Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of
Institutions
Author(s): Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
Reviewed work(s):
Source: October, Vol. 55 (Winter, 1990), pp. 105-143
Published by: The MIT Press
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Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From
the Aestheticof Administration
to the Critique of Institutions*
BENJAMIN H. D. BUCHLOH
called beautyis noteternal.We knowthatour breathhad no
This monster
and
beginning willneverstop,butwecan, aboveall, conceiveoftheworld's
creationand its end.
- Apollinaire,Les peintrescubistes
Allergictoanyrelapseintomagic,art is part and parcel ofthedisenchantmentof theworld,to use Max Weber'sterm.It is inextricably
intertwined
withrationalization.Whatmeans and productivemethodsart has at its
disposalare all derivedfromthisnexus.
-Theodor
Adorno
A twenty-year
distanceseparatesus fromthe historicalmomentof Concepis
a
Art.
It
distance
that both allows and obliges us to contemplate the
tual
movement'shistoryin a broader perspectivethan that of the convictionsheld
during the decade of its emergence and operation (roughlyfrom 1965 to its
temporarydisappearance in 1975). For to historicizeConceptual Art requires,
firstof all, a clarificationof the wide range of oftenconflictingpositionsand the
mutuallyexclusivetypesof investigationthatwere generatedduringthisperiod.
But beyond that there are broader problemsof method and of "interest."
For at thisjuncture,any historicizationhas to considerwhattypeof questionsan
art-historical
approach- traditionallybased on the studyof visual objects- can
legitimatelypose or hope to answer in the context of artisticpractices that
explicitlyinsistedon being addressed outsideof the parametersof the production
of formallyordered, perceptual objects, and certainlyoutside of those of art
historyand criticism.And, further,such an historicizationmustalso address the
An earlier versionof thisessay was published in L'art conceptuel:
*
une perspective
(Paris: Mus&e
d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1989).
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
107
currencyof the historicalobject, i.e., the motivationto rediscoverConceptual
Art fromthe vantage point of the late 1980s: the dialecticthatlinksConceptual
Art, as the most rigorous eliminationof visualityand traditionaldefinitionsof
representation,to thisdecade of a ratherviolentrestorationof traditionalartistic
formsand procedures of production.
It is withCubism,of course, thatelementsof language surfaceprogrammatically within the visual field for the firsttime in the historyof modernist
painting,in what can be seen as a legacy of Mallarm&. It is there too that a
analysisof language and
parallel is establishedbetweenthe emergingstructuralist
the formalistexamination of representation.But Conceptual practices went
beyond such mappingof the linguisticmodel onto the perceptualmodel, outdistancing as they did the spatializationof language and the temporalizationof
visual structure.Because the proposal inherentin Conceptual Art was to replace
the object of spatialand perceptualexperience by linguisticdefinitionalone (the
work as analyticproposition),it thus constitutedthe most consequentialassault
on the statusof that object: its visuality,its commoditystatus,and its formof
distribution.Confrontingthe fullrange of the implicationsof Duchamp's legacy
for the firsttime, Conceptual practices,furthermore,reflectedupon the constructionand the role (or the death) of the authorjust as much as theyredefined
the conditionsof receivershipand the role of the spectator.Thus theyperformed
the postwarperiod's most rigorousinvestigationof the conventionsof pictorial
and sculptural representationand a critique of the traditionalparadigms of
visuality.
From its very beginning,the historicphase in which Conceptual Art was
developed comprisessuch a complex range of mutuallyopposed approaches that
any attemptat a retrospectivesurveymustbeware of the forcefulvoices (mostly
those of the artiststhemselves)demandingrespectforthe purityand orthodoxy
of the movement.Preciselybecause of thisrange of implicationsof Conceptual
Art,it would seem imperativeto resista constructionof its historyin termsof a
stylistic
homogenization,whichwould limitthathistoryto a group of individuals
and a set of strictlydefined practicesand historicalinterventions(such as, for
example, the activitiesinitiatedby Seth Siegelaub in New York in 1968 or the
authoritarianquests for orthodoxyby the English Art & Language group).
To historicizeConcept Art (to use the termas it was coined by Henry Flynt
in 1961)1 at thismoment,then,requires more thana mere reconstructionof the
As is usual with stylisticformationsin the historyof art, the origin and the name of the
1.
movementare heavilycontestedby its major participants.Barry,Kosuth,and Weiner, forexample,
vehementlydenied in recent conversationswith the author any historicalconnection to or even
knowledge of the Fluxus movementof the early 1960s. Nevertheless,at least with regard to the
inventionof the term,it seems correctwhen Henry Flyntclaimsthathe is "the originatorof concept
art, the most influentialcontemporaryart trend. In 1961 I authored (and copyrighted)the phrase
'concept art,' the rationale for it and the firstcompositionslabeled 'concept art.' My document was
ed. La Monte Young, New York, 1962." (La Monte Young's An
firstprinted in An Anthology,
was in factpublished in 1963.)
Anthology
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108
OCTOBER
movement'sself-declaredprimaryactors or a scholarlyobedience to theirproclaimed purityof intentionsand operations.2Their convictionswere voiced with
that is continuous within the
the (by now often hilarious) self-righteousness
traditionof hypertrophicclaims made in avant-gardedeclarationsof the twentiethcentury.For example, one of the campaign statementsbyJoseph Kosuth
fromthe late 1960s asserts: "Art before the modern period is as much art as
Neanderthal man is man. It is for this reason that around the same time I
Because a conceptual workof art in
replaced the term 'work' forart proposition.
the traditionalsense, is a contradictionin terms."'
It seems crucial to rememberthat the oppositionswithinthe formationof
Conceptual Art arose partlyfromthe differentreadings of Minimal sculpture
(and of its pictorialequivalentsin the paintingof Mangold, Ryman,and Stella)
and in the consequences the generationof artistsemergingin 1965 drew from
those readings-just as the divergencesalso resultedfromthe impactof various
artistswithinthe Minimalistmovementas one or anotherwas chosen by the new
generationas itscentralfiguresof reference.For example, Dan Graham seems to
have been primarilyengaged withthe workof Sol LeWitt. In 1965 he organized
LeWitt's firstone-personexhibition(held in his gallery,called Daniels Gallery);
in 1967 he wrote the essay "Two Structures:Sol LeWitt"; and in 1969 he
concluded the introductionto his self-publishedvolume of writingsentitledEnd
Momentsas follows:"It should be obvious the importanceSol LeWitt's workhas
had formywork. In the articlehere included (writtenfirstin 1967, rewrittenin
1969) I hope only that the after-the-fact
appreciation hasn't too much subwork
his
seminal
into
mycategories."4
merged
A second contestantforthe termwas Edward Kienholz, withhis seriesof ConceptTableaux in
1963 (in fact,occasionallyhe is stillcreditedwiththe discoveryof the term.See forexample Roberta
Smith'sessay"Conceptual Art," in ConceptsofModernArt,ed. Nikos Stangos [New York: Harper and
Row, 1981], pp. 256-70).
JosephKosuth claimsin his "Sixth Investigation1969 Proposition14" (publishedby Gerd de
Vries,Cologne, 1971, n.p.) thathe used the term"conceptual" forthe firsttime "in a seriesof notes
Art
dated 1966 and publisheda year laterin a catalogue foran exhibitiontitledNon-Anthropomorphic
at the now defunctLannis Galleryin New York."
And then there are of course (most officially
accepted by all participants)Sol LeWitt's two
famoustextsfrom1967 and 1969, the "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," firstpublishedin Artforum,
vol. V, no. 10, pp. 56- 57 and "Sentences on Conceptual Art," firstpublishedin Art& Language,vol.
1, no. 1 (May 1969), pp. 11-13.
For a typicalexample of an attemptto writethe historyof Conceptual Art by blindlyadopting
2.
and repeating the claims and convictionsof one of that history'sfigures,see Gudrun Inboden,
"JosephKosuth--Artist and Criticof Modernism,"inJosephKosuth:TheMakingofMeaning(Stuttgart: StaatsgalerieStuttgart,1981), pp. 11-27.
3.
Joseph Kosuth, The SixthInvestigation1969 Proposition14 (Cologne: Gerd De Vries/Paul
Maenz, 1971), n. p.
Dan Graham, End Moments(New York, 1969), n.p. The other Minimalistswithwhose work
4.
Graham seems to have been particularlyinvolved were Dan Flavin (Graham wrote the catalogue
essay for Flavin's exhibitionat the Museum of ContemporaryArt in Chicago in 1967) and Robert
Morris(whose work he discussed later extensivelyin his essay "Income Piece" in 1973).
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!i~ili!!!!!!!ii!!
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MelBochner.
WorkingDrawingsand OtherVisible
Meantto Be
Thingson PaperNot Necessarily
Viewedas Art.Installation,
SchoolofVisualArts
1966.
December,
Gallery,
Mel Bochner,by contrast,seems to have chosen Dan Flavin as his primary
figureof reference.He wroteone of the firstessayson Dan Flavin (it is in facta
text-collageof accumulated quotations,all of which relate in one way or the
other to Flavin's work).5Shortlythereafter,the text-collageas a presentational
mode would, indeed, become formativewithinBochner's activities,for in the
same year he organized what was probablythe firsttrulyconceptualexhibition
(both in termsof materialsbeing exhibitedand in termsof presentationalstyle).
EntitledWorking
Meant
Drawingsand OtherVisibleThingsonPaper NotNecessarily
to Be Viewedas Art(at the School of Visual Arts in 1966), mostof the Minimal
artistswere presentalong witha numberof thenstillratherunknownPost-Minimal and Conceptual artists.Having assembled drawings,sketches,documents,
tabulations,and other paraphernaliaof the productionprocess,the exhibition
limiteditselfto presentingthe "originals" in Xeroxes assembledintofourlooseleafbindersthatwere installedon pedestalsin the centerof the exhibitionspace.
While one should not overestimatethe importanceof such features(nor should
one underestimatethe pragmaticsof such a presentationalstyle),Bochner's
interventionclearlymoved to transformboth the formatand space of exhibitions.As such,it indicatesthatthe kindof transformation
of exhibitionspace and
of the devices throughwhichart is presentedthat was accomplishedtwo years
5.
Mel Bochner, "Less is Less (for Dan Flavin)," Artand Artists(Summer 1966).
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110
OCTOBER
later by Seth Siegelaub's exhibitionsand publications(e.g., The XeroxBook)had
already become a common concern of the generationof post-Minimalartists.
A thirdexample of the close generationalsequencingwould be the factthat
JosephKosuthseemsto have chosen Donald Juddas his keyfigure:at leastone of
the early tautologicalneon works fromthe Proto-Investigations
is dedicated to
Donald Judd; and throughoutthe second part of "Art afterPhilosophy"(published in November, 1969), Judd's name, work,and writingsare invokedwith
the same frequencyas thoseof Duchamp and Reinhardt.At the end of thisessay,
Kosuth explicitlystates: "I would hastilyadd to that,however,that I was certainlymuch more influencedby Ad Reinhardt,Duchamp via Johnsand Morris,
....................................,
WallFloorPiece(ThreeSquares).1966.
Sol LeWitt.
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
111
and by Donald Judd than I ever was specificallyby LeWitt . .. Pollock and
Judd are, I feel, the beginningand end of American dominance in art."6
Sol LeWitt'sStructures
It would seem that LeWitt's proto-Conceptualwork of the early 1960s
originatedin an understandingof the essentialdilemmathathas hauntedartistic
production since 1913, when its basic paradigms of opposition were first
formulated-a dilemma that could be described as the conflictbetween structural specificityand random organization. For the need, on the one hand, for
both a systematicreductionand an empiricalverificationof the perceptualdata
of a visual structurestandsopposed to the desire,on the other hand, to assigna
new "idea" or meaning to an object randomly(in the manner of Mallarme's
"transposition")as though the object were an empty(linguistic)signifier.
This was the dilemma that Roland Barthesdescribed in 1956 as the "difficultyof our times" in the concluding paragraphsof Mythologies:
It seems thatthisis a difficulty
pertainingto our times:there is as yet
and
one
this
choice can bear onlyon two equally
only
possible choice,
extrememethods:eitherto posit a realitywhichis entirelypermeable
to history,and ideologize; or, conversely,to posit a realitywhich is
ultimately
impenetrable,irreducible,and, in this case, poetize. In a
I
do
not yet see a synthesisbetween ideology and poetry(by
word,
I
poetry understand,in a verygeneral way,the search forthe inalienable meaning of things).7
Both critiquesof the traditionalpracticesof representationin the American
postwarcontexthad at firstappeared mutuallyexclusive and had oftenfiercely
attacked each other. For example, Reinhardt's extreme form of self-critical,
perceptual positivismhad gone too far for most of the New York School artists
and certainlyforthe apologistsof American modernism,mainlyGreenbergand
and selfFried, who had constructeda paradoxical dogma of transcendentalism
referentialcritique.On the other hand, Reinhardtwas as vociferousas they- if
6.
Joseph Kosuth, "Art after Philosophy" (Part II), in The MakingofMeaning,p. 175. The list
would seem complete,ifit were not forthe absence of Mel Bochner's and On Kawara's name,and its
explicit negation of the importance of Sol LeWitt. According to Bochner, who had become an
instructorat the School of Visual Artsin 1965, Joseph Kosuth workedwithhim as a studentin 1965
and 1966. Dan Graham mentionedthat during that time Kosuth was also a frequentvisitorto the
studios of On Kawara and Sol LeWitt. Kosuth's explicitnegationmakes one wonder whetherit was
not preciselySol LeWitt's series of the so-called "Structures"(such as Red Square, WhiteLetters,for
example, produced in 1962 and exhibitedin 1965) thatwas one of the crucialpointsof departurefor
the formulationof Kosuth's Proto-Investigations.
Roland Barthes,Mythologies,
7.
trans.AnnetteLavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), p. 158.
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112
OCTOBER
not more so - in his contemptforthe opposite,whichis to say,the Duchampian
tradition.This is evident in Ad Reinhardt'scondescendingremarksabout both
Duchamp--"I've never approved or liked anythingabout Marcel Duchamp.
You have to chose between Duchamp and Mondrian"-and his legacyas represented throughCage and Rauschenberg--"Then the whole mixture,the number of poets and musiciansand writersmixed up withart. Disreputable. Cage,
Cunningham,Johns, Rauschenberg. I'm against the mixture of all the arts,
against the mixtureof art and life you know, everydaylife."8
What slid by unnoticedwas the factthatboth these critiquesof representation led to highlycomparable formaland structuralresults(e.g., Rauschenberg's
monochromes in 1951-1953 and Reinhardt's monochromes such as Black
Quadruptychin 1955). Furthermore,even while made from opposite vantage
denied the
points,the criticalargumentsaccompanyingsuch workssystematically
traditionalprinciplesand functionsof visual representation,constructingastonishinglysimilarlitaniesof negation. This is as evident,for example, in the text
prepared byJohnCage forRauschenberg'sWhitePaintingsin 1953 as it is in Ad
Reinhardt's 1962 manifesto"Art as Art." FirstCage:
To whom,No subject,No image, No taste,No object, No beauty,No
talent, No technique (no why), No idea, No intention,No art, No
feeling,No black, No white no (and). Aftercareful considerationI
have come to the conclusion that there is nothingin these paintings
thatcould not be changed, that theycan be seen in any lightand are
not destroyedby the action of shadows. Hallelujah! the blind can see
again; the water is fine.9
And then Ad Reinhardt'smanifestofor his own "Art as Art" principle:
No lines or imaginings,no shapes or composingsor representings,no
visionsor sensationsor impulses,no symbolsor signsor impastos,no
decoratingsor coloringsor picturings,no pleasures or pains, no accidents or ready-mades,no things,no ideas, no relations,no attributes,
no qualities--nothing that is not of the essence.'0
Ad Reinhardt'sempiricistAmerican formalism(condensed in his "Art as
Art" formula)and Duchamp's critique of visuality(voiced for example in the
The firstof the two quotationsis to be foundin Ad Reinhardt'sSkowhegan lecture,delivered
8.
in 1967, quoted by Lucy Lippard in Ad Reinhardt(New York, 1981), p. 195. The second statement
appears in an interviewwith Mary Fuller, published as "An Ad ReinhardtMonologue," Artforum,
vol. 10 (November 1971), pp. 36-41.
9.
John Cage (statementin reaction to the controversyengendered by the exhibitionof Rauschenberg's all-whitepaintingsat the Stable Gallery,September 15-October 3, 1953). Printed in
EmilyGenauer's column in the New YorkHerald Tribune,December 27, 1953, p. 6 (section 4).
Ad Reinhardt,"Art as Art," ArtInternational(December 1962). Reprintedin Artas Art:The
10.
SelectedWritings
ofAd Reinhardt,ed. Barbara Rose (New York: Viking, 1975), p. 56.
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
113
famous quip: "All my work in the period before the Nude was visual painting.
Then I came to the idea.
"") appear in the historicallyratherunlikelyfusion
...
the two positionsin the mid-1960s, leading to
of Kosuth's attemptto integrate
his own formula,which he deployed startingin 1966, "Art as Idea as Idea." It
should be noted, however,thatthe strangeadmixtureof the nominalistposition
of Duchamp (and its consequences) and the positivistpositionof Reinhardt(and
its implications)was not only accomplished in 1965 with the beginnings of
Conceptual Art but was well-preparedin the work of Frank Stella, who in his
Black Paintingsfrom 1959 claimed both Rauschenberg'smonochromepaintings
and Reinhardt'spaintingsas pointsof departure. Finally,it was the work of Sol
- thatdemarcatesthatprecise
LeWitt- in particularworksuch as his Structures
transition,integratingas they do both language and visual sign in a structural
model.
The surfacesof these Structuresfrom 1961 to 1962 (some of which used
singleframesfromMuybridge'sserialphotographs)carriedinscriptionsin bland
the hue and shape of those surfaces(e.g., "RED SQUARE")
letteringidentifying
and the inscriptionitself(e.g., "WHITE LETTERS"). Since these inscriptions
named either the support or the inscription(or, in the middle section of the
painting,both supportand inscriptionin a paradoxical inversion),theycreated a
continuousconflictin the viewer/reader.This conflictwas notjust over whichof
the two roles should be performedin relationto the painting.To a largerextent
it concerned the reliabilityof the given informationand the sequence of that
information:was the inscriptionto be given primacyover the visual qualities
identifiedby the linguisticentity,or was the perceptualexperience of the visual,
formal,and chromaticelement anteriorto its mere denominationby language?
Clearly this "mapping of the linguisticonto the perceptual" was not arguin
ing favorof "the idea" -or linguisticprimacy- or the definitionof the work
of art as an analyticproposition.Quite to the contrary,the permutationalcharacter of the work suggestedthat the viewer/readersystematically
performall the
visual and textual options the painting'sparametersallowed for. This included
an acknowledgmentof the painting'scentral,square element:a spatial void that
revealed the underlyingwall surface as the painting's architecturalsupport in
actual space, therebysuspendingthe reading of the paintingbetween architectural structureand linguisticdefinition.
Rather than privilegingone over the other, LeWitt's work (in its dialogue
withJasperJohns'slegacyof paradox) insistedon forcingthe inherentcontradictions of the two spheres (that of the perceptual experience and that of the
linguisticexperience) into the highestpossible relief. Unlike Frank Stella's reone step furtherinto
sponse to Johns,whichforcedmodernistself-referentiality
the ultimatecul de sac of itspositivistconvictions(his notoriousstatement"what
11.
Marcel Duchamp, interviewwithFrancis Roberts (1963), ArtNews,(December 1968), p. 46.
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Sol LeWitt.
Untitled(Red Square,WhiteLetters).
1962.
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you see is whatyou see" would attestto thatjust as muchas the developmentof
his later work),12Sol LeWitt's dialogue (with both Johns and Stella, and ulti-
12. Stella's famous statementwas of course made in the conversationbetween Bruce Glaser,
Donald Judd, and himself,in February 1964, and published in Art News (September 1966), pp.
55-61. To what extent the problem of this dilemma haunted the generationof Minimal artists
becomes evident when almost ten years later, in an interviewwithJack Burnham,Robert Morris
would stillseem to be responding(if perhaps unconsciously)to Stella's notoriousstatement:
Paintingceased to interestme. There were certainthingsabout it that seemed very
problematicto me. ... There was a big conflictbetweenthe factof doing thisthing,
and what it looked like later. It just didn't seem to make much sense to me. Primarily
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
115
mately,of course, withGreenberg) developed a dialecticalpositionwithregard
to the positivistlegacy.
In contrastto Stella, his work now revealed thatthe modernistcompulsion
for empiricistself-reflexiveness
not only originated in the scientificpositivism
which is the foundinglogic of capitalism(undergirdingits industrialformsof
productionjust as muchas itsscienceand theory),but that,foran artisticpractice
that internalizedthis positivismby insistingon a purelyempiricistapproach to
vision, there would be a final destiny.This destinywould be to aspire to the
conditionof tautology.
It is not surprising,then,that when LeWitt formulatedhis second text on
Conceptual Art-in his "Sentences on Conceptual Art" from the spring of
firstsentence should programmaticallystate the radical difference
1969-rthe
between
the logic of scientificproductionand that of aestheticexperience:
1. Conceptual artistsare mysticsratherthan rationalists.They leap to
conclusionsthat logic cannot reach.
2. Rationaljudgments repeat rationaljudgments.
3. Irrationaljudgments lead to new experience.13
RobertMorris'sParadoxes
Theproblemhas beenfor sometimeone ofideas-those mostadmiredare
theoneswiththebiggest,
mostincisiveideas (e.g.,Cage & Duchamp) .
I
thinkthattodayart is a formofart history.
-
Robert Morris,letterto Henry Flynt,8/13/1962
Quite evidently,Morris's approach to Duchamp, in the early 1960s, had
already been based on reading the readymade in analogy with a Saussurean
model of language: a model where meaning is generated by structuralrelationships.As Morrisrecalls,his own "fascinationwithand respectforDuchamp was
related to his linguisticfixation,to the idea that all of his operations were
ultimatelybuilt on a sophisticatedunderstandingof language itself."'4Accordingly, Morris's early work (from 1961 to 1963) already pointed toward an
understandingof Duchamp thattranscendedthe limiteddefinitionof the readybecause there was an activityI did in time,and there was a certainmethod to it. And
thatdidn't seem to have any relationshipto the thingat all. There is a certainresolution
in the theaterwhere thereis real time,and whatyoudo is whatyoudo. (emphasisadded)
Robert Morris, unpublished interviewwithJack Burnham, November 21, 1975, Robert Morris
Archive.Quoted in Maurice Berger,Labyrinths:
RobertMorris,Minimalism,
and the1960s (New York:
Harper & Row, 1989), p. 25.
13.
Sol LeWitt, "Sentences on Conceptual Art," firstpublished in 0-9, New York (1969), and
Art-Language,Coventry(May 1969), p. 11.
14.
Robert Morrisas quoted in Berger,Labyrinths,
p. 22.
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116
OCTOBER
made as the mere displacementof traditionalmodes of artisticproductionby a
new aestheticof the speech act ("this is a workof art ifI say so"). And in marked
distinctionfromthe Conceptualists'subsequentexclusivefocuson the unassisted
readymades, Morris had, from the late 1950s when he discovered Duchamp,
been particularlyengaged withwork such as ThreeStandard Stoppagesand the
Notesfor theLarge Glass (The GreenBox).
Morris'sproductionfromthe early 1960s, in particularworkslike Card File
(1962), MeteredBulb (1963), I-Box (1963), Litanies,and the Statement
ofAesthetic
also entitledDocument(1963), indicateda reading of Duchamp that
Withdrawal,
clearlywentbeyondJohns's,leading towardsa structuraland semioticdefinition
of the functionsof the readymade. As Morrisdescribed it retrospectively
in his
1970 essay "Some Notes on the Phenomenologyof Making":
There is a binaryswingbetweenthe arbitraryand the nonarbitraryor
"motivated" which is . . . an historical,evolutionary,or diachronic
featureof language's developmentand change. Language is not plasticart but bothare formsof human behaviorand the structuresof one
can be compared to the structuresof the other.'5
While it is worthnoticingthatby 1970 Morrisalready reaffirmed
apodictithe
ontological characterof the category"plastic" art versus that of "lancally
guage," it was in the early 1960s that his assaultson the traditionalconcepts of
visualityand plasticityhad already begun to lay some of the crucial foundations
for the developmentof an art practiceemphasizingits parallels,if not identity,
withthe systemsof linguisticsigns,i.e., Conceptual Art.
Most importantly,as early as 1961 in his Box withtheSound of Its Own
Making, Morris had ruptured both. On the one hand, it dispenses with the
Modernist quest for medium-specificpurityas much as with its sequel in the
positivistconvictionof a purelyperceptualexperienceoperatingin Stella's visual
tautologiesand the earlyphases of Minimalism.And on the other,by counteracting the supremacyof the visualwiththatof an auditoryexperienceof equal ifnot
higher importance,he renewed the Duchampian quest for a nonretinalart. In
Box withtheSound ofIts Own Making,as much as in the subsequent works,the
critique of the hegemonyof traditionalcategories of the visual is enacted not
only in the (acoustic or tactile) disturbanceof the purityof perceptual experience, but it is performedas well througha literalistact of denyingthe viewer
practicallyall (at least traditionallydefined)visual information.
This strategyof a "perceptual withdrawal"leads in each of the worksfrom
the early 1960s to a differentanalysisof the constituentfeaturesof the structured object and the modes of reading it generates. In I-Box, for example, the
vieweris confrontedwitha semioticpun (on the wordsI and eye)just as much as
Robert Morris, "Some Notes on the Phenomenologyof Making: The Search for the Moti15.
vol. 9 (April 1970), p. 63.
vated," Artforum,
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RobertMorris.I-Box. 1962.
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witha structuralsleightof hand fromthe tactile(the viewerhas to manipulate
the box physicallyto seetheI of theartist)throughthe linguisticsign(the letterI
definesthe shape of the framing/display
device: the "door" of the box) to the
visualrepresentation(the nude photographicportraitof theartist)and back. It is
of course this very tripartitedivisionof the aestheticsignifier- its separation
into object, linguisticsign, and photographicreproduction-that we will encounter in infinitevariations,didacticallysimplified(to operate as stunning
tautologies)and stylistically
designed (to take the place of paintings)in Kosuth's
after
1966.
Proto-Investigations
In Document(Statementof AestheticWithdrawal),Morris takes the literal
negationof the visual even further,in clarifyingthatafterDuchamp the readymade is notjust a neutralanalyticproposition(in the mannerof an underlying
statementsuch as "this is a work of art"). Beginningwiththe readymade,the
workof art had become the ultimatesubjectof a legal definitionand theresultof
institutional
validation.In the absence of any specifically
visualqualitiesand due
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118
OCTOBER
to the manifestlack of any (artistic)manual competenceas a criterionof distinction, all the traditional criteria of aesthetic judgment--of taste and of
- have been programmatically
voided. The resultof thisis that
connoisseurship
the definitionof the aestheticbecomes on the one hand a matterof linguistic
convention and on the other the functionof both a legal contract and an
institutionaldiscourse(a discourseof power ratherthan taste).
This erosion works,then,notjust againstthe hegemonyof the visual,but
against the possibilityof any other aspect of the aestheticexperience as being
autonomousand self-sufficient.
That the introductionof legalisticlanguage and
an administrativestyleof the materialpresentationof the artisticobject could
effectsuch an erosion had of course been prefiguredin Duchamp's practiceas
well. In 1944 he had hireda notaryto inscribea statementof authenticity
on his
1919 L.H.O.O.Q., affirming
that ". . . this is to certifythat thisis the original
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.....
ConceptualArt 1962-1969
119
'ready-made'L.H.O.O.Q. Paris 1919." What was possiblystilla pragmaticmaneuver with Duchamp (although certainlyone in line withthe pleasure he took in
contemplatingthe vanishingbasis forthe legitimatedefinitionof the workof art
in visual competence and manual skill alone) would soon become one of the
constituentfeaturesof subsequent developmentsin Conceptual Art. Most obviouslyoperatingin the certificatesissued by Piero Manzoni definingpersonsor
partial persons as temporaryor lifetimeworks of art (1960-61), this is to be
found at the same timein Yves Klein's certificatesassigningzones of immaterial
pictorialsensibilityto the various collectorswho acquired them.
But thisaestheticof linguisticconventionsand legalisticarrangementsnot
the validityof the traditionalstudio aesthetic,it also cancels the
denies
only
aestheticof productionand consumptionwhichhad stillgoverned Pop Art and
Minimalism.
Justas the modernistcritique(and ultimateprohibition)of figurativerepresentationhad become the increasinglydogmatic law for pictorialproductionin
the firstdecade of the twentiethcentury,so Conceptual Art now instatedthe
prohibitionof any and all visualityas the inescapableaestheticrule forthe end of
the twentiethcentury.Just as the readymade had negated not only figurative
representation,authenticity,and authorship while introducingrepetitionand
the series(i.e., the law of industrialproduction)to replace the studioaestheticof
the handcraftedoriginal,Conceptual Art came to displace even thatimage of the
mass-producedobject and its aestheticizedformsin Pop Art, replacing an aestheticof industrialproductionand consumptionwithan aestheticof administrative and legal organizationand institutionalvalidation.
Edward Ruscha's Books
One major example of these tendencies--acknowledged both by Dan Graham as a major inspirationfor his own "Homes for America" and by Kosuth,
whose "Art afterPhilosophy" names him as a proto-Conceptualartist-would
be the early book work of Edward Ruscha. Among the key strategiesof future
Conceptual Art that were initiatedby Ruscha in 1963 were the following:to
chose the vernacular (e.g., architecture)as referent;to deploy photography
as the representationalmedium; and to develop a new form of
systematically
distribution(e.g., the commerciallyproduced book as opposed to the traditionally craftedlivred'artiste.
Typically,referenceto architecturein any formwhateverwould have been
unthinkablein the context of American-typeformalismand AbstractExpressionism(or withinthe European postwaraestheticforthatmatter)untilthe early
1960s. The devotion to a privateaestheticof contemplativeexperience,withits
concomitantabsence of any systematicreflectionof the social functionsof artistic
production and their potential and actual publics, had, in fact,precluded any
explorationof the interdependenceof architecturaland artisticproduction,be it
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VARIOUS
Edward Ruscha. Four Books. 1962-1966.
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AndyWarhol.FromThirteen Most Wanted Men.
1964.
even in the mostsuperficialand trivialformsof architecturaldecor.16 It was not
untilthe emergenceof Pop Art in the early 1960s, in particularin the workof
Bernd and Hilla Becher, Claes Oldenburg, and Edward Ruscha, thatthe references to monumentalsculpture(even in itsnegationas theAnti-Monument)
and to
vernaculararchitecturereintroduced(even ifonlyby implication)a reflectionon
public (architecturaland domestic)space, therebyforegroundingthe absence of
a developed artisticreflectionon the problematicof the contemporarypublics.
In January1963 (the year of Duchamp's firstAmericanretrospective,
held
at the Pasadena Art Museum), Ruscha, a relativelyunknownLos Angeles artist,
GasolineStations.The book, modest
decided to publisha book entitledTwenty-Six
It would be worthwhileto explore the factthatartistslike ArshileGorkyunder the impactof
16.
the WPA programwould stillhave been concernedwiththeaestheticsof muralpaintingwhenhe was
commissionedto decorate the NewarkAirportbuilding,and thateven Pollock tinkeredwiththe idea
of an architecturaldimensionfor his paintings,wonderingwhethertheycould be transformedinto
architecturalpanels. As is well known,Mark Rothko'sinvolvementwiththe Seagram Corporationto
produce a set of decorativepanels for theircorporate headquartersended in disaster,and Barnett
Newman's synagogueprojectwas abandoned as well. All of theseexceptionswould confirmthe rule
that the postwar aesthetichad undergone the most rigorous privatizationand a reversal of the
reflectionon the inextricablelink between artisticproductionand public social experienceas they
had markedthe 1920s.
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in formatand production,was as removedfromthe traditionof the artist'sbook
as itsiconographywas opposed to everyaspect of the officialAmericanart of the
1950s and early '60s: the legacy of AbstractExpressionismand Color Field
painting.The book was, however, not so alien to the artisticthoughtof the
emerginggeneration,if one remembersthatthe year beforean unknownartist
fromNew York bythe name of AndyWarholhad exhibiteda serialarrangement
of thirty-two
stenciledpaintingsdepicting Campbell Soup cans arranged like
objectson shelvesin the Ferus Gallery.While both Warhol and Ruscha accepted
a notionof public experiencethatwas inescapablycontainedin the conditionsof
consumption,both artistsaltered the mode of productionas well as the formof
distributionof theirworksuch thata different
public was potentiallyaddressed.
Ruscha's vernaculariconographyevolved to the same extentas Warhol's
had fromthe Duchamp and Cage legacyof an aestheticof "indifference,"and
fromthe commitmentto an antihierarchicalorganizationof a universallyvalid
Indeed, random samplingand aleatory
facticity,
operatingas total affirmation.
of possibleobjects (Ruscha's Twenty-Six
choice froman infinity
GasolineStations,
Warhol's ThirteenMost WantedMen) would soon become essentialstrategiesof
the aestheticof Conceptual Art: one thinksof AlighieroBoetti's The Thousand
LongestRivers,of Robert Barry'sOne Billion Dots, of On Kawara's One Million
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OCTOBER
122
in thiscontext,of Doug Huebler's life-longproject,
Years,or, mostsignificantly
entitledVariablePiece: 70. This workclaims to documentphotographically"the
existenceof everyonealive in order to produce the mostauthenticand inclusive
representationof the human species that may be'assembled in that manner.
Editions of this work will be periodicallyissued in a varietyof topical modes:
'100,000 people,' '1,000,000 people,' '10,000,000 people,' . . . etc." Or again,
thereare the worksby StanleyBrouwn or Hanne Darboven where in each case
an arbitrary,abstractprincipleof pure quantificationreplaces traditionalprinciples of pictorial or sculptural organization and/or compositional relational
order.
In the same mannerthatRuscha's books shiftedthe formalorganizationof
the representation,the mode of presentationitselfbecame transformed:instead
of liftingphotographic(or print-derived)
imageryfrommass-culturalsourcesand
transformingthese images into painting (as Warhol and the Pop Artistshad
practicedit), Ruscha would now deploy photographydirectly,in an appropriate
printingmedium. And it was a particularlylaconic typeof photographyat that,
one thatexplicitlysituateditselfas muchoutsideof all conventionsof art photographyas outside of those of the venerable traditionof documentaryphotography,least of all thatof "concerned" photography.This devotion to a deadpan,
anonymous,amateurishapproach to photographicformcorrespondsexactlyto
Ruscha's iconographicchoice of the architecturalbanal. Thus at all three levels
-the given forms
-iconography, representationalform,mode of distribution
of artisticobject no longer seemed acceptable in their traditionallyspecialized
and privilegedpositions. As Victor Burgin put it with hindsight:"One of the
thingsConceptual Art attemptedwas the dismantlingof the hierarchyof media
according to which painting (sculpture trailingslightlybehind it) is assumed
inherentlysuperiorto, most notably,photography.""7
Accordingly,even in 1965- 66, withthe earlieststagesof Conceptual practices, we witnessthe emergence of diametricallyopposed approaches: Joseph
on the one hand (according to their author conKosuth's Proto-Investigations
ceived and produced in 1965);18 and a work such as Dan Graham's Homesfor
Victor Burgin, "The Absence of Presence," in The End of Art Theory(Atlantic Highlands,
17.
1986), p. 34.
In the preparationof thisessay,I have not been able to finda singlesource or documentthat
18.
would confirmwith definitecredibilityKosuth's claim that these works of the Proto-Investigations
were actuallyproduced and existed physicallyin 1965 or 1966, when he (at that time twentyyears
old) was stilla studentat the School of Visual Artsin New York. Nor was Kosuthable to provideany
documentsto make the claimsverifiable.By contrastthese claimswere explicitlycontestedby all the
artistsI interviewedwho knew Kosuth at that time, none of them rememberingseeing any of the
ArtbyFour Young
before February 1967, in the exhibitionNon-Anthropomorphic
Proto-Investigations
Artists,organized by Joseph Kosuth at the Lannis Gallery. The artistswith whom I conducted
interviewswere Robert Barry,Mel Bochner,Dan Graham,and Lawrence Weiner. I am not necessarcould not have been done by Kosuth at the age of twenty
ilysuggestingthat the Proto-Investigations
or that the logical steps
(afterall, Frank Stella had painted his Black Paintingsat age twenty-three),
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Dan Graham.HomesforAmerica(ArtsMagazine).
December1966.
Americaon the other.Publishedin ArtsMagazinein December 1966, the latteris
a work which- unknownto most and long unrecognized-programmatically
emphasized structuralcontingencyand contextuality,addressingcrucial questionsof presentationand distribution,of audience and authorship.At the same
aestheticsof pertime the work linked Minimalism'sesotericand self-reflexive
mutationto a perspectiveon the architectureof massculture(therebyredefining
the legacyof Pop Art). The Minimalists'detachmentfromany representationof
contemporarysocial experience upon which Pop Art had insisted,however
resultedfromtheirattemptto constructmodels of visual meaningand
furtively,
experiencethatjuxtaposed formalreductionwitha structuraland phenomenological model of perception.
fusingDuchamp and ReinhardtwithMinimalismand Pop Art leading up to the Proto-Investigations
could not have been takenbyan artistof Kosuth'shistoricalawarenessand strategicintelligence.But
I am sayingthatnone of the workdated by Kosuth to 1965 or 1966 can-until furtherevidence is
produced-actually be documentedas 1965 or 1966 or dated withany credibility.By contrast,the
at thattime),such as Something,
wordpaintingsof On Kawara (whose studioKosuthvisitedfrequently
are reproduced and documented.
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OCTOBER
124
By contrast,Graham's workargued foran analysisof (visual) meaningthat
defined signs as both structurallyconstitutedwithinthe relationsof language's
systemand grounded in the referentof social and politicalexperience. Further,
Graham's dialectical conception of visual representationpolemicallycollapsed
the differencebetweenthe spaces of productionand those of reproduction(what
Seth Siegelaub would,in 1969, call primaryand secondaryinformation).'9Anticipating the work's actual modes of distributionand reception withinits very
structureof production,HomesforAmericaeliminatedthe differencebetweenthe
artisticconstructand its(photographic)reproduction,the differencebetweenan
exhibitionof art objects and the photographof its installation,the difference
betweenthe architecturalspace of the galleryand the space of the catalogue and
the art magazine.
JosephKosuth'sTautologies
In oppositionto this,Kosuth was arguing,in 1969, preciselyforthe continuation and expansion of modernism'spositivistlegacy,and doing so withwhat
musthave seemed to him at the timethe mostradical and advanced tools of that
tradition:Wittgenstein'slogical positivismand language philosophy(he emphaticallyaffirmedthiscontinuitywhen,in the firstpartof "Art afterPhilosophy,"he
states,"Certainlylinguisticphilosophycan be considered the heir to empiricism
. ."). Thus, even while claimingto displace the formalismof Greenberg and
For Kosuth
Fried, he in fact updated modernism'sproject of self-reflexiveness.
art by subjectingboth
stabilizedthe notion of a disinterestedand self-sufficient
-the Wittgensteinianmodel of the language game as well as the Duchampian
model of the readymade- to the stricturesof a model of meaningthatoperates
in the modernisttraditionof that paradox Michel Foucault has called modthought.This is to say that in 1968 artistic
ernity's"empirico-transcendental"
for
is
still
the
result, Kosuth,of artisticintentionas it constitutesitself
production
above all in self-reflexiveness
(even if it is now discursiveratherthan perceptual,
than
rather
essentialist).20
epistemological
19.
"For many years it has been well known that more people are aware of an artist'swork
through(1) the printedmedia or (2) conversationthanby directconfrontationwiththeart itself.For
paintingand sculpture,where the visual presence-color, scale, size, location-is importantto the
work, the photograph or verbalizationof that work is a bastardizationof the art. But when art
concernsitselfwiththingsnot germaneto physicalpresence,itsintrinsic(communicative)value is not
altered by its presentationin printedmedia. The use of catalogues and books to communicate(and
disseminate)art is the most neutralmeans to presentthe new art. The catalogue can now act as the
primaryinformationforthe exhibition,as opposed to secondaryinformationaboutart in magazines,
catalogues, etc. and in some cases the 'exhibition' can be the 'catalogue."' (Seth Siegelaub, "On
Exhibitionsand the World at Large" [interviewwith Charles Harrison],StudioInternational,[December 1969].)
This differentiation
is developed in Hal Foster's excellent discussionof these paradigmatic
20.
differencesas theyemerge firstin Minimalismin his essay "The Crux of Minimalism,"in Individuals
(Los Angeles: The Museum of ContemporaryArt, 1986), p. 162-183.
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
125
At the very moment when the complementaryformationsof Pop and
MinimalArt had, forthe firsttime,succeeded in criticizingthe legacyof Amerithis project is all the
can-typeformalismand its prohibitionof referentiality,
more astounding. The privilegingof the literal over the referentialaxis of
(visual) language- as Greenberg's formalistaesthetichad entailed- had been
countered in Pop Art by a provocativedevotion to mass-culturaliconography.
Then, both Pop and Minimal Art had continuouslyemphasized the universal
presence of industrialmeans of reproductionas inescapable framingconditions
for artisticmeans of production,or, to put it differently,
theyhad emphasized
thatthe aestheticof the studio had been irreversibly
replaced by an aestheticof
Minimal
And
and
Art had exhumed
and
consumption.
finally,Pop
production
the repressed historyof Duchamp (and Dadaism at large), phenomena equally
unacceptable to the reigningaestheticthoughtof the late 1950s and early '60s.
Kosuth's narrowreading of the readymadeis astonishingforyetanotherreason.
In 1969, he explicitlyclaimed that he had encountered the work of Duchamp
primarilythroughthe mediation of Johns and Morris rather than throughan
actual studyof Duchamp's writingsand works.21
As we have seen above, the firsttwo phases of Duchamp's reception by
Americanartistsfromthe early 1950s (Johnsand Rauschenberg)to Warhol and
Morrisin the early 1960s had graduallyopened up the range of implicationsof
Duchamp's readymades.22It is thereforeall the more puzzling to see that after
1968-what one could call the beginning of the third phase of Duchamp
See note 5 above.
21.
As Rosalind Krauss has suggested,at leastJohns's understandingat that point already tran22.
scended the earlier reading of the readymade as merelyan aestheticof declarationand intention:
If we consider that Stella's paintingwas involvedearly on, in the work of Johns,then
Johns'sinterpretationof Duchamp and the readymade-an interpretationdiametricallyopposed to thatof the Conceptualistgroup outlinedabove - has some relevancein
thisconnection.For Johnsclearlysaw the readymadeas pointingto the factthatthere
need be no connectionbetween the finalart object and the psychologicalmatrixfrom
whichit issued,since in the case of the readymadethispossibilityis precluded fromthe
start. The Fountain was not made (fabricated)by Duchamp, only selected by him.
Therefore there is no way in which the urinal can "express" the artist. It is like a
sentence which is put into the world unsanctionedby the voice of a speaker standing
behind it. Because makerand artistare evidentlyseparate,thereis no wayforthe urinal
to serve as an externalizationof the state or statesof mind of the artistas he made it.
And by not functioningwithinthe grammarof the aestheticpersonality,the Fountain
can be seen as puttingdistancebetween itselfand the notion of personalityper se. The
relationshipbetweenJohns'sAmericanFlag and his reading of the Fountainisjust this:
the arthood of the Fountainis not legitimizedby itshavingissued stroke-by-stroke
from
the privatepsycheof the artist;indeed it could not. So it is like a man absentmindedly
hummingand being dumbfoundedifasked ifhe had meantthattune or ratheranother.
That is a case in which it is not clear how the grammarof intentionmightapply.
vol. 12 (November 1973), pp. 43-52, n. 4.
Rosalind Krauss, "Sense and Sensibility,"Artforum,
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OCTOBER
126
reception- the understandingof this model by Conceptual Artistsstill foregroundsintentionaldeclarationover contextualization.This holds true not only
for Kosuth's "Art afterPhilosophy,"but equally forthe BritishArt& Language
Group, as, in the introductionto the firstissue of thejournal in May 1969, they
write:
To place an object in a contextwhere the attentionof any spectator
willbe conditionedtoward the expectancyof recognizingart objects.
For example placingwhatup to thenhad been an object of alien visual
characteristicsto those expected withinthe frameworkof an art ambience, or by virtue of the artistdeclaring the object to be an art
object whetheror not it was in an art ambience. Using these techniques whatappeared to be entirelynew morphologieswere held out
to qualifyfor the statusof the membersof the class "art objects."
For example Duchamp's "Readymades" and Rauschenberg's
"Portraitof Iris Clert."23
A few months later Kosuth based his argument for the development of
Conceptual Art on just such a restrictedreading of Duchamp. For in its limiting
view of the historyand the typologyof Duchamp's oeuvre, Kosuth's argument
-like that of Art & Language- focuses exclusivelyon the "unassistedreadymades." Thereby early Conceptual theory not only leaves out Duchamp's
painterlywork but avoids such an eminentlycrucial workas the ThreeStandard
Stoppages(1913), not to mentionTheLarge Glass (1915-23) or the Etantsdonne
(1946 - 66) or the 1943 Boiteen valise. But what is worse is thateven the reading
of the unassistedreadymadesis itselfextremelynarrow,reducingthe readymade
model in factmerelyto that of an analyticalproposition.Typically,both Art &
Language and Kosuth's "Art afterPhilosophy"referto Robert Rauschenberg's
notoriousexample of speech-actaesthetics("This is a portraitof Iris ClertifI say
so") based on the rather limitedunderstandingof the readymade as an act of
willfulartisticdeclaration. This understanding,typicalof the early 1950s, continues in Judd's famous lapidary norm (and patentlynonsensical statement),
."
quoted a littlelaterin Kosuth's text: "if someone saysit's art,thenit is art
In 1969, Art & Language and Kosuth shared in foregroundingthe...
"analyticproposition" inherentin each readymade,namelythe statement"this is a
workof art," over and above all other aspects impliedby the readymade model
(its structurallogic, its featuresas an industriallyproduced object of use and
consumption,its seriality,and the dependence of its meaning on context).And
most importantly,according to Kosuth, this means that artisticpropositions
be it that of the
constitutethemselvesin the negation of all referentiality,
historicalcontextof the (artistic)sign or that of its social functionand use:
23.
Introduction,Art& Language, vol. 1, no. 1 (May 1969), p. 5.
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\il
~:
4
4:
:?:::2:
?:
Worksofartare analyticpropositions.
That is,ifviewedwithintheir
no
information
what-so-ever
about any
context-as-art,
theyprovide
matter
offact.A workofartisa tautology
inthatitisa presentation
of
theartist'sintention,
thatis,he is sayingthatthatparticular
workof
artis art,whichmeans,isa definition
ofart.Thus,thatitisartistruea
priori(whichis whatJuddmeanswhenhe statesthat"ifsomeonecalls
it art,it'sart").24
1969
Or, a littlelaterin the same year,he wrotein TheSixthInvestigation
14 (a textthathas mysteriously
vanishedfromthecollectionof his
Proposition
writings):
If one considersthattheformsarttakesas beingart'slanguageone
can realizethenthata workofartis a kindofproposition
presented
withinthecontextofartas a comment
on art.An analysis
ofproposi24. Joseph Kosuth, "Art after Philosophy," Studio International,nos. 915-917
December 1969). Quoted here fromJoseph Kosuth, The MakingofMeaning,p. 155.
(October-
Kosuth.FiveFives(to DonaldJudd).1965 ().
Joseph
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128
OCTOBER
tion typesshows art "works" as analyticpropositions.Works of art
that tryto tell us somethingabout the world are bound to fail.
The absence of realityin art is exactlyart's reality.25
Kosuth's programmaticeffortsto reinstatea law of discursiveself-reflexiveness in the guise of a critique of Greenberg's and Fried's visual and formal
are all the more astonishingsince a considerablepart of "Art
self-reflexiveness
afterPhilosophy" is dedicated to the elaborate constructionof a genealogy for
Conceptual Art,in and of itselfa historicalproject(e.g., "All art [afterDuchamp]
is conceptual [in nature] because art exists only conceptually"). This veryconstructionof a lineage already contextualizesand historicizes,of course, in "telling us somethingabout the world"-of art, at least; that is, it unwittingly
operates like a syntheticproposition(even if only withinthe conventionsof a
particularlanguage system)and thereforedenies both thepurityand the possibilityof an autonomous artisticproductionthat would function,withinart's own
as mere analyticproposition.
language-system,
one
Perhaps
mighttryto argue that,in fact,Kosuth's renewed cult of the
the
Symbolistproject to fruition.It mightbe said, forexample,
tautologybrings
that thisrenewal is the logical extensionof Symbolism'sexclusive concern with
the conditionsand the theorizationof art's own modes of conceptionand reading. Such an argument,however,would stillnot allay questions concerningthe
altered historicalframeworkwithinwhich such a cult must findits determination. Even withinitsSymbolistorigins,the modernisttheologyof art was already
gripped by a polarized opposition. For a religiousvenerationof self-referential
plasticformas the pure negationof rationalistand empiricistthoughtcan simultaneouslybe read as nothingother than the inscriptionand instrumentalization
of preciselythatorder- even or particularlyin its negation- withinthe realm
of the aestheticitself(the almostimmediateand universalapplicationof Symbolism for the cosmos of late nineteenth-century
commodityproduction would
attestto this).
in the
This dialecticcame to claim itshistoricalrightsall the more forcefully
a
acceleratFor
the
conditions
of
situation.
rapidly
given
contemporary,postwar
ing fusionof the cultureindustrywiththe lastbastionsof an autonomous sphere
of highart,self-reflexiveness
increasingly(and inevitably)came to shiftalong the
borderline between logical positivismand the advertisementcampaign. And
further,the rightsand rationaleof a newlyestablishedpostwarmiddle class,one
whichcame fullyinto itsown in the 1960s, could assume theiraestheticidentity
in the verymodel of the tautologyand itsaccompanyingaestheticof administration. For this aesthetic identityis structuredmuch the way this class's social
identityis, namely,as one of merelyadministeringlabor and production(rather
than producing) and of the distributionof commodities.This class, having be25.
1969 Proposition14.
Joseph Kosuth, The SixthInvestigation
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
129
establishedas the mostcommonand powerfulsocial class of postwar
come firmly
one which,as H. G. Helms wrote in his book on Max Stirner,
is
the
society,
itself
voluntarilyof the rightsto intervenewithinthe politicaldecision"deprives
with the existing
making process in order to arrange itselfmore efficiently
conditions."26
political
This aestheticof the newlyestablishedpower of administrationfound its
firstfullydeveloped literaryvoice in a phenomenon like the nouveau romanof
Robbe-Grillet.It was no accidentthatsuch a profoundlypositivistliteraryproject
would then serve, in the Americancontext,as a point of departurefor Conceptual Art. But, paradoxically,it was at thisverysame historicalmomentthat the
social functionsof the tautological principle found their most lucid analysis,
througha criticalexaminationlaunched in France.
In the early writingof Roland Barthes one finds,simultaneouslywiththe
nouveau roman,a discussionof the tautological:
Tautologie.Yes, I know,it's an uglyword. But so is the thing.Tautologyis the verbaldevice whichconsistsin defininglikeby like("Drama
is drama"). . . . One takes refugein tautologyas one does in fear,or
anger, or sadness, when one is at a loss for an explanation. . . . In
tautology,there is a double murder: one kills rationalitybecause it
resistsone; one kills language because it betraysone. . . . Now any
refusalof language is a death. Tautology createsa dead, a motionless
world.27
Ten years later,at the same momentthat Kosuth was discoveringit as the
centralaestheticproject of his era, the phenomenonof the tautologicalwas once
again opened to examinationin France. But now, ratherthan being discussedas
a linguisticand rhetoricalform,it was analyzed as a general social effect:as both
the inescapable reflexof behavior and, once the requirementsof the advanced
culture industry(i.e., advertisementand media) have been put in place in the
formationof spectacle culture, a universalcondition of experience. What still
remainsopen fordiscussion,of course, is the extentto whichConceptual Artof a
certaintypeshared these conditions,or even enacted and implementedthem in
the sphere of the aesthetic-accounting, perhaps, for its subsequent proximity
and success withina world of advertisementstrategists-or, alternatively,the
extent to which it merelyinscribeditselfinto the inescapable logic of a totally
administeredworld,as Adorno's notorioustermidentifiedit. Thus Guy Debord
noted in 1967:
The basically tautological character of the spectacle flowsfrom the
simple fact that its means are simultaneouslyits ends. It is the sun
26.
27.
Hans G. Helms, Die Ideologieder anonymenGesellschaft
(Cologne, 1968), p. 3.
Roland Barthes,Mythologies,
pp. 152- 53.
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130
OCTOBER
which never sets over the empire of modern passivity.It covers the
entiresurfaceof the world and bathes endlesslyin its own glory.28
A Tale ofMany Squares
The visual formsthatcorrespondmost accuratelyto the linguisticformof
the tautologyare the square and itsstereometricrotation,the cube. Not surprisingly,these two formsproliferatedin the painterlyand sculpturalproductionof
the early-to mid-1960s. This was the momentwhen a rigorousself-reflexiveness
was bent on examiningthe traditionalboundariesof modernistsculpturalobjects
to the same extent that a phenomenological reflectionof viewing space was
insistanton reincorporatingarchitecturalparameters into the conception of
paintingand sculpture.
So thoroughlydid the square and the cube permeate the vocabulary of
Minimalistsculpturethatin 1967 Lucy Lippard publisheda questionnaireinvestigatingthe role of theseforms,whichshe had circulatedamong manyartists.In
his response to the questionnaire,Donald Judd, in one of his manyattemptsto
detach the morphologyof Minimalismfromsimilarinvestigationsof the historical avant-gardein the earlier part of the twentiethcentury,displayedthe agressive dimensionof tautologicalthought(disguisedas pragmatism,as was usual in
his case) by simplydenying that any historicalmeaning could be inherentin
geometricor stereometricforms:
I don't thinkthere is anythingspecial about squares, which I don't
use, or cubes. They certainlydon't have any intrinsicmeaning or
superiority.One thing though, cubes are a lot easier to make than
spheres. The main virtue of geometric shapes is that they are not
organic, as all art otherwiseis. A formthat's neithergeometricnor
organic would be a great discovery.29
the square abolishes the
As the central form of visual self-reflexiveness,
traditionalspatial parametersof verticalityand horizontality,therebycanceling
the metaphysicsof space and itsconventionsof reading. It is in thisway thatthe
square (beginningwithMalevich's 1915 Black Square) incessantlypointsto itself:
28.
Guy Debord, The SocietyoftheSpectacle(Detroit: Black & Red, 1970), n. p., section 13. First
published,Paris, 1967.
Donald Judd,in Lucy Lippard, "Homage to the Square," Artin America(July-August, 1967),
29.
pp. 50-57. How pervasive the square actuallywas in the art of the early-to mid-1960s is all too
obvious: the workfromthe late '50s, such as paintingsby Reinhardtand Rymanand a large number
of sculpturesfromthe early 1960s onwards (Andre, LeWitt, and Judd), deployed the tautological
formin endless variations.Paradoxicallyeven Kosuth's workfromthe mid-1960s- while emphasizing its departure frompainting'straditionalobject statusand visual/formaldesign-continues to
displaythe definitionsof words on large, black, canvas squares. By contrastone only has to thinkof
JasperJohns'sor BarnettNewman's workas immediatepredecessorsof thatgenerationto recognize
how infrequent,if not altogetherabsent, the square was at that moment.
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RobertBarry.Paintingin Four
Parts. 1967.
*
i~iiiii~iII
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Uii~iii
as spatial perimeter,as plane, as surface,and, functioningsimultaneously,as
support.But, withthe verysuccess of thisself-referential
gesture,markingthe
formout as purely pictorial,the square paintingparadoxicallybut inevitably
assumesthe characterof a relief/objectsituatedin actual space. It therebyinvites
a viewing/readingof spatialcontingencyand architecturalimbeddedness,insisting on the imminentand irreversibletransitionfrompaintingto sculpture.
This transitionwas performedin the proto-Conceptualart of the early-to
mid-1960s in a fairlydelimitednumber of specificpictorialoperations. It occurred,firstof all, throughthe emphasison painting'sopacity.The object-status
of the painterlystructurecould be underscoredby unifyingand homogenizing
its surfacethroughmonochromy,serializedtexture,and gridded compositional
structure;or it could be emphasized by literallysealing a painting's spatial
transparency,by simplyalteringits materialsupport:shiftingit fromcanvas to
unstretchedfabricor metal. This typeof investigationwas developed systematically, for example, in the proto-Conceptualpaintingsof Robert Ryman,who
employedall of these optionsseparatelyor in varyingcombinationsin the earlyto mid-i1960s;or, after1965, in thepaintingsof RobertBarry,Daniel Buren,and
Niele Toroni.
Secondly- and in a directinversionand countermovementto the firstobject-statuscould be achieved by emphasizing,in a literalistmanner,painting's
This entailed establishinga dialectic between pictorial surface,
transparency.
frame,and architecturalsupportby eithera literalopening up of the painterly
or by the insertionof translucentor
support,as in Sol LeWitt's earlyStructures,
surfaces
the
frame of viewing,as in Ryman's
into
conventional
transparent
Buren's
fiberglasspaintings,
earlynylonpaintings,or Michael Asher's and Ger-
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Robert
Morris.FourMirroredCubes.1965.
hard Richter'sglass panes in metal frames,both emergingbetween 1965 and
1967. Or, as in the earlyworkof RobertBarry(suchas hisPaintingin FourParts,
1967, in the FER-Collection),where the square, monochrome,canvas objects
now seemed to assume the role of mere architecturaldemarcation.Functioning
as decenteredpainterlyobjects,theydelimitthe externalarchitecturalspace in a
manneranalogous to the serial or centralcompositionof earlier Minimalwork
that stilldefinedinternalpictorialor sculpturalspace. Or, as in Barry'ssquare
canvas (1967), which is to be placed at the exact center of the architectural
shiftingthe reading of it
supportwall, a workis conceived as programmatically
froma centered,unified,pictorialobject to an experience of architecturalcontingence,and as therebyincorporatingthe supplementaryand overdetermining
strategiesof curatorialplacementand conventionsof installation(traditionally
of the work itself.
disavowed in paintingand sculpture)into the conception
And thirdly--and most often--this transitionis performedin the "simple" rotationof the square, as originallyevident in Naum Gabo's famous diagram from1937 where a volumetricand a stereometriccube are juxtaposed in
order to clarifythe inherentcontinuitybetweenplanar,stereometric,and volumetric forms. This rotation generated cubic structuresas diverse as Hans
Haacke's CondensationCube (1963-65), Robert Morris's Four MirroredCubes
(1965), or LarryBell's simultaneously
produced MineralCoatedGlass Cubes,and
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Cube. 1963-65.
Hans Haacke.Condensation
Sol LeWitt's Wall-FloorPiece(ThreeSquares), 1966. All of these (beyondsharing
the obvious morphologyof the cube) engage in the dialectic of opacity and
as in
transparency(or in the synthesisof that dialectic in mirror-reflection
Morris'sMirroredCubesor LarryBell's aestheticizedvariationsof the theme).At
the same timethattheyengage in the dialecticof frameand surface,and thatof
object and architecturalcontainer,theyhave displacedtraditionalfigure-ground
relationships.
The deploymentof any or all of these strategies(or, as in mostcases, their
varyingcombination)in the contextof Minimaland post-Minimalart,i.e., protoconceptualpaintingand sculpture,resultedin a range of hybridobjects.They no
longerqualifiedforeitherof the traditionalstudio categoriesnor could theybe
identifiedas reliefor architecturaldecoration-the compromisetermstraditionallyused to bridge the gap between these categories. In this sense, these
objects demarcated another spectrumof departurestowards Conceptual Art.
Not onlydid theydestabilizethe boundariesof the traditionalartisticcategories
of studioproduction,byerodingthemwithmodes of industrialproductionin the
manner of Minimalism,but they went furtherin their criticalrevisionof the
discourse of the studio versus the discourse of production/consumption.By
ultimatelydismantlingboth along withthe conventionsof visualityinherentin
them,theyfirmlyestablishedan aestheticof administration.
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134
OCTOBER
The diversityof these protoconceptualobjects would at firstsuggestthat
theiractual aestheticoperationsdifferso profoundlythata comparativereading,
operatingmerelyon the grounds of theirapparent analogous formaland morphologicalorganization- the visualtopos of the square- would be illegitimate.
Art historyhas accordinglyexcluded Haacke's CondensationCube,for example,
from any affiliationwith Minimal Art. Yet all of these artistsdefine artistic
productionand receptionby the mid-1960s as reachingbeyond the traditional
thresholdsof visuality(both in termsof the materialsand productionprocedures
of the studio and those of industrialproduction),and it is on the basis of this
parallel thattheirworkcan be understoodto be linkedbeyond a mere structural
or morphologicalanalogy. The proto-conceptualworksof the mid-1960s redefine aesthetic experience, indeed, as a multiplicityof nonspecializedmodes of
object-and language-experience.Accordingto the reading these objects generate, aestheticexperience-as an individualand social investmentof objects with
meaning-is constitutedby linguisticas well as by specularconventions,by the
institutionaldeterminationof the object's status as much as by the reading
competence of the spectator.
Within this shared conception,what goes on to distinguishthese objects
from each other is the emphasis each one places on differentaspects of that
deconstructionof the traditionalconceptsof visuality.Morris'sMirroredCubes,
for example (once again in an almost literalexecution of a proposal found in
Duchamp's GreenBox),situatethe spectatorin thesutureof the mirrorreflection:
that interfacebetween sculpturalobject and architecturalcontainerwhere neitherelementcan acquire a positionof priorityor dominancein the triadbetween
spectator,sculpturalobject, and architecturalspace. And in so far as the work
acts simultaneouslyto inscribea phenomenologicalmodel of experience into a
traditionalmodel of purelyvisual specularityand to displace it, itsprimaryfocus
remainsthe sculpturalobject and its visual apperception.
By contrast,Haacke's CondensationCube-while clearlysufferingfroma
now even more rigorouslyenforced scientisticreductivismand the legacy of
- moves
modernism'sempiricalpositivism
away froma specular relationshipto
the object altogether,establishinginsteada bio-physicalsystemas a linkbetween
viewer,sculpturalobject, and architecturalcontainer.If Morrisshiftsthe viewer
froma mode of contemplativespecularityintoa phenomenologicalloop of bodily
movementand perceptual reflection,Haacke replaces the once revolutionary
concept of an activating"tactility"in the viewing experience by a move to
bracketthe phenomenologicalwithinthe determinacyof "system."For his work
now suspends Morris's tactile"viewing" withina science-basedsyntagm(in this
particularcase that of the process of condensationand evaporation inside the
cube broughtabout by temperaturechanges due to the frequencyof spectators
in the gallery).
And finally,we should consider what is possiblythe last credible transformationof the square, at the heightof Conceptual Art in 1968, in two worksby
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Lawrence Weiner,respectively
entitledA Square Removalfrom
a Rug in Useand A
36" X 36" Removalto theLathingor SupportWall ofPlasteror Wallboardfroma
Wall (both publishedor "reproduced" in Statements,
1968), in whichthe specific
Art
with
initiates
paradigmaticchanges Conceptual
regard to the legacy of
- while maintainreductivistformalismare clearlyevident. Both interventions
their
structural
and
links
with
formal
traditions
ing
morphological
by respecting
classicalgeometryas theirdefinitionat the level of shape--inscribe themselves
in the supportsurfacesof the institutionand/or the home whichthattradition
had alwaysdisavowed. The carpet (presumablyfor sculpture)and the wall (for
painting),which idealistaestheticsalwaysdeclares as mere "supplements,"are
foregroundedhere not onlyas partsof theirmaterialbasis but as the inevitable
futurelocation of the work. Thus the structure,location,and materialsof the
at the verymomentof theirconception,are completelydetermined
intervention,
their
future
destination.While neithersurfaceis explicitlyspecifiedin terms
by
of its institutionalcontext,this ambiguityof dislocationgeneratestwo oppositional,yetmutuallycomplementaryreadings.On the one hand, it dissipatesthe
traditionalexpectationof encounteringthe workof art onlyin a "specialized" or
"qualified" location(both "wall" and "carpet" could be eitherthoseof the home
or the museum,or, for that matter,could just as well be found in any other
location such as an office,for example). On the other, neither one of these
surfacescould ever be consideredto be independentfromits institutionallocation, since the physicalinscriptioninto each particularsurfaceinevitablygenerates contextualreadingsdependent upon the institutionalconventionsand the
particularuse of those surfacesin place.
A 36" x 36" SquareRemovalto
Lawrence
Weiner.
theWallboardor Lathingfroma Wall.1968.
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OCTOBER
136
Transcending the literalistor perceptual precision with which Barryand
Rymanhad previouslyconnectedtheirpainterlyobjectsto the traditionalwallsof
display,in order to make theirphysicaland perceptual interdependencemanifest,Weiner's two squares are now physicallyintegratedwithboththese support
surfacesand theirinstitutionaldefinition.Further,since the work's inscription
paradoxicallyimpliesthe physicaldisplacementof the supportsurface,it engenders an experienceof perceptualwithdrawalas well. Andjust as the worknegates
the specularityof the traditionalartisticobject by literallywithdrawingrather
than adding visual data in the construct,so this act of perceptualwithdrawal
operatesat the same timeas a physical(and symbolic)interventionin the institutional power and property relations underlyingthe supposed neutralityof
"mere" devices of presentation.The installationand/or acquisitionof eitherof
these works requires that the futureowner accept an instance of physicalreon both the level of institutionalorder and on
moval/withdrawal/interruption
that of privateownership.
It was only logical that, on the occasion of Seth Siegelaub's firstmajor
exhibitionof Conceptual Art, the show entitledJanuary5-31, 1969, Lawrence
Weiner would have presented a formula that then functionedas the matrix
underlyingall his subsequent propositions.Specificallyaddressingthe relations
withinwhich the work of art is constitutedas an open, structural,syntagmatic
formula,thismatrixstatementdefinesthe parametersof a workof art as thoseof
the conditionsof authorshipand production,and their interdependencewith
thoseof ownershipand use (and not leastof all, at itsown propositionallevel,as a
contingentupon and determinedby all of theseparametersin
definition
linguistic
theircontinuouslyvaryingand changingconstellations:
Withrelationto thevariousmannersofuse:
thepiece
1. The artistmayconstruct
2. The piecemaybefabricated
3. The pieceneed notto be built
withtheintentoftheartistthedecisionas to
Each beingequal and consistent
conditionrestswiththereceiverupon theoccasionof receivership
What begins to be put in play here, then,is a critiquethat operates at the
level of the aesthetic"institution."It is a recognitionthat materialsand procedures, surfacesand textures,locationsand placementare not only sculpturalor
painterlymatterto be dealt with in terms of a phenomenologyof visual and
cognitiveexperienceor in termsof a structuralanalysisof the sign(as mostof the
artistshad stillbelieved), but thattheyare always
Minimalistand post-Minimalist
already inscribedwithinthe conventionsof language and therebywithininstitutionalpower and ideological and economic investment.However, if,in Weiner's
and Barry'swork of the late 1960s, thisrecognitionstillseems merelylatent,it
was to become manifestveryrapidlyin the workof European artistsof the same
generation,in particularthat of Marcel Broodthaers,Daniel Buren, and Hans
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
137
Haacke after1966. In factan institutional
critiquebecame thecentralfocusofall
threeartists'assaultson the falseneutralityof visionthatprovidesthe underlying
rationalefor those institutions.
In 1965, Buren-like his Americanpeers--took offfroma criticalinvestigationof Minimalism.His earlyunderstandingof the workof Flavin,Ryman,
and Stella rapidly enabled him to develop positions from within a strictly
painterlyanalysisthatsoon led to a reversalof painterly/sculptural
conceptsof
Buren
was
on
the
one
hand
with
a
critical
reviewof
visualityaltogether.
engaged
the legacyof advanced modernist(and postwarAmerican)paintingand on the
otherin an analysisof Duchamp's legacy,whichhe viewedcriticallyas the utterly
unacceptablenegationof painting.This particularversionof reading Duchamp
and the readymade as acts of petit-bourgeoisanarchistradicality- while not
necessarilycomplete and accurate-allowed Buren to constructa successful
critique of both: modernistpaintingand Duchamp's readymade as its radical
historicalOther. In his writingsand his interventionsfrom 1967 onwards,
throughhis critique of the specular order of paintingand of the institutional
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Toroni.
Buren,Mosset,Parmentier,
NumberFour, September
Manifestation
1967, FifthBiennalede Paris, Musie
d'art modernede la Villede Paris.
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frameworkdeterminingit, Buren singularlysucceeded in displacingboththe
paradigmsof paintingand that of the readymade(even twentyyears later this
critiquemakes the naive continuationof object productionin the Duchampian
vein of the readymademodel appear utterlyirrelevant).
From the perspectiveof the present,it seems easier to see that Buren's
assault on Duchamp, especiallyin his crucial 1969 essay LimitesCritiques,was
operativeand preprimarilydirectedat the conventionsof Duchamp reception
dominantthroughoutthe late 1950s and early '60s, ratherthan at the actual
implicationsof Duchamp's model itself.Buren's centralthesiswas thatthe fallacy
of Duchamp's readymade was to obscure the very institutionaland discursive
framingconditionsthat allowed the readymade to generate its shiftsin the
assignmentof meaningand the experience of the object in the firstplace. Yet,
one could just as well argue, as Marcel Broodthaerswould in factsuggestin his
catalogue of the exhibitionTheEaglefromtheOligoceneto Todayin Dfisseldorfin
constructionof the workof
1972, thatthe contextualdefinitionand syntagmatic
art had obviouslybeen initiatedby Duchamp's readymademodel firstof all.
In his systematicanalysisof the constitutingelementsof the discourseof
painting,Buren came to investigateall the parametersof artisticproductionand
reception (an analysisthat, incidentally,was similarto the one performedby
Lawrence Weiner in arrivingat his own "matrix" formula). Departing from
of paintMinimalism's(especiallyRyman'sand Flavin's)literalistdismemberment
ing, Buren at firsttransformedthe pictorialinto yet another model of opacity
and objecthood. (This was accomplished by physicallyweaving figure and
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
139
ground together in the "found" awning material, by making the "grid" of
vertical parallel stripes his eternallyrepeated "tool," and by mechanicallyalmostsuperstitiously
or ritualistically,
one could say withhindsight-applying a
coat of white paint to the outer bands of the grid in order to distinguishthe
pictorialobject froma readymade.) At the same time that the canvas had been
removed fromitstraditionalstretchersupportto become a physicalcloth-object
(reminiscentof Greenberg's notorious "tacked up canvas [which]already exists
as a picture"),thisstrategyin Buren's arsenal founditslogical counterpartin the
canvas leaning as an object against support wall and
placement of the stretched
floor.
This shifingof supportsurfacesand proceduresof productionled to a wide
range of formsof distributionwithinBuren's work: fromunstretchedcanvas to
anonymouslymailed sheets of printed striped paper; from pages in books to
billboards. In the same way, his displacementof the traditionalsites of artistic
interventionand of reading resulted in a multiplicity
of locations and formsof
displaythatcontinuouslyplayed on the dialecticof interiorand exterior,thereby
oscillatingwithinthe contradictionsof sculptureand paintingand foregrounding
all those hidden and manifestframingdevices that structureboth traditions
withinthe discourse of the museum and the studio.
Furthermore,enacting the principles of the Situationistcritique of the
bourgeois divisionof creativityaccording to the rules of the divisionof labor,
Buren, Olivier Mosset,Michel Parmentier,and Niele Toroni publiclyperformed
(on various occasions between 1966 and 1968) a demolitionof the traditional
separationbetween artistsand audience, witheach given theirrespectiveroles.
Not only did they claim that each of their artisticidioms be considered as
absolutely equivalent and interchangeable,but also that anonymous audience
productionof these pictorialsignswould be equivalentto those produced by the
artiststhemselves.
With its stark reproductionsof mug shots of the four artiststaken in
photomats,the poster for their fourthmanifestationat the 1967 Biennale de
Paris inadvertently
pointsto anothermajor source of contemporarychallengesto
the notion of artisticauthorshiplinked witha provocationto the "audience" to
participate:the aestheticof anonymityas practicedin Andy Warhol's "Factory"
and its mechanical(photographic)procedures of production."
The criticalinterventionsof the four into an established but outmoded
culturalapparatus (representedby such venerable and importantinstitutionsas
the Salon de la Jeune Peintureor the Biennale de Paris) immediatelybroughtout
in the open at least one major paradox of all conceptual practices(a paradox,
30.
Michel Claura, at the time the critic activelypromotingawareness of the affiliatedartists
Buren, Mosset,Parmentier,and Toroni, has confirmedin a recentconversationthatthe referenceto
Warhol, in particularto his series The ThirteenMost WantedMen, which had been exhibitedat the
Ileana Sonnabend Gallery in 1967, was quite a conscious decision.
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140
OCTOBER
incidentally,which had made up the single most original contributionof Yves
Klein's workten yearsbefore). This was thatthe criticalannihilationof cultural
conventionsitselfimmediatelyacquires the conditionsof the spectacle,that the
insistenceon artisticanonymityand the demolitionof authorshipproduces instantbrand names and identifiableproducts,and that the campaign to critique
conventionsof visualitywith textual interventions,billboard signs,anonymous
handouts,and pamphletsinevitablyends by followingthe preestablishedmechanismsof advertisingand marketingcampaigns.
All of the works mentionedcoincide, however,in theirrigorousredefinitionof relationshipsbetweenaudience, object,and author. And all are concerted
in the attemptto replace a traditional,hierarchicalmodel of privilegedexperience based on authorialskillsand acquired competenceof receptionby a structural relationshipof absolute equivalents that would dismantle both sides of
the equation: the hieraticpositionof the unifiedartisticobjectjust as muchas the
privilegedpositionof the author. In an earlyessay(published,incidentally,in the
same 1967 issue of AspenMagazine- dedicated by itseditorBrian O'Doherty to
St6phane Mallarm --in whichthe firstEnglishtranslationof Roland Barthes's
"The Death of the Author" appeared), Sol LeWitt laid out these concernsfora
programmaticredistributionof author/artistfunctionswithastonishingclarity,
presentingthemby means of the rathersurprisingmetaphorof a performanceof
daily bureaucratictasks:
The aim of the artistwould be to give viewersinformation.. . . He
would follow his predeterminedpremise to its conclusion avoiding
subjectivity.Chance, tasteor unconsciouslyrememberedformswould
play no part in the outcome. The serial artistdoes not attemptto
as a clerk
produce a beautifulor mysteriousobject but functionsmerely
results
his
the
of premise(italicsadded).31
cataloguing
Inevitablythe questionariseshow such restrictivedefinitionsof the artistas
a cataloguingclerkcan be reconciledwiththe subversiveand radical implications
of Conceptual Art. And this question must simultaneouslybe posed withinthe
specifichistoricalcontext in which the legacy of an historicalavant-garde-and Productivism-had only recentlybeen reclaimed. How, we
Constructivism
can
these practices be aligned with that historicalproduction that
mightask,
artistslike Henry Flynt,Sol LeWitt,and George Maciunas had rediscovered,in
the early '60s, primarilythroughthe publication of Camilla Gray's The Great
Russian Art 1863-1922.32 This question is of particularimportance
Experiment:
since manyof the formalstrategiesof earlyConceptual Artappear at firstglance
31.
Sol LeWitt,"Serial Project#1, 1966," AspenMagazine,nos. 5-6, ed. Brian O'Doherty, 1967,
n. p.
The importanceof this publicationin 1962 was mentioned to me by several of the artists
32.
interviewedduring the preparationof thisessay.
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
141
to be as close to the practicesand proceduresof the Constructivist/Productivist
avant-gardeas Minimal sculpturehad appeared to be dependent upon its materials and morphologies.
The profoundlyutopian (and now unimaginablynaive) natureof the claims
associated withConceptual Art at the end of the 1960s were articulatedby Lucy
Lippard (along with Seth Siegelaub, certainlythe crucial exhibitionorganizer
and criticof that movement)in late 1969:
Art intended as pure experience doesn't exist untilsomeone experiences it, defyingownership,reproduction,sameness. Intangible art
could break down the artificialimpositionof "culture" and provide a
broader audience for a tangible,object art. When automatismfrees
millionsof hours for leisure,art should gain ratherthan diminishin
importance,for while art is not just play, it is the counterpointto
work. The time may come when art is everyone's daily occupation,
though there is no reason to thinkthisactivitywill be called art.33
While it seems obvious that artists cannot be held responsible for the
culturallyand politicallynaive visionsprojected on theirworkeven by theirmost
competent,loyal,and enthusiasticcritics,it now seems equally obvious thatit was
preciselythe utopianismof earlieravant-gardemovements(the typethatLippard
desperatelyattemptsto resuscitatefor the occasion) that was manifestlyabsent
from Conceptual Art throughout its history(despite Robert Barry's onetime
invocation of Herbert Marcuse, declaring the commercial gallery as "Some
places to whichwe can come, and fora while 'be freeto thinkabout whatwe are
going to do'"). It seemsobvious,at least fromthe vantageof the early 1990s, that
fromits inceptionConceptual Art was distinguishedby itsacute sense of discursive and institutionallimitations,itsself-imposedrestrictions,
itslack of totalizing
vision, its criticaldevotion to the factual conditionsof artisticproduction and
reception withoutaspiring to overcome the mere facticityof these conditions.
This became evident as works such as Hans Haacke's series of Visitors'Profiles
(1969- 70), in itsbureaucraticrigorand deadpan devotionto the statisticcollection of factual information,came to refuse any transcendental dimension
whatsoever.
Furthermore,it now seems thatit was preciselya profounddisenchantment
withthose political master-narratives
thatempowered most of '20s avant-garde
art that,acting in a peculiar fusionwiththe mostadvanced and radical formsof
critical artisticreflection,accounts for the peculiar contradictionsoperating
within(proto) Conceptual Art of the mid- to late-1960s. It would explain why
thisgenerationof the early '60s-in itsgrowingemphasison empiricismand its
scepticismwithregard to all utopianvision- would be attracted,forexample, to
33.
Lucy Lippard, "Introduction,"in 955.000 (Vancouver: The Vancouver Art Gallery,January
13- February8, 1970), n. p.
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OCTOBER
142
......
% ~FRoom-,
.
....
Toroni.Installationat
Buren,Mosset,Parmentier,
Museum
MarcelBroodthaers's
(Plaque).1971.
and would confoundthe affirmative
the logical positivismof Wittgenstein
petitof
Alain
Robbe-Grillet
withthe radical atopismof Samuel
bourgeois positivism
Beckett,claimingall of themas theirsources. And it would make clear how this
generationcould be equallyattractedbythe conservativeconceptof Daniel Bell's
"end of ideology" and Herbert Marcuse's Freudo-Marxist philosophy of
liberation.
What ConceptualArtachievedat leasttemporarily,
however,was to subject
the last residues of artisticaspirationtoward transcendence(by means of traditional studio skills and privileged modes of experience) to the rigorous and
relentlessorder of the vernacularof administration.
Furthermore,it managed to
the
artistic
of
towards
an affirmative
collaboration
production
aspiration
purge
withthe forcesof industrialproductionand consumption(the last of the totalizing experiences into which artisticproductionhad mimeticallyinscribeditself
withcredibilityin the contextof Pop Art and Minimalismfor one last time).
Paradoxically,then,it would appear thatConceptual Art trulybecame the
most significant
paradigmaticchange of postwarartisticproductionat the very
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ConceptualArt 1962-1969
143
moment that it mimed the operating logic of late capitalismand its positivist
in an effortto place itsauto-criticalinvestigations
at the serviceof
instrumentality
of
aesthetic
even
the
last
remnants
traditional
experience. In that
liquidating
in
of
itself
succeeded
it
purging
entirely imaginaryand bodily experiprocess
and
the
of
substance
ence, physical
space of memory,to the same extentthat it
effacedall residues of representationand style,of individualityand skill. That
was the momentwhen Buren's and Haacke's work fromthe late 1960s onward
turnedthe violence of that mimeticrelationshipback onto the ideological apparatus itself,using it to analyze and expose the social institutionsfromwhichthe
and the logic of administrationemanate in the
laws of positivistinstrumentality
firstplace. These institutions,which determinethe conditionsof culturalconsumption,are the veryones in which artisticproduction is transformedinto a
tool of ideological controland cultural legitimation.
It was leftto Marcel Broodthaersto constructobjects in whichthe radical
achievementsof Conceptual Art would be turnedinto immediatetravestyand in
which the seriousnesswith which Conceptual Artistshad adopted the rigorous
mimeticsubjectionof aestheticexperience to the principlesof whatAdorno had
called the "totallyadministeredworld" were transformedinto absolute farce.
And it was one of the effectsof Broodthaers'sdialecticsthatthe achievementof
Conceptual Art was revealed as being intricatelytied to a profoundand irreversible loss: a loss not caused by artisticpractice,of course, but one to which that
practiceresponded in the fulloptimismof itsaspirations,failingto recognizethat
the purging of image and skill,of memoryand vision, withinvisual aesthetic
representationwas not just another heroic step in the inevitable progress of
Enlightenmentto liberate the world from mythicalformsof perception and
hierarchicalmodes of specialized experience, but that it was also yet another,
perhaps the last of the erosions (and perhaps the most effectiveand devastating
one) to which the traditionallyseparate sphere of artisticproductionhad been
subjected in its perpetual effortsto emulate the regnant episteme withinthe
paradigmaticframeproper to art itself.
of Conceptual Art-its
Or worse yet, that the Enlightenment-triumph
of audiences and distribution,its abolition of object statusand
transformation
commodityform--would most of all only be shortlived,almost immediately
giving way to the return of the ghostlikereapparitionsof (prematurely?)displaced painterlyand sculptural paradigms of the past. So that the specular
regime,whichConceptual Art claimed to have upset, would soon be reinstated
withrenewed vigor. Which is of course what happened.
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