Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

7. For discussion of this era, see Max Kozloff, “American Painting During the Cold War,” Art-
forum (May 1973), and Eva Cockcroft, “Abstract Expressionism: Weapon of the Cold War,” Art-
forum 12 (June 1974). On a broader cultural scale, see also Harold Rosenberg, Discovering the
Present (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1974).
8. See, for example, Terry Smith, “American Painting and British Painting: Some Issues,” Stu-
dio International (December 1974).
9. This point can also be made concerning the contradictions apparent in looking at art produced
by feminist artists, black artists and various underprivileged groups: while their social thinking
is radical, fertile and engaging, what we see of the art produced is too often as embarrassingly
dull, uniform and bureaucratic as everyone else’s.
10. To start with, you can’t help wondering about the effect of this urbanizing on the “rugged
individualism” hailed in SoHo mythology. After all, the reality of SoHo is that it is a community
based on common occupations, interests and social need, but which is kept atomized by an
individualism which no longer really holds . . . a specialists’ corporate community made up of
people who claim to dislike organization and specialization.
11. IfI appear to be arguing for some sort of“social realism,” that is not the case at all. Anyway,
we already have the social realism ofcapitalism: it is in the “lesser arts” (c.f. William Morris),
which have become the dominion ofMadison Avenue’s advertising artists. They create the propaganda
educating and inspiring everyone to greater heights ofcommodity-mindedness and consumerism.
These “lesser arts,” financed directly by corporations, would not exist without such
patronage. Ironically, the lesser arts dominate the possibilities ofany explicit social practice
(such as it is). They also provide the wedge which isolates us from the prospect of such a practice
and herds us into the cloistered anti-social state of“high culture.” We are neatly trapped by our
own elitism.
12. There is already massive overproduction on both the selling market and the job market, with
far more art produced than can be sold, while the excess of job applicants at recent College Art
Association meetings speaks for itself—and this before any further job market shrinkage.
This text first appeared in Artforum, 13:8 (April 1975), pp. 34–37.
ian burn the art market 333