Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

Style, whether of the hands or of the brain (reason), is an anomaly. And with anomalies,
it is more intelligent to abort them than to help them to live.
ART-CULTURE
If Duchamp’s interference was in terms of Art (the logic of the phenomenon), it is fair to say
that it applied to aesthetics, and if thereby it heralded the freeing of habit from the dominion
of the hands, it is right to say that any interference in this sphere nowadays (Duchamp’s collocation
has the great merit of forcing one’s perception of Art to shift from being a perception of
artistic objects to becoming more a phenomenon of thought), given that what is being done
now tends to be closer to culture than to Art, would necessarily be a political interference.
Because if aesthetics is the basis of art, it is politics that is the basis of culture.
This text was initially presented in the debate “Perspectivas para uma Arte Brasileira,” 1970,
and later published as “Inserçoes em circuitos ideológicos,” Malasartes, no. 1 (September-
November 1975), p. 15. The present translation is taken from Cildo Meireles: IVAM Centre del
Carme, 2 Febrero/23 abril 1995 (Barcelona: Generalitat Valenciana, Conselleria de Cultura,
1995), pp. 173–174.
cildo meireles insertions in ideological circuits 233