Prime Objects and Body Doubles

Abstract

In an age of historical amnesia, media spin, photo hoaxes, and dilute art criticism, what passes as innovation in the art world's parlance is, to say the least, questionable. What, then, qualifies as “the inventive,” particularly in an experimental system such as visual art? If the practice of art is seen as a dynamic of changing attitudes, perspectives, and aesthetic desires, artists might well turn to George Kubler's notion of “prime objects” for one generative answer.1 Prime objects, in Kubler's formulation, may be considered the material by-products of alternative propositions that have been previously neither stated nor possible. Are such speculative solutions the creative engines often driving the ontological structure of objects, works of art included? Or to pose the question in more cynical guise, do such interrogative suppositions even matter at a time when “art fairs are the new disco”?2