Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

from its inception for New York art galleries, the photogra phers who made coffee-table books
and showed their images of poverty, carnage, or emptiness in the Museum of Modern Art,
appear as central figures in a history of art production that in no sense depended upon them
or even saw them as central to the discourse or the praxis. This is a problem for art historians.
But it is why I became persuaded to put these “non Art works” into a museum, a gallery, a
dealership, and at least for now into art history. As Allan Kaprow observed pungently long ago,
there is no art more Art than Non Art.
II
My son the comix artist has recently interviewed me for a ’zine, called Maxine, “a literate
companion for churlish girls and rakish women.” Here’s part of their call for submissions for
an issue focusing on ambition: “Do you have it? . . . What, did it fly out the window the last
time you weren’t called on in math class? Or do you think the whole concept was concocted
by the forces of consumer capitalism and keeps us chained to deadening cycles of production,
consumption and display? Are you actually propelled through the spiral of life by something
much cooler?” He added, “What has the word ‘ambition’ meant in your life? Have you found
it important to be ambitious regarding your art and career?” My answer, unstated as such, was
that everything that had organized my work precisely precluded answering a question posed
in those terms, to us repressed and repressive. Now I recognize the words but don’t know
the answer.
III
This is an odd moment for the system of art. Through most of the 80s the demands of capital
shaped and reshaped this system, but the recession in the industrial powers after the ’87 crash
brought the eventual withdrawal of big capital. But the art system has not effectively reshaped
itself. Artists entered the 80s with an inflated sense of control over their production, supported
by a bustling field of artist-founded or artist-run centers, a fair number of grant-giving organizations
respecting artists’ ideas of what art was, and a sufficient critical establishment writing
in trade journals. Dealers were held in some disdain, since few enough showed interest in what
artists thought was hot. But the boom of the 80s tipped that world over. By the end of the
decade there were plenty of dealers but almost no more critics, and most major art journals had
become homes for academic adjuncts while cultural-studies journals, staffed by echt academics,
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