Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

hang-ups about money, practicality, competition, and survival are the obstacles that bar entry
into an exquisite world ofirresponsibility. Let the artist abandon his own identity among his
peers, let him missionize for indulgence in the outer world, let him become a zealot of relaxation.
“Art work, a sort ofmoral paradigm for an exhausted work ethic, is converting into play.
As a four-letter word in a society given to games, ‘play’ does what all dirty words do: it strips
bare the myth ofculture by its artists, even.”
My guess, however, is that it is not the work, but the play ethic that is exhausted, at least
as represented in Conceptual art. Freedom from logic, moral sanctions, and formal seriousness:
none of these are issues for me as long as they do not become a reason of his being for the
artist. They are among conditions under which some work has to be accomplished, but they
are not a principle ofart-making, nor can they be equated with content. Yet the aggressive
“take-it-or-leave-it” psychology ofmuch recent art betrays, I think, uneasiness on this score.
That we are defied “to leave” the art, that we are often offered nothing, effectively, but this
defiance, is the piece’s justification. Why else do we have so much theory misconceived as
practice, thought considered as itselfan object, and hypotheses replacing experience? At
this point, play becomes desperate. Unrefreshing in itself, the contrast between the frivolity
ofthe premises and the puritanism ofstatement in art-as-idea is also unilluminating. It is a
weird deadlock.
This essay appeared in Artforum, 11:1 (September 1972), pp. 261–265.
max kozloff the trouble with art-as-idea 277