Thursday, February 12, 2009

Question: Is Your Art Theory Half Full Or Half Empty?




Fig. 1. Cildo Meireles - Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project, 1970


'Expression, like construction, signifies both an action and its result. ... If the two meanings are separated, the object is viewed in isolation from the operation which produced it, and therefore apart from vision, since the act proceeded from an individual live creature. Theories that seize on "expression" as if it denoted simply the object, always insist to the utmost that the object of art is purely representative of other objects already in existence. They ignore the contribution which makes the object something new.'

John Dewey