24 research outputs found
The Benefit of the Doubt: Regarding the Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art, 1966-1973
This dissertation offers a reconsideration of the uses of photography under the aegis of Conceptual Art between 1966 and 1973 by analyzing the ways photography challenged epistemological limits, and, despite the claims regarding the medium’s inherent indexicality, emphasized experience over exactitude, and doubt in place of certainty. By focusing on four American practitioners, I argue for the “benefit of the doubt;” in other words, for the value of disbelief and hesitation, marking the reorientation of art at this time towards critical methods which oppose all orthodoxies, including but not limited to formalist dogmas, and instead are committed to the denial of autonomy in favor of understanding meaning as infinitely contingent. The dissertation is divided among four key case studies, including Mel Bochner (n. 1940), Bruce Nauman (n. 1941), Douglas Huebler (1924-1997), and John Baldessari (n. 1931). Each chapter argues for the unique contribution of photography in relation to conceptual art practices, while also situating the projects of these individual practitioners within the broader history of the medium of photography. I explore specifically the concepts of seriality, transparency and theory in Bochner; performance, “worklessness,” and failure in Nauman; portraiture, mapping and impossibility in Huebler; humor, didacticism, choice and chance in Baldessari. This project looks back continuously to significant precursors, in particular the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), as a means of engaging the status and function of art after the Readymade, particularly as concerns de-skilling, disinterest, affirmative irony, and nominalism, as well as the dialectic between inclusivity and inconclusivity.Ph
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Heather Diack. Review of "Schizogenesis: The Art of Rosemarie Trockel" by Katherine Guinness
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The Gravity of Levity: Humour as Conceptual Critique
Parmi les nombreuses antinomies qui traversent les écrits issus de l’art conceptuel et les textes analytiques qui en traitent, l’une des plus importantes, et pourtant des moins explorées, est celle qui oppose les différentes conceptions de l’humour. Ces conceptions proviennent d’approches de l’humour que l’on pourrait qualifier soit de subversive et déstabilisante, soit d’analytique et contraignante. Bien que ces catégories ne s’excluent pas esthétiquement et philosophiquement l’une l’autre, elles ont pourtant été mises en opposition de façon systématique. Cet article examine l’histoire de cette tension afin de souligner son importance pour la compréhension de ce qu’a été l’art conceptuel. Il accorde, entre autres, une large place au débat entre l’interprétation doctrinaire de Joseph Kosuth et l’interprétation subversive de John Baldessari de l’humour duchampien. L’humour devient dès lors un catalyseur privilégié permettant d’interroger les finalités esthétiques et philosophiques de l’art conceptuel. Finalement, ce texte, à l’aide des concepts de légèreté (levity) et de pesanteur (gravity), fait la cartographie de la brèche qui passe entre un humour débridé et un humour hermétique