RE: [-empyre-] Re: Method Manifesto

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

Concerning Kosuth and the conceptual artists, it wasn't 'art for art's sake' but, in the case of
Kosuth, 'art as idea as idea', ie, his idea was 'art as idea'; reading his Art After Philosophy
and After (collected writings) one is struck by his somewhat Marxist points of view, and his
vision of the place of art in philosophy and in society more broadly, as an active thing in
society, rather than the more insulated vision involved in 'art for art's sake' which was a much
earlier slogan.

I recall reading him say that if somebody calls something art, then it must be art. He termed
the contrary position "reactionary".

My feeling on the matter is that saying 'X is art' is a bit like saying 'This proposition is not
provable' since one arrives at a contradiction should one say it is false; no contradiction
seems to arise if one says it is true, yet neither then is it provably true. Nor is it an axiom
completely independent of the rest of the language system, for if it were, its negation would be
an acceptable alternative to the proposition itself, but it is not. It is an unprovable
statement that nonetheless must be accepted as true. Each new piece of art is thus more like an
axiom than a theorem.

ja