Ward Shelley
Pierogi, New York USA

Art works that reference art history are in danger of ingesting themselves from the arse outwards - it takes a lightness of touch to avoid the 'nod-nod, wink-wink.' of knowingness. But self-referential, historiographical practice is important in an era when the origin and provenance of ideas are as mutable as their application; and works that are aware of their own status as artefact adopt, by default, a critical position. Ward Shelley's graphic wall charts of art history and biography, while perhaps not entirely self- reflexive, do flag up some core concerns of historiography.

Historiography, the study of the writing of history, is a scrutiny not of events but of the way in which events have been interpreted. It operates at a meta-level of analysis - an understanding of understanding - yet its very name contains an oxymoron. History and writing have, by their nature, opposing properties of fluidity and fixity; it is consensus of meaning that enables language to communicate, while history is notoriously gaseous, beyond our grasp and even our eye. Shelley notes this paradox in a disclaimer: "It is important to realize that when you understand something, you have AN understanding of it. There are others, and they are likely to function quite well too." Unlike disclaimers in cinema that differentiate fact from fiction, Shelley's emphasizes subjectivity over objectivity. Although on paper this may seem the same, in practice it is quite another matter. Despite our understanding of liberalism's need for subjectivity, or Post- structuralism's insistence on it, we still often find it difficult to swallow a negation of objective history. We cling to.the idea of the absolute truth of past events.

Shelley's pseudo, statistical representations of the influences on and importance of artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Pat Oleszko and Chris Burden rely predominantly on the causal model of art history, relating a narrative that adheres to a linear chronology. A Cartesian understanding of the universe is very much in evidence, only marginally breached by consequent literary and scientific developments, such as the merging of fact and fiction or the gravitational pull of the counter- intuitive. Twentieth-century metafiction - wnting that is aware of its own status as fiction - has long been exploring such matters as the unknowable inner life of historical subjects, and Shelley, although committed to the exteriority of his subjects, does allow vestiges of this to suffuse through the empiricaI information.