Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

I’m not a poet andI’m considering oral communication as a sculpture.
—Ian Wilson
One ofthe wonders ofmodern artists, and sources oftheir prestige, has been their capac-
ity to purge themselves ofthe credible, yet to behave, in a delicate balance, as iftheir eccentric
gambits were thoroughly plausible.
Established plausibility, such as painting’s, is, however, not admissible because it is a fixed
mode whose practice arouses no doubts as to its legitimacy. I regret to say that the reasoning
behind this is grounded on nothing more than the evident fact that painting is physically a flat
surface covered variously with paint. This is to observe nothing of the subjects, styles, expressive
goals or achievements in painting, matters that have no place in the new aesthetic. Robert
Barry notes that he abandoned painting because he wanted to get away from framing edges
and to be released from the wall. But this ordinary claustrophobia ties in with recent art’s
contempt for the stable and vulgarly identifies a stabilized mode with a restriction on freedom.
There is an elementary confusion here, too, because the physically finite space of painting is a
frame for what can be symbolically infinite.
There are so many different situations in which to look at something that standing right
before the painting or walking arounda sculpture couldwell be the most simple kind.
—Jan Dibbets
Question: Does one’s physical position before a work of art cancel out feeling towards
or thinking about it—andhow “simple” are these?
Oddly enough, the practitioners ofart-as-idea are exceedingly literal on this issue. With
them, an unusual claim differentiates creators on the score oftheir medium ofthe moment,
whether this be gas, philosophy, laser, post cards, Xerox, Instamatic photography, or set theory.
These have their apparent limitations, too, but they have their advantages and make their point
when introduced for unlikely consideration as art modes. The result is an unremitting exhaustion
ofpossibilities ofembodiment and gestures ofrenunciation, viewed as positive ends in themselves.
(I would have guessed that this evinces a very American penchant for packaging were it
not, through-and-through, an international development.) Haunted by the obsolescence and
ephemeralness ofhis actions, the artist ofunusual claims rededicates himselfto inconsistency.
max kozloff the trouble with art-as-idea 269