Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

computer programs function through typewriter terminals; eventually computer communication
will be verbal or direct neural relay. Notably, no one considers a terminal printout to
be literature.
Reasons for the emergence of Conceptualism vary in complexity and deal mainly with
the historical development of art. They range from Joseph Kosuth’s functional reductivism
to the practical consideration that gallery and museum exhibitions are increasingly planned,
not through the selection of existent work, but on the basis of submitted proposals, implying
that the artist’s prime or gestural relationship to his materials is secondary and the intellectual
cognizance is in many cases adequate. Quite often execution is redundant or at best for public
elaboration.
A yet more basic motive may underlie Conceptualism. The biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy
writes of a growing schism between biological drives and symbolic values. One of the
reasons for rapid technological change is increased proficiency in symbol manipulation, in
philosophy, art, religion, literature, mathematics, and various forms of scientific logic. Belief
in symbols and ideologies compels man to commit acts ordinarily against his biological wellbeing.
We seem to be the captives of our symbol-making capabilities and their inconsistencies,
as evident in such areas as the religious stand on birth control, the dynamics of thermonuclear
war, economic perpetuation of harmful industrial effects, and cases for and against computer
date banks. As Bertalanffy states, “The symbolic world of culture is basically un-nature, far
transcending and often negating biological nature, drives, usefulness, and adaptation.” 2 Beyond
a fundamental reevaluation of the meaning of art, Conceptualism inadvertently asks,
“What is the nature of ideas? How are they disseminated and transformed? And how do we
free ourselves of the confusion between ideas and their correlations with physical reality?”
“In a preliterate society,”says McLuhan, “art serves as a means of merging the individual
and the environment, not as a means of training perception of the environment.” 3 Conceptual
art presents us with a superspatial grasp of the environment, one that deals with time, processes,
and interrelated systems as we experience them in everyday life, forcing involvement with nonart
habits of perception and thus fulfilling both McLuhan’s models. (. . .)
Through the history of art there have been certain tacit relationships between dealer,
audience, collector and artist, establishing degrees of control over the production and dissemination
of a work of art. These however break down with Conceptualism, and part of an artwork
becomes the assignment of new control variables over the life duration of a piece.
Certainly this has been the tendency in the last ten years. All previous notions of an object’s
intrinsic qualities have been challenged to the point where it would be the simplest matter to
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