[Shaun J. Russell]

I couldn't resist checking, and sure enough, someone has a YouTube video of clipping his toenails.

Contemplative high art, to be sure.

[Stephen Collington]

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

Of course it's worth doing again, Stephen, until somebody gets it right.

Actually, Rick, that's a good point, and one which I was going to make, albeit in a different way. To wit: Goldsmith gives the game away in his interview. He's just too damn coherent. He leaves one with the sneaking suspicion that he wants to be understood and appreciated after all. I mean, why doesn't he just make barfing chicken noises or pick his nose in silence? Or if that's too sarcastic for your taste, why doesn't he just, say, quote random snatches of prose out of context? Like this, maybe . . .

Poets.org: How would you explain conceptual poetry to a younger audience unfamiliar with the tenets of conceptual art?

Kenneth Goldsmith: Hans Heilman's version to be added soon. In Visigothic Spain, Merovingian France, and Viking Europe, slavery--if not always dominant--was never less than critical. If you are unable to load any pages, 高祖为人，隆准而龙颜. Le mot kran désignait en moyen-haut-allemand l'oiseau échassier.

Poets.org: Are there conceptual strains/models you find in classic works by poets like Homer or Sappho, Shakespeare or Keats? Or is the tradition grounded solely in the work of more postmodern writers like John Cage, Jackson Mac Low, Andy Warhol?

Kenneth Goldsmith: Includes a definition of constipation and information on how it develops, how it is diagnosed, and how it can be treated. St. Thomas Aquinas' entire masterpiece, in an easy-to-use format. Ο ίδιος θεωρούσε πως καταγόταν από αυτοκρατορική οικογένεια. I like purple much better than orange.

And so on. That would be much a more convincing demonstration, I think.

An objection anticipated: Does this mean that formal poets would have to give their interviews in rhyming, metrical verse? Well, if the point of formal verse was that it was out to "smash the constraints of prose speech" (or whatever--and yes, I recognize that natural speech is indeed quite another thing than "prose"), then I suppose there might be a consistency problem in falling back on prose the rest of the time. But if your declared program is "against expression," well . . . be more consistent, I say. Whence the need for explanation? Unless, that is . . . you have something you want to express after all.

Rick, I was going to quote Wolfe again earlier but I held off. Would you like to do it this time?

.

[Rick Mullin]

Wolfe said: Quality by design as a Japanese parasol might intercede on behalf of the Antipope.

[Stephen Collington]

I like it! But of course, as you know, the passage I was referring to is this:

So it was that in April of 1970 an artist named Lawrence Weiner typed up a work of art that appeared in Arts Magazine--as a work of art--with no visual experience before or after whatsoever, and to wit:

1. The artist may construct the piece.
2. The piece may be fabricated.
3. The piece need not be built.
Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.

And there, at last, it was! No more realism, no more representational objects, no more lines, colors, forms, and contours, no more pigments, no more brushstrokes, no more evocations, no more frames, walls, galleries, museums, no more gnawing at the tortured face of the god Flatness, no more audience required, just a "receiver" that may or may not be a person or may or may not be there at all, no more ego projected, just "the artist," in the third person, who may be anyone or no one at all, for nothing is demanded of him, nothing at all, not even existence, for that got lost in the subjunctive mode--and in that moment of absolutely dispassionate abdication, of insouciant withering away, Art made its final flight, climbed higher and higher in an ever-decreasing tighter-turning spiral until, with one last erg of freedom, one last dendritic synapse, it disappeared up its own fundamental aperture . . . and came out the other side as Art Theory! . . . Art Theory pure and simple, words on a page, literature undefiled by vision, flat, flatter, Flattest, a vision invisible, even ineffable, as ineffable as the Angels and the Universal Souls.

Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word, pp.108-9

Took me a moment to find it from last time round.

[Rick Mullin]

Wolfe's book--actually an essay that he illustrated--is the greatest indictment filed against the 20th century on record, and one of the most wonderful books written on art that I've read. I have indeed referenced it in these pages in the past. His target is pretty much the New York School/post WWII period (and onward), not the early-century avant-garde. The section you quote, Stephen, goes off into parts that I don't entirely agree with, but he nails it where he says that the Art Establishment (once the avant-garde) has created a system whereby the theory is the thing. Whereby the art itself is secondary to the word written around it. The idea that people have to read a book to experience art is fundamentally a 20th centry idea that reflects back on things like pointillism. The experience of the art becomes secondary to what you think you are supposed to know and what you seek to be told.

Another quote from the book that I have handy is Wolfe's response to a review written by Hilton Kramer of the New York Times published April 28, 1974.

"What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying…in short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting."

Wolfe was referring to a review by Kramer of an exhibit at Yale called "Seven Realists" in which Kramer wrote:

Realism does not lack its partisans, but it does rather conspicuously lack a persuasive theory. And given the nature of our intellectual commerce with works of art, to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial—the means by which our experience of individual works is joined to our understanding of the values they signify

Amazing. Sorry about the large cut-and-paste type. But it does support Kramer's critical hot air.

I think it gets a bit off topic for this thread, but the topic has kind of blurred and I love The Painted Word.

[Stephen Collington]

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

[The section you quote goes off into parts that I don't entirely agree with, but he nails it where he says that the Art Establishment (once the avant-garde) has created a system whereby the theory is the thing. Whereby the art itself is secondary to the word written around it. The idea that people have to read a book to experience art is fundamentally a 20th centry idea that reflects back on things like The experience of the art becomes secondary to what you think you are supposed to know and what you seek to be told.

Kenneth Goldsmith: The best thing about conceptual poetry is that it doesn't need to be read. You don't have to read it. As a matter of fact, you can write books, and you don't even have to read them. My books, for example, are unreadable. All you need to know is the concept behind them. . . .

So, in a weird way, if you get the concept—which should be put out in front of the book—then you get the book, and you don't even have to read it. They're better to talk about than they are to read. . . . You're not evaluated on the writing or what's on the page; you're evaluated on the thought process that comes before 'pen is set to paper,' so to speak.

In 1959, Brian Gysin said that writing was 50 years behind painting. And it still is. So if conceptual art happened 50 years ago, we're just beginning to get around to it now.

Way to go Kenny G! You've finally caught up with Lawrence Weiner.

QED

[Orwn Acra]

Oh, but Kenny, if no one buys your books, how will you get the money?

[Alex Pepple]

I bet he trades in conceptual money, conceptual haircuts, conceptual government.... Why stop at poetry and books!

[Quincy Lehr]

You all do realize that there's something of a tradition in avant-garde art to make grandiose statements, in part, because they're funny, right? I suspect there's a certain sly hyperbole in many of the formulations used, a "Let's see if the normals get the joke. Hehehe."

[Janice D. Soderling]

Quincy, at Eratosphere there are no normals.

BTW, I just read a cool article and have forgotten where or I would quote it, but something to the effect that avant garde is passé nomenclature, to such extent that anyone who still uses it, isn't.