Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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conceive ofa “semantic threshold” which may not be exceeded by a work ifit is not to take
the form of an assertion and so be subject to the criteria “true or false,” thus becoming compromised
in its art identity. That the tendency ofa work to diverge in its significance is seen as a
problem is evidenced by the wide use of the “self-referential” format, where signification is as
far as possible recursive and convergent. Such preoccupations may tempt one to make analogies
with mathematics.
It has been suggested that art works represent propositions and that these have the logical
form of a tautology. The analogy is partially applicable, insofar as we must acknowledge the
essentially axiomatic nature ofart, in that the art work is subject to no external testing but
need only be consistent with the artist’s own assumptions, but is less appealing ifwe contrast
art expressions with, say, mathematical expressions. A mathematical expression is unequivocal
in what it asserts and we may recognize, for example, that (x � 1) 2 � x2 � 2x � 1 is tautological
and that x � x � 1 is absurd. Art, however, is equivocal in what it asserts to such a point
that we may reasonably doubt whether it actually asserts anything at all, and thus doubt
whether (p ∨∼p) may be any more appropriately said to be the form of an art “proposition”
than (p . ∼p); from this it follows that art is not “necessarily true” but rather that considerations
ofeither its truth or its falsity are simply irrelevant.
Certainly, truth and falsity are not applicable criteria in art. The elements of a work
assume, in their mutual relations, an autonomous status subject only to criteria ofinternal
coherence. We do not ask “is it true,” but only “is it valid” within the terms ofits own axioms.
Appreciating this we may be led to use a metaphor which seems to fit these facts and so speak
oftautologies in the “language ofart”—but the metaphor is misleading; art has no language.
Logic and mathematics may express a “frame of mind” in abstract variables and relations—logical
structures absolutely independent ofany experiential content which might be
attributed to them—but at the levels ofabstraction where art is viable, “. . . structure . . . is
the content itselfapprehended in a logical organization conceived as a property ofthe real.” 14
The paradoxical nettle always to be grasped is that ofreconciling the art work’s status as an
empty structure with its existence as an assembly of meaningful signs.
NOTES
1. G. Charbonnier, Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss (London: Jonathan Cape).
2. “. . . [in] ostensive definition, the object which is meant is brought within range of perception
and is then indicated by an appropriate gesture.” Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the
World (University of California Press, 1969).