Art After Philosophy (1969) Joseph Kosuth Essay

The fact that it has deep become fashionable for physicists themselves to be sympathetic toward religion . . . marks the physicists consume lack of confidence in the rigourousness of their hypotheses, which is a reaction on their p machination from the antireligious dogmatism of nineteenth- coulomb scientists, and a natural ending of the crisis through with(predicate) which bodily science has in effect(p) passed. A. J. Ayer. . . . one time mavin and save(a) has understood the Tractatus there entrust be no temptation to concern sensationself approximately(prenominal) more with doctrine, which is neither empirical desire science nor tautological like mathematics wiz forget, like Wittgenstein in 1918, abandon philosophicalal system, which, as tradition in aloney understood, is rooted in confusion. J. O. Urmson.Traditional philosophy, puff up-nigh by definition, has concerned itself with the un express. The nearly exclusive focus on the said by twentieth-century analytical linguistic philosophers is the sh atomic number 18d contention that the tongueless is unsaid beca expenditure it is un stratagemiculateable. Hegelian philosophy claim sense in the nineteenth century and must come been soothing to a century that was b arly get everyplace Hume, the Enlightenment, and Kant.1 Hegels philosophy was also open of giving binding for a defense of religious beliefs, supplying an alternative to Newtonian mechanics, and alteration in with the growth of history as a discipline, as salubrious as pass judgment Darwinian biology.2 He appeargond to give an accep prorogue fortitude to the conflict surrounded by theology and science, as salutary. The result of Hegels exercise has been that a great majority of contemporary philosophers are re bothy pocket-size more than historians of philosophy, Librarians of the Truth, so to speak.virtuoso begins to get the impression that there is secret code more to be said. And sure enough if atomic number 53 come acrosss the implications of Wittgensteins cerebration, and the thinking influenced by him and after him, Continental philosophy need non seriously be considered here.3 Is there a reason for the unreality of philosophy in our condemnation? Perhaps this fag end be answered by looking into the rest surrounded by our epoch and the centuries preceding us. In the past patchs conclusions rough the world were based on the in potpourriation he had nigh it if non special building blocky like the empiricists, thence gener whollyy like the rationalists.Often in fact, the closeness between science and philosophy was so great that scientists and philosophers were whizz and the same person. In fact, from the times of Thales, Epicurus, Heraclitus, and Aristotle to Desc wilees and Leibnitz, the great names in philosophy were often great names in science as well.4 That the world as perceived by twentieth-century science is a vastly diametric one than the one of its pr eceding century, need non be proved here.Is it possible, then, that in effect man has learned so much, and his give-and- purport is much(prenominal), that he can non believe the reasoning of traditionalistic philosophy? That perhaps he k directlys too much near the world to dissemble those anatomys of conclusions? As Sir mob Jeans has stated . . . When philosophy has availed itself of the results of science, it has not been by borrowing the abstract mathematical description of the pattern of occurrences, besides by borrowing the then up-to-the-minute pictorial description of this pattern thus it has not appropriated definite companionship scarcely conjectures. These conjectures were often good enough for the man-sized world, and not, as we straight know, for those ultimate processes of temperament which control the happenings of the man-sized world, and bring us nearest to the true record of reality.5He continuesOne consequence of this is that the archetype phi losophical coverions of m either(prenominal) problems, such(prenominal)(prenominal) as those of causality and free will orof materialism or mentalism, are based on an interpretation of the pattern of make upts which is no longer tenable. The scientific basis of these older handleions has been washed away, and with their slicing fetch gone all in all the arguments . . .6The twentieth century brought in a time that could be called the end of philosophy and the parentage of graphics. I do not mean that, of course, strictly speaking, however rather as the tilt of the situation. Certainly linguistic philosophy can be considered the heir to quackery, tho its a philosophy in one gear.7 And there is genuinely an contrivance jibe to guile go preceding Duchamp, but its other positions or reasons-to-be are so pronounced that its ability to office clearly as stratagem limits its finesse condition so drastically that its lonesome(prenominal) minimally device.8 In no mec hanistic sense is there a association between philosophys ending and blinds beginning, but I dont find this occurrence exclusively coincidental. Though the same reasons may be responsible for two occurrences, the connection is made by me.I bring this all up to meditate crafts survive and subsequently its viability. And I do so to enable others to understand the reasoning of my and, by extension, other operatives stratagem, as well to provide a clearer intelligence of the term Conceptual fraud.9 THE sour OF ART The main qualifications to the lesser position of painting is that advances in imposture are certainly not ever induceal ones. Donald Judd (1963). Half or more of the best new take to the woods in the last a couple of(prenominal) years has been neither painting nor sculpture. Donald Judd (1965). Ein truththing sculpture has, my work doesnt. Donald Judd (1967). The idea becomes a machine that makes the maneuverificeistic creation. Sol LeWitt (1965) The on e thing to severalize some device is that it is one thing. Art is stratagem-as- fraud and everything else is everything else. Art as machinationistry is nothing but finesse.Art is not what is not prowess. Ad Reinhardt (1963). The meaning is the use. Wittgenstein. A more functional approach to the study of conceits has tended to replace the regularity of introspection. Instead of onrushing to mountain range or describe concepts bare, so to speak, the psychologist investigates the way in which they function as ingredients in beliefs and in judgments. Irving M. Copi. Meaning is endlessly a presupposition of function. T. Segerstedt. . . . the worst consequence of abstract investigations is the meaning of certain words and expressions and not the things and states of affairs themselves about which we talk, when apply those words and expressions. G. H. Von Wright.Thinking is radically metaphoric. Linkage by resemblance is its constituent law or principle, its causal ne xus, since meaning only arises through the causal mountain ranges by which a sign stands for (takes the place of) an instance of a sort. To think of anything is to take it as of a sort (as a such and such) and that as brings in (openly or in disguise) the analogy, the collimate, the metaphoric grapple or ground or grasp or draw by which alone(predicate) the mind takes hold. It takes no hold if there is nothing for it to haul from, for its thinking is the haul, the attraction of likes I. A. Richards.In this section I will address the interval between estheticals and fine cheat consider briefly formalist artwork (because it is a bullocking proponent of the idea of aesthetics as art), and assert that art is analogous to an analytic proposition, and that it is arts equalence as a tautology that enables art to remain aloof from philosophical presumptions. It is necessary to scatter aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals with opinions on perception of the world in gene ral. In the past one of the two prongs of arts function was its repute as decoration. So any branch of philosophy that dealt with dishful and thus, taste, was inevitably duty bound to discuss art as well. proscribed of this habit grew the thought that there was a abstract connection between art and aesthetics, which is not true.This idea never drastically conflicted with delicate considerations out front recent times, not only because the geomorphological characteristics of art perpetuated the continuity of this error, but as well, because the apparent other functions of art (depiction of religious themes, portraiture of aristocrats, flesh out of architecture, etc.) used art to cover up art. When determinations are presented within the setting of art (and until recently objects always have been used) they are as legal for aesthetic consideration as are any objects in the world, and an aesthetic consideration of an object existing in the realm of art content that the obj ects existence or functioning in an art place setting is hostile to the aesthetic judgment. The relation of aesthetics to art is not unlike that of aesthetics to architecture, in that architecture has a very specific function and how good its design is is primarily associate to how well it performs its function.Thus, judgments on what it looks like correspond to taste, and we can cod that throughout history different examples of architecture are praised at different times ciphering on the aesthetics of particular epochs. Aesthetic thinking has even gone so farther as to make examples of architecture not tie in to art at all, whole plant of art in themselves (e.g., the pyramids of Egypt). Aesthetic considerations are indeed always extraneous to an objects function or reason-tobe. Unless of course, that objects reason-to-be is strictly aesthetic.An example of a rigorously aesthetic object is a decorative object, for decorations primary function is to add something to, so as t o make more attractive adorn ornament,10 and this relates now to taste. And this leads us directly to formalist art and rebuke.11 Formalist art (painting and sculpture) is the vanguard of decoration, and, strictly speaking, one could reasonably assert that its art condition is so minimal that for all functional purposes it is not art at all, but pure exercises in aesthetics. Above all things Clement Greenberg is the critic of taste. Behind every one of his decisions is an aesthetic judgment, with those judgments reflecting his taste. And what does his taste reflect? The period he grew up in as a critic, the period real for him the fifties.12How else can one count on for, given his theories if they have any logic to them at all his neutrality in Frank Stella, Ad Reinhardt, and others applicable to his historical scheme? Is it because he is . . . basically unsympathetic on personally experiential grounds?13 Or, in other words, their work doesnt suit his taste? still in the phil osophic tabula rasa of art, if someone calls it art, as Don Judd has said, its art. stipulation this, formalist painting and sculpture can be granted an art condition, but only by virtue of their presentation in name of their art idea (e.g., a rectangular-shaped canvas stretched over wooden supports and stained with such and such intensitys, using such and such forms, giving such and such a visual experience, etc.). If one looks at contemporary art in this light one realizes the minimal creative effort taken on the part of formalist artists specifically, and all painters and sculptors (working as such today) generally.This brings us to the realization that formalist art and upbraiding accepts as a definition of art one that exists simply on morphological grounds. While a vast quantity of equivalent looking objects or images (or visually related objects or images) may reckon to be related (or connected) because of a equality of visual/experiential readings, one cannot title f rom this an artistic or conceptual relationship. It is obvious then that formalist criticisms reliance on syllable structure leads needfully with a preconceived opinion toward the word structure of traditional art. And in this sense their criticism is not related to a scientific method or any sort of empiricism (as Michael Fried, with his detailed descriptions of paintings and other erudite paraphernalia would want us to believe).Formalist criticism is no more than an analysis of the somatogenetic attributes of particular objects that happen to exist in a morphological context. that this doesnt add any knowledge (or facts) to our understanding of the nature or function of art. And neither does it rumormonger on whether or not the objects analyzed are even works of art, in that formalist critics always bypass the conceptual element in works of art. Exactly why they dont comment on the conceptual element in works of art is precisely because formalist art is only art by virtue o f its resemblance to earlier works of art. Its a mindless art. Or, as Lucy Lippard so succinctly described Jules Olitskis paintings theyre visual Muzak.14 Formalist critics and artists alike do not drumhead the nature of art, but as I have said elsewhere Being an artist now center to pass the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. Thats because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.15The strongest dissent one can raise against a morphological justification for traditional art is that morphological notions of art embody an implied a priori concept of arts possibilities. And such an a priori concept of the nature of art (as secernate from analytically framed art propositions or work, which I will discuss later) makes it, indeed, a priori impossible to question the nature of art. And this questioning of the nature of art is a very authorised concept in understanding the function of art.The function of art, as a question, was first raised by marcel Duchamp. In fact it is Marcel Duchamp whom we can credit with giving art its ingest identity. (One can certainly see a tendency toward this self-identification of art beginning with Manet and Czanne through to Cubism,16 but their works are light-headed and ambiguous by comparison with Duchamps.) Modern art and the work in advance seemed connected by virtue of their morphology. other way of putting it would be that arts quarrel remained the same, but it was utter new things. The event that made conceivable the realization that it was possible to speak another nomenclature and still make sense in art was Marcel Duchamps first unassisted Ready-made. With the unassisted Ready-made, art changed its focus from the form of the wording to what was being said. Which means that it changed the nature of art from a question of morphology to a question of function.This change one from appearance to conception was the beginning of modern art and the beginning of conceptual art. All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually. The appraise of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art which is another way of saying what they added to the conception of art or what wasnt there before they started. Artists question the nature of art by presenting new propositions as to arts nature. And to do this one cannot concern oneself with the handed-d proclaim speech of traditional art, as this military action is based on the assumption that there is only one way of framing art propositions. But the very stuff of art is indeed greatly related to creating new propositions.The case is often made particularly in reference to Duchamp that objects of art (such as the Ready-mades, of course, but all art is implied in this) are judged as objets dart in later years and the artists intentions become irrelevant. Such an argument is the case of a preconceived notion ordering together not necessarily related facts. The point is this aesthetics, as we have pointed out, are conceptually irrelevant to art. Thus, any material thing can become objet dart, that is to say, can be considered tasteful, aesthetically pleasing, etc. But this has no bearing on the objects exertion to an art context that is, its functioning in an art context. (E.g., if a collector takes a painting, attaches legs, and uses it as a dining table its an act unrelated to art or the artist because, as art, that wasnt the artists intention.) And what holds true for Duchamps work applies as well to nearly of the art after him. In other words , the value of Cubism for instance is its idea in the realm of art, not the physical or visual qualities seen in a specific painting, or the particularization of certain colors or shapes.For these colors and shapes are the arts language, not its meaning conceptually as art. To look upon a Cubist masterwork now as art is nonsensical, conceptually speaking, as far as art is concerned. (That visual information that was unique in Cubisms language has now been generally absorbed and has a lot to do with the way in which one deals with painting linguistically. E.g., what a Cubist painting meant experimentally and conceptually to, say, Gertrude Stein, is beyond our speculation because the same painting then meant something different than it does now.) The value now of an original Cubist painting is not unlike, in most respects, an original manuscript by Lord Byron, or The Spirit of St. Louis as it is seen in the Smithsonian trigger. (Indeed, museums fill the very same function as the Sm ithsonian Institution why else would the Jeu de Paume wing of the Louvre exhibitCzannes and van Goghs palettes as proudly as they do their paintings?) veridical works of art are little more than historical curiosities. As far as art is concerned Van Goghs paintings arent worth any more than his palette is. They are both collectors items.17 Art lives through influencing other art, not by existing as the physical resi ascribable of an artists ideas. The reason that different artists from the past are brought alive again is because some aspect of their work becomes usable by living artists. That there is no truth as to what art is seems quite unrealized. What is the function of art, or the nature of art? If we continue our analogy of the forms art takes as being arts language one can realize then that a work of art is a kind of proposition presented within the context of art as a comment on art. We can then go further and analyze the types of propositions.A. J. Ayers evaluation of K ants singularity between analytic and celluloid is useful to us here A proposition is analytic when its validity depends solely on the definitions of the symbols it contains, and synthetic when its validity is square offd by the facts of experience.18 The analogy I will start to make is one between the art condition and the condition of the analytic proposition. In that they dont appear to be believable as anything else, or be about anything (other than art) the forms of art most clearly in conclusion referable only to art have been forms closest to analytical propositions. whole works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context as art they provide no information whatsoever about any press of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artists intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art.Thus, that it is art is true a priori (which is what Judd means whe n he states that if someone calls it art, its art). Indeed, it is nearly impossible to discuss art in general terms without talking in tautologies for to plan of attack to grasp art by any other handle is unmingledly to focus on another aspect or quality of the proposition, which is ordinarily irrelevant to the artworks art condition. One begins to realize that arts art condition is a conceptual state. That the language forms that the artist frames his propositions in are often private codes or languages is an inevitable outcome of arts freedom from morphological constrictions and it follows from this that one has to be familiar with contemporary art to appreciate it and understand it. Likewise one understands why the man in the lane is intolerant to artistic art and always demands art in a traditional language. (And one understands why formalist art sells like hot cakes.)Only in painting and sculpture did the artists all speak the same language. What is called Novelty Art by t he formalists is often the attempt to find new languages, although a new language doesnt necessarily mean the framing of new propositions e.g., most kinetic and electronic art. Another way of stating, in relation to art, what Ayer asserted about the analytic method in the context of language would be the following The validity of artistic propositions is not dependent on any empirical, much less any aesthetic, presupposition about the nature of things. For the artist, as an analyst, is not directly concerned with the physical properties of things. He is concerned only with the way (1) in which art is capable of conceptual growth and (2) how his propositions are capable of logically following that growth.19 In other words, the propositions of art are not f real(a), but linguistic in character that is, they do not describe the behavior of physical, or even mental objects they express definitions of art, or the formal consequences of definitions of art.Accordingly, we can say that art operates on a logic. For we shall see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical inquiry is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions (of art) and not with questions of empirical fact.20 To repeat, what art has in common with logic and mathematics is that it is a tautology i.e., the art idea (or work) and art are the same and can be appreciated as art without going outside the context of art for verification.On the other hand, let us consider why art cannot be (or has difficulty when it attempts to be) a synthetic proposition. Or, that is to say, when the truth or falsity of its assertion is verifiable on empirical grounds. Ayer states . . . The criterion by which we determine the validity of an a priori or analytical proposition is not capable to determine the validity of an empirical or synthetic proposition. For it is characteristic of empirical propositions that their validity is not purely formal. To say that a geometrical proposition, or a s ystem of geometrical propositions, is false, is to say that it is self-contradictory. But an empirical proposition, or a system of empirical propositions, may be free from contradiction and still be false. It is said to be false, not because it is formally defective, but because it fails to satisfy some material criterion.21The unreality of realistic art is due to its framing as an art proposition in synthetic terms one is always tempted to verify the proposition through empirical observation. Realisms synthetic state does not bring one to a circular shake off back into a dialogue with the larger framework of questions about the nature of art (as does the work of Malevich, Mondrian, pollock, Reinhardt, early Rauschenberg, Johns, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Andre, Judd, Flavin, LeWitt, Morris, and others), but rather, one is flung out of arts orbit into the infinite space of the human condition. Pure Expressionism, proceed with Ayers terms, could be considered as such A disapprobatio n which consisted of gushy symbols would not express a genuine proposition. It would be a mere ejaculation, in no way characterizing that to which it was supposed to refer.Expressionist works are usually such ejaculations presented in the morphological language of traditional art. If Pollock is important it is because he painted on loose canvas horizontally to the floor. What isnt important is that he later put those drippings over stretchers and hung them parallel to the wall. (In other words what is important in art is what one brings to it, not ones adoption of what was previously existing.) What is even less important to art is Pollocks notions of self-expression because those kinds of subjective meanings are useless to anyone other than those involved with him personally. And their specific quality puts them outside of arts context. I do not make art, Richard Serra says, I am engaged in an activity if someone wants to call it art, thats his business, but its not up to me to de cide that. Thats all figured out later. Serra, then, is very much aware of the implications of his work.If Serra is indeed just figuring out what lead does (gravitationally, molecularly, etc.), why should anyone think of it as art? If he doesnt take the responsibility of it being art, who can, or should? His work certainly appears to be empirically verifiable lead can do, and be used for, many physical activities. In itself this does anything but lead us into a dialogue about the nature of art. In a sense then he is a primitive. He has no idea about art. How is it then that we know about his activity?Because he has told us it is art by his actions after his activity has taken place. That is, by the fact that he is with several galleries, puts the physical balance wheel of his activity in museums (and sells them to art collectors but as we have pointed out, collectors are irrelevant to the condition of art of a work). That he denies his work is art but plays the artist is more than just a paradox. Serra secretly feels that arthood is arrived at empirically. Thus, as Ayer has stated There are no absolutely certain empirical propositions. It is only tautologies that are certain. Empirical questions are one and all hypotheses, which may be confirmed or discredited in actual sense experience. And the propositions in which we record the observations that verify these hypotheses are themselves hypotheses which are subject to the test of further sense experience. Thus there is no last(a) proposition.22What one finds all throughout the writings of Ad Reinhardt is this very similar thesis of artas-art, and that art is always dead, and a living art is a deception.23 Reinhardt had a very clear idea about the nature of art, and his importance is far from recognized. Because forms of art that can be considered synthetic propositions are verifiable by the world, that is to say, to understand these propositions one must leave the tautological-like framework of art and cons ider outside information. But to consider it as art it is necessary to ignore this same outside information, because outside information (experiential qualities, to note) has its own intrinsic worth. And to comprehend this worth one does not need a state of art condition.From this it is easy to realize that arts viability is not connected to the presentation of visual (or other) kinds of experience. That that may have been one of arts extraneous functions in the preceding centuries is not unlikely. After all, man in even the nineteenth century lived in a reasonably standardized visual environment. That is, it was ordinarily predictable as to what he would be coming into contact with day after day. His visual environment in the part of the world in which he lived was fairly consistent. In our time we have an experientially drastically richer environment. One can fly all over the earth in a matter of hours and days, not months. We have the cinema, and color television, as well as the man-made spectacle of the lights of Las Vegas or the skyscrapers of New York City.The whole world is there to be seen, and the whole world can stock ticker man walk on the moon from their living rooms. Certainly art or objects of painting and sculpture cannot be expected to compete experientially with this? The notion of use is relevant to art and its language. Recently the box or cube form has been used a great deal within the context of art. (Take for instance its use by Judd, Morris, LeWitt, Bladen, Smith, Bell, and McCracken not even mentioning the quantity of boxes and cubes that came after.) The difference between all the various uses of the box or cube form is directly related to the differences in the intentions of the artists. Further, as is particularly seen in Judds work, the use of the box or cube form illustrates very well our earlier claim that an object is only art when placed in the context of art.A few examples will point this out. One could say that if one of J udds box forms was seen filled with debris, seen placed in an industrial setting, or even merely seen sitting on a street corner, it would not be identified with art. It follows then that understanding and consideration of it as an artwork is necessary a priori to viewing it in order to see it as a work of art. Advance information about the concept of art and about an artists concepts is necessary to the appreciation and understanding of contemporary art. Any and all of the physical attributes (qualities) of contemporary works, if considered separately and/or specifically, are irrelevant to the art concept. The art concept (as Judd said, though he didnt mean it this way) must be considered in its whole. To consider a concepts parts is invariably to consider aspects that are irrelevant to its art condition or like reading parts of a definition.It comes as no surprise that the art with the least fixed morphology is the example from which we decipher the nature of the general term art . For where there is a context existing separately of its morphology and consisting of its function one is more likely to find results less conforming and predictable. It is in modern arts possession of a language with the shortest history that the plausibility of the defection of that language becomes most possible. It is understandable then that the art that came out of occidental painting and sculpture is the most energetic, questioning (of its nature), and the least assuming of all the general art concerns. In the final analysis, however, all of the arts have but (in Wittgensteins terms) a family resemblance. Yet the various qualities relatable to an art condition possessed by verse line, the novel, the cinema, the theatre, and various forms of music, etc., is that aspect of them most reliable to the function of art as asserted here.Is not the decline of poetry relatable to the implied metaphysics from poetrys use of common language as an art language?24 In New York the last d ecadent stages of poetry can be seen in the move by Concrete poets recently toward the use of actual objects and theatre.25 Can it be that they feel the unreality of their art form? We see now that the axioms of a geometry are simply definitions, and that the theorems of a geometry are simply the logical consequences of these definitions. A geometry is not in itself about physical space in itself it cannot be said to be about anything. But we can use a geometry to reason about physical space.That is to say, once we have given the axioms a physical interpretation, we can proceed to apply the theorems to the objects which satisfy the axioms. Whether a geometry can be applied to the actual physical world or not, is an empirical question which falls outside the scope of geometry itself. There is no sense, and then, in asking which of the various geometries known to us are false and which are true. Insofar as they are all free from contradiction, they are all true. The proposition whic h states that a certain application of a geometry is possible is not itself a proposition of that geometry. All that the geometry itself tells us is that if anything can be brought under the definitions, it will also satisfy the theorems. It is therefore a purely logical system, and its propositions are purely analytic propositions. A. J. Ayer26 here(predicate) then I propose rests the viability of art. In an age when traditional philosophy is unreal because of its assumptions, arts ability to exist will depend not only on its not performing a swear out as entertainment, visual (or other) experience, or decoration which is something easily replaced by kitsch culture, and technology, but, rather, it will remain viable by not assuming a philosophical stance for in arts unique character is the electrical capacity to remain alooffrom philosophical judgments. It is in this context that art shares similarities with logic, mathematics, and, as well, science. But whereas the other endea vors are useful, art is not. Art indeed exists for its own sake. In this period of man, after philosophy and religion, art may maybe be one endeavor that fulfills what another age readiness have called mans spiritual needs. Or, another way of putting it might be that art deals analogously with the state of things beyond physics where philosophy had to make assertions. And arts strength is that even the preceding sentence is an assertion, and cannot be verified by art. Arts only claim is for art. Art is the definition of art.NOTES * Reprinted from Studio International (October, 1969). 1 Morton White, The Age of compendium (New York Mentor Books), p. 14. 2 Ibid., p. 15. 3 I mean by this existentialism and Phenomenology. Even Merleau-Ponty, with his middle-of-the-road position between empiricism and rationalism, cannot express his philosophy without the use of words (thus using concepts) and following this, how can one discuss experience without sharp distinctions between ourselves and the world? 4 Sir James Jeans, physics and Philosophy (Ann Arbor, Mich. University of Michigan Press), p. 17. 5 Ibid., p. 190. 6 Ibid., p. 190. 7 The task such philosophy has taken upon itself is the only function it could perform without making philosophic assertions. 8 This is dealt with in the following section. 9 I would like to make it clear, however, that I intend to speak for no one else. I arrived at these conclusions alone, and indeed, it is from this thinking that my art since 1966 (if not before) evolved.Only recently did I realize after meeting terry Atkinson that he and Michael Baldwin share similar, though certainly not identical, opinions to mine. 10 Websters New World Dictionary of the American Language. 11 The conceptual level of the work of Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Morris Louis, Ron Davis, Anthony Caro, John Hoyland, Dan Christensen, et al., is so horribly low, that any that is there is supplied by the critics promoting it. This is seen later. 12 Michael Frieds reasons for using Greenbergs rationale reflect his background (and most of the other formalist critics) as a scholar, but more of it is due to his desire, I suspect, to bring his scholarly studies into the modern world. One can easily sympathize with his desire to connect, say, Tiepolo with Jules Olitski. One should never forget, however, that a historian loves history more than anything, even art.13 Lucy Lippard uses this quotation in a footnote to Ad Reinhardts ex post facto catalogue, January, 1967, p. 28. 14 Lucy Lippard, Constellation by Harsh Daylight The Whitney Annual, Hudson Review, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1968). 15 Arthur R. Rose, Four Interviews, Arts Magazine (February, 1969). 16 As Terry Atkinson pointed out in his introduction to Art-Language (Vol. 1, No. 1), the Cubists never questioned if art had morphological characteristics, but which ones in painting were acceptable. 17 When someone buys a Flavin he isnt buying a light show, for if he was he could just go to a hardware store and get the goods for considerably less. He isnt buying anything. He is subsidizing Flavins activity as an artist. 18 A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York Dover Publications), p. 78. 19 Ibid., p. 57.20 Ibid., p. 57. 21 Ibid., p.90. 22 Ibid., p. 94. 23 Ad Reinhardts retrospective catalogue (Jewish Museum, January, 1967) written by Lucy Lippard, p. 12. 24 It is poetrys use of common language to attempt to say the unsayable that is problematic, not any inherent problem in the use of language within the context of art. 25 Ironically, many of them call themselves Conceptual Poets. a great deal of this work is very similar to Walter de Marias work and this is not coincidental de Marias work functions as a kind of object poetry, and his intentions are very poetic he really wants his work to change mens lives. 26 Op. cit., p. 82.