The Conceptualist Turn: Wittgenstein and the New Writing

Abstract

In Wittgenstein’s lexicon, the highest art is that which somehow presents us with life itself as it is actually lived, conveyed in the “language of information” but framed so as to render it other, unfamiliar, strange. Wittgenstein’s dictum in his Culture & Value #6 that “The work of art forces us to see it in the right perspective, but without art the object is only a part of nature like any other,” goes in tandem with the Conceptualist movement in art. Since the late 1960s, when artists declared that theirs was a conceptual art and invoked the example of Wittgenstein, the role of context, circumstance, and framing have become increasingly central. In the art world, the case for conceptualism was made decades ago, but in the poetry world, notions of “original” language, the authentic self, and unique personal emotion die hard. Wittgenstein and Duchamp can provide the context for the conceptual movement in art and poetry. In fact, conceptual writing, inimical by definition to the short, self-contained lyric poem and often dependent on book form, is especially difficult to anthologize. It is the leading French conceptualist Sophie Calle who provides the bridge to such current “conceptual” performance poets as Vanessa Place, Caroline Bergvall, and Kenneth Goldsmith. Her recent publication in English by Lisa Pearson’s Siglio Press, of both The Address Book and Suite Venetienne may be the moment to reconsider conceptualism in a fresh perspective.