Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

alice’s head: reflections on conceptual art
jack burnham
(...)
Conceptual art resembles literature only superficially. What it really characterizes is a decided
shift in sensory ratios. As a result Conceptualism poses a paradox: Can art free itself from the
effects of the page in type only by adopting the printed form?
The problem with vulgar McLuhanism is that it makes more sense than any refined
theory of media. Our civilization, according to McLuhan, was “founded upon isolation and
domination of society by the visual sense.” 1 Thus printing is tied to the limits of perspectival
space. He hypothesizes that in the last century vestigial illusionism has slowly been supplanted
by the synesthesia of “tactile space,”culminating most recently in a desire for total environmental
involvement or, specifically, a “reality high.”For McLuhan, reality is more than the immediate
environment; it is extended by “field space”or all the electronic devices that provide global
awareness. Moreover since field space is pervasive, invisible, and non-causal, it makes no logical
separation between the mind of the perceiver and the environment. “Live in your head”means
that the printed page is to Conceptualism what the picture plane is to illusionistic Realism: an
unavoidable belaboring of the point, inelegant communication. Printed proposals are make-do
art; Conceptual art’s ideal medium is telepathy. Analogously, at the present time conversational