For this second post in this series of highlighted passages (first post here), I’ve chosen “Escape Attempts,” Lucy Lippard’s introduction to her famous book on conceptual art, Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Austrialia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones), edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. The hyperlinks sometimes illustrate examples from the text and sometimes annotate it with something drawn from my own interests, but hopefully either way they’re worth a click. —RG
On the tenets of Conceptual art
Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or “dematerialized.” […] Conceptual artists gloried in speeding past the cumbersome established process of museum-sponsored exhibitions and catalogues by means of mail art, rapidly edited and published books of art, and other small-is-better strategies. […] [W]e saw “ultra-conceptual art” emerging from two directions: art as idea and art as action. […] Communication (but not community) and distribution (but not accessiblity) were inherent in Conceptual art. Although forms pointed toward democratic outreach, the content did not. However rebellious the escape attempts, most of the work remained art-referential, and neither economic nor aesthetic ties to the art world were fully severed. […] Verbal strategies enabled Conceptual art to be political, but not populist. Communication between people was subordinate to communication about communication. […] For the most part communication was perceived as distribution, and it was in this area that populist desires were raised but unfulfilled. Distribution was often built into the piece. […] Decentralization and internationalism were major aspects of the prevailing distribution strategies. […] The easily portable, easily communicated forms of Conceptual art made it possible for artists working ourside the major art centers to participated in the early stages of new ideas. […] Perhaps most important, Conceptualists indicated that the most exciting “art” might still be buried in social energies not yet recognized as art.
On the activities of Seth Siegelaub and the act of publishing
When I got back to New York, I met Seth Siegelaub, who had begun to reinvent the role of the “art dealer” as distributor extraordinaire through his work with Lawrence Weiner, Douglas Huebler, Robert Barry, and Joseph Kosuth. Siegelaub’s strategy of bypassing the art world with exhibitions that took place outside of galleries and/or New York and/or were united in publications that were art rather than merely about art dovetailed with my own notions of dematerialized art that would break free of art-world commodity status. A practical man, unemcumbered at the time by addiction to ideology or aesthetics, Siegelaub went right ahead and did what had to be done to create international models for an alternative art network. […] [Quoting Siegelaub:] “Communication relates to art three ways: (1) artists knowing what other artists are doing. (2) The art community knowing what other artists are doing. (3) The world knowing what artists are doing… . It’s my concern to make it known to multitudes. [The most suitable means are] books and catalogues.” One of the things we speculated about in the late sixties was the role of the art magazine. In an era of proposed projects, photo-text works, and artists’ books, the periodical could be an ideal vehicle for art itself rather than merely for reproduction, commentary, and promotion. At one point I recall brainstorming with friends about a parasite magazine, each “issue” of which would appear noted as such in a different “host” magazine each month. The idea was to give readers first-hand rather than second-hand information about art. […] In 1970, Siegelaub, with the enthusiastic support of editor Peter Townsend, took over an issue of the then lively British journal Studio International and made it a kind of magazine exhibition with six “curators.”
On the activities of the Art Workers Coalition
The Art Workers Coalition provided a framework and an organizational relationship for artists who were mixing art and politics that attracted a number of “Conceptual artists.” Kosuth designed a fake membership card for entrance to The Museum of Modern Art—one of our major targets—with AWC stamped across it. […] So “Conceptual art”—or at least the branch of it in which I was involved—was very much a product of, or fellow traveler with, the political ferment of the times. […] [Later, T]he Ad Hoc Women Artists Committee (an offshoot of the AWC) launched its offensive on the Whitney Annual exhibition. The “anonymous” core group of women faked a Whitney press release stating that there would be fifty percent women (and fifty percent of them “non-white”) in the show, then forged invitations to the opening and set up a generator and projector to show woment’s slides on the outside walls of the museum while a sit-in was staged inside.
On criticism vs collaboration
I never liked the term critic. Having learned all I knew about art in the studios, I identified with artists and never saw myself as their adversary. Conceptual art, with its transformation of the studio into a study, brought art itself closer to my own activities. There was a period when I saw myself as writer-collaborator with the artists, and now and then I was invited by artists to play that part. […] (At the height of my conceptually hybrid phase, Kynaston McShine asked me to write a text for The Museum of Modern Art’s Duchamp catalogue. I constructed it of “readymades” chosen by a “random system” from the dictionary, and to my amazement, they used it.) I also applied the conceptual freedom principle to the organization of a series of four exhibitions which began in 1969 at the Seattle Art Museum’s World’s Fair annex. […] Three aspects (or influences) of Conceptual art were incorporated into these shows: the titles (“557,087” in Seattle) were the current populations of the cities; the catalogues were randomly arranged packs of index cards; and with a team of helpers, I executed (or tried to) most of the outdoor works myself, according to the artists’ instructions. […] My texts in the card catalogues included aphorisms, lists, quotes, and all were mixed in, unsequentially, with the artists’ cards.
On systems and strategies
Hans Haacke wrote: […] “The working premise is to think in terms of systems: the production of systems, the interference with and the exposure of existing systems… . Systems can be physical, biological, or social.” […] However, it was usually the form rather than the content of Conceptual art that carreid a political message. […] Some Conceptualists took a page from Pop (imagery and techniques) and Minimalism (fabrication out of the artist’s hands) by assuming an “industrial” approach. […] In 1967, LeWitt said “The idea is the machine that makes the art.” Bochner curated an exhibition of “working drawings” at the School of Visual Arts, which included “non-art” as well as businesslike art diagrams. […] Starting from their Duchampian notion of “claiming,” appropriation in the 1960s became more political as art-world artists borrowed John Heartfield’s classic poster-makers’ technique or co-opting media and other familiar images with new and often satirical ends (the “corrected billboard” of the later 1970s expanded this idea). Information and systems were seen as fair game, in the public domain. The appropriation of other artists’ works or words, sometimes mutually agreed-upon as a kind of collaboration, was another Conceptual strategy. […] Systems were laid over life the way a rectangular format is laid over the seen in paintings, for focus. Lists, diagrams, measurements, neutral descriptions, and much counting were common vehicles for the preoccupation with repetition, the introduction of daily life and work routines, philosophical positivism, and pragmatism. There was a fascination with huge numbers (Mario Merz’s pseudo-mathematical Fibonacci series, Barry’s One Billion Dots (1969), Kawara’s One Million Years (1969), and with dictionaries, thesauruses, libraries, the mechanical aspects of language, permutations (LeWitt and Darboven), the regular, and the minute (for example, Ian Murray’s 1971 Twenty Waves in a Row). Lists of words were equally popular, e.g. Barry’s 1969 piece that included its own “refinement” as it progressed at least into 1971, which began: “It is whole, determined, sufficient, individual, known, complete, revealed, accessible, manifest, effectual, directed, dependent.”
On teaching and education
Suprisingly little thought was given in the United States (as far as I know) to education, expecially within or as alternatives to the existing institutions. […] The most powerful model was Joseph Beuys, who said in 1969: “To be a teacher is my greatest work of art. The rest is waste product, a demonstration… . Objects aren’t very important any more… . I am trying to reaffirm the concept of art and creativity in the face of Marxist doctrine… . For me the formation of the thought is already sculpture.”
