Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

production for production’s sake
robert smithson
Gallery development starting in the late 50s and early 60s has given rise to a cultural economics
that feeds on objects and ideas through a random market. The “market place of ideas” removes
ideas from any physical reality. Because galleries and museums have been victims of “cutbacks,”
they need a cheaper product—objects are thus reduced to “ideas,” and as a result we
get “Conceptual Art.” Compared to isolated objects, isolated ideas in the metaphysical context
ofa gallery offer the random art audience an aesthetic bargain. Painting and sculpture as isolated
things in themselves are still carriers ofclass mystifications such as “quality.” Overproduction
takes a different form when it comes to modernist values. A group show of the
followers of Anthony Caro only serves to reinforce the “quality” of Caro’s sculpture. Critical
mystification then reinforces that “influence” by representing or misrepresenting the idea of
quality. The “object ofart” becomes more a condition ofa confused leisure class, and as a result
the artist is separated from his own work. The patron ofan Anthony Caro is thus conditioned
by critical representations ofreinforced “quality.” Qualities are used to mask the value ofthe
object, so that it is not merely an “object” among objects.
Production for production’s sake, art for art’s sake, sex for sex’s sake are interwoven into
an economic fabric that gives rise to that curious consumer called an “art lover.” If you can