Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

3. I count curators, dealers, and historian/critics among my friends, but I think non-artist art
“professionals” are in an extremely problematic situation vis-à-vis the system. Particular individual
efforts are noteworthy, occasionally even heroic, but a re-thinking of one’s role in society is
in order for everyone.
4. One of Artforum’s more dismal chapters has been the James Collins episode. Collins’ overnight
conversion from an Art & Language sycophant to an Artforum sycophant (and useful anti-
CA hatchet man) attests to both Artforum’s power and sense ofexpediency. Collins ended a
response to Rosetta Brooks saying that discourse “. . . between the covers ofmagazines like
Artforum seems like a proper location to me. There, unlike self-edited Conceptual Art magazines,
the Editor can always say ‘No.’” Ofcourse at Art-Language we said “No” too—to him, several
times. Hence the fanaticism of a sour grapes convert. His naive belief in the absolute and legitimate
authority ofnon-artist art magazine editors, by the way, is pathetic coming from someone
whose opportunism has propelled him on to yet another career as an artist. This time around,
though, “theory” has been replaced by sex appeal.
5. It’s very instructive for artists to see which work the critics find most usable for their craft.
Take a look at old ArtNews and Artforums. Since such magazines are usually in the hands ofthe
prevailing art establishment, the critics tend to act as lawyers for the maintenance of the status
quo. The practice seems to be to use the weakest examples ofany threatening new development
to argue against, thereby facilitating a put-down of the whole movement. You can’t expect these
more malleable artists to object to the sudden windfall that’s come their way, given the set-up
ofthe art world, but by now artists at least should realize the myth of“objective” criticism/
history to be understood for what it is: creative work competitive with the artist’s, yet repressive
and tenaciously self-serving in its role as “administrator” for the artist’s community.
6. [Kosuth seems to be referring to his own “Introductory Note” and Terry Atkinson’s “From an
Art & Language Point ofView,” Art-Language, 1:2 (February 1970), pp. 25–60.]
7. “The Artist as Anthropologist,” “(Notes) on an ‘Anthropologized’ Art,” and Statement for
the Congress ofConceptual Art, Art After Philosophy and After: Collected Writings, 1966–
1990, ed. Gabriele Guercio (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), pp. 107–127, 95–
101, 93–94.
8. The current re-interest in painting—perhaps best exemplified by Brice Marden and Robert
Ryman—is a result, ironically, ofthe “success” (taken as historically “right”) ofCA in Europe.
Several intelligent dealers, supporters ofCA, but dealers nonetheless, accepted the demise of
painting sufficiently to pose the question: “So, then who are the last young painters?” Art market
momentum, being as it is oblivious to “content,” and fueled by a basic bourgeois preference of
an art ofdecoration to that ofan art ofcomplexity, is rolling on ofits own accord. Painting, which
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