An artist who used to disappear: About concealing artistic subjectivity in the art of Jack Goldstein
An artist who used to disappear: About concealing artistic subjectivity in the art of Jack Goldstein

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the work of an American artist, a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts who made his debut in the early 1970s and a representative of the Pictures Generation group, Jack Goldstein (1945–2003). Goldstein’s works, realised by various media, such as performance, film and painting, are characterised by the gesture of disappearance, withdrawal from or concealment of artistic subjectivity, present in various ways. The text reflects on the significance of this gesture in the context of selected trends in American art of the 1970s and 1980s, and in relation to the discourse defining the artistic practices of that time, reviewing such notions as representation, authorship, identity or originality, and whose key figures included Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. Goldstein’s work was also presented against the background of artistic criticism sympathising with the trends initiated by the circle of The Pictures Generation, in which the most influential voices were those of Douglas Crimp, Thomas Lawson, Craig Owens and Hal Foster. The text also presents the technical aspects of Goldstein’s films and paintings in the context of a phenomenon that is particularly important for understanding the essence of mass culture, namely the spectacle.

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