Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

function of our work may be defined by the social and economic context in which we operate;
we are ourselves, individually and collectively, the constitutive agents of the social complex that
defines the value and significance of our work. In the same way that we as artists are responsible
for the notion of art, by the formulation of art works or concepts, we are in turn responsible
to the culture itself in the formulation of the notion and function of art.
In speaking of a social and historical context in which any art work or tradition evolves
and is transmitted, it is difficult to differentiate between the political and economic order
which prevails at any particular time and place, and the ideological or intellectual traditions
which have developed concomitantly; these latter more often than not serve to reinforce and
sustain the political and economic order. Institutions tend to claim authority over the individuals
and their activity in society regardless of whatever subjective meaning they may attach to
their situation and endeavor. The ideological structure of society integrates and legitimizes the
institutional order by explaining and legitimizing its objectivated meanings.
If we speak specifically about art in modern European and American culture, we see that
its meaning, function, and value within society are clearly institutionally mediated; and
that not only artistic values, but the intellectual and ideological forces which explain, interpret
and legitimize art practice have their origins in the very same traditions that presuppose
that institutional order. Thus the structural system of the art-world, which provides a context
for the social signification of art, is itself contextually situated in a social system, the
structure of which it in turn reflects. At this point, attempts to question or transform the nature
of art beyond formalistic considerations must inevitably begin to involve a consideration not
only of the presuppositions inherent in the internal structure of art models, but also a critical
awareness of the social system which preconditions and drastically confines the possibility
of transformation.
If we recognize the institutional structure of a complex society to be (culturally) allembrasive,
then we may begin to see that in attempting to redefine, alter or redirect the social
definition or function of art—the manner and channels through which we can effectively
work—we are encountering a firmly entrenched and highly developed institutional order: not
just when confronting the obvious bureaucratic structure of the New York art world, but encountering
the force of that order on every level, from such specific factors as the persistence
of socially convenient (marketable) formal models of art (i.e. painting and sculpture) to more
abstract socially convenient (non-controversial) theoretical models (formalism, art for art’s
sake), to the most blatant sociological fact that cultural power is clearly allied with economic
power, and that to a large extent the internalizations of the dictates of the productive system
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