Page 51 - Studio International - November 1970

visual thrill' were gestures not against art but more I intend to sell it". One [i.e. Atkinson/ condition of consciousness.
against the acceptance of a notion of art Baldwin] is much more like everyone else. The artists I admire now are those whose
which, in relying on appearances rather than The questions which the above assertion work is abstract in function as well as in form.
upon an understanding of functions, had seems to indicate are neither raised nor Objects have tended to be employed too often
always been disastrously incomplete; and answered' (from Air-conditioning Show 1966-7 in art as a means of diverting thought in
which, with the coming of non-representa- by Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin15). favour of sensation. The art of sensations is
tional art, was bound to lead, as it still does What is really crucial at this point, and what essentially picturesque and conservative.18
lead, to the wholesale mistaking of identities is at stake in the best of post-object art, is the
(Roger Fry's notion of Analytic Cubism as degree of abstraction possible and the In the early and mid sixties in America many
`abstract visual music' was one early and well rigorousness of the artist's thought in the attempts were being made by those with an
promoted example). Some recent art, in absence of material props. To exchange one intuition of the possible degrees of abstraction
denying itself the luxury of a specific physical entity for another—a telegram for a painted in art to short-circuit the systems of reference
presentation, has left those spectators who portrait—may be a nice means of questioning to objects in the hope of cutting off their irrele-
depended upon their powers of association identities in art, but is no real approach to vant, external associations. Three works of
with nothing but a sense of deprivation, at abstraction. (Likewise the only significant 1961 by Robert Morris provided important
best, or of intellectual inadequacy, at worst. question posed by the Erased de Kooning16 is early precedents: the Box with sound of its own
Without its sweetener many people cannot one concerning identities and residues.) making (a wooden box containing a tape re-
even recognize the pill, let alone swallow it. Endeavours in art are meaningful only if they corder with a three-hour loop of the sound of
The understanding of art as art, rather than as bear upon the concerns of art; i.e. if they are the box being made), the Card File a simple
a stimulus to associations, has much to do intelligible in terms of the language—the hanging file with entries—like SIZE, DECISIONS,
with the understanding of intentions. The 'meanings' — the artist inherits. Within this MISTAKES etc—which refer to the file and the
tree in your mind has no particular relevance analogy works like the Portrait of Iris Clert processes of its completion) and the Metered
to the tree in Cezanne's landscape unless it are translations rather than new articulations, Light Bulb (a wooden board with a light
was his intention to evoke in you a memory of gestures rather than actions. bulb, a chain switch and a meter; when the
trees (of any tree) as an integral part of your The significant artists now are those who, switch is pulled, the bulb lights up and the
reception of his painting, and unless that with a real understanding and knowledge of meter records the units which elapse until the
intention played a structural part in the art's particular language, are yet able to switch is pulled again and the work is 'at rest') .
formation of the work. Your memory being so maintain the possibility of a relevant general It was as if various artists had suddenly become
hard to predict, and Cezanne's painting being, meaning for art, a general function. At any aware that a truly abstract art needed no
in his mind, so very specific, it is inconceivable one time certain redundant concerns may specific objects, but no one knew how to get
that he should have intended any such thing. threaten to stifle art with particularities. rid of them.
Contrary to many spectators' and artists' Since before the beginning of this century art Joseph Kosuth's earliest independent works,
expectations, post-object art is not licensed to has tended to evolve in terms of the gradual such as One and three Chairs of 1965 (see Studio
ignore the need for intentions to be made working-out of the incompatibility between International, December 1969, p 212, fig 1)19,
explicit. Upon the submerged stump of the abstraction and illusion. Abstract art has were concerned with the relationship between
palpable tree many works of 'conceptual' art become our real art, the art which is poten- `concepts and what they referred to'. But
have foundered and sunk, their authors hav- tially best related to our knowledge, most what they referred to, in this case, was objects
ing confused the remembered with the real, true to our modes of acknowledging truths. (though these objects were not specific in
the particular instance with that general It has taken a long time for the demands of form; they were cliche object-types). His
category in which so many different and abstraction to be felt with full force. Recogni- early definition pieces bore more signifi-
irrelevant particulars may be discovered. So tion of these demands has been delayed by cantly upon the problem (these were pre-
many 'conceptual' artists, replacing 'situa- attempts to perpetuate in abstract art the sented as photographic enlargements, white
tions' with 'proposals', disastrously under- illusionistic modes which were proper to on black, of selected words cut from standard
estimate the power of the particular to perspectival painting. Mondrian foresaw the dictionaries; the enlargements themselves
supplant the general. A proposition may have end of painting, but could hardly have guessed were explicitly given a 'mode of presentation'
some equality of status with the physical how protracted would be its terminal illness status rather than an 'original art work' status).
situation it evokes—until that situation is nor what it would die of. Perhaps largely As Jack Burnham has written: `Kosuth began
realized, or particularized; from then on the because of the incipient illusionism of the to view abstraction as a philosophical-
particular memory will blot out the general potential pictorial field, `non-representational' linguistical problem, no longer dominated by
`idea' whenever the proposition is represented painting has acted as a red herring which visual-formal considerations.... That the levels
to the mind. We slide easily into the merely allowed the art object an extended life of abstraction embodied by words could
picturesque. span before its transmigration into objet d'art. legitimately challenge the notion of art
The criticism here may be operative in terms The emergence and success of a style of escaped just about everybody'. 2 0
of 'mode of presentation' (i.e. status accorded abstract painting which derives its effective- From 1966 to 1968 Kosuth's definitions pro-
by the artist to that to which he would have us ness largely from the tendency of juxtaposed gressed from critically apposite particulars
attend) rather than in terms of 'content' ; but colours to suggest a disjunction in depth is (`Water') to generalities and abstractions
in that case such artists are at fault for making evidence of the lengths to which artists, com- (`Meaning'). The significant development, as
implicit claims for their art as one in which mentators and public will go to preserve the I see it, came for Kosuth late in 1968 when he
presentation and content are the same.13 right of displaying their powers of associa- stopped presenting definitions of single words
tion.17 Many works of 'conceptual' art which as his means of drawing attention to the
`The Portrait of Iris Clert" et famille are very derive from preoccupations with physical conceptualizations implied by art language,
old. It reflects among others the view that situations and dramas of materials have served and set up the work (Investigation 2') which
"what we have we hold" : an anarchic blow at similarly to extend the dominion of the pictur- involved publication, part by part, of the
artistic jingoism. It ends up itself as jingoism. esque. It is crucially important to learn to see synopsis of categories from the thesaurus.21
The point in this context is that there is no abstraction not as the visual characteristic of This generalization of his art's function cut
assertion as avant-garde as "this worthless a range of objects (the idea is semantically Kosuth free from the possibility of reference to
scrap of paper etc. is a work of art and what is ludicrous), but as a faculty of thought, a any specific object, both in terms of the work's