Studio afterlife : the function of the posthumous studio in contemporary art

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a proliferation of posthumously “museumised” artists’ studios. This global phenomenon is characterised by the conservation or reconstruction of deceased artists’ studios within museums. The museum creates an “afterlife” of the studio, contributing to its cultural and historical significance by interpreting an artist’s work or biography. This practice-based study identifies an emergent current of contemporary art practice that engages with the posthumous studio. Significant contemporary artists Tacita Dean, Christian Jankowski, and Thomas Demand are among those who interpret or intervene in these sites. My project contributes to this underexplored area of art practice and art theory. It employs the posthumous studio as a resource for artistic practice and conceptual reflection, challenging the mythologisation of the modernist artist’s studio as the private domain of the solitary genius. The research focuses on the posthumous studios of two modernist painters, commencing with the restored studio of Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, followed by a more comprehensive study of the Francis Bacon studio reconstruction at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. While painting is the primary medium employed within the research methodology, intersections with other media such as photography, installation, and video play a significant role. Informed by museum practices in which aspects of posthumous studios are simulated for the purposes of display, my practice similarly incorporates the reconstruction of modernist studio artefacts. Derived from engagement with selected examples, the practice adopts the posthumous studio as a site for artistic exploration. In his seminal essay ‘The Function of the Studio’ (1971), Daniel Buren denounced the modernist studio as an ivory tower confining art practice to the production of portable objects “isolated from the real world.” A more nuanced reinterpretation of the modernist studio proposed by this project presents it as an assemblage of distributed materialities and agencies, an approach informed by the thinking of Gilles Deleuze, and Jane Bennett’s notion of “vibrant matter.” The project moves beyond the postmodernist, post-studio critique, bringing to light new understandings of the artist’s studio as concept and material phenomenon via investigation of the posthumous studio.