This Is Not a Thread: (Conceptual Art)

okay here's another one: There's one theory that kindof goes that the history of western art has been of different spaces. I think the one everyone learns in school is the renaissance and the discovery of perspective. But there have been other more subtle ones like b/w the 16th and 17th century you have this shift in the treatment of the picture plane b/w a kind of expansive space that opens out onto the viewer and a kind of enclosed, contained window view. And you might think about cubism as a kind of fractured, composite space.

And some art historians would say that these different characterizations of space have something to do w/ a kind of phenomenological morality, that they reflect the social landscape and narrate the relationship b/w the viewer and the artist, or reflect the psychic geography and how the individual experiences space historically.

And so one way of understanding the origins of conceptual art could be to think of the type of space it constitutes. And I guess for me that would have to do with this displacement idea that you get most explicitly w/ art that is experiences as documentary of something that happened elsewhere, or where the object is only a manifestation of the "idea" where the idea is the art. And I get the feeling that there's a certain alienation that results in that: like even art is something that is permanently removed, that is incredibly mediated. That transcendence is endlessly deferred and possibly essentially chimeric, which is a huge shift away from the immersive confrontational posturing of Minimalism for eg.

and like brice marden for instance where he leaves this band at the bottom that reveals the making of the painting because for him the site of painting is itself holy. And its interesting for me that LeWitt or Weiner try to get away completely from that kind of theology but end up just reformulating it.

And so one way of understanding the origins of conceptual art could be to think of the type of space it constitutes. And I guess for me that would have to do with this displacement idea that you get most explicitly w/ art that is experiences as documentary of something that happened elsewhere, or where the object is only a manifestation of the "idea" where the idea is the art. And I get the feeling that there's a certain alienation that results in that: like even art is something that is permanently removed, that is incredibly mediated.

otm, and fascinating besides. suppose that such art is not only something that results in alienation (alienation of the art from our experience of its manifestation), but that perhaps results from and reflects alienation, mediation. in that sense, as you say, very much of its time. on one level, you could see this as reflective of the separation of art, something we came to enshrine as almost mythic/metaphysical in the 20th century, from our commodified experience of art objects. on a larger level, you could perhaps describe it as instance of the human self defining itself as separate from a mediated and commodified material universe. i.e., the retreat of the self-as-viewer from this world to a remove from which it observes the world as if in a frame. art, being an act of self, is likewise extracted from the material to this protected remove. something magical in this then, as human selves that are not quite in the world still act on it in such a way as to leave traces of the distanced viewing space in which they operate.

anyway, yeah. great post.

but the more that distinction is stressed, the more tension there is between the physical and conceptual aspects of any work. and this apparent bifurcation is itself really interesting. i mean for me it seems to have precedents in eg. con-(or even tran)-substantiation (and that kind of calvinism is reflected maybe in the strict puritanism of eg. Weiner), or like marxist dialectics of the commodity itself (in a simplistic way i mean). But it ends up pointing at itself, at real or illusory values in art and how we can even deal w/ that, or make provisions for that. Especially when what art itself is might be completely outside our purview, shadowy and elusive.

one thing i find interesting about it is the way the artist is privileged in this idea. Like if you separate the object from the idea, and view the object as merely a trace or part of the art, then that reduces the value of the object.

hmm

Recognizing copyright in Wildflower Works presses too hard on these basic principles. We fully accept that the artistic community might classify Kelley’s garden as a work of postmodern conceptual art. We acknowledge as well that copyright’s prerequisites of authorship and fixation are broadly defined. But the law must have some limits; not all conceptual art may be copyrighted. In the ordinary copyright case, authorship and fixation are not contested; most works presented for copyright are unambiguously authored and unambiguously fixed. But this is not an ordinary case. A living garden like Wildflower Works is neither “authored” nor “fixed” in the senses required for copyright.

http://clancco.com/wp/2011/02/16/vara_moral-rights_sculpture_originality/

I'm going to buy a condominium and fill it with George Condo works and call it "Magna What, Magna Who"

http://albumsbyconceptualartists.tumblr.com/