Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

ules of thumb
victor burgin
. . . all the devices at the artist’s disposal are so many signs . . . the function of a work
of art is to signify an object, to establish a significant relationship with an object.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss1 Our prevailing orthodoxy is that art signifies nothing. In presenting my own interpretation of
this dogma I shall refer to a distinction which I hope is more tenable than the current “object/
non–object” dichotomy.
Art’s primary situation is not unique to art. It is that in which a person, or group of
persons, by certain displays, seeks to alter the state ofapprehension ofa second person or group
ofpersons. From this undramatic assertion it follows that the empirically observable differences
between types ofart are primarily differences oftype, scope, and use ofdisplays. “Sign” may
not yet be substituted for “display.” “Sign” implies a corollary thing signified, but in “abstract”
painting and sculpture a work has no apparent significance but is rather itself an object of
signification. As artists and critics connected with Modernism will insist that the unique art
object itself must be brought into the proximity ofour senses it should be clear that it is the
object which is signified and that signification here takes the form of ostensive definition. 2