Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

G. B.: At this stage, art would become truly democratic since the layman and the special-
ist would be equal in front of the work. Do you want to force the spectator to see only what is
visible, and not what the visible may suggest?
D. B.: I don’t want to force the spectator to do anything. I present a thing that distracts
in no way from this thing: this thing is this thing. You look at it, examine it, the expression “you
contemplate it” can no longer be used. What I attempt to do is to question the content of the
painting rather than its form, the latter being the artist’s problem.
Questioning art risks ineffectiveness. The shape that will appear suggesting nothing apart
from itself will lose effectiveness, a vital element of art, in order to become neutral, and therefore
conventional, if it is compared to the artistic form which itself must be original. Neutrality
and effectiveness are incompatible.
G. B.: Is abstract art not an art, precisely, in which what is to be seen is only what is on
the canvas?
D. B.: No. It is not by taking away figurative images that all images are removed. There
is no abstract or concrete art. Whether art is figurative, abstract, objective, kinetic, or in any
kind of “ism,” all artists have the same purpose: to exercise the will to express, to communicate.
There are screens, windows, dreams, entertainment and spectacle. There is especially contempt
of others.
G. B.: Your position interests me because it seems to be motivated by currently existing
art forms. I would like us to go over them and you to tell me what you think of them.
ART TODAY IS STAGNATING
D. B.: I am no longer directly concerned about art in general and contemporary art in particular.
Art interests me, namely its history and developments, just as tribal customs interest ethnologists.
It seems to me the only way to envisage the possibility of a theory. Art history is a succession
of experiments in form that are sometimes justifiable by their structures and their era.
In the same way, human sacrifice was justifiable for the Aztecs. Much more than being
pushed by the desire to change art structures, I notice that these structures have changed. Art
can no longer be accepted. Art is no longer justifiable. In this sense, art today is very instructive,
since every day it confirms my point of view, whether it is noticed in New York, Milan, London,
Tokyo, Paris . . . The formal evolution that can be followed from Cézanne to cubism,
Mondrian, Pollock, and Newman no longer even exists. There is stagnation. The lessons of
the past are rehashed for us with new materials.
georges boudaille interview with daniel buren 71