Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

316
medium, a methodology, and not an end in itself. We can learn as much, in a sense, through
the “failure” of concept art as we do through its partial success; while being critical of the (self)
presumptive and reductionist aspects of formalist tradition, we exist as its inevitable heir.
III.
Our dilemma at this point is profound and problematic in its circularity. If we assume any
theoretical stance or critical viewpoint (by which we mean to assess a previous or other presumably
“more naive” position), we must do so by use of a logic which justifies or lends authority
to our current more “sophisticated” outlook. This new position claims precedence over antecedent
or rival theories, and yet does so at the expense of obscuring its own presumptions.
Thus we are always in a position of revealing the “false” foundations of one logic while claiming
another similarly founded. This is, of course, where traditional Marxist social “science” as well
as many sociological or anthropological models, particularly the structuralist models, break
down. You cannot, on the one hand, claim that all knowledge is culturally determined, socially
derived and then in turn claim the objective validity of your own theory. In this sense the
dialectic becomes immanently useful as an ideal working model but in practice something of
an impossibility. So we proceed amidst contradiction.
Dialectical critique implies that one cannot view any object or subject at rest, for in the
very act of viewing or depicting our object, we grasp self and subject as situated in the same
historical moment from whence we depart. “Faced with the operative procedures of the nonreflective
thinking mind (whether grappling with the philosophical or artistic, political or scientific
problems and objects), dialectical thought tries not so much to complete and perfect the
application of such procedures as to widen its own attention to include them in its awareness
as well; it aims, in other words, not so much at solving the particular dilemmas in question, as
converting those problems into their own solutions on a higher level, and making the fact and
the existence of the problem itself the starting point of new research.” 5
That this model does represent at any given moment a logical closure which is immensely
problematic in application is readily apparent; but its emancipatory as well as normative
potential in the ideal is compelling. What is called for is not the replacement of one
authoritative model with another but rather the gradual creation of a community, a discourse,
an art, which is not so much the reflection of our competitive and antagonistic pursuits as it is
a common vehicle through which we might continually examine not only our own values and
assumptions, but those of the culture of and to which we ideally speak. We might see therefore