Page 53 - Studio International - November 1970

status which his theorizing gave it. Rein- The forces effective in this situation are of
hardt's writings and discourse31 about art course largely those peculiar to art traditions
were what gave his paintings function; they and to the circumstances of their exhaustion.
became the sole positives to be developed But such changes occur also as part of whole
from his gnomic negatives : cultural developments—changes in the way
`There is just one art, one artlessness, one we view ourselves, the circumstances of our
painting, one painterliness, one painterliless- existence, or the relationship between the two.
ness. The advent of abstraction in art testified to a
`There is just one difference, one sameness, capability, or at least a willingness on man's
one consciousness, one nothingness, one part, to restructure his means of considering
rightness, one indivisibility, one essence, one experience. The implications for art of the
fineness. concept of abstraction have hardly yet been
`There is just one thing to be said, one thing touched upon in critical discourse, for obvious
not to be said.'" reasons, but they are now fully exposed in art
Reinhardt declared that he was painting the itself. The change is now being made from a
last paintings anyone could paint, and he mode of perception based on given facts in the
called them 'Ultimate paintings'33. In 1967, material world to one patterned on the
the year of Reinhardt's death, Joseph relationship between man's response to these
Kosuth both fulfilled the prophecy and given facts and the general truths extra-
extended Reinhardt's life span in art when polated from a consideration of all such res-
he presented a white-on-black photographic ponses, remembered or present. It is signifi-
enlargement of the word 'Ultimate' on a five- cant that Kandinsky, Mondrian and Male-
foot-square board, thus transposing the vich were each in their own ways almost
tautology from the mystic to the analytic crankily anti-materialist ; 36 and that an ability
mode of philosophy. There could have been which we employ to describe to ourselves the to conceive of art in abstract terms, and in
no more fitting compliment to Reinhardt's kinds of experience with which they are con- terms of general functions, was coincident
art as art. cerned. with major changes in man's understanding
We always need a means of formulating, of As expressed in his writing and in his other of the physical structure of the universe. Yet
theorizing upon, and of conceptualizing work, Kosuth's is a highly tradition-conscious in terms of our current knowledge—sixty
about art which is true to our actual experi- (art-literate) view of art; it has, for instance, years later—of what constitutes any given
ence of it at any one time. The vocabulary of certain points in common with even the entity, the prevailing concept of abstraction
criticism or of discourse needs to approximate Modernists' view of the role of tradition in in art is still ludicrously primitive. It has
to the language of art. The language of art art; but Kosuth admits more traditions of hardly been a concept at all; more a matter
needs to take cognizance of the structures thought and articulation as potentially rele- of empirical response to appearances. The
employed in thought. vant to art than we have been accustomed to majority even of supposedly professional
Kosuth and the Art-Language artists have do under an impoverished critical regime commentators upon art approach as incom-
extended the legitimate vocabulary of art in (i.e. one narrowly educated in art). The main prehensible or obscure precisely those artists
the direction of philosophy by promoting weakness of the Modernist position is that its who are gifted with some ability to bring the
certain modes of analysis, previously con- basic tenets derive from consideration of only a facts of their art in line with the facts of per-
sidered proper to other disciplines, from a very limited period of a particular tradition ception and consciousness, whose constructs
secondary to a primary status in the considera- in the art of a narrow range of cultures; these bear some relation to the modes in which we
tion and construction of art. In fact, of course, tenets bear very little relation to the con- now know that entities are actually consti-
these modes of analysis have always been ditions under which art has been made in tuted and identified, whose work, in fact, has
relied upon in art as points of reference for other periods and other cultures —let alone to meaning by all the standards which we would
describing, or 'conceptualizing about' ex- any conditions outside art. In no other area apply to any area of ideas less mindlessly
perience. These artists confront this fact in the of human thought would it be considered considered than is the area of art.
consciousness of its implications. proper to establish general principles of `I see no a priori reason why even such an
In an article published in Studio International evaluation on so limited a consideration of important concept as that of a physical object
in October 1969 Victor Burgin called atten- the available relevant information. should be regarded as indispensable. Might
tion to what was being done : 'Some recent not substantially the same facts be expressed
art, evolving through attention both to the Once the process of recognition and exploita- in a language reflecting a universe of discourse
conditions under which objects are perceived tion of art's language had been begun— in which the basic particulars were momen-
and to the processes by which aesthetic status consciously, so far as I can see, by Kosuth, by tary events ?' —A. J. Ayer.37
is attributed to certain of these, has tended to Atkinson and Baldwin and, less directly, by `The world inferred has no things, as immut-
take its essential form in message rather than Bainbridge and Hurrell, independently and able solids ... it has only eventpatterns of
in materials. In its logical extremity this more or less simultaneously in late 1966/early relative stability....The event is permanent' —
tendency has resulted in a placing of art 196735—it was inevitable that the implications John Latham.38
entirely within the linguistic infrastructure with regard to the functions of art, and our `Perhaps it is time for a moratorium on things —
which previously served merely to support assumptions about those functions, should a temporary withdrawal from real objects
art.'34 Artists such as Kosuth, Atkinson, have demanded to be rigorously explored. If during which the object analogue formed in
Baldwin, Bainbridge, Hurrell and Burgin are there is any value to the concept of radicalism consciousness may be examined as the origin
acknowledging the conditions under which in art it is to be attributed to endeavours such of a new generating system— Victor Burgin."
art acts upon the conscious mind or is gene- as these, in which the intuition of a change in `... the world of objects as we have arranged
rated by it. Their art functions in full con- the means of function, rather than the style, of them is an imperfect analogue of the structure
sideration of the now widely held belief that art is pursued until it becomes necessary for all of our acts of consciousness, or conscious acts' —
the modes of our constructs derive from the concerned to acknowledge that a change in Victor Burgin." In its original context this last
concepts—articulated thoughts and beliefs— function has indeed occurred. was directed at the inadequacies of contem-