Conceptual Art

Buchloh presents both Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris as conceptual artists. I see how Lewitt's work embodies this movement and theme - he combines visuals with linguistics, creating conflicts and challenging his viewers. Morris plays with different senses in his productions using a strategy of "perceptual withdrawal", which is definately cool but I don't see how it is necessarily conceptual art. I guess our language is a sense -we rely on it to communicate, document, and think, but it seems like since it is sooo much more integrated into human culture and civilization, challenging language is a much bigger deal than, say, removing visual cues and replacing them with audio stimuli. Some one who is blind and needs to rely on their other senses more is more typical and easier for an audience to grasp than someone who has lost/never had any sense of language.

When the author is discussing the squares and cubes, he talks about the importance of the painting's transperancy. How it, quite literally, makes a piece conceptual art by forcing a view into the frame, support, etc of the work. It addresses the history of it, the manual work done to install it, and the traditional how-to of the process. My question is - many other works we've looked at have done this as well - from visual to performance pieces. Are all those considered conceptual art pieces as well? Is this movement generally regarded in reference to a time frame or the entire idea (which comes in waves and jumps through art history)?

Concept Art

Buchloh writes that Morris' "fascination with and respect for Duchamp was related to his linguistic fixation, to the idea that all of his operations were ultimately built on a sophisticated understanding of language itself." Obviously the role of language and text is significant for conceptual art, but how can Duchamp's "operations" be "built" on its undertanding?

According to Kosuth, "artistic propositions constitute themselves in the negation of all referentiality." Although this was included in a discussion of the primacy of the "analytic proposition" over all other considerations, I am having trouble seeing how the pieces fit.

Buchloh

1.) Buchloh states "Language is not plastic art but both are forms of human behavior and the structures of one can be compared to the structures of the other". My question revolves are the comparison of "plastic" and language, I have no clue why Buchloh is comparing the two. I understand that it is a test of visual, but if the way in which they relate to one another could be clarified, that would great.

2.) Buchloh states that Pop Art and Minimalism allowed the aesthetic of consumption and production to replace the typical "American-type formalism and prohibition of referentially". My question is, what exactly is this "formalism" and why was it prohibited to be referential before the 1960's?

Buchloh

Q1:Buchloh categorizes language as "not plastic art... but (a form of) human behavior" (593). I am confused about how he defines the concept of "plasticity." Does this mean undynamic, static art? What exactly is plastic art and in what ways does language not qualify?

q2: I found it incredibly interesting when Buchloh talks about Dan Graham's Homes for America and Graham's decision to eliminate the difference between actual art and documentation. This seems like a move to accommodate the masses to view and publicize his work. As we move into a more technology based world everyday, will this impact artist's creations? Will artists think about how their art will be reproduced, for example over the web?

Conceptual Art

Question 1: On page 517, Buchloh quoted Joseph Kosuth’s assertion that “Art before the modern period is as much art as Neanderthal man is man.” So all art works before modernity are “works” and only post modern art are completed works? Is that what Kosuth mean when he call “conceptual work of art” contradictory? I do not quite understand the purpose of this strong assertion.

Question 2: Buchloh said that “It is a recognition that materials and procedures, surfaces and textures… are always already inscribed within the conventions of language and thereby within institutional power and ideological and economic investment.” On page 529. In this case, for the artist to offer institutional critique, they must either apply unconventional materials, procedures and etc or not building the piece like the 3rd parameter in the linguistic definition on manners of use?

Conceptual Art: The Irrational Enlightenment

Early in his article, Buchloh states that Sol Lewitt’s work, or should I say art proposition, attempted to approach a particular “final destiny of tautology” (517). But how is this different from the logic Stella alludes to? Are not all works of art formulated around indirect speech? They are visual rather than audio representations after all. In his effort to define the practices associated with modern Conceptual art, Buchloh blurs the distinction between perceptual and conceptual experience through the use of excessive terminology. I am still unclear on what is traditional in Conceptual Art, and how irrationality is associated to Conceptual Art.

When describing Weiner’s two squares as objects that manifest both a physical and perceptual interdependence, Buchloh is concise in his claims of a withdrawal experience and how it makes the installation more than an aesthetic device, but also a visual interruption. As in Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting, a devoid or semi-inclusive object can be placed in a gallery for spectators to observe, both aesthetically and in relation to its missing parts. However, Buchloh fails to detail how Weiner’s two squares function, if at all, “on both the level of institutional order and on that of private ownership” (527). What does he mean by institutional order? Are these two squares not entirely a conception of private instance? Furthermore, if institutions influence individual perceptions, why does he place them as distinct factors?

conceptual art

Q1. According to Buchloh, "the traditional criteria of aesthetic judgment - of taste and of connoisseurship - have been programmatically voided" (593). I found this statement interesting because if the aesthetics of a piece are gone, how do you judge the piece of art? He talks about how the aesthetics becomes "on the one hand a matter of linguistic convention" while on the other hand, it functions both as a "legal contract and an institutional discourse" (593). I find this concept hard to grasp. How can the aesthetics of the piece be a "linguistic convention?"

Q2. Buchloh talks about how Conceptual Art "prohibits any and all visuality" from it's artwork (594). He then goes on to discuss the way in which the visual of the "square - would be illegitimate" (596). How - if something is right in front of you and you are looking at it - can the visual of the art be "illegitimate?" Isn't the visual itself what makes it art and why it is so important?