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Home , Christine Kozlov, David Askevold, Herman Daled, Joseph Kosuth

Joseph Kosuth and Seth Siegelaub Reply to Benjamin Buchloh on Conceptual Author(s): and Seth Siegelaub Source: October, Vol. 57 (Summer, 1991), pp. 152-157 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778876 . Accessed: 22/11/2014 10:08

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This content downloaded from 130.102.42.98 on Sat, 22 Nov 2014 10:08:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Joseph Kosuth and Seth Siegelaub Reply to Benjamin Buchloh on

We are herereprinting, at therequest of Joseph Kosuth, the following replies to BenjaminBuchloh's "Conceptual Art 1962-1969: Fromthe of Administration to theCritique of Institutions,"which appeared in October 55 (Winter1990). These replieswere writtenin responseto the versionof the essaythat appeared in L'art conceptuel: une perspective(Paris: Musee d'artmoderne de la Villede Paris, 1989). Kosuth'sinitial response was insertedinto the first edition of the catalog, and therevised versionprinted below (which Kosuth has nowfurther revised with the additionof a commenton Buchloh'sfootnote 28 [footnote29 in the October version])appeared, togetherwith a responseby Seth Siegelaub,in thesecond edition of thecatalog. The quotationswithin the replies come from the version of Buchloh's essay that appeared in thecatalog.

It is the firsttime in my experience that I have seen a participantin an historicalsurvey show attacked-much less withsuch vehemence. When it is an art historianwho takes as his task the defamationof a livingartist in character, work, and name, the situationis even more difficultto countenance. I do not propose thatMr. Buchloh give up his grimsubjectivity. Yet, it should not escape notice that his attack is primarilya personal one and grounded in my writings, ratherthan an analysisof my work. WhetherMr. Buchloh's newfoundwriting style- apparentlydeveloped for thisoccasion-is intended to pass as theoryor art historyundoubtedly will provide some amusing speculation,but in any case it does a disserviceto both while satisfyingthe requirementsof neither. Unfortunately,the moralismat the root of Mr. Buchloh'sjournalism does not translate into a professional ethic. In his systematiccondemnation and ridicule of my work, he breaches not only the trust I placed in his personal assurances of a fair and objective reading of this period-he engages in a wholesale falsificationof a history-and not only my own. I would only hope that the blatant cronyismhiding below his "history"of conceptual art and his biased and judgmental diatribe leveled against my work does not escape the attentionof the reader of thiscatalog. This letterwill not address the score of injusticesin Buchloh's articlenor will it attemptto show the limitationsof his historyof the readymade. He had fivemonths to writehis articleand I have had two days to digestit. I willmerely cite two of the most blatant falsehoods,saving an itemized account for a later date.

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Footnote6. Apparently,Mr. Buchloh did not read Artafter closely. is included. I admire and respect both On Kawara and Sol LeWitt and resent anythingelse being implied. Excuse me if I was influencedby Judd and Morris and not by Buchloh's choices. Their agenda as artistswas something quite separate frommine. This is common knowledgeto those familiarwith the period. The bad faith attributionof my motives is uncalled for. Although Buchloh never asked me, I will say that I never saw Red Square,White Letters by Sol LeWitt until the seventies and was surprised and interestedin it. In any case, it is certainlyan anomaly in his work. As for SVA, i was notorious there when I was a student for questioning the teachers. So much so, in fact,that the directorof the school, Silas Rhodes, put me on the facultyat the age of twenty-two. Footnote18. The exhibitionspace referredto was called the Lannis Gallery (after my cousin Lannis Spencer, who was paying the rent) for the firstmonth, and the Museum of Normal Artthereafter. I nevercalled itthe "Lannis Museum" and corrected anyone who did. Those familiarwith this period know this, as well as the fact (as usual unmentioned) that it was the space where , ,On Kawara, and otherswere publiclyexhibited very early-if not for the firsttime. This factand activitiessuch as my show "Fifteen People Present Their Favourite Book" in 1967 (among others) is curiously omitted. By 1967, I was workingon the FirstInvestigation and never exhibited the Proto-Investigationsat the Lannis Gallery.All thisis known and documented. This brings us to his most reprehensibleattack-even beyond the bounds of Buchloh's infamous polemics. It concerns the date of myProto-Investigations. Ever-diligentin supportingthe causes of his friends(Mr. Buchloh has hereto- fore not published on my work, although he borrowsthe voice of an "expert" on Conceptual Art here), my early work presents a special problem for this group, as it does fortheir champion. As I statedvery clearly at the time (Buchloh could have asked Seth Siegelaub et al. about this, rather than interviewing individuals who neither knew my 1965 work nor had anything to gain by supporting me, to put it mildly),these works existed only in notes or drawings and were fabricatedafter I had the financialresources due to interestin the somewhat later work. Of course I was asked "what did you do before?" notably by Gian Enzo Sperone, among other criticsand gallerists.Again, this is all known, if not by Mr. Buchloh. I simplyhad no funds at that age to fabricate works, and frankly,with no hope to exhibit them at the time-and with the nature of the work being what it was-there reallywas no point. This work is titled Proto-Investigations,clearly from the vantage point of the Investigations. Is the physicallyexhibited presence of a workthe onlycriterion for its existence? It isn't, if you know anythingabout Conceptual Art. In contrastto his claims, Mr. Buchloh did not ask me to provide any documentation about this early period. I find it bitterlyironic that he singles out my work to have legitimate dates questioned while the dates of two of his friends'works are patent fabri-

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cations thatare leftunchallenged. Or are these diversionarytactics the purpose of his essay? In order to isolate and dismiss me as a modernist,Mr. Buchloh simply stops discussing my activitiesat the moment they can be favorablycompared withthe work of his friendson the issue of "institutionalcritique." The period from The Second Investigationthrough to the period of The Fox-the years covered by this exhibition-is completelymissing. At the same time,Mr. Buch- loh takes insights,terminology, even a philosophicalagenda fromthis early text of mine and naturalizes it in the process of validatingthe work he wants to support. And he would have you believe, dear reader, that the "institutional critique" which he ascribes only to the work of his chums burst forthout of thin air, and could have done so withoutbenefit of this early writingand the work which went withit. Mr. Buchloh seems desperate to eitherdeny the work I did or to attribute it to someone else. In good faithI accepted the assurance of Buchloh and others that a hatchetjob of this sort would neitherbe done nor permitted.Buchloh and I had one two-hourconversation (our first)after which it was agreed that we should correspond and exchange summer addresses. I never heard from him again. Apparentlyhe opted for the easier job of a partisan attack rather than doing the necessary homework for a text more appropriate to such a catalog. A press release fora gang of pals should not be confusedwith historical scholarship. With this text, Mr. Buchloh disqualifieshimself once and for all frombeing taken seriouslyon this subject. Footnote28. Mr. Buchloh is himselfa very adept modernistwho uses an endless citationof "facts"-dates, quotes, references,cited works,and so forth for the purpose of constructinga scholarly,"authoritative" genealogy. Yet glar- ing errors abound. In this footnote,to cite one with remarkableimplications, he cites my FirstInvestigations, in passing, as paintings.Those works, texts of definitionsfrom my dictionary,are mounted photographs.Anyone witheven a passing knowledge of my work knows that this work, as well as the Proto- Investigations,used photography.The literatureof and on this period, not to mention my own writingon this work,is replete with referencesto it because of its philosophical/ideologicalimportance for an art engaged withsignification ratherthan auratic manipulationof form.Either Benjamin Buchloh is breath- takinglyignorant of the movementhe is claimingexpertise in (as other errors would suggest), or he has intentionallymisrepresented facts of this historyin order to support a subjectivelyinspired polemic (as the restof his manipulation of the factswould indicate). -Joseph Kosuth, November 19, 1989, and April 20, 1991.

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Despite claims and occasional footnotereferences to the contrary,Buch- loh's text is a formalisticand idealisticone, a sort of tautological"art historyas art historyas art history,"which has little,if any, relationship to the social, economic, or cultural, i.e., historical,period which it pretends to describe. Although the text claims to deal with the production of art between 1962 and 1969, it is hard to imagine how one can deal withthat period withoutmention- ing, even in a passing footnote, for example, May '68 or the U.S. War in Vietnam, which marked the period, even the art world. This is especially the case fora "progressive"art historiantrying to understandso-called "Conceptual Art," an art whose spirit,ideas, and practiceswere linked withthe broad social issues of the time. Instead of an open-ended, imaginativehistory questioning the possible dialectic between the art and life-why, for example, this type of art arose when it did and not, say,in 1926 or 1947 or 1984, or how this art was related to the changing mode of the production,distribution, and consumption of culture, etc.-he has chosen to writea standard, conservative,hermeneuti- cally-sealed,textbook-type history of his idea of "who-influenced-who,""who- did-what-first,"etc. His "Conceptual Art" historyis reductivefor stillanother reason: for him, "Conceptual Art" is basicallya historyof what he thinkshappens in Manhattan between Twenty-thirdStreet and Canal Street,just like artistsliving in Paris or Berlin in the early part of the century.A false idea, as itsinternational character, especially the relation between artistsin Europe and the U.S., was one of its most original traits,differing greatly from other art "movements."Europe, in fact, was-and still is, twenty-fiveyears later!-the site of most of the exhibitions-including thisone-and of the interestwhich supported thiswork. Apparently,although living in Europe at the time, Mr. Buchloh does not find this of interest;perhaps he is unaware of this history? His historyis writtenwith the hindsightand sense of distance of an art historianwriting about the (long) dead past, withvery little, if any, connection to the present, or, especially,future. His article even begins with "... roughly from 1965 to its temporary[?] disappearance in 1975," and concludes with 's anticipation of its ". . . abolition of object status and commodityform, at best, would only be short lived," so we should not forget that we are dealing with a closed-and unsuccessful?-chapter in past art history.(Perhaps this need to reduce historyto a compact package is precisely one of the unspoken purposes of museum exhibitionsand art history?) One of the reasons why this type of writingclaiming to be historycan be writtenabout "Conceptual Art" is thatduring its development there was no art criticwho lived the period and "promoted" and explained it (with the obvious exception of Lucy Lippard in New York,and to a lesserdegree Charles Harrison and Michel Claura in Europe) and is stillinterested in writingabout it twenty years later. Perhaps thiswas because the artistsidentified with this current were so vocal and literateabout theirwork and thus partlyexcluded the need for a

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criticalbackup, but in any case the result is that much of the documentation and historyof the period has been-and will be-left to people who have not lived it and are tryingto reconstructit long afterthe fact.This poses some very original problems in charting the period, in addition to understandingthe significanceof the art produced. But the specific problem with Benjamin Buchloh's text is not that it is composed of much subjectiveopinion, but thatit pretendsto be a factualhistory of the period, a pretentionreinforced by its attachmentto-and legitimation by-the catalog of the firstmuseum attemptto produce an historicalexhibition of the work of the period. Obviously,we all can have insightfulopinions about a period we didn't personallylive through-even art criticsand historians- but what is disturbinghere is that Buchloh's opinions are parading around as facts. Of the other numerous underlyingmisconceptions ordering his concept of "Conceptual Art," we will only mention here the most important:the Du- champ fixation. Like Hegel, for whom human historywas conceived as the realizationof the Idea, Buchloh's "Conceptual Art"is the realizationof the Duchampian Idea. Duchamp is depicted as the only possible "progressive"antidote to what Buchloh considers a "reactionary,"tautological, positivistic formalism-which has been enlarged by Buchloh to include all square art objects. With Buchloh's history,the Duchamp influenceis inescapable: "Confrontingfor the firsttime the full range of Duchamp's legacy,Conceptual practices.. ."; "This erosion by the introductionof a legalisticlanguage and the administrativestyle of the material presentationof the artisticobject-has, of course, once again been prefiguredin Duchamp's practiceas well"; "In January 1963, (the year of the firstAmerican retrospectiveof the work of at the Pasadena Art Museum) a relativelylittle-known Los Angeles artist [Edward Ruscha] decided to publish a book entitledTwenty-Six Gasoline Stations"; "It is therefore all the more surprisingto see around 1968 (whatone could call the thridphase of Duchamp reception) . . ."; "A few monthslater, Kosuth based his argument for the development of conceptual art on an equally restrictedreading of Duchamp"; etc.; etc. But the real problem of the Duchamp fixationis not that it makes Du- champ appear omnipotent;it has an even more insidiousand importanteffect. By fabricatinghis historyof "Conceptual Art" around the armature of the Duchamp idea-or the idea of Duchamp-Buchloh's historyhas been reduced almost exclusivelyto artistsand ideas which can be situated-whether pro or con-within the Duchamp perspective,thus verycarefully avoiding any other ideas, such as those of Andre, Weiner,Buren, and Barry,among others,which have little,if anything,to do withDuchamp, and oftenopen directlyonto social, moral, and political issues, both art-relatedand more general. The obvious

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exclusion of from the beginnings of this historyis especially re- vealing; it is nothingless than the exclusion of the "political." In light of his Duchamp fixation,much of Buchloh's critique of Kosuth also appears as a disguised dispute over the "correct"interpretation, use, and misuse of Duchamp. Furthermore,whereas Buchloh devotes much criticalen- ergyon the ideas of Kosuth withoutmentioning his work,it is quite the contrary for most of the other artisits, whose work is mentioned--albeit usually descriptively--butrarely their ideas (except for Robert Morris,who is treated approvinglybecause of his Duchamp ideas, and to a lesser extent,Sol LeWitt and Daniel Buren, who, however,are treated ratherambiguously). As one can see, I have not even begun to question Buchloh's subjective choice of specificfacts and their ordering in time and space; this will have to wait for a more thoroughand serious studyof "Conceptual Art" and its relation to its historicalmoment. For our moment,I will limitmyself to a random list of some actors "missingin action"--dematerialized?-who contributed,in one way or another, to the formationof the art historicalmoment called, for lack of a betterterm, "Conceptual Art": Carl Andre,John Baldessari, Robert Hout, Jack and Nell Wendler,Hollis Frampton,John Chamberlain,Ron Wolin, Harald Szeemann, VH101, Jean-Luc Godard, Edward Keinholz, Lucy Lippard, Jan Dibbets, Prague 1968, Eugene Goosen, Art & Project,Dennis Oppenheim, "Art and Industry,"Gian Enzo Sperone, Christo,Wim Beeren, Richard Serra, Art Workers Coalition, , Walter K6nig, Avalanche,, Germano Celant, Robert Irwin, JenniferLicht, Lotta Continua, Stanley and Elyse Grinstein,, Ray Dirks, Yvonne Rainer, Prospect, Niele To- roni, Donald Burgy, "," Woodstock,, Peter Town- send, "Art of the Real," WillougbySharp, Keith Arnatt,Michel Claura, Konrad Fischer, May '68, Frederick Barthelme,Jack Burnham, Peter Downsborough, Barry Flanagan, , Pulsa, Hamish Fulton, Guerilla Art Action Group, Stanley Brouwn, John Chandler, Enno Develing, N.E. Thing Co., the Black Panthers, , Hanne Darboven, Richard Long, Terry Fox, "Land art," Billy Kluver,Johannes Cladders, Michael Asher, Gilbert& George, Piero Gilardi, Peter Hutchinson,Michael Harvey,Al Hansen, "Antiform,"Luis Camnitzer, Michael Heizer, David Lamelas, Allen Kaprow, Ger Van Elk, Ste- phen Kaltenbach,Artist's Rights Movement, the Rosario Group, Bruce McLean, Mario Merz, Ursula Meyer,Walter de Maria, BarryLe Va, Roelof Louw, Adrian Piper, Gerry Schum, Les Levine, Franz Erhard Walther,The Bay of Pigs, Ian Wilson, Klaus Rinke, Keith Sonnier,William Wiley, Michael Snow, "Video Art," William Wegman,John Gibson, Tony Schafrazi,, Abbie Hoff- man, Sigmar Polke, Herman Daled, the U.S. Servicemen'sFund, Tomasso Trini, Eugenia Butler,Gene Beery,Lee Lozano, John Perrault,Marjorie Strider,Alan Ruppersberg,John Latham, Gene Swenson, Kent State, the Beatles, and, lest we forget,the Vietnam War. -Seth Siegelaub, January 1990.

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