Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

The relationship is very, very close. There is a very high turnover in every sense of the word,
emotionally, artistically, and economically. So the art world has changed dramatically and with
that change it has brought with it a certain kind of art, or it has searched for a kind of art
which responds to that kind of hype shit. I’m sure that Conceptual Art corresponds to a certain
moment within the art world too, a certain kind of art showing, or lack of it, particularly.
D.B.: We started by saying that everyone was concerned in their own place with these
problems. This was true in a personal sense, but it was also true that this was forced upon
everyone. Personally, today I have the same kinds of commitments. They are not perhaps so
brilliant but they are no worse than they were. What I see, though, is that this commitment is
no longer part of the context, and when you dare to say the sort of thing which comes naturally
to me about connections which exist between what is happening in the world and what is
happening in the art world, you almost look like a zombie. Few people will ever bother to enter
into discussion, preferring to think, even if it is not true, that this is an old story all washed
up. I’m not talking about myself and a situation in which someone can say to me, “Look, you
said that twenty years ago, forget it.” People of all ages who speak of these things from an
interesting and new perspective have a very hard time getting themselves understood or even
followed. It will change again no doubt, but the present situation I find astonishing.
S.S.: All art movements since the late nineteenth century have started with a group of
people. It is impossible to promote one great artist. Once they have been established by Kahnweiler
or Castelli or Betty Parsons it is possible for the public to perceive the personality of
each individual artist. This process of individualization of each artist’s troc becomes more and
more the focus of art at the expense of exactly these kinds of social determinants which are not
one to one. The mechanisms of art promotion do everything to try and avoid the context we
are trying to understand here, at the expense of great artists. The business of art history is the
valorizing of individual artists and the selling of them. Even looking at the problem is difficult
because it is so obfuscated and blurred. No-one wants to hear that there were fifty people
thinking about this kind of thing in the Sixties, they just want to know who the fucking genius
was and who they’re going to make money with. The kind of questions we are considering are
asked by some people of nineteenth-century painting, but to do the same for the period in
which we live is very difficult. Everything works against the kind of analysis which attempts to
find a commonality.
D.B.: We can go further. This kind of thing, whether it is a fantasy, degenerate, or whatever,
did provoke and create a new style. Seth was able to do a show which was a catalogue; it
was possible to put on a show simultaneously in Paris, London, New York and New Mexico;
deke dusinberre � seth siegelaub � daniel buren � michel claura working with shadows, working with words 437