The third limit is related to the rst: those treated in this study are all U. Again, this should not diminish the relevant and important work of European, Latin American, Australian, Canadian, or Asian conceptual artists in the late s. I shall therefore discuss neither the important work of post-conceptual artists of the s such as Conrad Atkinson, Victor Burgin, Mary Kelly, John Knight, Barbara Kruger, and Martha Rosler, nor the work of the many neo-conceptual artists of the s and s.
Standard accounts have tended to claim that conceptual art strove to negate the commodity status of art but failed. Lucy Lippard, the foremost critic and defender of conceptual art in the moment of its emergence, heralded this view as early as , when she lamented that the movement had rapidly capitulated to market forces and achieved commercial success. To be sure, artists and dealers had to grapple with the problem of how a collector would be able to purchase and possess a work during the early history of conceptualism, but there was never a moment when they did not seek to market the art.
As Siegelaub indicated in the early s, questions of how to transfer ownership and satisfy the collectors desire to own an authentic art object even if there was no longer an art object in the conventional sense soon became pass, as ways were developed to transfer the signature of the artist, or a certicate of ownership for the work, to the art patron.
The contradictory nature of Siegelaubs role has to be addressed in all its complexity. This account will consider his success in organizing and promoting a group of young artists concerned more with overturning the status quo in the art world and reaching a mass public than with questions of aesthetics. This explosion, as Daniel Buren termed it in retrospect, facilitated by the radical transformation of the aesthetic object, greatly beneted artists who sought to oppose the established hierarchies and economies of value regulating the art world.
This feature was singled out by Siegelaubs longest associate in the art world, Lawrence Weiner, as early as WS: Would you say something about Seth Siegelaubs role. LW: Well, he put the work together, and he instigated a complete narration that has become viable within the culture, and accepted as an entity. He packaged disparate artists who had the same general feeling towards the way of art. He was the advertising agency, there was no art role involved in that.
WS: But it cant be denied that Seth had an awareness of something that was happening in the culture in advance of almost everyone else. LW: Absolutely. Seth did a very good job. His packaging and his selling were done in a superb manner.
He also had very good material to work with. He did have the best dishwashing liquid around. Reading the emergence of conceptual art through the perspective of Siegelaubs practices of exhibition and distribution thus provides a glimpse into the inherently contradictory nature of this art movementin which the egalitarian pursuit of publicness and the emancipation from traditional forms of artistic value were as denitive as the fusion of the artwork with advertising and display.
The oscillation between these two developments is the problem at hand, one that denes conceptual art as much as it does the cultural possibilities of the present. As one of my favorite poets, Ezra Pound, once said, the beef stew cooking on the stove doesnt need any advertising.
It has advertising. It has its aroma. You can smell the beef stew on the stove. But the beef stew in the can has to be advertised. Somebody has to sell it to you. It cant sell itself. Carl Andre, We specialize in the development and organization of public relations programs involving the ne arts.
The art program is the medium through which you tell your story to the community. Seth Siegelaub and Jack Wendler, The circumstances were favorable, as the s were boom years in economic terms and the future promised endless growth. This euphoria carried over into all areas of. Art was being purchased at record rates, and a new type of patronage was emerging that differed dramatically from that of the elite circles that had previously dominated the art market in the United States.
Advocacy and support of experimental art has now gained such a hold on the American imagination that the normal lag between artistic invention and its public acceptance is disappearing. Experimental art had various attractions for the eager recruits.
For one thing, it now had investment valuea phenomenon that had long evaded the contemporary art market. Whereas buyers of art as an investment in the rst postwar years generally patronized more traditional work, during the early s speculation permeated every facet of the art market, including contemporary art. Furthermore, the patronage of innovative art gave collecting the same sense of adventure and risk-taking that existed in the world of business.
The cumulative effect of these trends, coupled with changes in tax laws, contributed to a booming market for contemporary art that in turn inated the exchange value of art and attracted an even greater number of interested patrons.
Financial journals made investment recommendations for art, singling out the potential of the work of a number of artists and artistic movements, and newspapers covered museum and gallery exhibitions more thoroughly in their social columns.
In , a Life magazine article boldly announced that more buyers than ever sail into a broadening [art] market.
The article included reproductions of work by a number of young artists, along with a price range for each. As important as monetary value was the prestige this type of patronage could bring the collector in the new phase of image-centered capitalism. As the contemporary art scene became a subject of interest in the popular press, the media increasingly gave the purchasers.
As one explained to the journalist of a Life magazine article: I dont even look at the pictures. I just know theyre thereand that I have the best and biggest collection in the world. Experimental art was hip, and, because of its inherently tenuous character, the contemporary art world provided a space for the ambitious newly rich to locate themselves on the way up the social ladder. Francis OConnor comments on this phenomenon in Notes on Patronage: The s, written as the great wartime prosperity collapsed and the art market ran out of steam in the recession of the early s: This new audience was made up of young, mobile, afuent, highly trained technocrats, eager to enjoy the comforts of their classone of which was art.
Art magically combined characteristics irresistible to these nouveau[x] riche[s]: it was prestigious to own and conspicuous to display, and vied with the stock market in investment potential.
Supporting this outlook was the increased presence of art in corporate ofces and buildings. In practice this subtle shift, whereby art now proliferated in the workplace as well as in museums and private collections, meant a decreased emphasis on the opinions of established art critics and scholars and an increased and more evident reliance on art galleries and dealers, whose advice often emphasized the exchange value of works of art alongside their aesthetic value.
The impact of the new market patterns that this new group of collectors put into effect, together with the ecstatic coverage of the art scene in the mass media, combined to effect a near total reversal of the traditional processes by which artists were recognized.
Whereas erudite art critics previously played a signicant role in establishing reputations, in the s new collectors of vanguard art began to purchase the work of artists prior to criti-.
Here is how the critic Harold Rosenberg put it at the time:. The texture of collaboration between dealers, collectors and exhibitors has become increasingly dense to the point at which the artist is confronted by a solid wall of opinion and fashion forecasts constructed, essentially, out of the data of the art market. The presence of this potent professional establishment has radically affected the relation, once largely regulated by the taste of patrons, of the artist to society and to his own product.
As Rosenberg suggests, in this fundamental reconception of patronage the entrepreneurial, innovative, and often historically naive art dealer replaced the highly specialized art critic as the central conduit between artists and their audience.
The critic, who had had a continuing importance throughout the era of the New York School, was no longer the primary arbiter of artistic success. Despite the move away from elitism, what emerged was an increased collusion among dealers, collectors, curators, and artists, where value was xed by trendiness and, ultimately, by marketability.
The potential power of the collection in determining an artworks value was also on the rise. As Siegelaub notes in a interview, collectors often approached artists with some line of horseshit about a very important collection, they say, Sell it to me very cheaply because youll be in my collection. Siegelaub declares in conversation with Charles Harrison in that people are aware of art through printed media and conversation, or through publicity and rumortwo venues that Siegelaub was to exploit during the mids.
Since more and more collectors of vanguard art lived outside the art world, they did not always read such abstruse journals as Artforum, at least not word for word. A photograph used to illustrate an article on an artist often proved more effective in marketing his work than the article itself. For the same reason, an article in Time, Life, or the New York Times was more useful to a dealer than an article in one of the art journals.
Ironically, articles which criticized an artists work began to have the same effect as articles which praised it: both brought the artist to the publics often casual attention.
This last comment resonates almost explicitly with the ndings of Harrison and Cynthia Whites study of the French art world. The passage directs attention to the shift during this decade from serious intellectual critique and analysis to the crucial importance of publicity. Within this atmosphere a new type of dealer emerged, one who had to appeal to collectors but maintain a distance from them at the same time.
Located at 16 West 56th Street in New York, Siegelaubs gallerySeth Siegelaub Contemporary Artdealt not only in ne art but also in Oriental rugs, which were sometimes incorporated into shows.
Additionally, the combination of new art and old, timeless rugs inevitably suggested that this particular new would also withstand time and become priceless. Siegelaubs aggressive promotion of his gallery is evident in the structure of his rst exhibition 14 September10 October He arranged paintings and sculptures by a number of artists throughout the gallery space and placed couches and chairs on an exotic carpet in the center of the room.
The gallery visitor was encouraged to lounge in the seats and experience the show as an overall environment. This four-day happening also encouraged audience participation through an unpredictable series of encounters.
Arni Hendin will be creating an experience at my gallery called an examination of Social Reactiona simulated day in the life of Mr. Important People. As the name suggests there will be an entire day constructed in the gallery: walls will be made, as will rooms, a subway car, ofce, department store, party and private apartment.
Important People will begin their day in their simulated house and continue through their day to the simulated party. The other people in. I expect coverage from two art magazines and one paper so far , and I plan to tie in with other media as we pick up steam.
What is remarkable about the experience that Siegelaub describes is that it engages in a sharp social critique of the potential collectors, or I. But what I want to single out in particular here is that right from the beginning of his career Siegelaub places importance on cultivating, shaping, and ensuring press coverage and publicity.
His credo will be that, if marketed correctly, almost any artwork, no matter how unconventional, could be sold. Fashioned into sensory obstacle courses, these interiors might include not only the traditional media of painting and sculpture but also, as Allan Kaprow with whom the term happenings was primarily associated at the time suggested, objects of every sort. As things turned out, however, the Seth Siegelaub Contemporary Art gallery only operated from 23 June to the end of April The increase in the number of collectors in the s was paralleled by increases in both the number of artists operating in the art world and the number of galleries.
According to one source, in New York City alone there were nearly one thousand galleries during this period. But things were by no means over for him. Although he would never again become afliated with a particular gallery space, he organized a large number of pivotal and highly inuential exhibitions over the next six years. In the process he played an even more important role in the enormous transformation in art exhibition and production practices that took place during the late s.
He took a two-room apartment at Madison Avenue and 82nd Street and began dealing privately out of his suite. Conducting business in this way meant sparing the expenses of maintaining a gallery. The practice of direct-mail advertising continued, though, as did the strong promotion of an identied and select group of forward-looking artistsalthough now a much smaller group.
Through his past dealings he had cultivated various art enthusiasts and young businessman-collectors who found the association with artists and others in this salon-type art world as appealing as collecting objects. Another site of business for Siegelaub during this period was the Manhattan nightclub Maxs Kansas City on Park Avenue South at 17th Street, where artists, critics, collectors, and visiting Hollywood celebrities would mingle over drinks and food.
Social capital, that network of contacts so important to a successful career, could be gained there, night after night. Thus Siegelaubs days would be spent in his Madison Avenue apartment, tirelessly drafting promotional letters and telephoning prospective patrons, and his evenings socializing and networking at Maxs Kansas City and other accessible sites of art world activity.
Every Sunday afternoon, Siegelaub would host a soire, or salon, at his apartment, to which he would invite a select group of collectors, critics, and museum curators to mingle with the artists he represented. This tactful organization of an exclusive inner circle was the way Siegelaub now did business and showcased his artists work. But Siegelaub had more than a good eye and adept managerial skills; he also had an extraordinary knack for promotion and publicity.
For a succinct illustration of his entrepreneurial strategy we have only to look at the agenda and promotion of Image. Art Programs for Industry, Inc. Image presented itself to the corporate world as a public relations specialist.
We specialize in the development and organization of public relations programs involving the ne arts, stated an Image promotional pamphlet targeted at prospective corporate clients. Also clear, though, is that by highlighting the personal dimensionyour storyImage establishes a differentiating system.
And as a range of distinguishing marks is keyed to one of personality traits, art comes to play the same role as did formerly a eld of distinct values. In signicant ways, corporate collectors made clear their preference for contemporary art over more established work.
Many in corporate practice, especially in public relations departments, imagined new, innovative art as a symbolic ally in the pursuit of entrepreneurship, a partner in their own struggles to revitalize business and the consumer order generally. A text that was clearly directed to corporate executives and shareholders stated:.
There are. Management executives have come to recognize the many practical benets in public relations termsamong them, building goodwill and establishing a reputation for progressiveness. This reputation is vital to the modern business institution. It inuences consumer acceptance of its products; helps attract dynamic young talents to the executive roster; satises stockholder interest in its ability to compete; and contributes signicantly to heightened respect from all segments of society.
Thus the corporate patron could share the creed of laissez-faire economists such as Milton Friedman, who maintained that a corporations only responsibility was to produce prots, and still justify support of the arts as enlightened self-interest. In a way that paralleled and fed off the deliberations of the This tract, organized around a series of rhetorical questions posed to the solicited corporation, complete with answers, species the value of an artwork.
Fine Art? Why should we get involved with art? The answer closely echoes the calls for corporate patronage of the arts coming from quarters of business and industry: Because Fine Art is good business. The contemporary corporation has much to gain from the identication with the positive virtues the Arts possess. The advantages are itemized:. Specically, an identication with the Arts will do the following: a.
Improve the image of your company by making your public more aware of what you are doing in the community. Assist in developing a more fully rounded personality for your corporation by adding a Cultural dimension. Provide a bold, unique and exciting element in the presentation of your products and services. Promote greater public acceptance of your corporation and its products and services by making yourself more attractive and visible in the marketplace.
As you are aware, the modern corporation is in the process of increasing its involvement in Americas Cultural life. Within a few years much of the excitement associated with the Arts will have been exploited, and thus drained of its present Public Relations value. Now is the time to become involved in the Arts and capitalize on the huge reservoir of interest, excitement and good-will. It is hardly necessary to add that the suggestion that an association with art could ultimately assist the corporate patron in moving goods in the marketplace is at the heart of the message of this brochure.
To paraphrase Pierre Bourdieu, by strategi-. In turn, the socially constructed prestige value generated for the corporation through the growth of cultural capital could do double duty. On the one hand, it could allow the corporation to attain a certain distinction through signifying its benevolence, legitimacy, and pursuit of ideals beyond the ordinary, instrumentalized world of business.
On the other hand, in a relatively short amount of time this same cultural capital could be reconverted into greater economic capital.
Thus objects, their syntax, and their rhetoric refer to social objectives and to a social logic. They speak to us not so much of the user and of technical practices, as of social pretension and resignation, of social mobility and inertia, of acculturation and enculturation, of stratication and of social classication.
According to Baudrillard, in contemporary capitalist societies both the object form use value and the commodity form exchange value are transgured into sign value, transformed into a sign pointing to the distinctness, vitality, and benevolence of the patron. With the emergence of sign value comes a new interest in the psychological and characterological traits of the agentsin this case artistsbetween the merchants and their consumers.
This leads to the development of new forms of perception, both physical and socialnew kinds of seeing, new types of behaviorand the creation of conditions in which altogether different kinds of art forms are not only possible but desirable, and encouraged by their new publics. Seen from this perspective, the structural model on which Siegelaub based his promotion of art is remarkably similar to the operation of advertisingan industry that was on the cutting edge of shifts in corporate practice in the s.
As Thomas Frank has shown, seeking a single trait by which to characterize the accelerated obsolescence and enhanced consumer friendliness to change that were the goals of business, the advertising industry in the middle of the decade settled on hipness.
Recall that the Image brochure warned that within a few years much of the excitement associated with the Arts will have been exploited, and thus drained of its present Public Relations value. Siegelaubs relocation of operations from 56th Street to Madison Avenue also signaled a shift in emphasis.
No longer the operator of an art gallery, his function was now closer to that of an advertising executive. His point of view was increasingly calibrated to the bottom-line interests of the corporation. As the Image brochure announced to the prospective corporate patron: Image represents your interests. We do this by seeing the world of art from your point-of-view. Here, then, we have the development in art whereby entrepreneurs such as Siegelaub and Wendler realize the disenchanting and ever-expedient tendencies of capital.
Their publicity program represents a pivotal stage in the development of an instrumentalizing tendency that will lead through twists and turns in subsequent years to achieve the total organization and control of even the most innovative and politically progressive elements of the s art world. The ramications of this turn will be vast. But this is not to conate the meanings and motives of individual action with the logic of the systemic.
Siegelaub and Wendler were conscious of their project, which was a completely rational one. Ultimately, the publicity of art seemed far easier to manipulate than direct sales to art patrons or segues into the established art world of museums.
As for the systemic consequences, we are of course free to suppose that they could not foresee them or, if they did, that they did not care.
Savvy about publicity, Siegelaub was keenly aware of the importance of staging group exhibitions as events and points of discussion. The identication of artists with a group and with a specic dealer would enable the public to place them.
Thus in early he organized two shows featuring the work of three artists afliated with him, Carl Andre, Robert Barry, and Lawrence Weiner.
The two exhibitions were not only highly publicized but also supplemented with well-documented public symposia featuring the artists. In contrast to the completely controlled, almost ideal interior space of the Laura Knott Gallery exhibition g.
The installations, made entirely with materials indigenous to the area, would only function within the specic campus sites, and for the duration of the exhibition. As Siegelaub envisioned it, this show would break, or displace, the traditional institutional framework of a work of art. In an unpublished essay entitled The Enclosure that he wrote immediately following the Windham College show, Siegelaub stated:. The contention that the framing convention of a work of art was implicit was accepted a priori by the majority of painting and sculpture of the late 50s and early 60s.
Painting became involved in the role of the art as object ignoring, in this acceptance of logical art history progression, the implication of the object and its relation to its physical context walls, oors, ceilings, and the room itself.
Sculpture revealing its intrinsic objecthood, not burdened by the problems of illusionism, seemed to accept its delimiting or placement as implicit or become architectural environmental hence non-sculptural. Thus Siegelaub traces the development from a type of late modernist art that unproblematically accepts the traditional framing conventions, to works that take into consideration the room in which they are placed and works necessarily sculptural that integrate with the broader environment and become architectural.
In an obvious sense, this notion is related to the development from painting to sculpture or three dimensional objects that Donald Judd articulated in his manifesto Specic Objects, and to Robert Morriss contemporary account of minimalist sculpture as contingent with its environment in his Notes on Sculpture. By mid, the Windham College show was identied as a linchpin in the slow but steady move away from institutions that developed into an integral element in the reection and production of postminimal sculpture of the late s.
An art critic signing his. Rose categorically asserted this aspect of the exhibition in an unpublished essay written in the spring of entitled Three since Windham. In a season of many earth shows, Rose writes, the Windham [College] show is important because it was the rst outdoor show. One of Alberro's central arguments is that the conceptual art movement was founded not just by the artists but also by the dealer Seth Siegelaub.
Siegelaub promoted the artists, curated groundbreaking shows, organized symposia and publications, and in many ways set the stage for another kind of entrepreneur: the freelance curator. Alberro examines both Siegelaub's role in launching the careers of artists who were making "something from nothing" and his tactful business practices, particularly in marketing and advertising.
Alberro draws on close readings of artworks produced by key conceptual artists in the mid- to late s. He places the movement in the social context of the rebellion against existing cultural institutions, as well as the increased commercialization and globalization of the art world.
The book ends with a discussion of one of Siegelaub's most material and least ephemeral contributions, the Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, which he wrote between and Designed to limit the inordinate control of collectors, galleries, and museums by increasing the artist's rights, the Agreement unwittingly codified the overlap between capitalism and the arts.
Alberro does a surprisingly good job of putting into perspective and recording the Conceptual Art movement. This scholarly text on a little-examined topic draws fascinating parallels between the art world and postindustrial capitalism and telecommunications. However, hissubsequent work in photography, performance, film, video, and the fusion of art and architecture,though well known in Europe and Japan, is less well known in.
The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture s. How curating has changed art and how art has changed curating: an examination of the emergence contemporary curatorship. Once considered a mere caretaker for collections, the curator is now widely viewed as a globally connected auteur. Over the last twenty-five years, as international group exhibitions and biennials have become the.
Der Fokus der. Inside and outside the White Cube. Between Categories - Brian O? Influenced by the interdisciplinarity of postmodernism, Fraser's interventionist art draws on four primary artistic and intellectual frameworks—institutional critique, with its site-specific examination of cultural context; performance; feminism, with its investigation of identity formation; and Bourdieu's reflexive sociology.
Fraser's writings form an integral part of her artistic practice, and this collection of texts written between and —including the performance script for the docent's tour that gives the book its title—both documents and represents her work. The writings in Museum Highlights are arranged to reflect different aspects of Fraser's artistic practice. They include essays that trace the development of critical "artistic practice" as cultural resistance; performance scripts that explore art institutions and the public sphere; and texts that explore the ambivalent relationship of art to the economic and political interests of its time.
The final piece, "Isn't This a Wonderful Place? A Tour of a Tour of the Guggenheim Bilbao ," reflects on the role of museums in an era of globalization. Among the book's 30 illustrations are stills from performance pieces, some never before published. Conceptual art was one of the most influential art movements of the second half of the twentieth century. One of Alberro's central arguments is that the conceptual art movement was founded not just by the artists but also by the dealer Seth Siegelaub.
Siegelaub promoted the artists, curated groundbreaking shows, organized symposia and publications, and in many ways set the stage for another kind of entrepreneur: the freelance curator. Alberro examines both Siegelaub's role in launching the careers of artists who were making "something from nothing" and his tactful business practices, particularly in marketing and advertising.
Alberro draws on close readings of artworks produced by key conceptual artists in the mid- to late s. He places the movement in the social context of the rebellion against existing cultural institutions, as well as the increased commercialization and globalization of the art world. The book ends with a discussion of one of Siegelaub's most material and least ephemeral contributions, the Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, which he wrote between and Designed to limit the inordinate control of collectors, galleries, and museums by increasing the artist's rights, the Agreement unwittingly codified the overlap between capitalism and the arts.
The internationally renowned artist Dan Graham is widely acknowledged as one of the leading members of the s conceptual art movement. However, his subsequent work in photography, performance, film, video, and the fusion of art and architecture, though well known in Europe and Japan, is less well known in English-speaking countries.
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