ABSTRACT
In 1983 the first museum dedicated to modern art in Taiwan opened its gates. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), still the most important museum for modern and contemporary art in Taiwan, has been more influential in paving the way for the development of contemporary art on the island than any other space, but it has also encountered significant problems. I would like to reflect on some of the scandals involving the museum, especially those that occurred in the museum’s early years. I will argue that they are not so much a question of the people involved, but instead point to a conflict right at the heart of modernity and modern art. I will use in particular the notion of the gaze of natural science, in opposition to Foucault’s (1994: 312) ideas of the ‘entire space of the representation’ as ‘one corporeal gaze’, and his concept of the ‘observed spectator’, which has also been used by Bennett (1995: 7). After a discussion of the notion of the aesthetized object inside the secular space created by the modern museum, I will go on to analyse the drive to universalism in some of the Taiwanese National Pavilions in Venice, linking this with the historical development from martial law to democracy and to Foucault’s and Bennett’s works.
