University of Arizona Poetry Center

Conceptual Writing and its Others

‘I will refer to the kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. (my italics) This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual artist is out to bore the viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would deter the viewer from perceiving this art.’ Sol LeWitt, ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,’ Artforum, June 1967.

‘Conceptual Writing’, as recently described by Kenneth Goldsmith and Craig Dworkin, recalls, returns us to, such classic texts as Le Witt’s above. Here I would like to broaden the formal base of a putative conceptual writing practice, by drawing out some more comparisons between Conceptual art and Language writing. As a starting point, here are some remarks from Liz Kotz’s admirable new book, Words to be looked at, Language in 1960s art:

‘If , as Roslind Krauss has argued, the breakdown of medium-based practices provides one model of a historical shift from ‘specific’ to ‘general’ forms of art, another logic is at play right alongside it, in which a ‘general’ template or notational system,--be it musical scores, fabrication instructions, architectural blueprints or diagrams, or schematic representations—generates ‘specific’ realisations in different contexts.’

What Kotz calls the ‘general template’ is what here, in the promulgations of Conceptual writing, following on from Duchamp/LeWitt, is called ‘the idea’, ‘the concept’ or the ‘machine’ and what I propose to call the ‘pretext’ for writing. The pre-text, is what Ouipians call the ‘constraint’ and it corresponds to the texts, explicit or implicit, that identify specific proceduralist practices associated with Language writing. Among the most programmatically explicit of such pre-texts are those that precede selections of Jackson MacLow’s various ‘genres’ –the ‘asymetries’, the ‘gathas’ , the ‘pronouns’. Ron Silliman long ago acknowledged the force of MacLow’s example for his own practice:

‘if I trace the movement towards such devices in my own writing what I find is a recognition, gained in stages over a period of years, that what was truly subversive, in the literal and best sense, about Jackson MacLow’s chance methodology was not the use of chance … but the turn toward method itself. … it took the artificial surface texture of the chance-composed text, with all its rigid awkwardness, to make that turn to method apparent.’ The Difficulties, Interview with Tom Beckett, 1985.

Bernadette Mayer’s ‘Experiments’ and Charles Bernstein’s subsequent additions, should also be as pre-texts.

‘Appropriation’ is another ‘general template’, one privileged by the self-branded Conceptualists, but one in which each specific realisation appears to have an equally specific pretext. It’s a template whose various framings and croppings, however, point to a strategic generality. Or better put, pre-texts provide the con-text for the specific realisations. Other works with comparably specific pretexts include Cage’s ‘writings-through’ of Thoreau, or MacLow’s of Pound, and obviously translations.

Because it is often implicit and sometimes a mere formula, the notion that the pretext provides the context for the specific realisations, maybe less than evident. Similarly, the assertion that the idea, or pretext, is more interesting that its application, maybe unconvincing. Does the Oulipian constraint N+7, or the 1,1,2,3,5,8, 13, 21 Fibonacci series that structures Tjanting and some sections of Lit, make the grade as a text? What of Lawrence Weiner’s ‘statement of intent’? “1) The artist may construct the work 2) The work may be fabricated 3) The work need not be built. Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.” This statement has served as the general template for all of Weiner’s work since its first publication in 1968. Further each specific work is a secondary general template whose linguistic form may result in specific realisations as a result of its reception. Mostly they remain as text on a page or a gallery wall, but specific realisations have been undertaken by the artist or by ‘receivers’ For an exhibition at the Bern Kunsthalle in 1983, twelve people were invited to fabricate a work.

The devolution of authorship that was a feature of the intent, at least early on. of Language writers, insinuates a further realisation, a post-text. Weiner’s MANY COLOURED OBJECTS PLACED SIDE BY SIDE TO FORM A ROW OF MANY COLOURED OBJECTS placed on the walls of a gallery, in that context, might be fabricated by a curator as an exhibition of paintings, or by me as a shelf of books in my library. Similarly with MacLow’s The Pronouns, A Collection of Forty Dances for the Dancers, 1964, which includes MacLow’s ‘Some Remarks to the Dancers (How the Dances Are to be Performed & How They Were Made),’ spelling out the elaborate chance operations he used to generate the specific realisations that are the poems making up the collection, poems which in turn serve as choreographic pre-texts to be translated into specific dances. In relation to the general template of ‘Some remarks’, the dances can be described as ‘post-texts.

Wystan Curnow