Conceptual Art
zi...@interport.net
Conceptual Art focused on how language, systems of classification and
other factors "outside the frame" determine the social reception of
artworks. Artists who can accurately be labeled conceptualists
include, for example, Douglas Huebler, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth,
Daniel Buren, Art & Language, Bernar Venet and John Baldessari (his
work of the 60's: he's since wandered away from conceptualism).
I underestand what you mean by conceptual, especially when you frame
it in relation to specific artists only. But my point was and is that
what I find absurd about conceptual artists is that they believe that
they have discovered these concerns. And that artists working in other
styles at other moments were not thinking about them. Serious
figurative artists of a certain stripe have been thinking in these
terms as a part of their activity at various points in the twentieth
century. Read the most recent article about Balthus by Sabine Rewald
in Art inAmerica and notice her quotes from Balthus on what he wanted
his firstshow to do. I have written a ltter to them on that article.
Rewald did not discuss the construction of the first street painting,
and in fact noone has ever said my shtick on it but people who have
heard me. I have no idea why noone else sees this stuff there. Maybe
it is because lal of the people sho are thinking about thought
[conceptualists] and words [ditto] aren't looking at him because he is
an obvious retrograde artist[to them]. Balthus painted that
composition twice. The first version was never exhibited until rather
recently. It was painted in the manner of Bonnard, the biggest direct
influence on him as a painter. A man whom Balthus know well and came
to for crits. Then he stretched up a new canvas with thehelp f
Stanley William Hayter and painted it again. This time he used a very
different model of picture making, di Chirico. He painted things
rather hard with controlled and simplified modeling [taken in part
fromSwiss folk painting and in part from a study of Piero]. But the
formal structure of the painting, which is in fact quite traditional,
is arrived at not through modernoist "French" brushstrokes, forming
dvices and abstract design per se, but by using di Chiricoesque
devices against themselves. The two figures closest to the front of
the box of space in that painting are the figure of a younf man [whoim
Rewald identiefies as Tweedledee] and a woman wearing a blavk hat with
red piping. Tweedledee is moving out of the picture at us, the woman
is facing in away from us. There heads over lap the stores which form
part of the back plane of the picture. Above his head ther is a blank
shop sign, aboive hers ther eis a red and black shop sign. His head
wears the shop sign like a naker's hat [ther is a baker in the
picture]-it picks up the back of the picture and brings it forward.
Her hat is ingested into a double image of a sort of Duchamp-Villon
horsehead which drags her head into the back plane of the picture. Not
only has he used double images as "pure plastic form" [I jike} but he
has made a joke about doing so in the process. He is making fun of
the seriousness of pictorial construction and of surrealism at the
same time while making a painting which incorporates them both for his
ends. Now -systems of classification -space AGAINST flatness,
Abstraction AGAINST Realism, Surrealistm AGAINST Modernist French
cuisine. This painting is dealing with all of those issues and making
both a joke out of them and a wonderful painting experience out of
them. If that is not conceptual in the way you hav described
conceptual artists as being so, what is it? And if it is where is
there special value?
Two of his influential works: the box-in-a-valise (a sort of portable
Duchamp museum containing tiny replicas of many of his works) and the
posthumously exhibited "etant donees" (please forgive my spelling)
date
from this period.
>
> Believing that Duchamp is a dead end, does not mean that the work is
> intrinsically without interest. It does mean, though that the places
> which one can go from it do not produce live and growing art.
I do believe that the little museum is a little repetition. I read
Duchamp's lack of work from the twenties on until the start up as
similar to Varese's. Varese stopped composing after a group he thought
beneath him took over the American music world. He started up again
when he became thre man of the hour. His one work for the World's fair
inBelgium does not compare with the earlier works. No one ever plays
it, bt the other works are in the repertoire. Other tape works are
played in concert, by the way so that is not the reason.
You declare a very large swath of recent art history to be lifeless:
Johns, Warhol, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, the current
"Second-Generation"
Conceptualists (e.g., Mike Kelley, Robert Gober, Sophie Calle, Charles
Ray), and much else. Do you really mean this?
Yes, I am afraid I do really mean this. When it is someone whom I
know. Some of them I am not familiar with. What I have seen in
galleries and in an occasional Whitney have seemed puerile to me.
Let me give you an example.
I believe that Smithson's Spiral Jetty is an early icon of the
movement, no? I would call it an example of the picturesque landscape
architecture which came out of abstract expressionism. While Gilpin
[the 18th century inventor of the word "picturesque"originally had a
precise meaning for the term picturesque, which I usually respect, the
word came to mean-that in nature which was not only reminiscent but
planned to look like the forms found in painting. Smithson is a little
better than that, but what he has done is make a mark, or a form which
in its uselessness and its particularity is meant to engage as an
expression of ego and originality the way a Rothko or a Kline or a
Newman does. So it is to there work as the picuresque landscapes of
certain counties in Britain were to the paintings of Salvator Rosa,
for example. A nice way of referring to Smithson would be to say it
was a little like Cratilus, Heraclitus' follower. Heraclitus said,
among other things: You can't step twice in the same rivier for other
and yetother waters are constantly flowing." Cratiluscame as a sophist
[a paid performer in philosophy, to lecture before a group] to lecture
in Atherns. He came to the appointed place, draw his robe about him
and raised his arm, with his forefinger pointing up. Then he left. He
did this because the words which left his mouth would change meaning
while he spoke them so he could only "make a sign". Again where is
conceptual art now? This was in the 6th century BC or so.
From where I stabd that is a terrible put down. To be merely a
translator into dirt and gravel and roadway of someone else's udea in
paint on canvas-the idea of thuniqueness of tharitst's vision, but of
course without struggle-isn't much.
>
> The conceptual movement has always seemed to me arid when it wasn't
> mean. The mean side of Serra seems always on top [he is very much a
> conceptual artist, whether he makes things or not].
Got to go now.More later.
Sincerely,
Gabriel
Anonymous
I'm headed out of town in a few minutes, so this post will be brief:
Look again at my definition of "Conceptual Art," particularly the line
about "outside the frame." That is taken from a 1968 remark by Robert
Barry: "For years people have been concerned with what goes on inside the
frame. Maybe there's something going on outside the frame that could be
considered an artistic idea." (The words "inside" and "outside" are
italicized in the original, but I don't know how to convey italics in a
newsgroup post.)
Your interesting reading of the Balthus painting suggests the complicated
interaction of formal strategies and iconography at play in his work. (I
haven't had a chance to read the A in A article yet.) While Balthus' work
draws upon art history and a variety of concepts, the relationships that
the viewer is asked to focus on are "inside" the frame, on the surface of
the canvas, in dialogue with the insides of other frames.
Contrast this with, for example, Daniel Buren, who exhibits the same
uniform stripes--which approach zero in formal invention or visual
interest--in different exhibition contexts. The stripes act as a sort of
surrogate or placeholder for the traditional "signature style" artwork, and
the viewer's attention is directed elsewhere: in Buren's case, toward the
specific institutional framework of the exhibition, arguably toward Buren's
written critique of exhibition conventions which, according to him, render
art and artists a tool for the powerful to confirm and legitimize their
social privileges. Buren's trying to get the viewer to look at the
political situation that "frames" works of art. (Many of the conceptualists
were not driven by the same political agenda as Buren, by the way.)
I hope that helps clarify the "outside the frame" idea. The conceptualists
wanted to focus on aspects of art which had generally been considered
extra-artistic, and toward that end they tried to refuse the expected
display of traditional artistic skill or sophisticated style. They didn't
entirely succeed, but my thoughts on that will have to wait for a future
post.
Yipes! I'm late! Please keep writing, Gabriel, and if anyone else is
interested, please jump in. More as soon as I can manage it.---Ano.
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