Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

Operative: this word only has meaning in regard to the possibilities. Which suggests that
you can’t get out of the context of art even if you’re misguided enough to want to try. 2
There’s no such thing as anti-art; there’s only art.
—Victor Burgin
Art’s only claim is for art. Art is the definition of art.
—Joseph Kosuth 3
There is just one art, one art-as-art.
—AdReinhardt 4
Art is the only sure means of judging art. Art criticizes art (i.e. it elucidates it, reshuffles
it, re-arranges it, re-enlivens it). Art stays within the area of art; the area of art expands by
accretion, it does not alter through redirection. Pseudo-art continually aspires to non-art conditions:
hence “anti-art,”“technologic art,”“pop art,”etc., etc. The art is either there or it’s
not; the labels—“anti,”“technologic,”“pop”and so on—direct attention away from the issue
into less critical areas. (E.g. Lichtenstein is more involved with art than with pop: pop in
Lichtenstein’s work is a metaphor for presentation, which is not-art. His real endeavor is corrective
and critical. His public Pop image is misleading and irrelevant and nothing much to do
with him anyway.) Pseudo-art is involved with avenues of escape from art. An art position can
harden into a pseudo-art position. Similarly, involved criticism can harden into pseudocriticism.
Greenberg’s concept of Novelty Art movements similarly acts as if to obfuscate ideas
which operate within the context of art but outside Greenberg’s concept of “Modernism.”(The
longer this term retains currency the more ironic its modes of employment become.)
For Greenberg to imply that one cube sculpture can usefully be differentiated in value from
another only in terms of its visual quality—i.e. through the comparative “rightness”of its size,
surface, etc.—is patently ridiculous. 5 (For a start, how can there be a specific and meaningful
size for a cube, relative to other cubes?) Two separate but identical cubes could be two very
different works of art at different dates or even in two different places at the same date (maybe
that distinction has no meaning anyway). It seems pointless to pretend that one can come to
a work of art with no prior information about anything except a narrow range of earlier art
charles harrison notes towards art work 205