art its history and meaning

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ur doing it wrong, or this paper is conceptual art

label - formal analysis - commentary 1

Joseph Kosuth (American, born 1945)Titled (Art as Idea as Idea) The Word "Definition"

Date:1966-68Medium:Mounted photographic enlargement of the dictionary definition of "definition"Dimensions:57 x 57" (144.8 x 144.8 cm)

Kosuth has said that art is making meaning, and in his work he investigates the ways in which art-making is tied to language. This work is part of a series based on definitions clipped from dictionary entries for words including art, chair, meaning, or, in this reflexive example, definition. Kosuth considers the work of art to be the definition of the given word, but for the purpose of presentation he asks that his original cut-out dictionary entry be photographically enlarged to a specific dimension each time the work is exhibited. This Photostat is the first realization of this work, fabricated in 1968, and as such it is shown here as a historical document.this work is square. the background is entirely black. the middle horizontal third features a definition, in golden-ish lettering, formatted in the typical style of a dictionary entry, complete with a syllabic breakdown, international phonetic alphabet pronunciation key, part of speech indicated, linguisitic origin indicated. the definition is of the word "definition." it reads: 1. a defining or being defined. 2. a statement of what a thing is. 3. a statement or explanation of what a word or phrase means or has meant. 4. a putting or being in clear, sharp outline. 5. the power of a lens to show (an object) in clear, sharp outline. 6. the degree of distinctness of a photograph, etc. 7. in radio & television, the degree of accuracy with which sounds or images are reproduced. Abbreviated def.

"but, like, what does it mean?" an artsy twenty-something asked her even artsier friend as the three of us stood looking at a definition of the word "definition." "but, like, why does it have to mean anything?"

while the two of them tried in puzzlement to piece together a coherent thought about self-reference, i could barely contain my excitement. what does it mean is precisely the wrong question. what does it mean invites defintionand definition is death. definition is closure, stasis, comfort, complicity, complacency, illusory stability. to define something is to bury it; to define objectives is to foreclose on discovery; to know is not to ask. the meaning seems plainly given, and yet nowhere to be found.

what does it mean?

instead: what is it? it is an invitation to interrogate, ask, postulate, hypothesize, venutre, destabilize, critique, challenge, revisit, reconsider, reconceive. at the same time, it interrogates you: what am i? why am i here? do i belong here? am i art? who defines art?

"a truly political art," says Kosuth, "would not content itself with the message alone; it wouldit has toengage the viewer in a questioning of the nature and process of art itself." he continues: " ... if art is to be more than expensive decoration, you have to see it as expressing other kinds of philosophical and political meaning."[endnoteRef:1] so then it is not that the question of meaning is misguided; rather, it's that the emphasis is as much, if not more, on the act of questioning and challenging as it is on the pinning down of any determinate, self-contained and settled meaning (or definition) which can be presented neatly, tidily in a vacuum.... [1: Freedberg, David. The Play of the Unmentionable: An Installation by Joseph Kosuth at the Brooklyn Museum, artist quoted from interview with Randall Short contained within, "An Artist Who Sees the Frame First." (New York: The New Press published in association with the Brooklyn Museum, 1992), pp. 44-45, 27. ]

....or, without any reference outward, on a black square. but it is appropriate then, although probably not intentional on Kosuth's part, that the definition of "definition" is presented against a Black Square. on the one hand, there is something defined, determinate, sharp and distinct, presumably concretei.e. a definition, something that relates a sign to that of which it is a sign, a pointer to the world; on the other hand, there is the form of the black square in which Malevich "took refuge" in his mission to "free art from the dead weight of the real world"[endnoteRef:2]i.e. the pole exactly opposite of concreteness, reference, and objectivity. now, whereas Malevich and Suprematism sought to strip art of reference to the real world, Kosuth and Conceptualism sought to strip it of, in a sense, art itself, that is, of appearance. Malevich and Suprematism sought to leave only pure sensation alone; Kosuth and Conceptualism sought to leave the concpet, the idea, alone. [2: Malevich, Kazimir. The Non-Objective World. (1927).]

Conceptualism's Duchampian emphasis on the thought, the idea, renders a traditional formal analysis inadequate, if not completely beside the point. for "the idea itself," wrote Sol LeWitt, "even if it is not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product." In that same essay, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," LeWitt offered his famous definition of conceptual art: "In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."[endnoteRef:3] so the idea and process, the planning, must be considered as much as line, form, color, and so on. Kosuth's Art as Idea as Idea is, in its process and planning, a perfect example of an idea becoming a machine that makes art. Kosuth cuts and pastes a dictionary definitionthat's almost the whole story. but these images are accompanied with a signature, a documentation, a certificate of ownership that grants institutionsi.e. museums, galleries, etc.the right to actually produce the object to specification and display it in exhibition. [3: LeWitt, Sol. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Art Forum, (June 1967). ]

first, this speaks to the dematerialization of the art-object in conceptual art. second, and more interestingly, it invites a closer look at LeWitt's statement that the idea becomes a machine that makes art as it pertains to Art as Idea as Idea along the following two lines.

1) what is the producing machine?

in this case, the object is produced, is made, by MoMA, Tate, The Modern, and so onthat is, it is realized in materiality, not by Kosuth, the artist, but by institutions licensed, essentially, to do so.

2) what is the art?

the art is an idea, a meaning.

but this logical analysis of LeWitt's definition into its components as applied to The Word "Definition" is precisely not the point here, for that kind of analysis is the work of definition. rather, the point is in the dynamic, differential, and meaning-constituting relation and, indeed, (inter)dependence of these components. what is absolutely crucial here is that, in realizing the work in materiality, in installing it in an exhibition, which is to say, installing it within a context, within a symbolic order, these institutions are not RE-producing "an idea, a meaning"; rather, they are producing it for the first time. this is absolutely not a chronological point, but a transcendental one in the full Kantian sense: the institutions, in their reproduction of the material object, are necessary preconditions, sine qua non, for the very possibility of this meaningthat is, the idea cannot interrogate you with the questions why am i here? do i belong here? until there is a "here" where it is, where it may or may not belong, and against which it can stand, and which it can challenge as an institution of power that produces the very definitions and norms which sustain it. but, like what does it mean?

first, the question is not ignorant, although it can be asked in ignorance. it can be asked in prelude to a search for an answer within the very box the work intends to challenge. in fact, it is the inability to answer this question within the scope of that box (without relying on an illusory stability of definitions and an unjustified appeal to received, prescriptive norms) that constitutes the challenge to and demonstrates the untenability of its borders. this point also speaks to the error committed by more conservative thinkers in their attempts to define art so as to exclude whatever offends their oh-so-refined sensibilities. moreover, the site of that error is (on the interpretation presented here) made evident and addressed by Kosuth's piece. the error is this: they seek to apply to art a method of conceptual (oh, the irony) analysis that proceeds by considering paradigm examples, searching for what they have in common most essentially. such an enterprise, however, is doomed from the start, for it seeks the stable, static, unchanging heart of a cultural practice that is always taking place at the porous borders, at the periphery, at the frontline of culture, society, meaning, history, thought. but borders are by definition always contested, at best maintained by a sort of detante, and frontlines are by definition sites of conflict and battle, not stasis. their quest for definition is a quest for death, a quest to murder art, change, progress, and, in finding a self-contained stable definition, to remove it, art, from the realm of the living, where it can serve as a challenge to the status-quo favored by those in power, to a Platonic realm of eternal ideasthat is, ideas divorced from the critical task of interrogation and questioninga realm of settled, and stable meanings.

it is unsurprising then that this conservative impulse, which amounts to an attempt to install one set of ideas as dominant while checking all subversive tendencies, is so typically couched in the language of the Goodfor the moral dimension of psychic life exerts a motivating influence on subjects' actions. the realm of what is is multiplicitous and always in motion; the realm of ought, however, has been constructed as singular and stable. now, "far from being picture-capturing devices, humans are perpetually being caught by pictures"art "is a human-capturing device."[endnoteRef:4] so, if art is limited to concrete representation and all subversion is checked by approbation, then the art-consuming public will only ever be captivated by a very rosy picture, one that does not challenege or illuminate (or even represent, thereby rendering invisible) the determinate, serious, and real struggles of marginalized or oppressed people for recognition, justice, equlity, and human dignitythat is, a picture that never incites, that passifies because it obscures, and that serves to maintain the status-quo. in other words, if the world that is has, through whatever historical contingency, put a group at the top, we should not be surprised when that group seeks to keep it that way by deploying an ideology that paints the way things are as the way things ought to be and by checking the subsersive potential of art by excluding anything subsersive in it by definition. "what is this rubbish? this isn't Art." [4: Leader, Darian. Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us From Seeing. (Washington D.C.: Shoemaker and Hoarde, 2002), pp. 125. ]

but, like, why does it have to mean anything?

it's actually not the worst answer. in fact, it doesn't mean anythingat least not in itself, not in its own isolated, self-referential vacuum. it can only mean in context, and that's the point, as argued above. in fact, the questionwhat does it meanis itself created by context, based on an assumption, presumably justified by the art-viewer's encounter with the work in a museum's exhibition hall, that the work, if it doesn't represent illustratively, nonetheless represents semantically, has cognitive content; that is, if the work does not justify its occupation of wall-space aesthetically, then it must justify it some other way, for example, by being a puzzle to be solved by interpretation.

no art without a wall to hang it

Philip L. Goodwin and (American, 1885 - 1958) Edward Durell Stone (American, 1902 - 1978)and othersGoodwin-Stone Building (MoMA) and extensions to present11 West 53rd Street, New York, NYArchitecture, International Style

Date:1939

(there is no label, so I am writing my own)

Although in mind here is the entire Museum of Modern Art structure at 11 W53rd as it exists today, the building designed by Goodwin and Stone and completed in 1939as the MoMA's first permanent homeis named above, for it was the seed for all that grew from it in the form of renovations and extensions. "As the headquarters of a truly revolutionary cultural institution, the Goodwin-Stone building bore a special burden: it had to meet the challenge of the newly established Museum, to accommodate its innovative program, and to symbolize its ideological aims."[endnoteRef:5] The building was designed largely in the International Style, characterized by a committment to three principles1) "a new conception of architecture as volume rather than as mass", 2) "regularity rather than symmetry as a means of ordering design", and 3) a lack of ornamentation[endnoteRef:6] exemplified in 1) the facade's white planar simplicity, it's two dark upper-floor strip windows, the translucent glass above the entrance, stretching the entire area of the lower half of the facade, and the structure's cantilevered roof punctuated by a row of portholes, 2) the regularity of the portholes, and the grid of the windowpanes, tempered by the (originally) off-center entrance placement, and 3) the minimalism of the design as far as added, or applied, adornment. The interior exhibition space was "indeterminate and neutral."[endnoteRef:7] While loftlike, the Streamline Moderne-influenced interior was more domestic and residential-scaled than the grand museum interiors to which many visitors would have been accustomed. Unlike the dominant practice of showing art on cloth-covered walls, the MoMa featured white walls. The urban structure was also distinctive for a museum in the vertical (as opposed to horizontal) flow its multi-storied construction accomodated and its lack of any expansive public area. Paul Goldberger, a respected critic, wrote that "the odd mix of avante-garde [Streamline Moderne developed in the 1930's as a late offshoot of the Art Deco style, characteristic of the then-recently constructed Rockefeller Center just across from the museum site] and establishment temperments" of the Museum's founders," with a "devotion to the new on the one hand and connections to the city's established lines of power on the other [Nelson Rockefeller, a great fan of the Art Deco style, was involved in the project]" contributed to a "dilution" of the International Style evident in the buildings design.[endnoteRef:8] Indeed, as it was in 1939, "the museum was an aesthetic measure of the social forces that shaped the institution over the previous ten years." Perhaps it was its radical-but-not-too-radical moderism that brought the design critical praise. [endnoteRef:9] [5: Ricciotti, Dominic. "The 1939 Building of the Museum of Modern Art: The Goodwin and Stone Collaboration," American Art Journal, Vol.17 No.3 (Summer 1985), pp. 51.] [6: Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style, (1932); paperback ed. (New York, 1966), pp. 25] [7: Ricciotti, pp. 57. ibid.] [8: Goldberger, P. The city observed, New York: A guide to the architecture of Manhattan. (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 49.] [9: Ricciotti, pp. 72. ibid.]

Since 1939 the building has undergone renovation and extension. In 1953 the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, designed by Philip Johnson, was dedicated. In 1964 the Museum opened an east wing, a garden wing, and enlarged the sculpture garden. 1980 saw construction begin on the west wing and Museum Tower. When Cesar Pelli was selected to design the Museum's vastly expanded west wing, film theater, and two floors of offices (opened in 1984), he commented that the Museum sought to be "respectful of its own past." "The Goodwin-Stone building will continue being the symbol of the Museum of Modern Art and will maintain its now-historical relationship with the rest of the block as a white medallion on a dark background."[endnoteRef:10] That project also saw the completion of four-story, glass-enclosed hall overlooking the sculpture gardenrecalling the vast window of the facade. Indeed, when, in 2013, it was announced that the 12-year-old home of the American Folk Art Museumitself a notable work of architecture, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsienwould be demolished for a MoMA expansion, Museum officials said that "the building's design did not their plans because the opaque facade is not in keeping with the glass aesthetic of the rest of the museum."[endnoteRef:11] The MoMA has reconsidered the demolition at the prompting of architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, now involved in the project. The 2014 Vision Statement states that the designers will seek "to build upon the sequence of galleries created by Yoshio Taniguchi in 2004without replicating themto maximize the variety of spaces for presenting our collection; and to ensure that the Museum is more directly woven into the dynamic urban fabric of midtown Manhattan."[endnoteRef:12] [10: "The Museum of Modern Art Project: An Interview with Cesar Pelli," Perspecta, Yale Architectural Review, no. 16 (1980), pp. 107.] [11: Pogrebin, Robin. "12-Year-Old Building at MoMA Is Doomed," The New York Times, Art & Design Section. (NYC: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., April 10, 2013). accessed by web: May 10, 2015. .] [12: Lowry, Glenn D. "BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE: A WORK IN PROGRESS." MoMA. January 2014. Web. 21 May 2015. .]

"but, like, what does it mean?"

as stated above, the questionwhat does it mean?is context-bound, and grounded in an assumption. encountering Kosuth's piece in a museum or gallery, the viewer expects it to justify its occupation of space: is it a work of aesthetic beauty? does it have a meaning? the expection makes sense, too, for if there is anything, anything at all, that distinguishes art from not-art, then that distinction will fall within one of the dimensions of the human cognitive range: 1) maybe it's phenomenally, sensorily exceptional in some way, perhaps in its beautythis dimension pertains to our sensibility, our capacity to be affected by the world; 2) perhaps it's emotionally movingthis dimension pertains to our affective states and is related but not identical to sensibility; 3) maybe it has cognitive content, maybe it means something, maybe it's communicatingthis dimension pertains to our intellectual faculty, our understanding. the viewer may not have a clear idea of exactly where along those spectrums the art/not-art distinction lies when she arrives at the museum or gallery, but she assumes that there is such a distinction when she enters an institution of art. moreover, though she may not be able to articulate that boundary, she is nonetheless sensitive to it and thus responds to works that appear to be clearly on the not-art side of the spectrum. "this is a square... i see squares all the time." "my five-year-old could have drawn this." "this is a toilet..." "these are just words! this is a dictionary entry!" in other words, there's nothing special about this and i didn't come here for more everyday crap that some jackass just decided to sign and put in a frame. or, i'm being duped.

Kosuth's The Word "Definition" triggers that response and interrogates itbut matters are completely different beyond the halls of the art museum, our subjective stance toward the stuff of everyday life is different: i have yet to walk into my bedroom, apprehend my bed, and say, "bed, explain yourself! i demand you justify your occupation of space within my humble abode, immediately! my cognitive barometers indicate that you are hideous and have no meaning. get out, now." the same goes for books, dishes, cars, and buildings. all these objects have another justification: obvious usefulness: books are good for escape or education; cars are good for getting places, or as status symbols; beds are good for sleeping on. even so, all these things are installed in a context, within a symbolic order: cardboard boxes all over my friend's apartment on moving day are "justified"; cardboard boxes all over my friend's apartment just because... raise an eyebrow.

in his essay "Art After Philosophy", Kosuth declares that "if one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art." his explanation for this assertion is illuminating: "That's because the word 'art' is general and the word 'painting' is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art."[endnoteRef:13] the idea suggests a hierarchy. art, which is general, subsumes painting, which is specific. different contexts constitute different symbolic orders, and the more specific contexts take as given, take for granted, the broader contexts under which the former are subsumed. but this raises a question also raised by Art as Idea as Idea. the question becomes clearer if we first consider what Kosuth says while discussing the context-dependence of philosophical and political meaning: "This particular exhibit [referring to the 1990 "The Play of the Unmentionable" installed by Kosuth at the Brooklyn Museum] tries to show that artworks, in that sense, are like words: while each individual word has its own integrity, you can put them together to create very different paragraphs. And it is that paragraph I claim authorship of."[endnoteRef:14] here he is simply interested in making a helpful analogy, but in so doing obscures his own view stated immediately prior: words and artworks (and meanings) do not have their own integrity, but only derive what integrity, what meaning, they have from the context in which they're situated. they only come with their own integrity in the relative sense that we recieve them after they've already been installed within a context by, to use the case of words as an example, a language community. but, to make a Lacanian point, the word is not a sufficient unit of meaning-making; rather, it is the sentence, and until the sentence has been completed the meaning of the individual signifiersthe wordsis seriously un(der)determined. with that and the thought of the hierarchy, a question: if the bed assumes the context of the bedroom, and the bedroom assumes the context of the dwelling, and the....; and if the word requires the context of the sentence, and the sentence....; and if the painting presupposes art, ....; and if there is such a hierarchy, and that implies a highest elementthen what is the ultimate point of reference that prevents the entire, self-contained and self-referential system from collapsing into meaninglessness? if the whole asks why am i here? do i belong here?then what is the ultimate here, the ultimate context? incidentally, this offers yet another interpretation of Kosuth's piece: a self-referential unit, apparently glowing golden with meaning, but ultimately suspended in the absolute darkness of black void. but it can be taken farther, and again in a Lacanian direction: it is only because of the black background that we percieve the letters which constitute the text of the definition; that is, the absolute darkness of black void is the precondition of glowing meaning. i will return to this point below. [13: Kosuth, Joseph. "Art After Philosophy," 1969.] [14: from Freedberg, cited above. Kosuth in interview with Short, pp. 27]

the question is (ultimately) unavoidable, but it is posed more locally with respect to the present concern: if the context of an artwork on display is the art museum, what is the context of the art museum? insofar as the art museum is a cultural institution, its context is society. and insofar as art is a cultural practice, its context is society as well.

one can question the nature of painting, which is specific; one can question the nature of art, which is general. one can question the nature of art, which is specific; one can question the nature of society, which is general.

now, the relation of broader contexts to narrower ones is a relation of preconditions for meaning-making. it was noted that the bed is meaningless without the context of the bedroom, the bedroom impossible without the context of a dwelling, and so on. but a bed is equally meaningless without the context of sleep, and sleep is meaningless without the context of a sleeper. similarly, a dwelling is meaningless without a creature that dwells. similarly, words presuppose a being that understandssentences presuppose a being that communicatesparagraphs, chapters, novels presuppose a being that narrates.

returning now to the Lacanian interpretation of Kosuth's piece offered just above, it must be recalled what Manet knew well in The Luncheon on the Grass, namely, that painting is a two-dimensional affair. what sense does it make, then, to say that the black square is behind the letters of the definition? that is, what sense does it make to call the black "background"? the text of the definition lights up for us, presents itself as meaningful, because of the kind of beings that we are, namely, meaning-making beings to whom the world is immediately present in experience as meaningful, beings to whom things matter, who are characterized by care, in its Heideggerian sense. thus we approach the zero-level context. the ultimate precondition for meaning-making is nothing but a meaning-making being in a life-world that discloses itself as and appears with the promise of meaning, and demands to be made meaning of. moreover, that demand is constituted not by something out there, but by our nature as beings to whom things matter. the precondition for society is a community of such beings, beings characterized by care, who are pulled toward certain things, relationships, and experiences and repelled by othersto care is to care what happens, to care what happens is to have a preference, to have a preference is to desire.

Kosuth is concerned with "a truly political art." in the sense in which he uses it here, the "political" is that which pertains to the lives and prospects of the members of a community with respect to their beliefs regarding how they ought to be organized and how power (and resources) ought to be distributed and deployed, regarding what future they want and how to achieve it. again, this presupposes desiring, meaning-making beings. without that, there is no envisioning and no pursuing. "political art" can therefore only be that which intends or effects an intervention in (or commentary on) that dimension of human life.

from all that has been said, yet another interpretation of the piece becomes possible. on this following interpretation the work speaks to the very heart of what it is to be a being like us. the observation that the "background"the blackand the "foreground" the text that promises meaningtogether constitue a mutually-enabling unitynamely, the artwork Kosuth has given usstands. the observation that the textual component, taken alone, represents an unmoored, unanchored, self-referencing stasis with only the promise of meaning also stands. indeed, one way to read the black "background" is as suggesting that such tidy, self-contained, immobile, static definition is death, i.e., the opposite of life, which is movement and change. but the second way of reading the black squareand probably the more crucial reading for this interpretationis as a reference to Malevich's Black Square, and thus as representing pure sensation. so, one the one hand there is the concept-forming faculty of the intellect, the understanding; on the other hand is the faculty of feeling, of affective existence. now, whereas the conceptual structure in the intellect can be thought as stable and static, self-consistentand even must be thought in this way, for if it were in itself unstable and incoherent it would collapse wholesale and therefore would be no faculty of understanding whatsoeverthe faculty of feeling, or emotion, or affect, on the other hand, cannot be so thought, for this dimension involves qualitative experience, and thus necessarily presupposes existence in time, and, by extension, change and movement. the observation that the text is underlain by a black square, then, is the observation that determinate meaning, concepts, ideas are underlain by pure sensationthat is, sensation breathes life and movement into a conceptual structure that cannot even properly be said to have any meaning so long as it remains a static collection of closed concepts. in other words, meaning and, therefore, even the very coherence of definition, presupposes pure sensation. this is even indicated by Kosuth's inclusion of linguistic origin in the definition: what is static never originates, the notion of origination presupposes the experience of time. finally, the square represents the unification of these two elements within a limited, embodied being. a closed, self-referential and thus meaningless definition is locked, together with a solid field of pure color, within the confines of a square, and suddenly it comes to life, points outwards, interrogates, questionsart as a noun, as stasis, as neat and definable and stable, goes out the window: art is revealed as a verb, as alive, as meaning and creating meaning, as a practice, a doing, as a questioning. an intellectual faculty is embodied, together with a faculty of pure sensation, within the confines of a finite being, and suddenly it is animatedthe pure sensation breathes movement into the intellect, and the intellect channels, negotiates, and directs flows of sense and affectsuddenly the being is in a life-world, desiring, caring, looking, experiencing meaning and creating it, dreaming, pursuing. and so society becomes possible. and art becomes possible. at the porous boundary of self and world, the human being creates.

to return to Lacan, the black canvas is not the void. the void is beneath that still, a blank canvas, presupposed as the condition of movement and changefor what is already full is fixed and locked in placethe void is always threatening to open up a gap, and thereby creates the pull of a vacuum that demands to be filled, a tension, a dynamic instability, which ceaselessly generates (or regenerates) desire, imagination, and movement and through that constitutes world and meaning.

i said that "political art" can only be that which intends or effects an intervention in (or commentary on) that dimension of our lives as social beings that concern visions for the societal future and our beliefs about how to move toward realizing those visions. it is therefore also that which touches the underlying beliefs upon which those former are founded. in that category we might find metaphysical and ethical beliefs. an art that affects those beliefs will in consequence affect the explicitly political beliefs built on them. now, it's fairly obvious that without an encounter there can be no affection, so an encounter is necessary. an individual must confront an artwork in experience in order to be affected by it. this raises two questions: first, what is the nature of that encounter? second, what are the conditions which render such an encounter effectual? in other words, how does an object of political art interact with individuals and, by extension, with broader society? how can an encounter with such an object alter one's beliefs, feelings, and desires?

these questions are so immensely interesting and so difficult. several very basic observations will have to suffice.

for an objectwhether it's an idea of conceptual art or a more traditional art object or anything elseto affect a person in a way that's more than transitory, the object must effect a change in the person's conceptual and affective schemes with regard to something that matters. the object has to communicate in a language the person understands. Ai Wei Wei's So Sorry/Remember, for example, cannot affect someone in the way it was intended to do unless that person understands at least the meaning of the characters. and if it said "I bought new socks last Tuesday" few people would care. a work like Ai Wei Wei's screams LOOK HERE! SEE THIS! if people look but don't understand or don't care, it's a futile work as far as its aspiration to make something visible or known is concerned. art has the power to draw attention, to make people look, to make them think, to spread a message. consider Steve Lambert's Capitalism Works For Me. it's a big, lit-up sign that says 'CAPITALISM' with a scoreboard below it that reads 'works for me'one side keeps tally of 'TRUE' responses entered by regular people via a switchbox, while the other side keeps tally of 'FALSE' responses. anyone who comes across the sign/scoreboard/contraption not only inevitably asks themself if capitalism is working for them, but they also look at the scoreboard and see what the tally is: is capitalism working for the people around here? both of these example represent direct interventions in the conceptual and affective schemes of their audiences with regard to something that matters.

in that the former draws attention to the culpability of the state in the deaths of 9,000 schoolchildren and the latter prompts people to stop, think about the economic system that affects every aspect of their lives, and make a concrete decision, then and there, about whether it's working for them, these are (presumably) good uses of art. but while some uses of art can inform and illuminate, others can aim to mislead, misinform, obscure, and control. as is now well-known, the CIA sought to promote Abstract Expressionist art abroad as a weapon in the Cold War in order to foster an image of the US as a land of freedom of expression, of movement, alive, creative, and so on, as against the drab Soviet Realism that dominated the Soviet Bloc.

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