Blurting In A & L

answer 2/23

Author: John Abbate  
Posted: 25.11.2002; 00:50:42
Topic: Question 2
Msg #: 616 (in response to 418)
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Thomas, (re: answer 2/22): By "art as a discourse for experts" are you referring to the dominance of the Greenberg/Fried model? Because it is doubtful whether this was still an issue in 1972; or if it was, it betrays a lack of knowledge or interest in what was happening in art elsewhere. I'm thinking of works such as Yves Klein's Leap Into the Void (1960), for example, and numerous other works that fell outside the formalist-aesthetic paradigm or challenged (intentionally or not) the commodity status of the art object (Manzoni's Artist's Shit (1961)). I think it is true that the Index(es) marked a shift in the relation of the spectator to the individual work of art, ie. the "beholder" was displaced in favour of the participant or reader (a construction that was useful in challenging the dominance of Greenberg/Fried-type formalism in the anglo/american context, but which today needs to be rethought, because it is possible that this "beholder" was something of a polemical notion erected to function as a strawman).