Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

342
to force meaning to be dependent on context at every level, and from the outside. And on the
inside, the units (as well as the other ways they functioned) consisted of textual material, usually
“theory” but not always. These were self-referential in order to be self-reflexive of the model
(and art) itself. Its space consisted of “psychological space” at a unitary level (comprehension
of the text) yet the construction from adding all the parts (units) to make a “whole” had no
iconic meaning; the model’s physicality was not rarified and made magical. Outside of the
personal meaning of entering its “psychological space” no specific proposition could be “seen”
any more or less than any Investigation could be “seen.” Indeed, its interdependency from unit
to proposition to Investigation meant that the act of “seeing” my work meant “seeing” art. 10 In
this way there was a direct operational relationship between the particular (a unit) and the
general (art and culture).
While I always considered my writing on art a part of my role as an artist—interdependent
with the models—I nevertheless have maintained that to quasi-gesturally profess one’s
functioning as a writer (this being the praxiological in-the-world agent) as continually the
“model” (from the point of view of praxis) of art qua artist sets up too clear and in fact an
inappropriate distinction between the meaning of the activity and the import of the content of
what was being written. Further, in Art & Language, there has been the problem of mystification
which follows writing so special as to be too inaccessible to be “influential” on generally
applied conceptions of art-practice; thus furthering the notion that the artistic significance of
the group is the generalizable “script-making activity” rather than what is actually being said.
Language when used within the context of a “model” of art cannot be considered operationally
similar to its use in explicated “art theory.” “Modelistic” use of language is not the
voluntary and full conscious literal content-communication which it is often mistaken to be.
Certainly there is a level of specific meaning to what is stated. But its significance as a model
of art is relational, not literal; though those relations cannot be understood independent of
specific meaning, it is understood only when it is understood in its totality.
Throughout my work there has been a realization that “model” must clearly exist as such,
as internalizations and capable of a contrast to external art criticism or aesthetics. (What separates
the critic and art historian from the artist is his/her demand to have an external relationship
to art-practice; the myth of scientific “objectivity” has demanded this—in some ways one
can define the artist as one who tries to affect change from the inside, and the historian/critic
as one who tries to affect it from the outside. There can be little doubt as to why the historian/
critic is increasingly viewed as a “cultural policeman.”) Theory as praxis to be more fully understood
must withstand transformation in being reversed: praxis as theory—meaning what contextually
(semantically) functioned as art was a theory of art.