Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to ...

118 OCTOBERto the manifest lack of any (artistic) manual competence as a criterion of distinction,all the traditional criteria of aesthetic judgment-of taste and ofconnoisseurship - have been programmatically voided. The result of this is thatthe definition of the aesthetic becomes on the one hand a matter of linguisticconvention and on the other the function of both a legal contract and aninstitutional discourse (a discourse of power rather than taste).This erosion works, then, not just against the hegemony of the visual, butagainst the possibility of any other aspect of the aesthetic experience as beingautonomous and self-sufficient. That the introduction of legalistic language andan administrative style of the material presentation of the artistic object couldeffect such an erosion had of course been prefigured in Duchamp's practice aswell. In 1944 he had hired a notary to inscribe a statement of authenticity on his1919 L.H.O.O.Q., affirming that ". . . this is to certify that this is the originalRobert Morris. Untitled (Statement of AestheticWithdrawal). 1963.