Struggle . . .

Stuggling on . . . . Spent all day dealing with the wealthy and sick.

Came into college for a lecture. The title seems to have been removed from 'Blackboard' Something about Plato - (was reading about Michelangelo and Neo Platonism on my travels all day.)

Took out a couple of books on/by (it's not clear) Joseph Kosuth, described as an American Conceptual artist, though he seems very German, with plenty to say that is critical of Conceptual art, though even more critical of Expressionism and the other children of Formalism.

My earlier 'post it note' was even cheekier than I knew. Check underlined quote below. So It should have read "Ask me WHY' using the inclusive marketing quote.

Here's another - my response to what I managed to absorb last night and this morning. 

Ignorance is Bliss - Knowledge is Power. 2012 Marker pen on 'Post it Note'.

"1. One begins to understand the popularity among critics of such mindless movements as expressionism, and the general disdain towards 'intellectual' artists such as Duchamp, Reinhardt, Judd, or Morris.

2. Artists in America have a tendency to cloak their investigations in such a way as to enable extra-art justification for their activities. I suspect this has a great deal to do with America's basic anti-intellectualism. As John Sloan says in The Gist of Art (1939) 'Artists, in a frontier society like ours, are like cockroaches in kitchens-not wanted, not encouraged, but nevertheless they remain.'

3 In recent years artists have realised that the 'how' is often purchasable and that purchasability of the 'how' (and the subsequent 'de-personalisation' of 'how' construction) is negatively impersonal only when the 'how' is functioning for a 'personal touch' ''why' construct.

4 And give the art economists and politicians something to 'invest' in.

5. Unfortunately many of these artists want to reform the system enough to make their ideas acceptable, but not so much as to ruin their chances for 'success' in the grand old manner.

6. An aspect of this problem is that which was fundamental to our earlier discussion of formalist and 'reactive' art. That has to do with the supervisory, even 'parental' role critics have taken in the 20th century toward artists; the institutionalized condescension engaged in by museums and gallery personnel; and the peculiar ability artists themselves have to remanticise intellectual bankruptcy and opportunism.

7. Without this understanding a 'conceptual' form of presentation is little more than a manufactured stylehood, and such art we have with increasing abundance.

Page 139

Joseph Kosuth 'The Making of Meaning' 1981

The layout of this book is so ugly I am finding it hard to read.

Funny to me how only a few weeks ago I had just discovered the word 'Tautology' and now I can see them everywhere.

Joseph Kosuth.
Four Colors Four Words, 1966

I've already lost track of where he says something regarding aesthetics, I asked after the lecture if there was another aesthetic that these kind of ideas could be presented with, [or are all we left with is to play with typography?] realize now what a stupid question it was to ask.

Still haven't had time to photograph the text drawings I've been making over the weekend.

or my tea cup piece from over a week ago.

Ho hum.