Works <strong>of</strong> art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within <strong>the</strong>ircontext-as-art, <strong>the</strong>y provide no information what-so-ever about anymatter <strong>of</strong> fact. A work <strong>of</strong> art is a tau<strong>to</strong>logy in that it is a presentation <strong>of</strong><strong>the</strong> artist's intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work <strong>of</strong>art is art, which means, is a deJinition <strong>of</strong> art. Thus, that it is art is true apriori (which is what Judd means when he states that "if someone callsit art, it'sOr, a little later in <strong>the</strong> same year, he wrote in The Sixth Investigation <strong>1969</strong>Proposition 14 (a text that has mysteriously vanished from <strong>the</strong> collection <strong>of</strong> hiswritings):If one considers that <strong>the</strong> forms art takes as being art's language onecan realize <strong>the</strong>n that a work <strong>of</strong> art is a kind <strong>of</strong> proposition presentedwithin <strong>the</strong> context <strong>of</strong> art as a comment on art. An analysis <strong>of</strong> proposi-24. Joseph Kosuth, "<strong>Art</strong> after Philosophy," Studio International, nos. 915-917 (Oc<strong>to</strong>ber-December <strong>1969</strong>). Quoted here from Joseph Kosuth, The Making <strong>of</strong> Meaning, p. 155.Joseph Kosuth. Five Fives (<strong>to</strong> Donald Judd). 1965 (?).
OCTOBERtion types shows art "works" as analytic propositions. Works <strong>of</strong> artthat try <strong>to</strong> tell us something about <strong>the</strong> world are bound <strong>to</strong> fail. . . .The absence <strong>of</strong> reality in art is exactly art's reality.25Kosuth's programmatic efforts <strong>to</strong> reinstate a law <strong>of</strong> discursive self-reflexivenessin <strong>the</strong> guise <strong>of</strong> a critique <strong>of</strong> Greenberg's and Fried's visual and formalself-reflexiveness are all <strong>the</strong> more as<strong>to</strong>nishing since a considerable part <strong>of</strong> "<strong>Art</strong>after Philosophy" is dedicated <strong>to</strong> <strong>the</strong> elaborate construction <strong>of</strong> a genealogy for<strong>Conceptual</strong> <strong>Art</strong>, in and <strong>of</strong> itself a his<strong>to</strong>rical project (e.g., "All art [after Duchamp]is conceptual [in nature] because art exists only conceptually"). This very construction<strong>of</strong> a lineage already contextualizes and his<strong>to</strong>ricizes, <strong>of</strong> course, in "tellingus something about <strong>the</strong> worldm-<strong>of</strong> art, at least; that is, it unwittinglyoperates like a syn<strong>the</strong>tic proposition (even if only within <strong>the</strong> conventions <strong>of</strong> aparticular language system) and <strong>the</strong>refore denies both <strong>the</strong> purity and <strong>the</strong> possibility<strong>of</strong> an au<strong>to</strong>nomous artistic production that would function, within art's ownlanguage-system, as mere analytic proposition.Perhaps one might try <strong>to</strong> argue that, in fact, Kosuth's renewed cult <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>tau<strong>to</strong>logy brings <strong>the</strong> Symbolist project <strong>to</strong> fruition. It might be said, for example,that this renewal is <strong>the</strong> logical extension <strong>of</strong> Symbolism's exclusive concern with<strong>the</strong> conditions and <strong>the</strong> <strong>the</strong>orization <strong>of</strong> art's own modes <strong>of</strong> conception and reading.Such an argument, however, would still not allay questions concerning <strong>the</strong>altered his<strong>to</strong>rical framework within which such a cult must find its determination.Even within its Symbolist origins, <strong>the</strong> modernist <strong>the</strong>ology <strong>of</strong> art was alreadygripped by a polarized opposition. For a religious veneration <strong>of</strong> self-referentialplastic form as <strong>the</strong> pure negation <strong>of</strong> rationalist and empiricist thought can simultaneouslybe read as nothing o<strong>the</strong>r than <strong>the</strong> inscription and instrumentalization<strong>of</strong> precisely that order -even or particularly in its negation -within <strong>the</strong> realm<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> aes<strong>the</strong>tic itself (<strong>the</strong> almost immediate and universal application <strong>of</strong> Symbolismfor <strong>the</strong> cosmos <strong>of</strong> late nineteenth-century commodity production wouldattest <strong>to</strong> this).This dialectic came <strong>to</strong> claim its his<strong>to</strong>rical rights all <strong>the</strong> more forcefully in <strong>the</strong>contemporary, postwar situation. For given <strong>the</strong> conditions <strong>of</strong> a rapidly acceleratingfusion <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> culture industry with <strong>the</strong> last bastions <strong>of</strong> an au<strong>to</strong>nomous sphere<strong>of</strong> high art, self-reflexiveness increasingly (and inevitably) came <strong>to</strong> shift along <strong>the</strong>borderline between logical positivism and <strong>the</strong> advertisement campaign. Andfur<strong>the</strong>r, <strong>the</strong> rights and rationale <strong>of</strong> a newly established postwar middle class, onewhich came fully in<strong>to</strong> its own in <strong>the</strong> 1960s, could assume <strong>the</strong>ir aes<strong>the</strong>tic identityin <strong>the</strong> very model <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> tau<strong>to</strong>logy and its accompanying aes<strong>the</strong>tic <strong>of</strong> administration.For this aes<strong>the</strong>tic identity is structured much <strong>the</strong> way this class's socialidentity is, namely, as one <strong>of</strong> merely administering labor and production (ra<strong>the</strong>rthan producing) and <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> distribution <strong>of</strong> commodities. This class, having be-25. Joseph Kosuth, The Sixth Investigation <strong>1969</strong> Proposition 14.
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