r t edited by Alexander Alberro and Sabeth Buchmann Generali Foundation Collection Series edited by Sabine Breitwieser The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 1111111 London, England General( Foundation Vienna, Austria Art After Conceptual Art edited by Alexander Alberro and Sabeth Buchmann Generali Foundation Collection Series edited by Sabine Breilwieser foe Generali Foundation Vienna, Austria [email protected] http://foundation.generali.at ISBN: 3-901107-50-9 Text edited by Gudrun Ratzinger Copy edited by Lisa Rosenblatt Produced by Julia Heine Photo edited by !ris Ranzinger, Julia Seyr Designed by Andreas Pawlik (AO), Stephan Pieffer Paper: Munken Premium Cream, Munken Pure Typeface: Sabon, Neue Helvetica Total Production: Generali Foundation Printed and bound in Austria Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Art After Conceptual Art/ edited by Alexander Alberro and Sabeth Buchmann. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. !SBN-13: 978-0-262-51195-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) !SBN-10: 0-262-51195-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Conceptual art. 2. Conceptual art-Influence. I. Alberro, Alexander. II. Buchmann, Sabeth. N6494.C63A735 2006 709.04'075-dc22 2006044881 The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected]. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. © Vienna 2006, Generali Foundation, authors, translators, photographers and artists TABLE OF CONTENTS Dietrich Karner Foreword 9 Sabine Breitwieser Series Editor's Note 13 Alexander Alberro Introduction: The Way Out is the Way ln Part L After Conceptual Art 21 Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Allegorical Procedures: Appropriation and Montage in Contemporary Art 53 Thomas Crow Unwritten Histories of Conceptual Art 67 Helen Molesworth House Work and Art Work 87 Ricardo Basbaum Within the Organic Line and After Part II. Dismantling Binaries 101 Luiza Nader Language, Reality, Irony: The Art Books of Jarosfaw Kozfowski 119 Isabelle Graw Conceptual Expression: On Conceptual Gestures in Allegedly Expressive Painting, Traces of Expression in Proto-Conceptual Works, and the Significance of Artistic Procedures 135 Gregor Stemmrich Heterotopias of the Cinematographic: Institutional Critique and Cinema in the Art of Michael Asher and Dan Graham 151 Helmut Draxler Letting Loos(e): Institutional Critique and Design P-art III. Post-, Neo-, and New Genre Conceptual Art 103 Edit Andras Transgressing Boundaries (Even Those Marked Out by the Predecessors) in New Genre Conceptual Art 179 Sabeth Buchmann Under the Sign of Labor 197 Elizabeth Ferrell The Laci<; of Interest in Maria Eichhorn's Work 213 Henrik Olesen Pre Post: Speaking Backwards 233 Contributors 236 Index 239 Photo and Text Credits c;\I Sabine Breitwieser Series Editor's Note Specifically, an identification [of the contemporary corporation] with the Arts will do the following: a. Improve the image of your company by making your public more aware of what you are doing in the community. b. Assist in developing a more fully rounded personality for your corporation by adding a Cultural dimension. c. Provide a bold, unique and exiting element ln the presentation of your products and services. d. Promote greater public acceptance of your corporation and its products and services by making yourself more attractive and visible in the marketplace. Seth Siegelaub, i 967 1 Conceptual practices are often discussed in reference to the aspect of a )>dematerialization(i of the art-object, and of a democratization of the art world that, it is hoped, will accompany it. Or this notion, introduced into the discussions on Conceptual art in the late 1960s by Lucy Lippard, is referenced in order to develop, from its critical scrutiny, alternative proposals as to what is in fact to be understood by it. Whether the means of Conceptual art are capable of »[affecting] the world any differently than, or even as much as, its less ephemeral counterparts« was disputed early on.2 From a later vantage point, Benjamin Buchloh questioned such goals in general, stating that >) Conceptual Art was distinguished, from its inception, by its acute and critical sense of discursive and institutional limitations, its self-imposed restrictions, its lack of totalizing vision, its critical devotion to the factual conditions of artistic production and recep­ tion without aspiring to overcome the mere facticity of these conditions ... « 3 Even considering that critics as well as artists have varying ideas about what the notion of ))Conceptual art« comprises, it has become an accepted term for those positions that »under­ stand the visual arts not me;;ly as a synonym for physical objects but as a field of negotiation of the changed cultural significances of image, language, and representation.« For many this 1 Quoted in Alexander Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity {Boston, MNLondon: MIT Press, 2003), 14 2 Lucy Lippard, »Post/ace« in Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object {New York: Praeger, 1973), 264 3 Benjamin H, D, Buchloh, "From the Aesthetic of Administration to Institutional Critique,~ in L'a.rt conceptuel: Une perspective, ed, Claude Gintz, exh, cat. (Paris: Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1989), 53. field has become the »basis for a practice focused on actions and processes along the lines that conjoin the arts, the everyday, and politics.« 4 In view of these considerations, collecting Conceptual an becomes a difficult endeavor; not because, as the notion of dematerialization might suggest, there are no objects on the art market, but because there is the danger that the critical impetus that is-despite the skepticism expressed by critics-inherent to many of these works gets lost in the process of their »institu~ tiona!ization.« As is evident from the passage above, quoted from a brochure for potential buyers, Seth Siegelaub, the great advertising strategist of early North American Conceptual art, highlighted the compatibility of critical art with the marketing goals of private corporations already in 1967. Almost 40 years later, Siegelaub's statement is of interest insofar as it paints in garish colors the situation in which both private institutions of art, such as the Generali Foundation, and the artists continue to find themselves. Funded by an insurance corporation, the Generali Foundation has built a collection of works that transcend the conventional boundaries of art. A large group of these works can be subsumed under the term »Conceptualism,« and a significant part of these in turn engages the institutional conditions of art or the economic realities of our society. Contrary to the opinion represented by Siegelaub, however, these works cannot simply be used for purposes of advertis­ ing by the organization that funds them. The reasons, of course, lie primarily in the works themselves, which resist such direct instrumentalization by virtue of their content and especially of their aesthetic structure; but also in the fact that exhibitions of »great« artists that move within conventional generic limits have been, and still are, much more suited to purposes of prestige advertising than the positions of Conceptualism, which are often seen as »cumbersome,« ))hermetic,« or ))too intellectual,i( if audiences are familiar with them at all. Of course, the current questions surrounding the collection and exhibition of works of art whose nearly intangible dactics« are directed against both »the fetishization of art and its sys­ tems of production and distribution in late capitalist society« 5 are incumbent also upon the socially and politically committed and institution-critical artists who cooperate with the Generali Foundation.6 A paradox situation arises in which the artists know that »the institution« acknow­ ledges the dilemma they are in, and permits, even explicitly calls for, a critical reflection upon their involvement with and work for that institution. This brings us back to the point of depar­ ture of the present consideration, and to the question, frequently raised, to what degree a sub­ stantial critique of the economic, political, and social status quo is even possible under these conditions. The answer can be a positive one when the cultural field in which the Generali Foundation operates is understood as a system of individual actors that continue to sound out the margins of free play, of the spaces of action available to them. These processes of negotiation occur on widely different planes, between artists and the institution, but also between the 4 Sabelh Buchmann, »Conceptual Ar!«, in: OuMonts Begriffslexikon zur zeitgen6ssischen Kunst. ed. Hubertus Butin (Cologne: DuMont, 2002). 49. s Mari Carmen Ramirez, »Tactics lor Tllriving on Adversity: ConceptuBlism in Latin America, 1960-1980,« in Vivencias!Life Experience, ed. Sabine Breitwieser (Vienna: Genera!i Foundation), 63. 6 See for example Andrea Fraser's A project in two phases (1994-1995) and Andrea Fraser, Report (Vienna: EA•Generali Foundation, 1995) PREFACE Generali Foundation and its benefactor or-as in the present case-between the editors of this volume, whose background is in the academy, and the art institution. Furthermore, one may argue-following, in fact, Seth Siegelaub's first point-that