Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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is common property, the same way that paint colors or bronze are common property to all
painters or sculptors. Whether the artist chooses to present the work as a book or magazine or
through an interview or with sticker labels or on billboards, it is not to be mistaken for the
“art”(“subject matter”?).
C. H.: The organizer’s response to an art “idea”is still primary. Where no other information
is available, the man who takes responsibility for making someone else aware that an artist
has done something can still make his own response absolutely intrusive; a kind of filter between
the work and everyone else.
S. S.: It’s a question of where an artist will give up his choice. This is a vitally important
difference between the new work and what has preceded it. Whereas painters have generally
never specified how much light their paintings should be seen by, what size wall they should
be hung on—they have left it up to you implicitly—this new body of work explicitly denies
any responsibility for presentation. All you need to see a painting is light. This new work
doesn’t even concern itself with that. The question of what environment you see the work in
has nothing to do with what has been done. If it is made clear that the presentation of the
work is not to be confused with the work itself, then there can be no misreadings of it. If an
audience is made aware of an artist’s work and he knows that how he is made aware is not
within the artist’s control or concern, then its specific presentation can be taken for granted.
C. H.: How do you make it clear?
S. S.: The standardizing of the exhibition situation begins to make the specific intentions
of the artists clearer.
C. H.: Do you feel that this new work cannot, by its very nature, be misused as earlier
work has often been in mixed exhibitions?
S. S.: No. By selection you could choose ideas between artists that parallel each other,
just as you could pick up fifty stripe paintings and make them look more alike than they really
are. You could load any exhibition situation in the same way. Orienting a show is not any more
or less possible than it was when painting was painting and sculpture was sculpture. You can
still make anything look like what you want it to. Figures don’t lie; accountants do.
C. H.: So how has your function as an exhibition organizer been different from anyone
else’s?
S. S.: By keeping the exhibition situation as uniform as possible for each and all of the
artists in the exhibition and not relying on outside verbal information like catalogue introductions,
thematic titles, etc., I’ve tried to avoid prejudicing the viewing situation.