Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

The nonrevolutionary artist is expected to work solely to be hung in the “appropriate” gal-
lery for his works. The gallery takes over full responsibility, including cultural responsibility, for
introducing the artist to the changing world of artistic fashions. Of course, certain unstated “conditions”
apply to the would-be entrant into the social integration mechanism of avant-garde art.
The most important of these is that his artistic expression be in a phase of initial purity and
neutrality similar to the laboratory research stage of the scientist’s work.
Should the artist’s mode of expression already imply real intervention in social life or direct
political action, then there is no chance of integration. His conscience will break upon the ideology
of the system.
Gilardi’s analysis is borne out remarkably by an exhibition of funk art in Berne financed
by the Philip Morris Company on the theme “When attitudes become form.” As Mr. Murphy,
president of the European section of Philip Morris, stated in his introduction to the catalogue:
“Just as the artist endeavors to improve his interpretation and conceptions through innovation,
the commercial entity strives to improve its end product or service, through experimentation
with new methods and materials. Our constant search for a new and better way in which to
perform and produce is akin to the questionings of the artists whose works are presented
here....Asbusinessmen in tune with our times, we at Philip Morris are committed to support
the experimental.”
Art courtesy of PhilipMorris or art in the service of PhilipMorris, one can agree with
Gilardi, could do no harm to anyone. (. . .)
It is certainly no answer to transfer gallery conditions to the streets. If, in the course of
an open-air vernissage—like Fromanger’s in Paris at the Place d’Alésia last October—the artist
shows his latest creations to the press and to art-lovers, he is not in fact escaping the confines
of a conventional gallery exhibition. Only the walls are missing; there an object is closed in
upon itself; the experience is without possibility of real development and lacks any participation
on the part of the public. Nothing new has happened. Segregation has been maintained.
The dynamics of the artistic process are still divorced from the dynamics of the
social process.
To compensate for this, in the numerous cases where artistic enterprise is condemned
for practical or repressive reasons to separation in a cultural ghetto, it can still from within its
confines make systematic attempts to distribute its products in the outside world by means of
loudspeakers, objets perdus, leaflets, balloons and so on. The expansion of a free concept is the
consequence of a program of action.
jean clay art tamed and wild 139