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Show Chapter XI. Xenophobia and Moral Anomaly 462 emphasized the uniqueness, singularity, and indexical immediacy of the art object itself. The category of art itself functioned as a catch-all term signifying the object's inherent resistance to extrinsic conceptualization, and so its aesthetic interest as an otherwise anomalous entity in its own right. This stance itself was, of course, a theoretical one. But Minimalism differed from earlier theoretical stances in stipulating the properties of the specific object in question as the origin and locus of theorizing about it. It embedded the object in an abstract symbol system of its own making. Conceptual and Performance art of the late 1960s and early 1970s extended this strategy further, by subordinating the medium in which the work was realized to the concepts it embodied or explored. It was even more clearly the intrinsic meaning of the work, and not the cognitive preconceptions the viewer brought to it, that dictated its appropriate conceptualization. In subordinating medium to concept, Conceptual art not only reaffirmed the conceptual fluidity and inclusiveness of art, as originally introduced by Duchamp's urinal. It also opened the door to the use of any medium, event or object deemed appropriate to the particular concepts the artist chose to explore. Thus Conceptual art repudiated all remaining traditional restrictions on content and subject matter as well as on medium. And in so doing, it created the possibility of seeing any object as a theoretical anomaly relative to the conceptual scheme within which it was conventionally embedded. Any such object became a potential locus of original conceptual investigation, and all such objects became potential threats to the conceptual unity of a rigidly or provincially structured self. Under these circumstances, the gallery or museum as a site of cognitive provocation has become clear. Beyond a few extremely vague and uninformative terms of classification, such as "installation art," "performance art," "object art," etc., there are no longer any expectations or preconceptions a viewer may legitimately bring to such work regarding what kind of viewing experience is in store - except that he will be required to discriminate cognitively a variety of elements, and fashion for himself a coherent interpretation of the experience that at the same time respects the intrinsic conceptual integrity of the work. A viewer of contemporary art must be prepared for media that include foodstuffs, bodily fluids, chemical compounds, and industrial materials, as well as traditional art media; and for content that may be highly autobiographical, social, sexual, political, or philosophical, as well as realistic or abstract. No viewer who insists on maintaining excessively rigid, provincial, or philistine views about art will survive in the contemporary art world for very long. Thus the contemporary art-going public is self-selected primarily to consist, not in a specialized educational and economic elite (as though there were no working-class artists, self-made millionaire collectors, or scholarship students among the art critics); but rather in those individuals who are © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
