'All Over and At Once' Lane Relyea

Relyea, Lane. ‘All Over and At Once’ sections 1,2 & 4 in X-tra Contemporary Art Quarterly 6.1 (2003): Pg. 3-23

The title of Lane Relyea’s text sets an appropriately disparaging tone for the essay to follow. In 'All Over and At Once' (2003) Relyea criticises contemporary art and art critisism ending by urging a reaction against the dominant modes of discourse today. This position can be compared to T.J.Clark’s in his recent book The Sight of Death (2006) in order to think about the relationship between art and writing.

There is a strong distinction between Relyea and Clark’s approaches in these two texts. The Sight of Death is the result of Clark visiting two Nicolas Poussin paintings repeatedly and recording his observations in the form of a diary[1]. Although Clark does not discuss contemporary art in the book, I believe he shares an interest with Relyea in contemporary discourse and I would argue that the reactionary impulse against what Relyea would call ‘glut’ (of information, of recent art) (Relyea p.17, p.22 respectively) is more evident in Clark’s work than in Relyea’s. This is because Relyea talks about the current state of affairs, whereas Clark draws out an understanding across the length of his text; by writing about the Poussin paintings day by day there is the implication that they are worth it, that they will reward prolonged looking and that this way of engaging with art is somehow important to Clark. In other words - where Relyea describes, Clark does through writing.

Clark mentions in his preface that The Sight of Death “is not a manifesto” (Clark vii) and this reminds me that my first impression of Relyea’s text was that it was reminiscent of a manifesto, for example in the lines – “We need a compelling discourse…”, “We need a discourse capable of framing art…”, “…we need an art that does more…” (Relyea 22). I believe the text is unsuccessful in this style. Relyea takes his time as he attempts to summarise both the ‘glut’ of contemporary art as well as contemporary criticism (be it modern, postmodern, or a ‘shrivelled up version’ of either)(19) but the concluding ‘urge to action’ falls short as the solution he proposes (although it has been apparent within the essay) comes too quickly at the end.[2] It does not ‘pack a punch’, which is what the manifesto style implies it will do.

I believe Relyea’s ideas in ‘All Over and At Once’ sit much more comfortably in another context (in which they appear almost verbatim) – the panel discussion of the same year ‘Thick and Thin’. This is because the topic of the panel discussion is more specific - contemporary painting rather than the larger topic of contemporary art and also because it is useful to hear Relyea's peers (a group of artists, curators and writers) refute/reinforce his comments as the discussion progresses.

Works Cited:

Clark, T.J. The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006

Storr, R. et al. ‘Thick and Thin’ in ARTFORUM 41.8 (2003): 174-183

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[1] The two paintings are: Landscape with a Calm (1650-51) and Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake (1648)

[2] The ‘solution’ I am thinking of begins with the line – “Stopping a work, framing it, having it hold itself before us …” and continues to the end of the reading (pp. 22-23)