This was my final paper for Intro to Critical Theory, an MFA course at the University of Buffalo where I'm pursuing my degree. It's an exploration of the intersection of art and politics, interwoven with some philosophical and theoretical concepts that are of interest to me and my work.
I struggled with whether or not to post this as a diary, mostly because of the length, but I feel that the issue of culture is something that concerns the progressive movement greatly. To that end, I hope the length doesn't scare too many people off.
I welcome any additions, comments or criticisms, especially from other artists and theorists!
Note: I have removed the footnote cites accompanying the original quotes and replaced them with a bibliography at the end of the paper.
Thesis; Where We Are; Subject
The first decade of another millennium is waning and we find ourselves within a hitherto unknown global community experiencing an unparalleled amount of flux and confusion. The western liberal philosophy, having been the predominant ideological force since the relatively recent fall of communism, has taken its ideals and run up an enormous tab under their auspices, so much so that most of the rest of the world has joined in on the gamble and learned to throw the dice even better than the instructor. Even the term free market has become synonymous with liberal democracy. Any other form of existing civil governance that doesn't subscribe to the latter is said to be implementing "reform" towards the former. Further, the precarious balance of both real and imagined capital that drives the global financial network ties us together in ways to which we have not been previously accustomed. Whereas once, divisions along political, philosophical, and economic lines could be said to differentiate "Our" culture from "Theirs"; now there exists only the illusion of separation. Profit and the pursuit of it have realigned the globe into a massive hierarchy of competing free enterprise states, with the result being a cavernous vacuum of potential opposition that is aching to be filled (and hundreds of hungry mouths just waiting for their opportunity to don the mantle). The fact is that the world has been narrowed in its scope, leveled under the weight of humanity’s constant default submission to a socio-economic syntax. It has been flattened to the point where all systems operate from the same base point, with no one path offering a better option than any other. From the lowliest untouchable caste member in India all the way up to Warren Buffet, all peoples are now plugged into their corresponding position within the ever-present and insatiable drive for more and more value, real or simply perceived. Though the increasing dependence on unfettered trade, a hazardously deregulated free market, and an ever-dwindling pool of natural resources has created enormous amounts of wealth, the way in which it is meted out has given rise to an analogous inequality. However, the contemporary discourse posits that this system is, by virtue of Darwinian evolution, the best we have conceived thus far.
Of course, it’s not that the situation itself is so radical or unprecedented. Cultural commentators and philosophers have been theorizing for more than a century about a point when humanity’s needs were met with a singular social system and history, as a linear measurement of man’s progress, would be moot. For Hegel, it was to be an overarching framework that would serve to fit all human experience into tidy taxonomies. Marx saw history's demise in the worldwide awakening of the proletariat class, while countless contemporary thinkers see it in terms of the preeminence of our own western brand identity. This belief in an advance towards a post-history through trial and error has endured despite numerous setbacks, false starts, disappointments, and unmitigated failures, up to and most noticeably including the rise of totalitarianism, its mutation into fascism, and the two world wars which they fomented. The west in particular, led by the United States, has been one of the strongest champions of this faith in linear progression, with the final harmonious state of society being that of western liberal democracy and free market capitalism. That societies (Islamic societies, in particular) could still exist in 2008 that eschew these two pillars of western thought is a major sticking point in contemporary cultural circles. Francis Fukuyama, wunderkind of the neo-liberal wave of the 70s and 80s, for example, wrote:
"Despite the power demonstrated by Islam in its current revival, however, it remains the case that this religion has virtually no appeal outside those areas that were culturally Islamic to begin with."
In other words, it would be inconceivable that any societal structure that advanced an alternative to liberalism would have any real influence outside its initial adherents. In reality, the rise of Islamic states has occurred within and in spite of the western mode. He went on to state:
"It is against this background that the remarkable worldwide character of the current liberal revolution takes on a special significance. For it constitutes further evidence that there is a fundamental process at work that dictates a common evolutionary pattern for all human societies... in the direction of liberal democracy."
Yet the progressive idea of humanity’s hard slog towards a liberal free market system as endgame, seemingly unassailable in 1992 when Fukuyama proclaimed it so, has been thoroughly discredited in the wake of the singular event of September 11th, 2001 (a crucial moment of which I’ll speak more later). If hypothetically we had actually reached the End of History in 1992, then we barely had time to assess what that meant for global civilization before the parameters were inverted so that the parade of capitalist ideology energized its own opposition. In short, the arrogance of a dominant paradigm to assume it could be the one to finally move us into a post-historical age will summarily fall victim to its own intrinsic hubris. The visceral contemporary phenomenon of asymmetrical warfare and terrorism, unique in its current form, was invited to power by the very structure that asserted a triumph over it. Jean Baudrillard, though careful not to ascribe justification or explanation for the consequences, puts it this way:
"The moral condemnation and the holy alliance against terrorism are on the same scale as the prodigious jubilation at seeing this global superpower destroyed... For it is that superpower which... has fomented all this violence which is endemic throughout the world, and hence that (unwittingly) terroristic imagination which dwells in all of us."
The abstract nature of modern-day terrorism, forged in the various revolutions and proxy campaigns of colonial and post-colonial conflict, is distinguished from more traditional forms of combat by the fact that it uses the capitalistic structure against itself, choosing to operate with a subversive assault that allows for destruction without the need for a cogent military framework. Whereas classic warfare was waged by rival states with massive real capital, terrorism uses inexpensive methods to achieve its aims, devoid of a total dependence on national treasure, yet still utilizing the tools of instant monetary transaction that classical nation states have constructed for themselves. As Baudrillard has suggested, the capacity for this extreme of subversion rests in every participant in the system, willing or not, and it is from this basic premise that terrorism derives its power.
What becomes evident through the examination of these ideas is that the "march of progress" has truly been more cyclical than linear, and every ascendant ideology necessarily creates its own oppositional Other to act as counter-balance. It would seem that there is a correlation between any theory of societal governance, its tenants put into practice, and the growth of a contradictory (and sometimes violent) anti-structure. In the ebb and flow of the cycle any progression of one paradigm is enabled by the regression of another. We in America have latched onto certain concepts that justify our own democratic philosophy, using lofty rhetoric that papers over a highly complex and narcissistic bureaucratic machine, although it has been admittedly beneficial to certain millions the world over. With those inherent contradictions making up its core, it can only reproduce itself ad infinitum in order to constantly reaffirm a faith in its self-proclaimed, self-perceived worth. However it is at this point of frenzied reproduction that the system begins to break down and mutate, emphasizing the cracks that pervade the whole. This is, I should add, more consistent with the continuity of Darwin's evolutionary hypotheses than the idea of linear progression.
Credit, for example, which is the common thread and driving engine of all existing financial markets (including Islamic ones, though with different rules), is merely a fictional copy of authentic value (still extant in limited form in rural and tribal societies), yet one which is vitally important to all new permutations of global consumerism and the resultant cultural market which follows. Additionally, as rabid consumerism spreads its influence across every hemisphere, its inattention to certain humanistic guarantees and adherence to unbound profit above all else have exposed it to attack, both on its credibility from outside and on its infrastructure from within. These contradictions, not so dangerous when only a handful of states could lay claim to their superiority, become the death knell when all states embrace, or rather prefer, an imperfect copy of the imperfect original, bought and sold with still more fictions. Liberal democracy could easily be assumed to begin to achieve the fabled endpoint of history when it was conceived in revolutionary France and the United States, especially when viewed relatively to the dominant monarchical model of the time. The folly could be further reinforced contemporaneously by its near ubiquity in the present day. Yet what is trumpeted as an inevitability quickly stands revealed as anomaly when embraced by such anti-ethical entities such as Russia and China. Their admittance of the free market into their power structures serves not to strengthen the promise of the original idea, but to become part and parcel of its dilution and dissolution, and the commonality of Credit as the lifeblood of its machinations permeates the boundaries between the two fields.
The infusion of importance into the simulation has taken place not only in global finance and governance through the advent of Credit but in culture as well. The ease of simulation has meant a swell in the number of cultural objects available to any living consumer. Yet this explosion in cultural output has not served to carve out a new category of sacred object, nor has it served to reclaim the tenets of spirituality and authenticity from the altar of Credit. As Walter Benjamin put it so succinctly, "Quantity has been transmuted into quality." Of course, Benjamin is optimistic for the ramifications of humanity's interaction with art. Unfortunately, the new modes and new mediums that could have been possible in this new dialog have been swallowed by the imaginary Credit-worthiness of the reproduction. Dave Hickey, firebrand critic of the contemporary art world, muses:
"When I trade a work of by Kenny Price for a work by John Baldessari... I am not conducting a commodity transaction, I am hopefully engaging in a subtle negotiation of analogous social value.
[...]
"Thus, when you trade a piece of green paper with a picture on it, signed by a bureaucrat, for a piece of white paper with a picture on it, signed by an artist, you haven't bought anything, since neither piece of paper is worth anything. You have translated your investment and your faith from one universe of value to another"
The upside is that culture is no longer relegated to the elite but the drawback is that the continuous reproduction dilutes the original into irrelevance. Another interesting side effect has been the elevation of the act of viewing (both in literal terms and in terms of critique) to a fetish (to which Mr. Hickey's rock star status can attest). As with the concept underlying conspicuous consumption, it is not merely enough to see and enjoy a work of art, one must eke out a theoretical framework that legitimizes the act of viewing. While not an intrinsically bad thing, it does serve to divert the subject of art so that the meaning is tantamount to the object.
So can the reproduction and dissemination of ideas be put to practical use, rather then devolve into a retrogressive trap? Is it possible that art and culture could forge a new direction as tied as it is to this ravenous cult of simulation? I think that an attempt to answer these questions must first examine how we arrived at this point.
Antithesis; Where We Were; Object
Though some would obviously dispute the details, I think it is reasonable to state that humans differentiate themselves from other species primarily through the invention of work. That something could distract a thinking creature from pursuing its most instinctual cravings, to reject that instinct's primacy deliberately, is a peculiarly human trait. It is work that gave rise to civilization, social structures, and the whole of human history by allowing us to perform tasks only superficially related to fulfilling basic needs. But a tragic irony is formed through this construction: work exists for this repression but also because of it. As Georges Bataille observes in Erotism:
"Work demands the sort of conduct where effort is in a constant ratio with productive efficiency. It demands rational behavior where the wild impulses... are frowned upon. If we were not able to repress these impulses we should not be able to work, but work introduces the very reason for repressing them."
Therefore, work is a contradictory illusion that we have created in order to distract us from the fact that we are also animals, albeit with the caveat of abstract thought. This work, in whatever form it may take, always serves the same end: to deny nature, to forestall nature, to contain and repress nature. This is the cycle of humanity at its outset, begot by the invention of work and mutated into an ever more complex system of specialization, all for the simple task of repressing instinct.
What we are discussing, then, is the difference between continuity and discontinuity. Animals respond to and are linked to Nature through instinct; they cannot separate themselves from it nor would they have the capacity to desire to. Nature outside of human perception is a continuous thing. It encompasses life and death, being and nothingness, measured time and infinity, in a turbulent, holistic system. An ingrained perception of this truth, intrinsic to our condition as reasoning animal, is what man attempts to subjugate by engaging in work. Human is self-aware; he realizes he is alive and this very fact causes him to view himself as outside of nature. However the distraction of work can only suffice for a limited amount of time. Additionally, if the use of work is to repress instinct and continuity, then the cessation of work is a celebration of that continuity. In this complex interplay between instinct and distraction, society was formed to mitigate the relationship between the two. This would be the birth of the taboo. The taboo is the code by which society keeps work and instinct in their place, to produce maximum efficiency.
Though perhaps not always directly, the rise of the taboo figures heavily in both the contradictions of a "total" societal structure and in the culture of reproduction. To suppose that liberal, capitalistic democracy is the logical endpoint of human civilization would also require the supposition that democracy is the most harmonious balance of work and instinct through the use of taboos. By that same logic, the irresistible urge to break the taboos would also be in balance according to their place in the hierarchy. This is the reason that societies allow for prescribed periods of transgression. In times of surplus the need for work is diminished, and a celebration of the transgression is possible, right up to the point where a deficit makes work necessary again. Indeed:
"Often the transgression... is no less subject to rules than the taboo itself."
The parameters for this interplay are further enhanced by intricacies of language and technology, topics which fill volumes of ontological discourses in their own right, but which are not germane to this discussion per se.
For the current western societal model, this time of excess was at its apex during the late 1990s, a time of unparalleled abundance and plurality of ideas. Not coincidentally, this era of abundance was accompanied by a glut in culture that celebrated appropriation over originality. The sanctity that modernism placed on progression through the creation of real objects devolved through varying degrees of abstraction (expressionism, cubism, futurism, vorticism, neo-plasticism, etc.) into a theoretical exercise that placed a higher worth on the concepts behind the object. This stems in part from the primary importance of the creator's intent championed by the Greenbergian mode of criticism during the heyday of Abstract-Expressionism. Once the process of abstraction had been scraped clean of all but its most basic formal qualities, including the personal expression of the artists themselves, the object could no longer exist without the accompanying subject, i.e. the theoretical and societal framework in which it was created. This is evident in the rise of such anti-movements as Pop Art, Fluxus, land art, and installation art. These cutting edge artistic practices sought to strip the object of any importance whatsoever, in favor of the subject of the time in which it came into being. It became de rigeur to reassess the spectrum of modernism through a lens of detachment that allowed for ever more convoluted and complex strategies for explanations of meaning. Whereas the image-makers had previously occupied a sacred realm in their creation of singularities, the ability to endlessly reproduce these objects removed the power they once held. Art as a visual signifier became detached from what was being signified. Culture had become a thing based on reflection rather than creation, much as Benjamin envisioned. Yet where he saw the potential for this detachment to create something fresh, what was instead forged was the creator as copy, with actions in reality relegated to reproduction through documentation. Even the artist's body became a quantity with which to curry social value through repetition (more so with the arrival of mass media).
This was the scope of our culture at the end of the 20th century. An arena in which everything had been done, and likely been printed on a t-shirt. Why forge ahead with new modes of thought if an operable and functional stasis appears to be at hand? After all, we saw numerous alternatives to our society and our culture attempt to unseat our place of dominance, only to vanquish them as they appeared, either through direct combat or through assimilation. Even in the rare case of a cultural hold out against our imposition, the reaction was to bring financial weight to bear in order to marginalize and isolate them, rendering them inert. Our form of governance had also been copied throughout the world, even in those areas in which it seemed to be anathema. So then, it was a perfect abundance of real and reproduction. With no historical challenges to our dominance, we felt free to engage in a celebration of that surplus. Unfortunately, the point of transgression that accompanied this time of surplus came not from our own jubilation, but from the breakdown that this abundance necessarily created.
September 11th, 2001 was an event that, while not completely unheralded, changed the parameters by which we measured our historical progression. It was a direct challenge to the organizing principle of nearly all industrial nations on earth. It is important to realize that the attack on the World Trade Center had many smaller precursors that should have awoken us from our slumber. Yet the reason why it took the totality of that symbolic act finally assert a shift in the paradigm is found in the continuous swing of the pendulum from singular to plural and back again. The philosophy of the free market, synecdoche for democracy, copied endlessly around the world, had achieved plurality. For western philosophical thought to assert dominance through plurality was, in and of itself, a contradiction; hegemony cannot exist as both plural and singular. So the necessary oppositional singular event formed as a reaction to the folly of pluralistic dominance.
It is crucial to note at this point that when we speak of historical events and the concurrent cultural changes that result, we must once again reject the temptation to think in terms of a linear, cause-and-effect movement of experience. Pivots in culture and history do not unfold in this way. While a certain day or moment in time, is useful as a frame of reference, no one event changes the perception of 1.5 billion people in one fell swoop. September 11th came as close to such a possibility as we are likely to see, but the nature of the reaction to it by leaders in Washington proves that just because the paradigm has shifted doesn’t mean there is any reason to change behavior or even acknowledge the shift in all peoples at once. This maxim also applies to the realm of culture. Though the dominant structure of art, constructed as it is with the linear progression of modernism and the decentralized nature of post-modernism, now falls into the category of plurality, the singular event of September 11th shifts that plurality in culture as readily as it shifted it in the socio-economic arena.
So the point we find ourselves in now is predicated on what has come before. As a reactionary response to the asserted dominance of liberal democracy as the best organizational method of civilization, the attack was the revenge of the copy. The world of simulation is one that occupies an imperfect space, removed as it is from the realm of the original. The copy then takes on an existence of its own, separate from the original, but tied to it. The attack in New York was merely a simulation of a full-scale, nation-state style attack: grand in scope, with strategic goals in line with more traditional forms of warfare, but devoid of any of their trappings. It was an attempt to erase the Other, or to foment its willing self-destruction through its own means. In this case, the United States stands exposed paradoxically, not as the original from which the bastardized copy was born, but as the copy, the replica, the simulacra. In the span of ten or so minutes in 2001 we achieved an inverse of historical perspective. Over the next few years, the supposed inherent "goodness" of American ideology was seen different from the altruism it espoused. So this, the post-9/11 world, is one in which there is a slippage between copy and original, in which our plurality is exposed as singularity, and the path towards a new organizational paradigm is far from clear. With this situation in our minds and readily observable, it is now possible to return to the attempt at solutions.
Synthesis; Where We Go; Abject
Julia Kristeva, in attempting to unravel the mystery of horror, put forth the idea of abjection as the place beyond and outside of a traditional object/subject relationship. It is a non-object devoid of subject or an Other reformed as its own alter-ego. It is the space of the sacred realm beyond taboo, the transgression of the taboo, for the transgression allows us to experience the continuity of Nature through the indulgence of animalistic urges, urges which would normally be repressed through work:
"The abject confronts us...with those fragile states where man strays on the territories of animal"
So then, as Bataille suggested, our desire to transgress the taboo, to glimpse the continuity of the sacred realm of pure Nature, is at the heart of humanity. Kristeva sees that sacred realm as the realm of the abject. Additionally, to experience the abject, to abject one’s self, or for a nation or system to do so, requires that the taboos be shattered during the period of celebration, the orgy. Bataille posits:
"In the orgy, the celebration progresses with the overwhelming force that usually brushes all bonds aside. In itself the feast [or initial celebration] is a denial of the limits set on life by work, but the orgy turns everything upside down. It is not by chance that the social order used to be turned topsy-turvy during the Saturnalia, the master serving the slave, the slave lolling on the master’s bed."
The orgy can then be said to represent the fullest expression of celebration, where taboo is moot, and the coupling of the discontinuous with the continuous can proceed with glee. Human devolves into animal, according to the rules of both the taboo and the transgression, and the neo-animal that appears exists in the state of abjection. The orgy is the state of revelation and it is the space in which the global community finds itself today.
This epiphany is the foundation of what should be considered a blueprint for culture beyond this point. Again turning to the truism that historical events do not progress linearly, it is impossible to predict how long the orgy will last. We cannot experience what is beyond the realm of our perception. It could be that liberal democracy and the culture it has engendered will crumble in the face of its Other. Or perhaps the system of imaginary Credit will fail, only to be replaced by a new transactional structure, one that infuses pure objects with value that exists separate from its subject. What is certain is that a new paradigm will emerge. It is my hope that we, as artists, can be instrumental in devising how it should be constructed.
Artists today are uniquely within the realm of abjection. They produce work, which provides the repression of desire they require as humans, but they transgress taboos through their work in a celebration of their desires. The artist occupies a place both within society and without. This is as true for liberal democracies as it is for repressive regimes. In the former, the artist attempts to critique the power structure according to broadly liberalized rules of taste and ethics. In the latter, the goal is the same, only with tighter controls on the parameters. Both examples are subversive. It is for this reason that the creative individual is perfectly poised to navigate the current maelstrom of abjection and transgression. Indeed, the artist of today has an obligation to provide this service by virtue of their own experience, that of constant societal abjection. The irrational conflict between subject and object, theory and practice, copy and original, is one that exposes any one dominant society as a fraud as readily as it exposes the frauds to be the true kings. The artist is neither. The artist creates imperfect copies of the world, informed by personal perception and experience, but it is a copy that is neither mimetic nor perfect: a pseudo-simulation. This near-copy is, in itself, an original. It is in a constant state of Becoming, moving from object to subject and back again, occupying neither space, but a new space, that of abjection. For the work produced by an artist both repulses us and attracts us; we see in it the semblance of our own world, but without the essence of reality; an abject hyper-real. This ephemeral quality is the key to understanding its place within the orgy and the space after.
In order to emerge on the other side of the orgiastic celebration of excess intact, with taboos and transgressions back in place (though perhaps with different codes of conduct), we must invent new modes of communication. There is always the potential for failure or assimilation. The orgy does not conform to traditional modes of behavior and we may find ourselves swallowed by the onslaught of total release. But this new language will be that of signs and symbols. In other words, it will be the visual language of art. This will be the language with which the new taboos are written, formed from the imperfect simulation of reality. What is possible is a new realization of the duality and continuity of existence, one that eschews the unattainable goals of dominance and taxonomy, and instead supplants them with an acknowledgement of our pluralism. The secret is that if all forms of expression are invalid, then none are. As Arthur Danto writes in After the End of Art:
"...artists, liberated from the burden of history, were free to make art in whatever way they wished, for any purposes they wished, or for no purposes at all. That is the mark of contemporary art, and small wonder, in contrast with modernism, there is no such thing as a contemporary style.
[...]
"This is what I mean by the end of art. I mean the end of a certain narrative which has unfolded in art history over the centuries, and which has reached its end in a certain freedom from conflicts of the kind inescapable in the Age of Manifestos."
Danto concedes that there has, of course, been art produced since the end of modernism, but he describes the current situation, that in which no style, no manifesto, no movement is sufficient to contain the panoply of expressionistic visual strategies. Yet the strength of our potential is precisely that lack of cohesion. If all paths are valid, then that suggests that there are infinitely new ways to communicate, infinite modes of organization to contemplate, a veritable smorgasbord of opportunities to occupy the roles of both "Us" and "Them."
In this way, we can see that the power of abjection is exactly the power of transgression. This ability to exist simultaneously in the realm of subject and object, and operate outside of it is the continuity that the taboo wishes to hide, that which the transgression seeks to reveal. At the core of this proposition is the understanding that, as surely as there are still abstract-expressionist painters long after the potency of that movement has passed, there will be no codified structure to this new era of the hyper-real. We will no longer make any distinction between copy and original, nor will we suppose to put any singular work into any one category. The energy lies in the singularity of plurality. The task at hand is to lead societal experience parallel to individual experience. However, we must keep vigilant over the temptations of this charge. It would be simple to forego a transgression for a regression and merely implement a new status quo, which would also involve a return to the irrational idea of linear progress. The goal, as artists, is to revel in the plural, in the infinite, the continuity of experience. We must use the new modes of visual communication to awaken the abject impulse in humanity, for it is only in an embrace of the abject that we can begin to reshuffle the deck and discover a neo-real. This is not to say that our aim should be to shock into submission; on the contrary shock is what would be expected. The purpose we seek is acceptance of the abject. Only through the revelation of transgression can we examine the folly of the former taboos and begin to imagine how they must be reconfigured for the new era of human history and experience.
I should make one final point. The answer to the question What happens next? that I have discussed is only relative to the time in which we occupy. As the years of this millennium continue to pass, it may become necessary to modify the aims of the creative class in its struggle to free the abject in all humanity. As should be evident, there is no one right answer. The strategy towards a positive transgression is one in which every plan must be considered valid, this will likely lead to judgments of taste and value based on archaic principles that were buried in the ashes of the World Trade Center. If a fellow human learns, finally, that the path of transgression is the only viable path towards a harmonious understanding of continuity, then that revelation must be encouraged and celebrated. It is for this reason that even the excesses of old: hyper-inflated markets for culture, submission to popular forms of visual communication, etc. must also be accepted, for they constitute only a fraction of the available possibilities. In addition, the harder any artist clings to what has gone before as a path towards transgression, the more likely it is that they will be assimilated into the more advanced state of plurality which I envisage. We are all the new kings of our experience. We are all the purveyors of culture. We must accept this responsibility gravely, for without the creative class, all classes would cease to exist, for all classes comprise the creative class. We reject the illusion of simulation and embrace the reality of simulacra. A transgressive reality awaits us.
Bibliography:
- Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992,
- Baudrillard, Jean, The Spirit of Terrorism and other Essays, New York: Verso, Trans. Chris Turner, 2002
- Benjamin, Walter, "The Work of Art..." Illuminations, New York: Schocken, 1968
- Hickey, Dave, Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy, Los Angeles: Art Issues, 1997
- Bataille, Georges, Erotism: Death and Sensuality, San Francisco: City Lights, Trans. Mary Dalwood, 1957, 1986
- Kristeva, Julia, The Powers of Horror, New York: Columbia Press, 1982, Trans. Leon S. Roudiez
- Danto, Arthur C., After the End of Art, New Jersey: Princeton, 1997