Page 75 - Studio International - December 1973

ART THEORY& PRACTICE
were in uneasy relationship. Perhaps Reinhardt largely experimental practice; it postulates no sufficient to engage it in a neo-dada role whether
was restrained from outright naming of names controls although it may find them in the it has intended this or not; only the very
by the aura of coterie loyalty which was course of its preparations, and more positive didactics of theoretical art seem as
inculcated in the early 195os. Theoretical art, importantly it has a basic tolerance, of the sort though they might secure an essentialist
by contrast, has none of this diffidence and is which might find more of interest in a failure position against this sort of misunderstanding.35
even generated by a distaste for and a rejection such as Barry's 'Psychic Series'. In this respect In this sense Theoretical Art has more in
of the circumscribing art milieu. Perhaps the it proposes a split between the artificer of common with recent critical traditions than with
post-Duchampian syndrome has both raised conceptualism and a sort of control room the history of art proper; if a survey history of
issues which it cannot settle and made it easy working on an overall plan, in Art-Language art since 1945 comes to be written it may well be
for a degenerate art involvement to flourish; terms the Mapping and Filing Project.32 The largely in terms of the genesis and function of
this certainly seems to be in Stezaker's mind work will take place and it will then be seen schools of criticism. Since the early 195os
when he typifies some recent art activity as a what is there, a procedure which is remarkably various pressures have promoted an increasing
question of following the leader who is similar to the pattern of work and a major stress on statement making and explanation by
following his nose. Duchamp's exploitation of retrospective so familiar in present painting. It artists of their own work, and this has generally
the readymade was based on a trick and has no message beyond the assurance of taken place in the collective circumstances of an
spawned an expanding category of derivatives critical attention, where theoretical art is an exhibition or group discussion. The more this
through the original 'medium-sized dry goods' ideology dependent on a full and prior has happened the more these statements have
to the less tangible entities on which a constantly understanding of its principles in advance of any been exposed to criticism, measured against
shifting definition of art could be based. realization of art carried out under those each other and the work they accompany and
Inevitably there is an element of simplification principles. The demands of such a strategy are found to have serious shortcomings. In the
in Stezaker's characterization of this Duchamp- distinctly different to those of the post-facto course of the self-conscious and extensive
derived art; it is certainly not as epidemic in the criticism of Art-Language; they require an air discussion which surrounded American
history of art as to be all art since Duchamp but of positive didacticism, a deliberate scheme of painting in the late 1940s, Ad Reinhardt seems
it is a significant proportion of art about `art'.30 emphasis and clarity, and it is probably this to have been particularly concerned to question

Trying to redeem art, and this is fundamentally which accounts for the combative phraseology the beliefs of his contemporaries. This is his
what Stezaker seems to intend, he has both of 'Priorities', for instance, and the unrelenting typical approach in one of the discussions
claimed the primacy of the explicit definition lapidary demonstrations of ' "a . . ." and six around abstract expressionism : 'I would like to
and numbered the detractors who have predicable concepts'.33 ask a question about the exact involvement of a
promoted the shifting counter definition. On Certainly there is an aura of difficulty and work of art. What kind of love or grief is there in
the one hand there are the main proponents of exclusiveness about theoretical art if only in the it ? I don't understand, in a painting, the love of
recent conceptualism who added propositions way in which it is refined and extended around anything except the love of painting itself. If
`as further extensions of the implicit definition its basic and essential unity. Prior there is agony, other than the agony of painting,
of art' and on the other empirical and analytical Conceptualism was much more of a strategy and I don't know exactly what kind of agony that
aestheticians such as Dewey, Brunius and it was always possible to characterize it by would be. I am sure external agony does not
Weitz. This detraction from the credibility of fragments, by a provocative statement : 'I am a enter very importantly into the agony of our
aestheticians is a reflection of the fact that their successful culture fucker', which said painting'.36 Reinhardt addressed himself
work has been used at some time by protagonists something about the political and social stance generally to the rhetorical excesses of his
of a contradictory view. of the artist, about the tone of his address, and contemporaries in a period of generally
Underlying Stezaker's theoretical art and which ultimately gave rise to a tendency to see untested assertion about art. In 1954 Lawrence
certainly admitted in the work of the Art- recent art in avant-garde terms of a sociology of Alloway in his introduction to 'Nine Abstract
Language group is an attitude of custodial artists.34 John Stezaker, laying out the Artists' assumed a role similar to that of
responsibility for 'art'. The more completely principles of Theoretical Art, maintains a Reinhardt in pointing to the wide diversity of
`art' can be seen as a separate domain or realm, strict dispassionacy, as though the work was views concealed under a similarity of
it seems, the more interest is aroused in its inevitable, writing itself; the other problem, of terminology and in drawing attention to what
internal government: at least this might be how course, is that of maintaining a distinctness from he called 'obstinate absolutes' in art whose
it appears to conceptualists in and around Art- philosophy when the vocabulary is so greatly persistent presence in thinking about art
Language who concern themselves with the shared and the weight of this is probably also obscured the obvious incompatibility of
control and government of an 'open concept' of carried by the 'seriousness' of the approach, absolute standards with the prevailing
art, one which implicitly contains a loosely which is full of implications of an essentialist relativism of the period.37 Neither Reinhardt
organized body of often dissimilar practices. In nature. Conceptualism in general has been nor Alloway launch more than a mild
Art-Language, in 'From an Art and Language concerned to fix limits to art activity and in questioning of the terminological inexactitudes
Point of View', for instance, Terry Atkinson doing this has presupposed some basic identity of their contemporaries but it was symptomatic
takes Robert Barry to task for the many or essence, but at the same time it is one of the developing importance of the theoretical
imprecisions in his 'Psychic Series 1969':31 this constantly open to the threat of change, and this justification of art. Where art and a theory of
is a post-facto analysis of a particular piece in has been sufficient to convert it into a body of art had previously led dependent but separate
terms particular to that piece without making practice like any other practice. That is to say, existences the onus was increasingly on a close
any fundamental challenge to the terms or the nature of the enterprise recognizes a interdependence in which the quality of a
presuppositions under which it was produced, unitary notion of 'art' without evolving a method theory was subject to close enquiry. Where art
whereas John Stezaker is much more total in the which is true to this. Anywhere other than in itself might be inviolable, its accompanying
scope of his criticism, aiming rather at a art this sort of question would not necessarily texts were not, although they were more and
replacement of the principles under which art provoke a response, but fundamental to art is more a fundamental part in the closed system of
can exist: he is prepared, in 'Categories', for the idea of it as expressing a purity beyond the art.38 In place, then, of the artist's statement
instance, to say that the principal consequence real, which helps construe 'realism' and 'dada' with its highly subjective approximations to a
of scepticism in art is to have rendered art as affronts involving as they do an elision of art very broad philosophy of art there evolved the
meaningless. The commitment of Art-Language and the everyday. Whilst admitting only more controlled theoretical support of critics,
in its overall view of art and in its responsiveness infrequently to the politics of 'anti-art', the ill- particularly developed in America in the work
is fundamentally methodological, in pursuit of a definition of much Conceptualism has been of Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. This

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