Jeff Wall
photography remai ned too comfortably
"Marks of Indifference":
Aspects of Photography
in, or as, Conceptual Art
(1995)
Originally published in Ann Goldstein and Ann e
Rorimer, Reconsidering the Object of Art,
1965-1975, ex h. cal. (Los Ang eles: Museum
of Conte mporary Art, 1995), 247-267.
Preface
This essay is a sketch, an attempt to study
the ways that photography occupied
Conceptual artists, the ways that photogra-
phy decisively realized itself as a modernist
art in the experiments of the 1960s and
1970s. Conceptual art played an important
role in the transformation of the terms and
conditions within which established photog-
raphy defined itself and its relationships
with other arts, a transform ation which
established photography as an institutional-
ized modernist fo rm evolvi ng explicitly
through the dynamics of its auto-critique.
Photography's implication with modernist
painting and sculpture was not, of course,
developed in the 1960s; it was central to the
work and discourse of the art of the 1920s.
Edward Rusch a; 1555 Artesia Blvd. and 6565 Fountain Ave., from Some Los Angeles Apartments, 1965;
photo-offset-pri nted book; 7 1/o x 5 % in . ( 18.1 x 14.3 em); Walker Art Center
32 THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
But, for the sixties generation, art-
Under the regime of depiction, that is, in
rooted in the pictorial traditions of modern
art; it had an irritatingly serene, marginal
existence, a way of holding itself at a dis-
tance from the intellectual drama of avant-
gardism while claiming a prominent, even
definitive place within it. The younger
artists wanted to disturb that, to uproot and
radicalize the medium, and they did so with
the most sophisticated means they had in
hand at the time, the auto-critique of art
identified'with the tradition of the avant-
garde. Their approach implied that photog-
raphy had not yet become "avant-garde"
in 1960 or 1965, despite the epithets being
casually applied to it. It had not yet accom-
plished the preliminary autodethronement,
or deconstruction, which the other arts had
established as fundamental to their devel-
opment and their amour-propre.
Through that auto-critique, painting and
sculpture had moved away from the prac-
tice of depiction, which had historically
been the foundation of their social and
aesthetic value. Although we may no
longer accept the claim th at abstract art
had gone "beyond" representation or
depiction, it is certain that such develop-
ments added something new to the corpus
of possible artistic forms in Western
culture. In the first half of th e 1960s,
Minimalism was decisive in bringing back
into sharp focus, for th e fi rst time since
the 1930 , the general problem of how
a work of art could validate itself as an
...
object among all other objects in the world.
the history of Western art before 1910, a
work of art was an object whose validity as
art was constituted by its being, or bearing,
a depiction. In the process of developing
alternative proposals for art "beyond"
depiction, art had to reply to the suspicion
that, without their depictive, or representa-
tional function, art objects were art in
name only, not in body, form , or function .'
Art projected itself forward bearing only its
glamorous traditional name, thereby enter-
ing a troubled phase of restless searching
fo r an alternative ground of validity. This
phase continues, and must continue.
Photography cannot find alternatives to
depiction, as could the oth er fine arts.
It is in th e physical nature of the medium
to depict things. In order to participate
in th e kind of reflexivity made mandatory
for modernist art, photography can put
into play only its own necessary condition
of being a depiction-which-constitutes-
an-object.
In its attempts to make visible this condi-
tion, Conceptual art hoped to reconnect
the medium to the world in a new, fresh
way, beyond the worn-out criteria for pho-
tography as sheer picture-making. Several
important directions emerged in this
process. In th is e say I will examine only
two. The first involves the rethinking and
" refunctioning" of reportage, the dominant
type of art-photography as it existed at the
beginning of the 1960s. The second is
related to the fi rst, and to a certain extent
emerges from it. This is the issue of the de-
skilling and re-skilling of the artist in a con-
text defined by the culture industry, and
made controversial by aspects of Pop art.
1. From Reportage to Photodocumentation
Photography entered its post-Pictorialist
phase (one might say its "post-Stieglitzian"
phase) in an exploration of the border-
territories of the utilitarian picture. In this
phase, which began around 1920, important
work was made by those who rejected the
Pictorialist enterprise and turned toward
immediacy, instantaneity, and the evanes-
cent moment of the emergence of pictorial
value out of a practice of reportage of one
kind or another. A new version of what
could be called the "Western Picture,"
or the "Western Concept of the Picture,"
appears in this process.
The Weste rn Picture is, of cour e, that
tableau , th at inde pendently beautiful
depiction and composition that de rives
from the institutiona liza tion of pe rspective
and dramatic figuration at the origins of
mode rn Weste rn a rt, with Raphael, Diire r,
Bellini a nd the ot her familiar maestri. It is
known as a product of divine gift, high skill,
deep emotion, and crafty pla nning. It plays
with the notion of th e sponta neous, the
unanticipated. The maste r picture- make r
prepares everyt hing in adva nce, yet trusts
that all the planning in th e world will lead
only to something fre h, mobile, light and
fascinating. The soft body of the brush,
the way it co nsta ntly changes shape a it is
used, was the primary mea ns by which the
genius of composi tion was placed at risk
at each moment, a nd recove red, transcen-
dent, in the shimme ring surfaces of magical
feats of figuration.
Pictori alist photography was dazzled
by the spectacle of Weste rn pa inting a nd
attempted, to some extent, to imitate it
in acts of pure composition. Lacking the
means to make the surface of its pictures
unpredictable and important, the first
phase of Pictorialism, Stieglitz' ph a e,
emulated the fine graphic arts, re-invented
the beautiful book, set standa rds for
gorgeousness of composition, a nd faded.
Without a dialectical conception of its
own surface, it could not achieve the kind
of planned spo ntane ity pai nting had put
before the eyes of the world as a universal
norm of art. By 1920, photographe rs inte r-
ested in art had begun to look away from
painting, eve n from mode rn painting,
toward the vernacul ar of the ir own
medium, and toward the ci nema, to di -
cover thei r own principle of sponta ne ity,
to discover once again, for the mselves,
that unanticipated appearance of the
Picture demanded by modern aesth etics.
At this moment the art-concept of pho to-
journalism appears, the notion that art can
be created by imitating photojourna lism.
This imitation was made necessary by the
dialectics of avant-garde experime ntation .
Non-autonomous art-forms, like architec-
ture, and new phenomena such as mass
communications, became pa radigmatic
in the 1920s and 1930s because the avant-
gardes were so involved in a critique of the
autonomous work of art, so intrigued by
the possibility of going beyond it into a
utopian revision of society and conscio us-
ness. Photojournalism was created in the
framework of the new publishing a nd com- the smalle r, faster cameras and film stock.
municatio ns industries, and it e laborated But repo rtage is inhe re nt in the nature of
a new kind of picture, utilitarian in its th e medium, a nd the evolution of equip-
dete rmin ation by editorial ass ignme nt and me nt re flects this. Repo rtage, or the spon-
novel in its seizure of the instantaneous, of taneous, fleeting aspect of the photographic
the "news event" as it happened. For both image, appea rs simultaneously with the pic-
th ese reasons, it seems to have occurred to to rial, tableau-like aspect at the origins of
a number of photographe rs (Paul Stra nd, photography; its traces ca n be seen in the
Walke r Eva ns, Brassai, He nri Cartier- blurred elements of Daguerre's first street
Bresso n) th at a new a rt could be made cene . Reportage evolves in the pursuit
by means of a mimesis of th ese a ims and of th e blurred parts of pictures.
aspects of photography as it really existed
in the world of th e new culture industries. In this process, photography e laborates
its version of the Picture, and it is the first
This mimesis led to transformations in new version since the onset of modern
the concept of th e Picture th at had conse- painting in the 1860 , or, possibly, since the
quences for th e whole notio n of mode rn e me rge nce of abstract art, if one considers
art, and that the refore stand as precondi- abstract pai ntings to be, in fact, pictures
tions for the kind of critique proposed anymore. A new ver ion of the Picture
by th e Conceptual artists after 1965. Post- implies necessarily a turning-point in the
pictoria list photography is e laborated in development of mode rnist art. Proble ms
the working out of a de mand that the are raised which will constitute the inte llec-
Picture make an appea rance in a practice tu al content of Conceptual art, or at least
which, havi ng already large ly re linquished significant aspects of th at conte nt.
the sensuousness of the surface, must also
re linquish any explicit preparatory process Alfred Sti eglit z; The Flatiron Building, 1902-1903 ;
of composition. Acts of composition are gelatin si lver print ; 6 11l 1o x 3 11 in. ( 17 x 8.3 em);
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Ang eles
the prope rty of the tableau. In repo rtage,
the sovereign place of composition is
retained only as a sort of dynamic of antici-
patory framing, a " hunte r's consciousness,"
the ne rvous looking of a "one-eyed cat,"
as Lee Friedlander put it. Every picture-
co nstructing advantage accumulated over
centuries is given up to the jittery flow of
eve nts a they unfo ld. The recta ngle of the
viewfinder and the speed of the shutte r,
photography's "window of equipme nt," is
all that remains of the great craft-complex
of composition. The art-co ncept of photo-
journali m began to force photography into
what appea rs to be a mode rnistic dialectic.
By divesting itself of the encumbrances and
advantages inhe rited from older art form s,
reportage pu s h e~ toward a discovery of
qua lities appare ntly intrinsic to the
med ium, qu alities that must necessarily
distinguish the medium from others, and
thro ugh the self-exa mination of which
it can emerge as a mode rnist art on a
plane with the others.
This force, or pressure, is not simply social.
Repo rtage is not a photographic type
brought into existence by the requirements
of socia l institutions as such, even though
institutions like th e press played a central
part in defining photojournalism. The press
had some role in shaping the new equip-
me nt of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly
'MARKS OF INDIFFERENCE' 33
One of the most important critiques
o pe ned up in Conceptual art was th at of
art-photogra phy's achieved o r perceived
'aestheticism." The revival of inte rest
in th e rad ical theories a nd method of the
po liticized and objectivistic ava nt-ga rde of
the 1920 and 1930s has long been recog-
nized as o ne of the most significa nt co ntri-
butions of th e art of the 1960s, particul arly
in Ame ri ca. Productivism, " factography,"
and Bauh aus co ncepts were turned aga inst
the appa re ntly ' depo liticized" a nd resub-
jectivi zed art of the 1940s a nd 1950s. Thus,
we have seen th at the kind of fo rma listic
and " re-subjectivized" a rt-photography th at
develo ped around Edward Westo n and
An e l Adams on th e We t Coast, o r Harry
Callaha n a nd Aaron Siskind in Chicago
in those yea rs (to use o nly American exa m-
ples) atte mpted to leave behind not only
any link with agi t-pro p, but eve n any con-
nectio n with the nervo us surfaces of ocial
life, and to resum e a stately mode rnist pic-
to ri ali m. This work ha been greeted with
opprob rium from radical critics since the
beginnings of the new debates in the 1960s.
The orthodox view is th at Cold Wa r pres-
sure co mpe lled socially-conscious pho tog-
raphe r away fro m the bo rde rline forms of
art-photojourna lism toward th e more sub-
jectivistic ve rsio ns of art injo1mel. In this
proces , the mo re explosive a nd problem-
ati c forms and co ncepts of radical ava nt-
ga rdism were driven from view, until th ey
made a return in the activistic neo-ava nt-
gardism of the 1960s. The re is much truth
in this construction, but it i flawed in th at
it draws too sharp a line between the meth -
od and approaches of politicized ava nt-
gardism and those of the more subj ectivistic
a nd fo rn1 alistic trends in a rt-photography.
The situati on is more co mplex beca use the
possibilities for auto no mous formal co mpo-
sitio n in photogra phy were the mselves
refined and bro ught o nto the historical
a nd ocial agend a by the medium 's evolu-
tion in th e context of va ngua rdist art. The
art-concept of photojourna lism is a theoret-
ica l formali za tio n of the ambiguo u co ndi-
tio n of th e mo t problematic kind of
photograph. That photogra ph emerges o n
the wing, out of a pho togra phe r's complex
ocial e ngagement (his o r her a signm ent)
it records something significa nt in th e
event, in the engagement, a nd gains so me
validity [rom that. But this validity alo ne is
o nly a social va lidity-the picture's success
as repo rtage per se. The entire avant-garde
of the 1920s and 1930 wa awa re that
va lidity as repo rtage per se was insufficient
for the most radical of purposes. Wh at was
necessary wa that the picture not only
succeed as repo rtage and be socia lly effec-
tive, but that it succeed in putting forward
a new propositio n o r mode l of the Picture.
Only in do ing both these things simultane-
o usly could pho tography rea lize itself as
a mode rnist a rt form , and pa rticipate in the
radical and revolutio nary cultural projects
of th at era. In this co ntext, rejection of a
classicizing aesthetic of th e picture-in the
name of pro le taria n amateuri m, for exam-
ple-must be seen as a claim to a new level
of pictorial conscio usne s.
Thu , art-pho tography was compelled to
be both a nti-aestheticist and ae the tically
significa nt, albe it in a new ' negative" sense,
at the sa me moment. Here, it is impo rtant
to recogni ze that it was the co nte nt of th e
ava nt-ga rde di alogue itself that wa central
in crea ting th e demand for a n aestheticism
which was the object of critiqu e by that
same avant-garde. Ln Th eO/yoftheAvant-
Garde (1974) Peter Burge r a rgued that th e
ava nt-ga rde e me rged histo rica lly in a cri-
tique of the completed aestheticism of
nin eteenth-century mode rn a rt.2 He sug-
gests th at, aro und 1900, the ava nt-garde
ge ne rati on, confronted with the social and
institut ional fact of the separat io n between
art a nd the othe r autonomo us domains of
life fe lt co mpe lled to atte mpt to lea p ove r
th at sepa rati on and reconnect high art a nd
the conduct of affa ir in the world in o rde r
to save th e aesth etic dim ension by tran-
scendin g it. Burger's e mph as is o n this drive
to transcend Aestheticism and a uto no mous
art neglects the fact th at the obsession with
the aesthe tic, now transform ed into a ort
of taboo, was carried over into th e center
of every possible a rtistic thought o r critica l
idea developed by vanguard ism. Thus, to
a certa in exte nt, o ne ca n inve rt Burge r's
th e i and say th at ava nt-garde art not only
co nstituted a critiqu e of Aestheticism, but
a lso re-establi hed Aestheticism as a per-
ma ne nt issue through its intense proble-
ma tiza tio n of it. This thesis co rrespo nds
e pecially closely to the situ atio n of photo-
gra phy within vanguard ism. Pho tography
had no history of autono mous sta tus pe r-
fected over tim e into an imposing institu-
tion. It emerged too late for th at. It
aesth eticizing thus was not, and co uld no t
be, simply an object for a n avant-gardist
critique, since it was brought into existe nce
by that sa me critiqu e.
In this sense, th ere ca nnot be a clea r
demarcation between aestheticist formal-
i m and various modes of e ngaged photog-
raphy. Subjectivism could beco me the
foundation for radical practices in photog-
raphy just as easily as neo-factography,
a nd both a re ofte n prese nt in much of the
work of the 1960s.
The peculia r, yet fa miliar, political ambigu-
ity as cu1 of th e experimental forms in and
a round Conceptualism, parti cul arly in th e
co ntext of 1968, i the result of the fusion,
o r eve n confusio n, of tropes of art-photog-
raphy with aspects of its critique. Far fro m
be ing ano malo us, this fu sio n re fl ects pre-
cisely th e inner structure of photography
as pote ntially avant-garde or even neo-
ava nt-garde art. This implie th at the new
forms of photographic practice and expe ri-
me nt in the sixti es and seve nties did not
derive excl usive ly from a reviva l of anti-
subj ectivist and a nti-formalist tende ncies.
Rathe r, the works of figures like Douglas
Huebler, Robert Smithson, Bruce Naum an,
Richard Lo ng, o r Joseph Kosuth emerge
from a space constituted by the a lready-
matured tran formations of both types of
approach-factogra phic a nd subjectivistic,
activist and formalist, " Marx ian" and
"Kanti an"- present in the work of their
precur o rs in th e 1940s and 1950s, in the
intricac ies of the dialectic of " reportage
a art-pho tography," a art-photography
par excellence. The radical critiques of a rt-
Andre Kert esz; Meudon , 1928, 1928; gelatin
silver print ; 16 7/e x 12 112 in. (41 .8 x 31 .8 em);
courtesy Estate of Andre Kertes z
photography inaugurated and occasionally
realized in Conceptual a rt ca n be seen
as bo th a n overturning of acade micized
approaches to th ese issues, a nd as a n
extrapo la ti o n of existing tensio ns inside
that acade micism, a new critical phase o f
acade micism and no t simply a re nunci atio n
of it. Photoconceptualism was able to bring
new ene rgies fro m the o th e r fine arts into
th e problemati c of a rt-photojo urn a lism,
and this had te nded to obscure th e ways
in whi ch it was rooted in th e unresolved
but well-established aesth etic iss ues of
the photography of th e 1940s a nd 1950s.
Intellectu ally, the stage was thus set fo r
a reviva l of the who le drama of repo rtage
within ava nt-ga rdism. The peculi ar situa-
tion of art -photography in th e a rt ma rket
at the beginning of the 1960s i anothe r
preconditio n, whose co nseque nces are
not simply socio logical. It is almost asto n-
ishing to reme mber that impo rtant art-pho-
tographs cold be purchased fo r under $100
not only in 1950 but in 1960. This suggests
that, despite the inte rn al compl exity o f
the aesthetic structu re of a rt-photography,
its moment of recognitio n as art in capita list
societies had not yet occurred. All the aes-
thetic preco nditio ns fo r its eme rgence as a
major form o f modernist a rt had come into
being, but it took the new critiques and
transformations of the sixties a nd seventies
to actu alize these socially. It co uld be said
that the very absence of a ma rke t in pho-
tography at th e mo me nt of a rapidly boom-
ing one fo r painting drew two kinds of
energy toward the medium.
The fir t i a specula tive a nd inquisitive
energy, one which circul ates everyw he re
thing appear to be " unde rva lue d."
Undervaluation implies the future, oppo r-
tunity, and the sudde n appea ra nce of
something forgotten. T he undervalued is
a category akin to Be nj amini a n ones like
the "ju t past," o r the " recently forgotte n."
The second is a sort of negative versio n
of the first. In the light of the new critical
skepticism toward " high art" that bega n
to surface in the inte llectu al glimme rings
around Pop art and its mytho logies, the lack
of interest of art marketers and collecto rs
marked photography with a utopia n pote n-
tial. Thus, the thought occurred th at a pho-
tograph might be the Picture which could
not be integrated into "th e regime," the
commercial-bureaucratic-discur ive orde r
which was rapidly becoming the object of
criticisms animated by th e att itudes of
th e Student Moveme nt and the New Left.
Na ive as such th oughts might seem today,
th ey we re va luable in turning serio us
atte ntio n towa rd the ways in which art-
photography had no t yet beco me Art.
U ntil it beca me Art, with a big A, pho to-
graphs co uld not be experienced in te rms
of the dialectic of va lidi ty which marks
a ll mode rnist aesthe tic ente rprises.
Paradoxically, th is could o nly happe n in
reve rse. Pho tography could e merge socially
as a rt o nly at the mome nt whe n its aesthetic
presuppositions seemed to be unde rgo ing
a withe ring radical critiqu e, a critiqu e
apparently a imed at fo reclosing any furthe r
aesthe ticiza tion or "a rti fica ti o n" o f th e
medium. Pho toco nceptualism led th e way
towa rd the compl ete acceptance o f photog-
raphy as a rt-auto no mo us, bo urgeois,
collectibl e a rt- by virtue o f insisting th at
this medium might be privileged to be th e
nega ti o n of th at who le idea. In be ing tha t
nega tio n, th e last ba rri e rs we re broke n.
Inscribed in a new ava nt-ga rdism, a nd
ble nd ed with e le me nts of text, sculpture,
pa inting, or drawing, photography became
the quintesse nti al "a nti-object." As
the neo-ava nt-ga rdes re-examin ed a nd
unrave le d the o rthodoxies of th e 1920s
a nd 1930s, th e bound ar ies o f the do ma in
of auto no mo us a rt we re unexpectedly
widened, not narrowed. In th e explosion of
post-a utonomous mode ls o f practice which
characte rized the di course of the seventies,
we ca n de tect, maybe o nly with hindsight,
Richard Long ; England 1968. 1968; black-and-wh ite photograph ; dimensions vari able; courtes y th e art is l
the extension of avant-ga rde aestheticism.
As with the first ava nt-ga rde, post-
auto nomous, " post-studio" art req uired its
do uble legitimatio n- first, its legitimatio n
as having transcended-or at least having
authe ntica lly tested- th e boundaries o f
a uto no mo us art a nd having become func-
tiona l in some real way; and th en, seco ndly,
th at this test, this new utili ty, result in works
o r fo rm s which pro posed compe lling mod-
els of art as such, at the sa me time that they
seemed to dis olve, abandon, or negate it.
I propose th e fo llowing characte rization o f
this process: auto no mo us a rt had reached
a sta te whe re it appea red th at it could only
validly be made by mea ns o f the strictes t
imitatio n of th e no n-auto nomo us. T his he t-
e ron omy might ta ke th e fo rm of direct criti-
cal comm entary, as with Art & La nguage;
with the p roductio n of po litical propa-
gand a, so commo n in the 1970s; or wi th the
many va rie ties of " inte rve ntion" o r appro-
priation practiced mo re recently. But, in
a ll th ese procedures, an auto nomous wo rk
of art is still necessa rily created. The inno-
va tion is that the conte nt of the wo rk is the
va lidi ty o f the mode l o r hypo the is o f non-
autonomy it creates.
This compl ex game of mimesis has been,
o f course, the fo undatio n fo r all th e
"endgame" strategies within ava nt-ga rdism.
The profusio n of new fo rms, processes,
mate ria ls and subj ects whi ch characte rizes
the art of th e 1970s was to a grea t extent
stimulated by mimeti c re latio nships
with o the r social productio n processes:
"MARKS OF INDIFFERENCE. 35
 indu trial commercial, cinematic, etc. Art-
photogra phy, a we have een, had already
evolved an intricate mimetic structure
in which arti t imitated photojournalists
in order to create Pictures. This elabo rate,
mature mimetic order of production
brought photography to the forefront of
the new pseudo-heteron omy, a nd permit-
ted it to become a paradigm for a ll aestheti-
cally-critical, mode l-co nst ructing thought
abo ut art. Photoconceptua lism worked out
many of the implications of this, so much
so that it may begin to eem that many of
Conceptu a l a rt's e sen rial achievement are
either created in the form of photographs
or a re otherwi e med iated by the m.
Reportage is introverted and parodi ed,
mann eristica lly, in a pects of photoconcep-
tualism. The notio n th at an arti tica lly
significa nt photograph ca n a ny lo nger be
made in a direct imitatio n of photojourn al-
ism i rejected as having been histo rically
co mple ted by the ea rlie r ava nt-garde
a nd by the lyrical subj ectivism of 1950s a rt-
photography. The gesture of re portage
i withdrawn from the ocia l field a nd
attached to a putative th ea trica l event. The
social field te nds to be abandoned to pro-
fes ion a! photojournali m pro per, as if the
ae th eti c proble ms associated with depict-
ing it were no longe r of any consequence,
and photojournalism had entered not
so much a po tmode rnist phase as a "post-
aesthetic" one in which it wa excluded from
ae the tic evolution for a time. This by the
way, suited the sensibilities of those po litical
activists who atte mpted a new version of
proletarian photography in the period.
Thi in trove r ion, or ubj ectiviza tion, of
reportage was ma nifested in two important
directions. First, it brought pho tography
into a new relationship with th e
Bruc e Nauman, S elf-Portrait as a Fountain,
1966- 1967 / 1970 (under ca l. no. 106)
proble ma tics of th e raged, o r posed, pic-
ture, thro ugh new concept of perfo rma nce.
Seco nd, the inscription of photography into
a nexus of expe rim enta l practices led to a
direct but dista nti ated a nd pa rodic re lation -
ship with the a rt-concept of photojournal-
ism. Although the work of many artists
co uld be di cussed in this context, for the
sake of brevity I wi ll discuss the photo-
gra phic work of Richard Lo ng and Bruce
Nauman as re presentative of th e first issue,
tha t of Da n Gra ha m, Douglas Huebler,
a nd Robe rt Smithson of the seco nd .
Lo ng's a nd Na um an's photograph docu-
me nt already co nceived a rtistic gestures,
actions, or "studio-events"- things
th a t sta nd self-consciously as co nceptua l,
aesthetic model for state of affa ir in
th e world, which, as such, need no longe r
appea r directly in th e picture. Lo ng's
England 1968 ( 1968) documents an action
or gesture, made by th e a ni t alone,
o ut in the co untryside, away fro m th e no r-
mal e nvirons of art o r pe rfo rm ance.
Gene ri ca lly, his pictures are landsca pes,
a nd th e ir mood is rathe r diffe re nt from
the typologies a nd inte ntion of repo rtage.
Conventional a rtistic land cape photogra-
phy might feature a foreground motif, uch
a a curious hea p of to nes o r a gnarled
tree, and counterpoint it to th e rest of th e
cene, howing it to be singula r, diffe re nti-
a ted from its surroundings, and yet existing
by mean of those surroundings. In uch
ways, a la ndsca pe picture ca n be thought
to be a repo rt on a state of affa ir a nd
the refo re be con iste nt with an art-concept
of re portage. Lo ng's walked line in th e
gras ub titutes it e lf fo r the foreground
motif. It is a gesture akin to Barnett
Newman's noti on of the estab lishme nt of
a " He re" in the void of a primeval te rra in .
Bruce Nauman; Failing to Levitate i n th e Studio.
1966 ; blackandwhite photograph ; 20 x 24 in.
(50.8 x 60.9 em); co urtes y th e ar tist
It is simulta neo u ly agriculture, religion,
urba nism, a nd th eater, a n interve ntion in
a lonely, picturesque spot which becomes a
e rring com ple ted artistically by the ge ture
and th e photogra ph for which the gesture
was enacted. Long does not photograph
events in the process of the ir occurrence,
but stages an event for the benefit of a pre-
co nce ived photographic re ndering. Tbe
picture is presented as th e sub idiary form
of an act, as "photo-docume ntation." It has
become that, howeve r, by mea ns of a new
kind of photographic mi e-en-scene. That
is it exists a nd is legitimated as continuo us
with th e project of re portage by moving in
precisely th e o ppos ite direction, toward a
completely designed picto ri al method, a n
introverted rna qu e rade th a t play ga me
with th e inherited aesthe tic proclivitie of
art-photogra phy-as- reportage. Many of th e
sa me e le me nts moved indoors, cha racte r-
ize aum an's tudio photograp h , such
as Failing to Levi/ale in the Studio (1966)
or Self-Portrait as a Fountain (1966-67!70).
The photographer' tudio, a nd th e gene ric
complex of "studio photography," was the
Pictoria list a ntithesis aga inst which th e
ae thetics of reportage were e labo rated.
Nauma n cha nges th e te rms. Working within
th e experime ntal fr a mewo rk of what was
beginning at the time to be called " pe r-
formance a rt," he carries out photographic
acts of repo rtage whose subject-matter is
the self-consciou , self-cente red "play" tak-
ing place in the studios of artists who have
moved "beyond" the modern fine art into
th e new hybridities. Studio photography
is no lo nge r isolated from reportage: it is
reduced a nalyt ica lly to coverage of what-
ever is happe ning in th e studio, that place
once o rigo rously co ntrolled by precede nt
and formula, but which wa in the proces
of being re in vented once more as theater,
factory reading roo m, meeti ng place,
ga llery, museum, and ma ny other thing .
Na uman 's photographs, fi lms, a nd videos
of thi pe riod are done in two modes or
tyl es. The fir t th at of Failing to L evitate,
i "direct," rough, a nd shot in black a nd
white. The other is based on studio lighting
effects-multiple sources, colored gel ,
e mpha tic co ntra t -and is of co ur e don e
in color. The two styles, red uced to a set
of basic formu lae and effects, a re signifie rs
for the new co-existence of species of
photography which had seemed ontologi-
cally sepa rated and even opposed in
the art history of photography up to that
time. It is as if the reportage work go
back to Muybridge a nd the ources o f a ll
traditio nal co ncepts o f photographic docu -
me nta ry, a nd th e color pictures to th e ea rly
"gags" a nd jo kes, to Man Ray a nd Moho ly-
Nagy, to the birthpl ace o f e ffect used
for th e ir own sa ke. The two re igning myth
o f pho tog ra phy-th e o ne th at cla ims
th at pho tographs a re " tru e" a nd th e o ne
that cla ims th ey a re no t-are hown to
be gro unded in th e sa me praxis ava ilable
in the sa me place, th e tudio, at th a t place's
mome nt o f hi to ri ca l tra n formatio n.
These practice , o r strategic , a re extre me ly
comm o n by about 1969, so commo n as
to be de rigueur aero s th e ho rizo n of pe r-
fo rm a nce art ea rth a rt, Arte Pove ra, a nd
onceptualism, a nd it ca n be sa id th at these
new meth odo logies o f photographic prac-
tice are the tro ngest facto r linking togethe r
th e expe rim e ntal form s of th e pe riod , which
ca n seem so di spa rate and irreco ncil able.
Thi integra tio n o r fu io n o f repo rtage
and perfo rm ance, its ma nn e ri tic introve r-
sion, ca n be ee n a a n implicitly parodi c
critique of the co ncepts of a rt-photog raphy.
Smith on and Graha m, in part beca use th ey
were active a writer , we re able to provide
a more explicit parody o f photojourn a lism
than aum an o r Lo ng.
Photojourn alism as a ocia l instituti o n ca n
be defi ned most imply as a co llabo ra ti on
between a write r a nd a photographe r.
Conceptual art's inte llectu alism wa e ngen-
dered by young, aspiring arti sts fo r whom
critical writing was an important practice
of elf-definiti on. The exa mple of Do nald
Judd's criticism fo r A rts Magazine was deci-
ive here, and e ays like "Specific Objects"
(1964) had the impact, almo t, o f lite ra ry
works of art. The inte rplay be twee n a vet-
eran litterateur, Cle me nt Gree nbe rg; a
young academic art critic, Michael Fried;
and Judd, a talented styli t, i o ne of the
riche t episodes in the history of America n
critici m, and had mu ch to do with igniting
the idea of a writte n critique ta nding
as a wo rk of art. Smith on's "The rysta l
Land," published in Harper's Bazaar in
1966, i an homage to Judd as a crea to r of
both vi ual and lite rary fo rms. Smith o n'
innovation, howeve r, is to avo id the genre
of art criticism, writin g a mock-trave logue
in lead. He plays the part o f th e inquisitive,
belletristic journ alist, accompa nying and
interpreting his subj ect. He na rrativizes his
account of Judd 's art, moves from critical
commentary to storyte lling and re- inve nts
the re latio nship between visual art and
lite rature . Smithso n's mo t impo rta nt pub-
lished works, such as "The Monume nts o f
Passaic," a nd "Incide nts o f Mirror-Travel in
the Yu ca tan" a re "auto-accompa nim e nts."
Smithso n th e journa li !-photographe r
acco mpa ni es Smith o n th e a rti st-expe ri-
me nte r a nd is able to produ ce a so phi ti-
cated apo logia for his scu lptura l work in the
gui e of popula r e nte rta inme nt. His es ays
do not ma ke th e Co nceptualist claim to be
wo rk of visual a rt, but appea r to re ma in
co nte nt with be ing wo rks o f lite rature. The
photog raphs included in the m purpo rt to
illustrate th e na rrative o r comm enta ry. The
na rrati ves, in turn , describe the eve nt o f
making th e pho tographs. "One neve r kn ew
wh at side of th e mirro r o ne was o n," he
mu ed in " Pas a ic " as if re fl ecting o n th e
parody o f photojourna li m he was in th e
proces of enacting. Smith on's parody was
a way o f di s o lving, o r ofte ning, th e objec-
tivistic a nd positivistic to ne of Minima li m,
o f ubj ectivizing it by as ocia ting its reduc-
tive fo rm al la nguage with intrica te, drifting,
even de lirio u moods o r states of mind .
The Minim a list sc ulptura l fo rm to
whi ch Smithso n's texts co nsta ntly a llude
appea red to e rase the associa tive cha in
o f expe ri e nce, th e inte ri o r mo no losue o f
crea tivity, insisting o n th e pure immedi acy
o f the product itself, th e wo rk as such,
as " pecific object." Smith o n's expo ure
of wha t he saw as Minim alism's e mo ti o na l
inte ri o r depe nd o n th e re turn o f ideas
of tim e a nd process, o f na rrative a nd
e nactm e nt, o f expe ri e nce, me mo ry, a nd
a llusio n, to th e a rtisti c fo refro nt, aga inst
the rh eto ric o f both Gree nbe rg a nd Judd.
Cover of A rtforum , no. 1 (September 1969),
wi th photography of Robert Sm ith son's First Mirror
Displacement , 1969
His pho tojo urn a lism is a t o nce self-
po rtra iture-th at is, pe rfo rm a nce-and
re po rtage abo ut wh at was hidde n and even
re pressed in th e a rt he most admired . lt
loca ted the impulse towa rd self-suffi cie nt
and no n-objective fo rms o f art in co ncre te,
pe rso na l respo n e to rea l li fe, socia l
exp e ri e nces, th e reby co ntributing to th e
new critiqu es o f fo rm alism which we re
so central to Conceptu al a rt 's project.
Da n Graham' involveme nt with th e
ci a sica I tradition o f repo rtage is unique
a mong th e a rti sts usua lly ide ntified with
Co nceptua l a rt, and his a rchitectura l photo-
graphs co ntinue so me aspects o f Wa lke r
Eva ns's project. In thi , Graha m locate
his practice at th e boundary of pho tojour-
nalism, pa rticipa ting in it, whil e at the
sa me tim e placing it a t the se rvice of o th e r
aspects o f his oe uvre. Hi architectural
pho tog raphs provide a socia l grounding
fo r the structural mode ls o f inte rsubjective
expe rience he e labo rated in text, video,
pe rfo rma nce a nd culptural environm e ntal
pieces. Hi works do not imply make
refe re nce to th e large r social world in the
ma nne r o f pho tojo urn a lism; ra the r they
refe r to Graha m's own o ther projects,
which, tru e to Co nceptual fo rm , a re mode ls
of th e social, not de pictio n o f it.
Graham's Hom es for A m erica (1966-67)
has ta ke n o n ca no ni cal tatu in thi rega rd.
He re th e photo-essay fo rm at so famili ar
to the hi tory o f photogra phy has been
me ti culo usly replica ted a a mode l of th e
instituti on of pho tojo urn a lism. Like Walke r
Eva ns at Fortune, Gra ham write the text
and upplie th e pictures to go a lo ng with it.
Hom es was actu ally planned a a n essay o n
Robert Smith son, Th e Bridge Monument Sh owing
Sidewalk s, 1967, from M onuments of Passaic
(cat. no. 173)
 suburban archi tecture fo r an art magazine,
and could certainly tand unprobl e matica lly
o n it own a such. By cha nce, it was never
actu ally published as Graham had inte nd ed
it. Thereby, it migrated to the form of a lith-
ographic print of an apocryphal two-page
pread.J The print, and th e original pho tos
included in it, do not constitute a n act or
practice of reportage so much a a mode l o f
it. Thi model is a parody, a meticulous and
detached imitation who e a im is to inte rro-
ga te the legitimacy (a nd the proces e of
legi tim ation) of its original, and th e reby
(a nd only thereby) to legitimate it e lf a art.
The photograph included in th e work
a re among Graham's mo t well-known a nd
have e tab lished impo rta nt precede nts for
his subseque nt photogra phic work. In initi-
ating his project in photography in te rm
of a parodic mode l of th e photo-es ay,
Graham positio ns all his picture-making
as art in a very preci e, yet very co ndition al,
ense. Each photograph may be-or mu t
be co n ide red as possibly be ing-no mo re
than an illustration to an e ay, a nd the re-
fore not an auto no mous work of art. Thus,
they appear to sa tisfy, as do Smith on's
photograph , the demand for a n imitatio n
of the non-autono mou . Homes for
America , in be ing both really just an e say
on the suburbs and, as we ll, an artist's print,
con tituted it e lf explicitly as a ca nonical
insta nce of th e new kind of anti-
auto nomo us yet auton o mous work of
art. The photograph in it oscilla te at th e
Dan Graha m, "Homes for Amer ica." Arts M agazine 41 (December 1966- Janu ary 1967): 21 - 22
threshold of th e a uto no mo us work, eros ing
and recro ing it, re fu sing to depa rt from
th e a rti stic dil emm a of reportage and
the reby establishing an aesthe tic model
of just th at thre hold condition.
Hueble r's work i a l o e ngaged with crea t-
ing and exa mining the effect photographs
have when they ma que rade a pa rt of
ome ext ra neo us project, in which th ey
a ppea r to be mea ns a nd not e nds. Unlike
Smithso n or Graham, though, Hueble r
makes no literary cla ims for th e textu al
pa rt of his works, th e " program s" in which
his pho tographs ar e utilized. Hi work
approach Conceptual a rt pe r se in th at th ey
eschew lite rary status and ma ke claims only
as visua l art objects. eve rth e less, hi
re nun ciatio n of th e lite rary i a language-
act, a n act e nun cia ted as a man oe uvre
of writing. Hueb le r's " pieces" involve the
appropri ati o n, utili za tion a nd mimesis
of va ri o us "syste ms of documentation,"
o f which pho tography is o nly one. It is
positioned within th e work by a gro up
of ge ne rica lly related pro tocols, defined
in writing, a nd it is strictly within th ese
pa ramete r th at th e image have mea ning
and artistic status. Wh e re Graham and
Smith on make their wo rk through mime-
sis a nd parody of th e forms of pho tojour-
nali m, its published produ ct Hueble r
parodies the a ignme nt, th e " project"
o r e nte rpri se th a t e t th e whole process
into mo tio n to begin with. The seemingly
pointless and even trivi al procedures th at
Armory '66 ..
_--
hoi Out .,,.,
we HaG W. Mond
~-----.:~
~~
....
co nstitute wo rks like Duration Piece #5,
Amsterdam, Holland ( 1970) or Duration
Piece # 7, Rome ( 1973) function a mode ls
for th at verba l or written const ructio n,
which, in the working world, ca u es photo-
graph to be made. The mo re the as ign-
me nt is e mptied of what cou ld norm at ive ly
co n ide red to be co mpe lling social subj ect
matte r, the mo re vi ible it is simply as
an instance of tructure, an order, a nd the
more clearly it ca n be expe ri e nced a a
model of relationships between writing a nd
photography. By e mptying subject ma tte r
from hi practice of photogra phy, Hueble r
recapitulates importa nt aspects of th e
development of mod e rni st pa inting.
Mondrian, for exa mpl e, moved away from
depictions of the la nd ca pe, to expe rim e n
tal patterns with o nly a residual de pictive
va lue, to abstract work which ana lyze a nd
model re lationships but do not depict or
represent them. The idea of a n art which
provide a direct expe rie nce of ituat io ns
or re lat io nships, not a eco ndary, repre e n-
ratio nal o ne, is o ne of ab tract art's most
powerful creations. The viewer doe not
experience the " re represe ntatio n" of
absent things, but the presence of a thing,
th e work of a rt itself with a ll of its
indwe lling dynami m, te nsio n and co m-
plexity. The expe rie nce is more like an
e ncou nter with a n e ntity than with a mere
picture. The e ntity doe not bear a depic-
tio n of anoth er en ti ty, mo re impo rtant th a n
it; ra th e r, it appea r and i expe rie nced
in th e way objects a nd e ntities a re expe ri
e nced in the e motion a lly-cha rged co ntexts
of ocia llife.
Hueb ler' mimesis of th e model-co n true-
ri ve as pects of mode rnist abstract a rt co n-
tradi ct , o f course, the na tura l depict ive
qu a lities of photography. This co ntradi c-
tion is the necessary center of these works.
By maki ng photog raphy's ine ca pab le
depictive cha racte r co ntinu e even where
it ha been decreed th at th e re is no thing
of significa nce to de pict, Hueble r aims to
make visi ble so me thing esse nti a l abo ut
th e me dium 's na ture. The a rtistic, crea tive
pa rt of thi work is obvio u ly no t the pho-
tography, th e picturemaking. This di
pl ays a ll the limited qu a lities ide ntified
with pho toco nceptu alism's de-skilled,
a mate urist se nse of itself. Wh at is creative
in th ese works a re th e writte n a signm e nts,
o r program s. Every e le me nt th at co uld
make th e pictures " inte resting" o r "good"
in te rm s derived from a rt-photogra phy is
ystema tica lly a nd rigorously excluded.
At th e sa me time, Hueble r elimina tes
all conventional " lite rary" characteristics
from his writte n stateme nts. The work
is comprised of these two simultaneous
negotia tions, which produce a " reportage"
without event, and a writing without narra-
tive, comme ntary, or opinion. This do ubl e
negation imitates the criteria for radica l
abstract pa inting and sculpture, and
pushes thinking about photography toward
an awa re ness of the di alectics of its inhe r-
ent de pictive qu alities. Hueble r's works
allow us to co nte mpl a te the co ndition of
"depictivity" itself and imply th at it is this
contradiction between the unavoidable
process of depicting appea rances, a nd the
equally un avo idable process of making
objects, that pe rmits photography to
become a mode l of a n art whose subj ect
matter is the idea of a rt.
U. Amateurization
Photography, like all the arts th at preceded
it, is founded o n the skill, craft, and imagi-
nation of it practitione rs. It was, however,
the fate of all the arts to become modernist
through a critique of the ir own legitimacy,
in which the tec hniqu es a nd abilities
most intimately ide ntified with the m were
placed in question . The wave of redu c-
tivism that broke in the 1960s had, of
course, been ga the ring during the preced-
ing half-century, and it was th e ma turing
(one could almost say, the tota lizing)
of that idea that brought into focus the
explicit possibility of a "conceptual a rt,"
an art whose content was none othe r
than its own idea of itself, and the history
of such an idea' beco ming respectable.
Painters and sculptors worked the ir way
into this problem by scrutinizing and repu-
diating-if only experime nta lly-the ir
own abilities, the special capacities th at had
historically distinguished the m from other
people-non-artists, unskilled or untal-
ented people. This act of renunciation had
moral and utopian implications. Fo r the
painter, a radical repudiation of complicity
with We tern traditions was a powerful
new mark of distinction in a new e ra of
what Nietz che called "a revaluation of all
values."4 Moreover, th e significa nce of the
repudiation was almost immedi ate ly appar-
ent to people with even a passing awareness
of art, though apparent in a nega tive way.
"What! You don 't want things to look
three-dimensional? Ridiculous!" It is easy
to experience the fact that so mething usu-
ally considered essenti al to art has been
re moved fro m it. Wh atever the thing the
a rtist ha thereby created might appear to
be, it is first a nd fo remost th at which results
from the absence of e le me nts which have
hithe rto always been the re. The reception,
if not the production, of mode rnist art has
been consistently form ed by thi phe no me-
non, a nd the idea of mode rnism as such is
inseparabl e from it. The historica l proce s
of critica l refl exivity de rives its structure
and ide ntity fro m the moveme nts possible
in, and cha racte ristic of, the older fine
arts, like pai nting. The drama of mode rn-
ization, in which artists cast off the a nti-
quated characte ristics of the ir m etiers, i
a co mpelling one, and has become the co n-
ceptual mode l fo r mode rnism as a whole.
Clement Gree nbe rg wrote: "Certain factor
we used to think essential to th e making
and experie ncing of a rt a re shown not to
be so by the fact th at Mode rni st painting
ha bee n able to di pe n e with them a nd
ye t continue to offer the exp e rie nce of art
in all it e e ntia! ."5
Abstract and experime ntal a rt begi ns
its revolutio n and continues its evolution
with the rejection of de pictio n, of its
own history as limning and picturing,
and then with the deconsecration of the
institution which came to be known as
Re prese nta tion . Painting finds a new telos,
a new ide ntity a nd a new glory in being
th e site upo n which this transformation
works itself o ut.
Dan Graham ; Homes for America. 1966-1 967 ; photo-offset reproduction of layout for Arts Magazine ;
34 112 x 25 in. (87.6 x 63.5 em); Walker Art Center
Homes for
America
:. . --~ .........:::..
::-:~
It is a commonplace to note th at it was th e
appea rance of photography which, as th e
representative of the Industrial Revolution
in the realm of the image, set the histo rical
process of mode rnism in motio n. Yet
photography's own histo rical evolution
into mode rni st discourse has been dete r-
mine d by the fact th a t, unlike the older
arts, it ca nnot dispe nse with de pictio n
a nd so apparently, cannot participate
in the adve nture it might be said to have
suggested in th e first place.
The dilemma, the n, in the process of legi ti-
mati ng photogra phy as a modern ist art is
that the medium has virtually no dispe nsa-
ble characteristics, th e way painting, for
exampl e, does, a nd therefore cannot con-
form to the ethos of reductivism, so suc-
cinctly formul ated by Greenberg in these
lines, also from " Mode rnist Painting":
"Wh at had to be exhibited was not o nly th at
which wa unique and irreducible in art in
ge ne ra l, but also that which was unique and
irreducibl e in each particular art. Each art
had to de te rmine, through its own opera-
tions and works, the effects exclusive to
itself. By do ing so it would, to be sure, na r-
row it a rea of compete nce, but at the sa me
time it would make its possession of th at
area all the more certain."6
The essence of the mode rnist deco nstruc-
tion of painting as picture-making was not
realized in abstract art as such ; it was real-
ized in emph as izing the distinction between
th e institution of the Picture and the neces-
sary structure of the depiction itself. It was
physically possible to eparate the action
of the painte r- those touches of th e brush
which had hi torically always, in the We t
at least, led to a de piction- from depiction,
a nd abstract art was th e most co nclusive
evide nce for this.
Pho tography constitutes a depiction not
by th e accumul a ti o n o f individu al marks,
but by th e instantaneo us ope ration of a n
integrated mecha nism. All th e ray pe rmit-
ted to pass through the le ns form a n image
immedi ate ly, and th e le n , by de finition ,
crea te a focused image at its correct foca l
le ngth . Depiction is the on ly possible
res ult of the ca me ra ystem, and th e kind
of image form ed by a le ns i th e o nly
image po ible in photography. Thus, no
ma tter how impressed photogra phe rs may
have bee n by the analytica l rigor of mod-
e rni t critica l di co urse, th ey co uld not
pa rticipate in it directly in th e ir practice
beca u e the pecificities of their medium
did not pe rmit it. This phys ical ba rri e r has
a lo t to do with th e dista nced re lat io nship
be twee n painting and photography in
the e ra of art-photography, th e first sixty
o r o year of this ce ntury.
Despite the barrie r, a round th e middle
of th e 1960 , num e rous young a rtists a nd
a rt stude nts appropria ted photography,
turned the ir atte ntio n away from au/eurisl
vers io ns of its practice, a nd fo rcibly sub-
jected th e medium to a full- cale imme r-
sion in the logic of reductivism. Thee se n-
ti a l reduction came on the level of kill .
Photography cou ld be integrated into th e
new radica l logics by e limina ting all th e
pictoria l suav ity and techni cal so phistica-
tion it had accumul a ted in the proce of
its own imitation of th e Grea t Picture. It
wa po ible, th e refo re, to test the medium
fo r its indispensable e le me nts, without
abandoning depiction, by findin g way to
legitimate pictures th at de monstra ted th e
ab e nce of the conve nti onal ma rks of pic-
to rial distinction developed by the grea t
a ute urs, from Atge t to Arbu .
Already by a round 1955, the revalorization
a nd reasse me nt of ve rnacul a r idioms of
popular culture had e me rged as pa rt of a
new "new objectivity," a n objectivi m bred
by th e limitat ions of lyrica l arl infonnel,
th e introve rted and self-righteo usly lofty
art form s of th e 1940s and 1950s. T his new
critical trend had so urce in high a rt a nd
high acade me, as th e names Jaspe r Johns
and Piero Manzoni, Rol and Ba rth e and
Leslie Fiedle r, indicate. It continues a
fund ame ntal project of the ea rlie r ava nt-
garde-the transgression of th e boundari es
between " high" and " low" art, be twee n
a rtists a nd the rest of th e people, between
"art" and " li fe. " Although Pop art in the
la te fifti es a nd ea rly sixti es seemed to con-
centrate o n bringing mas -cu lture e leme nts
into high-culture fo rms, already by the
1920s the situation had beco me far more
complex and reciprocal th a n th at, a nd
motifs a nd style from ava nt-ga rde and
high-cu lture sources we re circu lati ng
exte nsive ly in th e variou new Culture
Industries in Europe, the United States,
the Sovie t Union, and e l ewh e re. This
transit between " high" a nd " low" had
beco me th e central proble matic for th e
ava nt-ga rde beca use it re fl ected so deci-
sive ly the process of mode rniza tion of a ll
cu lture . The great que tion wa whe th e r
o r not a rt a it had eme rged from th e pa t
would be ' mode rnized" by be ing di olved
into th e new mass-cul tura l structures.
Hovering be hind a ll te ndencies towa rd
reductivism was th e shadow of this grea t
" redu cti o n." The ex pe rim e ntation with
the "a naesth e tic," with "the look of no n-
a rt," ' the condition of no-a rt," or with
" the loss of th e visua l," i in this light
a kind of te mpting of fate. Be hind th e
Gree nbe rgian fo rmul ae, first e labo rated
in the late 1930s, lies th e fear th at th e re
may be, fin a lly, no indi pe nsable cha rac-
te risti cs th a t distinguish th e a rts, a nd th at
a rt as it ha come down to us is very dis-
pe nsable indeed. G aming with th e anaes-
the tic was both a n inte llectual nece ity
in the co ntex t of mode rni sm, a nd at th e
sa me tim e th e re lease of socia l a nd psychic
e ne rgi es which had a sta ke in th e " liquid a-
tion" of bourgeoi " high a rt." By 1960
the re was pleasure to be had in this exp e ri-
me ntatio n, a pleasure, moreover, which
had bee n fully anct io ned by th e aggressi-
vity of th e first ava nt-garde o r, at least,
importa nt parts of it.

Douglas Hu ebler; Duration Piece #7. Rome , March 19 73 (detai l), 1973: 14 black-a nd -white photographs and statement: overa ll dimensions 39 1/ x 32 112 in.
(99.7 x 81 .9 em} framed; co urtesy Darcy Huebler

Duration Piece #7
Rome

Fourteen photographs were made, at exact 30 second tnterv&ls , 1n order to document

specl!1o cha.nges 1n the rel&ttonsh!p between two aspects of the water fa.lllng from
t.he rocks ln one area at the base of the Founta.ln of Trevt .

The photographs, undeslgnated by the sequence in which they were made. join wtt.h
t.h.ts statement t.o constitute the form of this work .

Ma.rcb, 1973 Douglas Buebler

Rad ica l deconstructio ns th e refore took
the form of ea rches for mode ls of " the
a naesthe tic." Duchamp had charted thi s
territory be fo re 1920, and his influe nce was
the decisive o ne for the new critical objec-
tivism surfac ing forty yea r late r with
Gerhard Richte r, Andy Warhol , Manzo ni,
John Cage, and there t. The anaesth etic
found its e mbl em in the Readymade, the
commodity in a ll its gui ses, form s, and
traces. Wo rking-cia s, lower-middle class,
suburbanite, a nd und e rcl ass mili e ux we re
expertly sco ured for the re leva nt utilita ri an
images, de pictions, figurations, and objects
that violated a ll the criteria o f ca no nical
mode rnist taste, style, a nd technique.
Sometimes the early years of Pop a rt seem
like a race to find the most pe rfect, meta-
phy ically banal image, that cipher th at
demonstrate th e ab ility of culture to co n-
tinue whe n every aspect of what had bee n
known in mode rn art as se riousnes exper-
ti e, and refl exiveness had been dropped .
The empty, th e counterfe it, th e functional ,
and the brutal themselves were of course
nothing new as a rt in 1960, having a ll
become tropes of th e ava nt-ga rde via
Surrealism. From th e viewpoint created
by Pop art, though, ea rli e r treat me nts of
this problem eem e mphat ic in the ir adhe-
rence to the Romantic idea of th e trans-
fo rmat ive powe r of authentic art. The
anaesthetic is tran formed a a rt, but a long
the fracture-lin e of shock. The shock
caused by the appea rance of th e anaes-
thetic in a serio us work is calmed by th e
Publicity stilllrom John Cassave tes " Faces (l ilmed 1965/ rele ased 1968): cou rt es y Photolest
aura ofseri ousne s itself. It is thi s aura
which becomes th e ta rget of the new wave
of critical play. Avant-ga rde a rt had he ld
the a nesth e tic in a pl ace by a web of sophis-
ticated manoe uvres, calcula ted transgre -
sive gestures, which always paused o n th e
thresho ld of real abando nme nt. Re me mbe r
Be ll me r's po rnogra phy, Hea rtfi eld's propa-
ga nda, Maya kovsky's adve rti sing. Except
for th e Readymade, th e re was no compl ete
mimesi o r appro priatio n of the a naes-
th etic, a nd it may be that th e Readymade
that thing that had indeed crossed th e line,
provided a so rt of fulcrum upon which,
be tween 1920 and 1960, eve rything e lse
could re ma in balanced.
The unprecedented mimesi of' the condi-
tion of no a rt" o n th e pa rt of th e a rti sts
of the ea rly sixties seems to be an instincti ve
re fl ecti o n of th ese lines from Theodor
Adorno'sAe thetic Th e01y, which was be ing
composed in th at sa me period: ' Ae th etic ,
o r what is left of it, seems to assum e tacitly
that the surviva l of art i unproble matic.
Central for this kind of aest he ti cs the refore
is the question of how a rt survives, no t
whethe r it will survive at all. This view
ha little credibility tod ay. Aesth etics ca n
no lo nge r rely o n art as a fact. If art is to
remain fa ith ful to its co ncept, it must pass
over into anti-art, o r it must develo p a se n e
of e lf-do ubt which is born o f the mo ral
gap between its continued existe nce and
ma nkind 's ca tastrophes, past a nd future,"
and "At th e present time significa nt mode rn
a rt i e ntire ly unimpo rta nt in a ociety th at
o nly to le rates it. Thi situatio n affects a rt
itself, ca using it to bea r th e marks of indif-
ference: th e re is th e disturbing se n e th at
this a rt might just as well be different
o r might not exi t at all."7
The pure appropriati on of the a nae the tic,
the imagined co mpletion o f the gesture
o f passing ove r into a nti-a rt, or no n-a rt, is
the act of inte rn aliza tio n of society's indif-
ference to th e happiness a nd se rio usness
o f a rt. It is also, therefore, an expre sia n
of th e a rtist's own ide ntifica tion with bale-
ful socia l forces. This ide ntification may be,
as a lway in mode rnism, expe rim e ntal, but
th e expe rime nt must be ca rried out in actu-
a lity, with the risk that an " identi fica tio n
with the aggre or" will really occur a nd be
so successful socially as art that it becomes
inesca pable a nd pe rm ane nt. Ducha mp
ginge rly seemed to avoid thi ; Wa rhol
perhap did no t. In no t do ing o, he he lped
ma ke explicit so me of the hidde n e ne rgies
of red uctivi m. Wa rho l made his taboo-
breaking work by subjecting photography
to reductivist me thodo logy, bo th in his
silkscree n pa inting and in his film s. The
painting re ite rated o r appropriated photo-
jo urn alism and glamour pho togra phy a nd
claimed that picture-making skill were of
minor impo rtance in making ignifica nt
pictorial a rt. The films exte nded the argu-
me nt directly into the regime of th e photo-
graphic, and established a n aesthe tic of
th e a ma te urish which tapped into New
York trad itio ns going back via th e Beats
and inde pende nts to the late 1930s a nd
the fi lm expe rim e nts of J ame Agee a nd
Helen Levitt. To th e tradition of indepe nd-
e nt, intima te, and naturalistic filmmaking,
a practiced by Robe rt Frank, Jo hn
Cassavetes, o r Frederick Wi e m a n, Wa rho l
added (pe rhaps "subtracted" would be
th e be tte r word) th e ago ny of redu ctivi m.
Cassavetes fu sed th e documenta ry traditi on
with me thod acting in films like Faces
(1968), with the inte nti on of gett ing clo e to
peo ple . The ro ugh pho togra ph y a nd light-
ing drew attention to itself, but th e styl e
signifi ed a mora l decision to forego techni-
cal finish in the name of e motional truth.
Warho l rever ed thi in film s like Eal, Kiss,
o r Sleep (a111 963), separating the picture-
style fro m its radica l humanist conte nt-
types, in effect using it to place people at
a peculi a r distance, in a new relatio nship
with the pectator. Thus a methodological
mode l is constructed: the no n-profe sio nal
o r amate uri st ca me ra technique, co nven-
tio nally a ociated with anti-comme rcial
natura lism and existe nti a l, if not po litical,
commitment, is separa ted from those a so-
ciati o ns a nd turned towa rd new p ycho-
socia l subject , including a new ve r io n o f
th e glamour it wa nted to leave be hind. In
thi process, amate urism as such becomes
vis ible as th e photographic modali ty o r style
whi ch, in itself, signifi es th e de tachme nt of
photography fro m three grea t no rms o f th e
Western picto ri a l traditio n- the fo rm al, th e
technical, and th e o ne re lating to th e range
of subj ect-matte r. Wa rho l violate a ll these
no rm s simulta neo u ly, as Ducha mp had
do ne befo re him with th e Readymade.
Ducha mp managed to sepa rate his wo rk
as a n o bject fro m the do mina nt traditio ns,
but not until Wa rh o l had the picture bee n
acco rd ed th e ame trea tm e nt.S Warh o l's
replaceme nt of th e no tio n o f th e a rti t as
a skill ed produ cer with th at of th e artist as
a consum er of new picture-making gadgets
was only th e mo t obviou a nd strikin g
e nactme nt o f wha t co uld be called a new
amateuri m, which mark so mu ch of th e
a rt o f th e 1960s a nd ea rli er 1970 .
Amate urish film and pho tographic images
and tyle of course re lated to the docu-
me ntary traditi on, but th e ir deepe t
reso na nce is with th e wo rk of actu al a ma-
te urs-th e gene ral popula tio n, th e " peo-
ple." To begin with , we must recognize a
co nscious utopiani m in thi turn towa rd
th e techn ological vernacul a r: Jo eph
Beuys' loga n "every ma n is a n a rtist,"
o r Lawre nce We ine r's diffide nt conditio n
fo r the reali za tio n a nd possessio n of his
works refl ect with pa rticul a r cla ri ty th e
idea listic side of th e cla im th at the making
of a rtwo rks needs to be, and in fact has
beco me, a lot easie r th a n it was in th e past.
These artists a rgued th at th e grea t mas
of th e people had bee n excluded fro m a rt
by socia l ba rri e rs and had inte rna lized a n
ide ntity as " untale nted," and " inartistic"
a nd o were re e ntful o f the high art th at
th e domin ant institutio ns unsucces fully
co mpelled the m to vene rate. Thi resent-
me nt wa th e moving fo rce of philistine
rn a s culture and kit ch, as we ll as o f re p-
ressive social and legislative a ttitud es
towa rd the arts. Continu atio n o f th e regime
o f specialized high a rt in ten ificd th e a lie n-
at io n of bo th the people and th e specia l-
ized, ta le nted a rti ts wh o, a th e objects
of resentm e nt, develo ped e litist a ntipathy
towa rd " th e rabble" and ide ntified with th e
ruling clas. e a th e ir o nly possible pa tro n .
Thi viciou circle of "ava nt-ga rde a nd
ICCC \Alii I I
kit ch" could be bro ke n o nly by a radica l
transfo rm ation and nega ti o n of high art.
These a rgum e nts repea t th ose o f the ea rlie r
Constructivists, Dada ists, and Surrealist
almost wo rd fo r wo rd , nowh e re more co n-
scio usly tha n in Guy Debo rd ' Th e Society
of the Spectacle ( 1967) : ''Art in the pe ri od
of its dissolutio n a a moveme nt o f nega-
tio n in pur uit o f its own transcende nce
in a histo rical socie ty wh e re histo ry is not
directly lived, is a t o nce a n a rt o f change
and a pure expressio n o f the impossibility
o f cha nge. The mo re gra ndi ose its
demands, th e furth e r fro m its grasp is true
self-realiza tio n. This is a n a rt tha t is neces-
sa rily avant-garde; and it i a n a rt th at is not .
Its va ngua rd is its own disappea rance."9
The practical transfo rm ation o f art (a
opposed to th e idea o f it) implies th e tra n -
fo rm atio n o f the practi ce of bo th arti sts
a nd the ir audie nces, th e aim be ing to oblit-
e ra te o r di able both ca tego ric into a kind
of di a lectica l synth esis o f th em, a Schille r-
like ca tegory of e ma ncipated hum a nity
whi ch needs ne ithe r Represe ntatio n no r
Speca to rship. These idea ls we re an impo r-
tant aspect o f th e move me nt fo r th e trans-
fo rm atio n o f a rtistry, which o pened up
th e qu estio n o f skill. The utopian project
of redi covering the roo ts o f crea tivity in
a spo ntane ity a nd inte r ubjectivity freed
fro m all specia lizati on and spectacul a rized
expe rti se co mbined with th e actu al profu-
sio n of light co nsum e r techno logic to
legitimate a widespread "de-skilling" a nd
" re-skilling" o f a rt and a rt educati o n. The
sloga n " pa inting is dead" had been hea rd
from the ava nt-ga rde ince 1920; it mea nt
th at it was no longe r necessa ry to sepa rate
o ne e lf fro m th e peo ple through th e acqui -
sition o f skills and sensibilities rooted in a
cra ft-guild exclusivity and ecrecy; in fact,
it wa absolute ly necessary not to do so,
but rathe r to a nim a te with radica l imagina-
tio n tho e co mmo n techniques and abilities
made ava ilable by mode rnity itself. First
amo ng these was photography.
The radi ca ls' pro ble m with pho tog raphy
was, as we have ee n, its evolutio n into a n
a rt-ph o tography. Un able to imagine any-
thing bette r, photography lap ed into a n
imita tio n of hi gh art a nd un criti cally recre-
ated its eso te ri c wo rld o f techniqu e and
"qu a lity. " Th e instability o f th e co ncept of
a rt-pho tography, its te nd e ncy to beco me
re fl exive a nd to ex ist a t th e bo und a ry-line
o f th e utilita ri a n, was muffl ed in th e
process o f its "a rti fica ti o n." The crite ri a
o f deco n tructive radica lism-expressed
in idea like " the co nditi o ns o f no a rt," a nd
"every ma n is an a rti st"-could be applied
to pho tography prim a rily, if no t exclu -
sive ly, thro ugh the imita tion o f ama te ur
picture -ma king. This wa no a rbitrary
decisio n. A po pul a r y te rn of photography
based o n a minima l level o f kill wa insti -
tuted by Geo rge Eastm a n in 1888, with th e
Kodak sloga n, "you pu h th e butto n; we
do th e rest." In th e 1960 , Jean -Luc
God a rd de bunked his own crea tivity with
th e co mm e nt th at " Kodak does 98 pe r-
ce nt." The mea n by which pho tography
co uld jo in a nd co ntribute to th e move me nt
of th e mode rnist a utocritiqu e was the
use r-frie ndly rna s- ma rk e t gadge t-ca me ra.
The Browni e, with its sma ll ga uge ro ll-film
a nd qui ck shutte r was a t o , o f course, th e
proto type fo r the equipm e nt o f th e
pho tojo urn a list, a nd th e re fo re i pre e nt,
as a histo ri cal shadow, in th e evo lutio n of
a rt-pho tog raphy as it e me rged in its
di a lectic with photojo urn a lism. But th e
p rocess of pro fessio na liza ti o n of pho togra-
phy led to techni ca l tra nsfo rmati o ns o f
small-scale ca me ras, which, until the mo re
rece nt pro li fe rati o n o f mass-produ ced
SLRs, re instituted a n eco no mic ba rri e r fo r
the ama te ur th at beca me a ocia l a nd cul -
tura l o ne as we ll. No t until th e 1960s
did we ee to urists a nd picni cke r spo rting
Pe ntaxes a nd Niko ns; befo re th e n th ey
u ed th e va ri o us Kodak o r Koda k-like
products, such a the Hawkeye, o r th e
lnsta mati c, which we re little diffe re nt
from a 1925-mode l Brow ni e.IO
A ndy Warh ol; KISS . 1963 ; film still. blackandwhite.
silent ; Th e Andy Warh ol Mu seu m: founding Collection
It is significant, then, that the mimesis
of amateurism began around 1966; th at is,
at the last mome nt of the "Eastman e ra"
of am ate ur photography, at the mome nt
when Nikon and Po laroid were revolution-
izing it. The mimesis takes place at the
threshold of a new technological situation,
one in which the image-producing capacity
of the average citizen was about to make
a quantum leap. It is thus, historically
speaking, really the last moment of "ama-
teur photography" as such, as a social cate-
gory established and maintained by custom
and technique. Co nceptua lism turns toward
the past just as the past d arts by into the
future ; it e legizes somet hing at the same
instant th at it points toward the glimmeri ng
actualization of avant-garde utopianism
through technological progres .
If "every man is an artist," and that artist
is a photographer, he will become so also
in the process in which high-resolution
photographic eq uipment is released from
its cult ish possession by specialists and is
made available to all in a cresting wave
of consum erism. The worlds of Be uys and
McLuhan mingle as average citizens come
into possession of "professional-class"
equipment. At this moment, then, am a-
teurism ceases to be a technical category;
it is revealed as a mobile social category
in which limited competence becomes
an open field for inve tigation.
"Great art" establi hed the idea (or ideal)
of unbounded competence, the wizardry
of continually-evolving talent. This ideal
became negative, or at least seriously unin-
tere ting, in the context of reductivism,
and the notion of limit to competence,
imposed by oppressive ocial re lationship ,
became charged with exciting implicatio ns.
It became a subve rsive creative act for a tal-
ented and skilled artist to imitate a person
of limited ab ilities. It was a new experie nce,
one which ran counte r to all accepted ideas
and standards of art, and was one of the last
gestures which could prod uce avant-gard ist
shock. The mimesis signified, or expressed,
the vanishing of great trad ition of Western
an into the new cultural structures estab-
lished by the mass media, credit financi ng,
suburbanization, and reflexive bureaucracy.
The act of renunciation req uired for a
skilled artist to enact this mimeses, and
construct works as models of its conse-
quences, is a candal typical of avant-garde
desire, the desire to occupy the tllreshold
of the aesthetic, its vanishing-point.
Many exam ples of such amateurist
mimesis can be drawn from th e corpus
of photoco nce ptualism, a nd it could
probably be said th at almost a ll photoc-
onceptualists indulged in it to some
degree. But one of the pure t and most
exemplary instances is the group of books
publi hed by Edward Ruscha between
1963 and 1970.
For a ll the familiar reasons, Los Angeles
was perhaps the best setting for the com-
plex of reflections and crossovers between
Pop art, reductivi m, and their mediati ng
middle te rm, mass culture, and Ruscha for
biographical reasons may inhabit the per-
sona of the American Everyma n particu-
larly easi ly. The photographs in Some Los
Angeles Apartments (1965), for exam ple,
synth esize the brutal ism of Pop art with
the low-contrast monochromatici m of the
most utilitarian a nd perfunctory photo-
graphs (which could be imputed to have
been taken by the owners, ma nager , or
residents of the buildings in question) .
Although one or two pictures suggest some
recognition of the criteria of art-photogra-
phy, or even architectural photography (e.g.
"2014 S. Beverly Glen Blvd."), the majority
seem to take pleasure in a rigorous display
of generic lapses: improper relation of
le nses to su bject distances, insensitivity to
time of day a nd quality of light, excessively
functional cropping, with abrupt excisions
of peripheral objects, lack of attention to
the pecific character of the moment being
depicted-all in all a hilarious perform-
Edward Rus cha. Union, Ne edles, California, from Twenlysix Gasoline Stations. 1962 (cat. no. 129)
ance, an almost si ni ter mimicry of the way
"people" make images of the dwellings in
which they are involved. Ruscha's imper-
sonation of uch an Everyperson obviously
draws attention to the alienated relation-
ships people have with their built environ-
ment, but his pictures do not in any way
stage or dramatize that alie nation the
way that Walke r Evans did, or that Lee
Friedl ande r was doing at that moment.
Nor do they offer a transcendent experi-
ence of a building that pierces the alie n-
ation usually felt in life, as with Atget, for
example. The pictures are, as reductivist
works, models of our actual relations with
their subj ects, rather than dramatized
representat io ns that transfigure those rela-
tions by making it impo sible for us to
have such relations with them.
Rusch a's books ruin the genre of the
"book of photographs," that cia sica I form
in which art-photograp hy declares its
independence. Twentysix Gasoline Stations
(1962) may depict the service stations along
Rusch a's route between Los Angeles and
hi family home in Oklahom a, but it derives
its artistic significance from the fact that at
a moment when "The Road" and roadside
life had already become an auteurist cliche
in the hands of Robert Frank's epigones, it
resolutely denies any repre e ntation of its
theme, seeing the road as a system and an
econo my mirrored in the structure of both
the pictures he took and the publication
in which they appea r. Only an idiot wou ld
take pictures of nothing but the filling
UNION , NEEDLES, CAliFORNI A
station , and th e ex istence of a book of just
th ose pictures is a kind of proof of the
exi tence of such a person. But the per on ,
the asocial cipher who cannot connect with
the others around him, is an abstraction, a
phantom conjured up by th e construction,
th e structure of th e product said to be by his
hand. The anaesthetic, the edge or bound -
ary of th e artistic, emerges through th e con-
stru ction of this phantom producer, who is
unable to avoid bringing into vi ibility the
" marks of indifference" with which moder-
nity cxprc ses itself in or as a ' free society."
Amateurism is a radical reductivist meth -
odology insofar as it i the form of an
impersonation. In photoconceptuali m,
photography po it it e cape from th e cri -
teria of art-photography through th e artist's
performance as a non-arti t who, despite
being a non-a rti st is nevertheless com-
pelled to make photographs. These photo-
graphs lose th eir sta tus as Representation s
before th e eyes of their audience: th ey arc
" dull ," " boring," and " insignificant. " Only
by being o could th ey accomplish the intel-
lectu al mandate of reductivism at the hea rt
of the enterpri e of Conceptual art. The
reduction of art to th e condition of an intel-
lectu al concept of it elf wa an aim which
cast doubt upon any given notion of the
sensuous experience of art. Yet the lo s
of the sensuous wa a state which itself had
to be experi enced. Replacing a work with
a theoretical es ay which could hang in its
place was th e most direct means toward
thi end; it wa Conceptualism's mo t cele-
brated acti on a gesture of usurpation of the
predominant position of all the intellectu al
organizers who controlled and defined the
Institution of Art. But, more importantly,
it was the proposa l of th e fin al and defini-
Edward Ruscha . Every Building on the Sunset Strip. 1966 (cal. no. 13 1)
.dd IFFF \N.dl I
tive nega tion of art as depiction, a nega tion
which, as we've seen, is the telos of experi-
mental, reductivist moderni m. And it can
sti ll be claimed that Conceptual art actually
accomplished this negation. In consenting
to read the es ay that takes a work of
art's place, spectators are presumed to
continue th e process of their own redefini-
tion, and thus to participate in a utopian
project of transform ative, specul ative self-
reinvention: an avant-garde project.
Linguisti c conceptualism takes art as close
to th e boundary of it own elf-overcoming,
or elf-dissolution, as it is likely to get,
leaving its audience with only th e task of
recti covering legitimations for works of
art as th ey had existed, and might continue
to exist. This was, and remains, a revolu-
tionary way of thinking about art, in which
it right to exi tis rethought in th e place
or moment tradition ally reserved for the
enjoyment of art 's actual existence, in the
encounter with a work of art. In true mod-
erni t fashion it establishes th e dynamic
in which the intellectu al legitimation of art
as such- that is, th e philo ophical content
of aesthetics-is experienced as th e content
of any particular moment of enjoyment.
But, dragging it heavy burden of depiction,
photography could not follow pure, or lin-
gui tic, Conceptualism all the way to th e
frontier. It cannot provide the experience
of the negation of experience, but must
continue to provide the experi ence of
depiction, of th e Picture. It i possible th at
th e fundamental shock th at photography
caused was to have provided a depiction
which could be experienced more the way
the visible world is experi enced th an had
ever been possible previously. A photo-
graph th erefore shows its subject by mea ns
of showing what experience is like; in th at
en e it provide "an experi ence of experi-
ence," and it defines this as the significance
of depiction.
In thi s light, it could be said that it wa pho-
tography's rol e and task to turn away from
Conceptual art, away from reductivism
and its aggressions. Photoconccptualism
was th en th e last moment of the pre-history
of photography as art, the end of the Old
Regime, the most usta incd and sophi ti -
ca ted attempt to free the medi um from its
peculiar distanced relationship with artistic
radicali m and from its ties to the We tern
Picture. In its failure to do so, it revolution-
ized our concept of the Picture and created
the condition for th e restoration of that
concept a a central category of contempo-
rary art by around 1974.
otes
I. Cf. Thierry de Duve s discussion of nominalism,
in Pictolial Nom inalism: On Marcel Ouclwmp's
Passage from Painting to the Readymade, trans.
Dana Polan with the author (Mi nneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 199 1).
2. Pe ter Burge r, Th eOJyoftheAvam-Garde,
trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1984).
3. A variant, made as a collage, is in the Daled
Collection, Brussels.
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, " Ecco Ho mo," in On the
Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, ed. Waller
Kaufmann a nd trans. Kaufmann and R. J.
Ho llingda le (New York: Vintage Books, 1967),
290.
5. C le me nt Greenbe rg, " Mode rnist Painting,"
in Clemelll Greenberg: The Collected Essays and
Cliticism. vol. 4: Modem ism with a Vengeance,
1957- 1969, ed. J ohn O ' Brian ( hicago:
University of hicago Press, 1993). 92.
6. Ibid. , 86.
7. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Th e01y, trans.
. Lenhardt ( Lo ndon: Ro utledge & Kega n
Paul , 1984), 464,470.
8. Cf. de Duve's argument th at the Readymade
ca n/shou ld be nominated as painting.
9. Guy De bord, The Society of !he Spectacle, trans.
Dona ld icholson-Smith ( ew York: Zone
Book , 1994), 135 (thesis 190).
10. Robert A. Sobieszek discusses Robert
mithson's use of the lnstamatic ca mera in his
essay, " Robert Smith. on: Photo Works," in
Robert Smithson: Photo Works , exh. ca t. ( Los
Angeles: Los Ange les County Museum of Art
and A lbuquerque: University of ew Mexico
Press, 1993), 16, 17 (note 24), 25 (note 6 1) .