Echoes: Felix Gonzalez-Torres as a precursor of relational aesthetics

What is the relation of the aesthetic idea to its society in modernist culture? This paper considers this question in the light of Felix Gonzalez-Torres's rumination on a similar issue, what need does our culture find for art? As Nicolas Bourriaud has subsequently credited the Cuban artist with anticipating relation aesthetics by forging a "space based inter-subjectivity", this paper will examine both his practice and the "relation" in relational aesthetics. Given Gonzalez-Torres's Brechtian stance, how do the interstitial relations of Bourriaud and Gonzalez-Torres equate?

Andrew McNamara, Visual Arts, Queensland University of Technology