Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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it was possible to do a show in a small village. Today, the door has been opened to a new
academicism within curatorship. I do not think all that is unconnected to the fact that one can
now think that a possible use for the Gare d’Orsay is as museum. In the Sixties there was an
explosion: we could show anywhere, and anyone could show. This could be ridiculous, but it
was also part of the spirit: everyone was an artist, or could be. Today there is little enthusiasm
for the stimulation of production, but a huge enthusiasm for the creation of museums. This
increase in the number of art centers is one of the legacies of that period, and it implies a
change in the audience, since such centers would not exist without people to attend. People
operating in the wider context understood better what to do with those ideas than the artists
did. This is a paradox which affects what I do today since as an artist you come after the
proposal of a context. I think this is extremely funny, interesting, tricky and dangerous. The
effort which this requires from architects, keepers, curators, directors, collectors takes place in
a system which has no common measure with the art world of twenty years ago.
M.C.: Is the question not, in fact, whether Conceptual Art ever existed? Thinking of the
fact, for instance, that, perhaps with one or maybe two exceptions, I cannot remember any
artist ever accepting himself to be a conceptual artist? Am I right?
S.S.: I think Joseph (Kosuth) did.
M.C.: He’s the only one to my knowledge. Nonetheless, people have been talking about
Conceptual Art for quite a while, including a period of a few years in which they spoke of it
as a sort of threat. To some extent because of the combination that existed at the time, which
opened up more freedom for exhibitions, I just wonder whether it was because of this that
art suddenly became so fashionable. When you say that it opened up this variety of types of
exhibition—do it anywhere, by yourself, whenever—does this not have a lot to do with the
fact that art has become a real thing in economic terms? It would be paradoxical if, because of
something which never existed, one saw the emergence of art as reactionary as you describe,
but there is another way of demonstrating that conceptual art never existed: it has never
achieved power, even within the art world.
D.B.: The power has been taken from the ends of the artist and transferred to the ends
of the curator, museum director, magazine editor, or whoever. There is one example of this
which I like because it is so extraordinary. After 1967 even people with totally antagonistic
works were able, with somebody’s help or on their own, to show anywhere. It was interesting
and was difficult and it was totally for a little élite—a bakery is a vitrine for an exhibition, the
apartment of a friend is a beautiful place to show, etc. All of this was put by and almost forgotten
as stupidity, or naiveté. During the Seventies things gradually moved back to the museums,