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Is it possible to see what one doesn't know - as this question presumes? Isn't that the province of saints or madmen? Is an art historian/art critic/theorist supposed to project his vision a priori? Why are we being asked to extend our kit of tools into the future, almost like cartoon characters skidding to a stop and hanging in mid-air?
I wish I could encounter my desire around the corner of the next museum or gallery wall. But is that a vision? It's happened to me two or three times in my 42 years of life, so it's rare. Moreover, it doesn't seem an adequate program - or even a vision - of a yet unknown art. But maybe that's why I keep looking, so it's a vision of a sort. Perhaps we just keep looking for pleasures we never could have imagined.
If I were an artist I'd try to think about the social as form - to make a social formalism! Some people are doing it and I like their art and write about it. But when you start talking about visions, you shatter the propriety of professional judgement. Michael Brenson was brave enough to say something like this in Los Angeles a week ago: maybe, after all, we are waiting to be saints, pierced by a shaft of light. But for the moment, we all have our jobs to do.
David Joselit
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