Re: [-empyre-] making a meta-living

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

Art as Bourdieu pointed out in Distinction etc. - forgive me, I'm writing 
on a PDA, there will be errors - is a discursive formation or formations 
dependent on cultural and economic capital and their complex interactions. 
The people you mention were purists within a framework - the framework is 
critical. I rememvber talking w/ Donald Kuspit about LeWitt for example - 
and his relationship to kantianism; for me at the same time his work was a 
withdrawal from the violence of Vietnam, the postulation of an 
inconceivable alterity (re Levinas). It's like math - looks clean enough 
but once you let Brouwer and Godel and their descendents in, it gets messy 
enough.

Art's never syntactical; the intrinsic and extrinsic mix in discourse. How 
else would one understand for example Andre's Lever - were it not for the 
reams of dialog (and non-dialog) generated around it when it was exhibited 
at the Tate? THAT's what makes art exciting - the swirl of the objects, 
their distributions in all sorts of modes, the contestations, etc. It 
keeps me going.

Purity makes me shudder - too much what Kristeva discusses in Powers of 
Horror -

Alan, for the modd, dirty, etc.

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Paul Brown wrote:

> Alan - in an attempt to attract you out of your 
> lurkership (or an
> invitation to reply to me offlist) I'd be interested to 
> know:  if you
> don't believe in pure art (apropos my def. as art about 
> art versus art
> with some "non intrinsic" content) where/how do you 
> categorise artists
> like (for eg.) Albers or Max Bill?
>
> > Just want to say I don't believe for a second in pure 
> > art, nor do I think that art follows lineage 
> > necessarily at all. I also think a hell of a lot of 
> > the art going on today in the galleries is terrific 
> > and that competition helps make it so, whether online 
> > or off - and for that matter, real and virtual are 
> > more or less smashing together.
> >
> > That said, I'm going back to silence - too many 
> > enemies on this list.
> >
> > - Alan
> >
> >
> > http://www.asondheim.org/
> > WVU 2004 projects: 
> > http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/
> > some other recent work:
> > http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/members/sondheim
> > Trace projects 
> > http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
> >
> > Alan Sondheim, sondheim@panix.com
> > 718-857-3671 / 718-813-3285 432 Dean Street Brooklyn, 
> > NY, 11217
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> --
> ===============================================================
> Paul Brown          PO Box 413, Cotton Tree QLD 4558, 
> Australia
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> http://www.paul-brown.com
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http://www.asondheim.org/
WVU 2004 projects: http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/
http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/members/sondheim
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm