It has not always been this way…

· If we return to the 19^th century

“The perfect hanging job was an ingenious mosaic of frames without a patch of wasted wall showing.”

· Each frame established its own limits; each frame was a self-contained entity.

· Brunelleschi, late 13^th century, is attributed to the discovery of perspective which happily coincided with easel painting.

· Each frame became a window penetrating the wall, there was no concept of continual wall space, and paintings could be hung together like sardines

What changed?

TECHNOLOGY – the camera was developed into a compact, portable device in the early 20^th century

With this the edges became fragile, the photograph was now the ultimate perspectival window!

However, “Art’s changes often seem one step ahead of obsolescence.” (O’Doherty)

Painting evolved into something else when perspective was removed from the frame.

“Space became increasingly shallow.”

· Following this route of lateral expansion the frame was dropped as the limiting factor.

This resulted in a peculiar occurrence

- The edge became the structural unit, in dialogue with the wall itself.

- Enter, stage right, the curator, the gallerist, asking the questions,

“What goes together? What doesn’t?”

“How much space should a work have to breath?”

· The wall became a territorial battle ground, a hostile frame in itself…

· At this point O’Doherty ends…The story of the frame, however, does not.

Another frame enters the gallery space – THE SCREEN

· Technology, once again, changes the space forever as the white cube morphed into the black box.

· Howard Wise masterminded the first video exhibition in 1960 ‘TV as a Creative Medium’

· Opinion was divided – was this really a utopian antidote to bourgeois painting, an art for all, accessible to all? The ultimate integration of art and life?

· Or was it the distillation of life into art – something collectable, package-able, frame-able and controllable?

· Philip Leider (editor of Artforum 1962-71) asked the question, “are computers, consumer electronics and communication theory transforming art production or simply obscuring it?”

· Either way, technological gain does not come without a loss. While this… was lost to a post-industrial society (Walter Benjamin’s aura 1935 ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’), the documentary image remained.

· The reproduction has now wheedled its way so deeply into art history that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate physical reality from its document.

· In 1966 Susan Sontag wrote her article, ‘Against Interpretation’ – on reading her article I felt that her principles on interpretation could just as easily be applied to ‘framing’.

- Framing too (like her interpretation) is a way of translating, creating a sign, making art comfortable. Placing an ever expanding image into a manageable, bite-size chunk.

The best example I could find to illustrate these points was Francis Ays’s ‘When Faith Moves Mountains’, the footage of which he sold to the Guggenheim as the Artwork in 2002 transforming an absurd physical act into a three channel video installation with sound.

His pertinent retort - the absurdity of the pointless gesture, was somewhat de-valued when given physical form – the video installation.

ALARM – move outside (continue impromptu discussion of cast collection via taking photos.

· Transition into document, memento, tourist shot, collectable image… PHONE (return to studio)

· Where O’Doherty found himself in an era able to analyse the minimalist frame – “The white cube gallery cell”, perhaps we are now in a position to analyse a broader framing system afforded by technology.

· The frame still exists but perhaps is more transparent; however every act of transparency necessarily produces its opposite. Its purpose has changed.

· BUT who is it for? How does it function? Does it protect or confine?