Duly Chastised

I didn't include the respondent's (below) threat of my being stuck in a lifetime of java servitude! But the short correspondence definitely makes sense, and I am glad to be reminded of these points. I do not want to be the gallery goer who whines "I don't get it," with conceptual art anymore than with abstract expressionism. And I definitely don't want to come off as being anti-anything, really... but when the viewer cannot identify with much of a given work, and it/its context of being made/the artist is not explained, that is just a difficult, frustrating situation. It is like the difference between Situationists and, say Fluxus, where one seems much more formal, regulated and explicable. Other work seems to throw the rules out the window or encrypt itself, or only really comes together as the sum of its parts. THis stuff is both more attractive to me than the Situationists (who I cannot help but feel are formulaic and start to bore me), but often very challenging. It also seems to present some problems for critical judgment- which is why I think there is so much over-wrought writing about this work. Anyway, sometimes I get a little wound up and blurt stuff out (re-reading that statement about Michelangelo-Kosuth seems pretty high-fallutin' now), so feel free to jump in anytime, readers, and remember that I did have a fever.;)

By the way, the Steven Claydon vid at White Columns, "Cluck, Cluck" with all the crystals and crazy British rantings was one of those great instances, in my opininion, of something taking us beyond language's descriptive means.