Page 66 - Studio International - March 1974

which made the later works more specific in their To assign a function to the 'hypothetical approach to the history of art which forever
direct content. usage' of Burgin's art works in social terms, confines itself to being at arm's length from the
In Narrative Performative (1971) he uses he presupposes a Lévi-Straussian concept of problem, always standing back and looking on,
a narrative with accompanying photographs to society and its subsumed sign conventions. in typically positivistic fashion. The strength of
specify the content for his 'apprehension Thus the 'empty forms' of his art works are this opposition lies in the fact that it allows
matrices' and in his most recent work VI the regarded as connotating change in modes of prescription, which, of course, is not only
shift from self-reference to a more overt content communication and of apprehension, more absent from the context-bound a priorism of the
seems complete, though it is in the form of the specifically in contributing to a determination position under attack, but is, in fact, a condition
work that its identity nevertheless resides. The of the institutional structures and codes which with which the latter could not exist. As
variables subsumed within the formal influences these. Thus Burgin has asserted that Stezaker puts it: 'The stance adopted by the
`apprehension matrix' of VI are no longer art might function in 'mediating between functionalist is not that of an objective observer,
different objects perceived but different forms different sign conventions', presumably in order but of a participant, whose role is not in
of perception of a given datum — a photograph. to 'endorse or contradict the institutional representing the "world" in the old sense, nor in
So the art-work, VI exists as a 'form of norms' and therefore involve a socially exhibiting formalistic analogues, nor . . . in
cognitive forms'. significant or meaningful modus operandi for forwarding non-intentional entities for
The second regularity characterizing all of art activity. consideration in themselves . . . the artwork
Burgin's work is the manner in which contextual The status of art as a marginal activity in itself .. . belongs to the world it connotes.'
issues external to and yet contingent upon the social terms means that it is limited in its This idea stands up against that view which
work are 'internalized' in a variety of different meaningfulness and its efficacy in these admits to an immutable world, a world resigned
manners. In the earliest Any Moment it is terms. The point of Victor Burgin's work, to a tedious determinism; instead, it invokes not
aspects of the immediate environment which however, seems to counteract the reductionism only what is present and living in our
are systematically listed as the content of the of much of this country's art and replace the environment now, as 'proper material' (to
work. In later works the contexts are Part pour l'art concept of art with a more paraphrase Hegel) but also takes account of the
conceptual or ideological, but the way in which socially valuable one, and in this way perhaps fact that the influences which have formed the
the balance between their impingement on the instate the discipline more centrally in the agent are identical to those which have moulded
work (as determining its apprehension) and their matrix of activities comprising society. 'Work the events that constitute the subject-matter (or
content in the work remains consistent. and Commentary' contains invaluable material content) of any given work.
The modus operandi of Burgin's works for anyone of similar conviction. q Stezaker's thesis is heavily based on a
appears to be entirely in the structures they ROSETTA BROOKS critique of tolerance which, it is claimed, is the
make manifest. But these are not structures inevitable concomitant of the pluralistic nature
made manifest amongst things, or ways of of our modern world. Arguments in favour of
coming to know things, but structures exhibited Constructive programme pluralism maintain that a pluralistic society is
by the works themselves. Modes of cognition Beyond Art for Art's Sake': Apropos Mundus both natural and good, and an end to be sought
or apprehension and indeed modes of by John Stezaker. 84 pp. Nigel Greenwood Inc. in itself (Wolff). It is this vaunted state of
communication and signification are dealt with Ltd., in co-operation with Gallery House Press, affairs that is implicit to the ideology of what
structurally without involving any explicit London, 1973. £1.50. Stezaker calls 'Post-Duchampian' art, and to
signified 'message'. As he has remarked : which he, quite rightly in my view, attributes
`The paradoxical nettle always to be grasped `Beyond "Art for Art's Sake" ' serves as an the current intellectual and moral desuetude in
is that of reconciling the status of an art-work exhibition catalogue, as a critique, and as a the discipline. However, with regard to the
as an empty form and with its being a meaningful prolegomena. By contrast with more typical employment of this quasi-historical compound
assembly of signs'. The way in which he has products that come our way via the other epithet for the concept of art (which he later
consistently pursued this reconciliation has been mechanisms of publicity (both academic and reduces to `P-D art') I have reservations. It is
in seeking external items with which the art- commercial) John Stezaker's book, in a way, not so much that I object to Duchamp as an
work can be said to be functional or serves to expose the merely arbitrary and historical landmark per se, but it is, however, a
meaningful. Rather than looking for intrinsic conventional divisions of labour in the cultural matter of suggesting that the sources of
meaning, extrinsic meaning in the relations of scene in general. As the title suggests, the book pluralism in the domain of art are contiguous
the art-work with a variety of contextual has reference to a specific work, namely Mundus, with the sources of l'art pour l'art which has its
environments has held the clue to Burgin's which has already been described by origin in French art and criticism in the first
reconciliation. John Walker (Studio International, Dec. 1973). half of the 19th century. Additionally, the
The 'emptiness' on what is 'hypothetically' However, the text which prefaces this work is of covering concept of `P-D art' as a term designed
apprehended is perhaps made meaningful in a more general kind and in proportion to the to account for the plethora of activity since the
conjunction with the surrounding framework of ambition of its programme, which is time, say, of the Bottlerack, etc., though
art conventions and norms. In precisely the considerable, it also demands an equally admittedly convenient, suffers from gross over-
way that subjective sociology deals with all circumspect response. simplification. The term 'Modernism' is of
social entities as meaningful entities by virtue One of the chief virtues of this work is that, in course available for this purpose — but this too
of the interrelations of social action etc. with the identifying the opposition (so to speak) and by has run into similar difficulties, mainly, one
structure of society. This seems to be implicit extension the source of `means'-orientated suspects, as a result of over-exposure. The
in Burgin's more recent commitments. The objectivity (which by way of the insidious advantage of the latter term, however, is that it
point is, in apprehending a Burgin art work, to process of reduction has become the sine qua non is perhaps more sympathetic to the notion of a
look to the structure and not to what the of mainstream art activity (so-called) specifiable tradition (Formalism) and, as such,
structure literally does. One might say that throughout this century) it has been made cannot so readily be seized upon as a synonym
ultimately one is expected to look to the possible to posit an area of activity which — in for the totality of past art. Having said this, we
societal use of 'empty' structure. As he has being dismissive of the natural aspects of the have to admit that the distinction between
said in an interview with Anne Seymour: business — is given over to the more positive `formal' art and 'the rest' is not only unclear but
'you can read it and leave it "empty" — as you and dynamic concept of function. complex (a fact which Stezaker might have
might examine the construction of a sieve Stezaker's appeal to functionalism here is considered): the culmination of this complexity
without actually sieving anything'. opposed to that peculiarly static and empirical can perhaps best be seen in Reinhardt's work.

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