Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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Emilio Prini states: “creative action must join hands with reality in every one of its as-
pects—climate, the people and things that stand around it”; Ger van Elk, speaking of the
“verbal action” prepared by Dibbets for German TV, said “. . . there will not be any communication
between Dibbets and the public since the latter will be but an instrument in an act of
mental and total creativity”; William Wiley says: “When I get upeach day, I reinvent my life
minute by minute”; speaking of the question “To find the time or let it find me?,” Steve Kaltembach
wrote: “It is possible to manipulate an object so as to achieve an alteration in the
perception of the object or the environment; an object may also be manipulated to bring about
an alteration in perception itself”; finally, we may quote a reasoned statement made by Boezem:
“. . . the whole scene is open and there is an evolution by individuals who find that they are
‘stuff’ outside the cadre of art-history. And just that is the ‘news’ in it—the engagement with
total reality.”
In the case of the art-trade establishment in New York and, at second remove, the whole of
western avant-garde market, the driving force is no longer financial gain but the acquisition of
cultural power as an end in itself; the gallery owners of the avant-garde are interested in controlling
the informative structure of an artistic movement or of a groupof artists; the making of a
profit is a matter of secondary consideration.
It is well known that the majority of the avant-garde galleries in the States run at a loss.
Their financing, via the assistance of a notorious clause in the tax legislation, offers one of the
many safety-valves for exuberant capital spending; at the same time, the avant-garde is held
on a leash, channeled into political neutrality and, in a word, absorbed into the ideology of
the “system.”
The work of museums of modern art is equally tied to social structures, but is clearly
less sensitive to the strains of the struggle for cultural power and free from commercial interests;
in the U.S., museums, like galleries, are closely bound upwith the private economy; the galleries
look upon museums interested in avant-garde art as an instrument for enhancing the prestige
of their own artists.
The most functional contribution being made by the museums of the United States and
northern Europe is that of impartial analysis of single sectors or situations of avant-garde research;
exhibitions with a historical or comprehensive panorama are always heavy; today, oneman
shows stand for cultural mystification that is a contradiction of the new environmental
content offered by the avant-garde.