Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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objects, or to pretend that certain kinds of information—specifically about probable intentions—can
be screened off at the moment of “aesthetic contemplation.”Any information
which the artist provides will inevitably become a part of the spectator’s area of consideration—
and this includes titles, however flippantly added.
Certain artists, in taking a “my-life-is-my-art”attitude, are doing no more (nor less) than
making explicit the extreme and inevitable consequences of this truism. There is of course no
inherent virtue in this: it’s only fatalism after all. To counter this, art has always thrown up new
strategies by means of which certain endeavors can be made to read as relatively specific. This
is often a question of medium—e.g. the distinct and various means of presentation for Joseph
Kosuth’s Art as Idea as Idea. Ironically, the more in-series the condition of the work presented,
the more a considered presentation is needed to render the work accessible as something specific.
To put it another way, the more explicit the strategy, or the more evident the distinction
between strategy and purpose, the heavier the demand for a strategy which will stand up to
scrutiny. Art of this kind does not evade criticism; it challenges it out in the open.
The critic’s policy is characteristically to divide and rule: divide the presentation from
the idea and rule the presentation (or the presentation of the presentation), confident that few
will notice that the idea has been sacrificed. It is a sad irony that the critic, knowing that literacy
will tend to be mistaken for intelligence by those who are less literate, can always rely on literary
presentation to characterize his status as one involved with art.
Alas, information supplied by the artist is not all, however indiscriminate, that comes
up for consideration: in the end, the spectator’s experience of the work of art will come to
include information imposed upon the art work by writers and others. Mud does stick. Fried’s
criticism is now a part of Noland’s art. No wonder the better artists tend to protect their work
from indifferent exposure; i.e. to protect the idea from indiscriminate presentation of its presentation.
The notion of “cubes”obscures the endeavor of Braque and Picasso and no critic’s
initiative will prize it loose.
Artists tend to become indifferent to the continued currency of such labels perhaps only
because for them words lose their meaning faster and become abstract. This situation may
not last much longer. Duchamp’s ironic instructions, anti-informative legends and complex
nonsensical puns pointed the way—through the looking-glass as it were—towards an investigation
of language on art’s terms; i.e. within the context of art—not literary—ideas. Just now
language seems potentially operative as never before within the primary art context.
The artist’s indifference to literacy is the one hope for the salvation of language as a
means to illuminate art. By the same token, the artist’s comparative indifference to traditions