The Misfits.pdf - Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Zagreb

But the axis of the neoavantgarde wave was
the conceptual paradigm of art, precisely
defined by Joseph Kossuth: the activity of the
artists consists in estimating the concept of
artand changing the function of art through
its conceptual reasoning". From Sol LeWitt.
who introduces the term 'conceptual art'
(1967) in order to mark that his work is born
from a concept", presenting a conceptual and
not visual order of a work of art, through the
thesis on "dematerialisation of the work of
art" by critic Lucy Lippard (1973), the dominant
place is at first taken by the transformation of
a visual work of art into a textual, tautological
or analytical (Art&Language). After that, with
post-conceptualism, we see a growth of dif-
ferent strategies which spawn forth ideologi-
cal and culturological analyses of art and cul-
tural systems, followed by anthrolopological
and semiological analyses of various symboli-
cal forms of expression, as well as the imple-
mentation of theoretical and textual research
on the analysis of various media: photography
(previously mostly used for documentary purpos-
es), video, film, drawing, and even painting. With
the advent of neoconceptualism of the eighties and
the nineties, the strategies turn towards the
research of the functioning of art in culture, the
social practice of production and consumption of
values, meaning and forms of presentation in
the mass media culture.
This is the order of events which naturally led
to the question: where is history of art, then.
when con-temporary art is universalistically
marked by the loss of "object"? How is history
of art possible at all, if it is to have the con-
temporary characteristics of the general
change in the epistemological horizon? Since
the end of high modernism, it has become
obvious that nothing possesses the old, inno-
cent autonomy. The artists explicitly says:
Mladen Stilinovic
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I hear the talk about the death of art
the death of art is the death of artist
someone wants to kill me
help!
1977
"The subject of my work is the language of politics,
or the refraction of that language in the common-
place. /.../ The question is, how to manipulate
what manipulates you, so obviously, so
brazenly. but I am not innocentthere is no
art without consequences." (M. Stilinovi, Foot
writing, 1984). This fact is, therefore, particu-
larly clear to artists who saw their engagement
in the practice of artistic work as the experi-
ence of a subject living "in the East", whose
particular contextual conditions, of course,
represent the other starting point in the manner of
their functioning. But the context wasn't merely
"natural and self-explanatory framework of the
function" for "new artistic practice" as a "reaction
to events", both near and far, but also a corridor
between art and culture. In its two-way openness,
from affective experiences of social marginality,
there grew strategies for the acquisition of the
power of public articulation, but outside of free-
dom-fighting rhetoric of utopistic ideologies, and
outside the "strong subject" of high modernism
21 I THE MISFITS