Daniel Buren

Daniel Buren's studio. (bron: Wouter Davidts)

"Thirty-five years ago Daniel Buren wrote a text entitled “The Function of the Studio,” which remains key in the artist’s career-long treatise on the “desertion of the studio and its implications” for artworks. In this early text Buren declared his rejection of the studio and a commitment to working in situ and allowing the physical context of the exhibition site to influence the artistic outcome, a modus operandi he has maintained throughout his career. In advance of the exhibition “The Studio” at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, in which he was a participating artist, Daniel Buren was invited to revisit this text." (Introduction from "The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists". (hk))

"Daniel Buren
The Function of the Studio

Of all the frames, envelopes, and limits—usually not perceived and certainly never questioned—which enclose and constitute the work of art (picture frame, niche, pedestal, palace, church, gallery, museum, art history, economics, power, etc.), there is one rarely even mentioned today that remains of primary importance: the artist’s studio. Less dispensable to the artist than either the gallery or the museum, it precedes both. Moreover, as we shall see, the museum and gallery on the one hand and the studio on the other are linked to form the foundation of the same edifice and the same system. To question one while leaving the other intact accomplishes nothing. Analysis of the art system must inevitably be carried on in terms of the studio as the unique space of production and the museum as the unique space of exposition.
Both must be investigated as customs, the ossifying customs of art.
What is the function of the studio?

1. It is the place where the work originates.
2. It is generally a private place, an ivory tower perhaps.
3. It is a stationary place where portable objects are produced.

The importance of the studio should by now be apparent; it is the first frame,
the first limit, upon which all subsequent frames/limits will depend.
...." (text: Daniel Buren)

"Daniel Buren
The Function of the Studio Revisited: Daniel Buren in Conversation

The function of the studio is absolutely, basically, the same as it always was. The studio as I defined it in 1971 has not changed, although perhaps more artists are escaping their studios today than when I wrote “The Function of the Studio.” Artists have a much looser idea of what constitutes a studio than they did in the early 1970s. However, I think it is still the main place of work for the majority of artists.
The function of the studio is the making of a work of art for an ideal place, a work which may be endlessly manipulated. If you work most of the time in a studio you produce works that are destined to be installed somewhere else. That was the key point of my text—in a studio you produce work to be shown anywhere—whether in a gallery, museum, or private collection—and you must work with a preconceived idea of what these rooms might be like, as the final destination of the work is totally unknown.
It is a different case when the artwork calls on the specifics of its location for its identity and completion and cannot be installed or seen in another place. This returns us to the idea of the site as an integral component of the work whereby it can only be understood at that site, which is in turn transformed by the artwork, forever or for the time that they are together. If the work is created thus there is a break from the idea and the idealism of the studio.
...." (text: Daniel Buren)

Read the full text (and "Studio Reader") here. (hk)

> Daniel Buren