Art Association, New York, 1997, pages 60-67); and "Aspects of the Aesthetics of Telecommunications," originally published in Siggraph Visual Proceedings, John Grimes and Gray Lorig, eds. (New York: ACM, 1992).
"Systems Art" - website created for an exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, London, England (20 October - 17 November 2007), along with a symposium (26-27 October 2007) and an artwork by Neil Ferguson shown at the London Metropolitan University (25-26 October 2007). See especially the papers from the "Systems Art" symposium.
Biota.org - see especially the Biota@home White Paper, a project to use distributed computer networking to create and explore "artificial nature" simulations.
"Software Art and Writing" by Florian Cramer and Ulrike Gabriel, published in the American Book Review's "Codeworks" issue (edited by Alan Sondheim, 18 August 2001)
Please suggest additional links, or links to existing linkpages...
