# New Artistic Languages

Art History I · Artistic Languages · https://tryals.app/learn/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages

## The Object Stops Being Obvious

Art history traditionally studied **objects**: physical things owned, conserved, and displayed. Twentieth-century practices broke this model. The discipline had to adapt its methods.

### The Readymade

**Marcel Duchamp** proposed that **selection and designation** constitute art without craft. The artist's choice and the institutional frame replace carving or painting. 

Surviving readymades are often replicas. In an autographic art, in the sense defined by Goodman, this would be fatal. Here, it is beside the point.

### Practices Resisting the Object

| Practice | What the work is | The historian's problem |
|---|---|---|
| **Performance** | An action before witnesses | Only documents remain |
| **Installation** | A configured space entered | Reinstallation alters it |
| **Video and film** | A reproducible time image | Format obsolescence |
| **Conceptual art** | The underlying idea | Unclear what to conserve |
| **Land art** | A remote intervention | Rarely seen directly |
| **Digital and net art** | Code running in a system | Environments decay |

**Performance** turns historical study into the study of documentation. **Digital art** presents urgent preservation hurdles. A piece made for an operating system in 2005 may already be unrunnable.

### Shifts in the Discipline

**Four** key shifts follow:

* **From object to event.** The focus shifts to an occurrence rather than a thing.
* **From conservation to documentation.** Care moves from preserving the object to maintaining its records.
* **From the museum to the site.** Relocating a site-specific work fundamentally changes it.
* **From authorship to instruction.** Works exist as scores for others to enact, recalling Goodman.

### Continuities

These challenges are not entirely unprecedented. Medieval altarpieces lost their meaning when dismantled for museums. Liturgy was participatory and temporal. Art history merely ignored these issues because physical remnants endured.

> **Common pitfall:** debating whether these works "count as art". Focus instead on the methodological problems of evidence, preservation, and study.

## Practice questions

9 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Most surviving readymades are later replicas, and this troubles almost nobody. Why not?

A. If designation constitutes the work, the particular object is nearly incidental
B. The historical documentation alone survived, which replaced physical conservation entirely
C. Authorised institutional replicas automatically inherit the status of original objects
D. Early readymades were produced as conceptual instructions for audience re-enactment

**Answer:** A. If designation constitutes the work, the particular object is nearly incidental

**Why:** Because the readymade proposes that **selection and designation** do the work that making used to do. If so, the particular bottle rack is nearly incidental, which would be fatal for an autographic art, where the object's history is part of the work, and is beside the point here.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/most-surviving-readymades-are-later-replicas-and-this-troubles

### 2. Sort each practice by the historian's central problem with it.

**Answer:**

- The work is over and only documents remain: 1970s performance, Small-audience action
- The work is reinterpreted each time it is set up: Large installation, Viewer-entered space
- The environment the work runs in stops existing: 2005 browser net art, Work on an obsolete OS

**Why:** The three columns need different responses: documentation protocols for the first, installation instructions and curatorial judgement for the second, and emulation or migration for the third. Conservation as cleaning and repair addresses none of them.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/sort-each-practice-by-the-historians-central-problem-with-it

### 3. Art history has shifted 'from conservation to documentation' for many post-object practices. What does this transition require of the historian analysing a 1970s performance piece?

A. She must establish the exact material conditions of performance
B. She must treat surviving traces as mediation rather than the work
C. She must verify that secondary accounts match the artist's score
D. She must reconstruct the original event to test its valid execution

**Answer:** B. She must treat surviving traces as mediation rather than the work

**Why:** Equating documentation with the work mistakes the record for the event, while seeking material permanence reverts to traditional object-connoisseurship. Documents are not transparent re-enactments; they are secondary, partial witnesses that require critical contextualisation.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/art-history-has-shifted-from-conservation-to-documentation-for-many

### 4. Which shifts does the discipline make in response to these practices?

A. From treating display as logistics to treating it as substantive
B. From interpretation to connoisseurship
C. From studying objects to studying events
D. From conservation to documentation

**Answer:** A. From treating display as logistics to treating it as substantive; C. From studying objects to studying events; D. From conservation to documentation

**Why:** The fourth runs backwards: connoisseurship is the attribution of objects by hand and eye, which is exactly the practice these works give least purchase to. The three genuine shifts all move attention away from the persisting object.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/which-shifts-does-the-discipline-make-in-response-to-these-practices

### 5. Complete the account of the new languages.

**Answer:** Duchamp's readymades propose that **designation** can constitute a work without making. A work existing as instructions realised by others moves towards Goodman's **allographic** side. For performance, what survives is not the work but the **documentation**. For net art, conservation becomes a question of **emulation** rather than of cleaning and repair.

**Why:** The second blank links this lesson to the first one in the unit. A work that exists as instructions others realise is allographic in Goodman's sense, like a score, which means a whole class of contemporary practice has quietly changed sides on a distinction drawn to separate painting from music.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/complete-the-account-of-the-new-languages

### 6. Of the six practices tabled in this lesson, roughly how many leave a durable object that can be conserved in the traditional sense?

**Answer:** 1 (within ±1.2)

**Why:** Roughly **one**, and even that is arguable. The number is the practical measure of the change: a discipline whose conservation methods assume a persisting object has almost nothing to apply them to here, which is why documentation protocols became a research field in their own right.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/of-the-six-practices-tabled-in-this-lesson-roughly-how-many-leave-a

### 7. Arrange these questions in the order a historian should ask them about a non-object work.

**Answer:**

1. What was the work: an action, a space, an idea, a system?
2. What survives of it, and in what form?
3. Who made the surviving record, and with what intentions?
4. What does the record leave out?
5. What can be claimed on this evidence, and what cannot?

**Why:** The third and fourth questions are the ones that distinguish this from ordinary art history. Documentation is made by somebody, for a purpose, and a photograph of a performance was framed by a person who chose where to stand, so the record is evidence with an author, not a neutral residue.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/arrange-these-questions-in-the-order-a-historian-should-ask-them

### 8. Match each practice to the conservation response it requires.

**Answer:**

- Performance → Documentation protocols and testimony
- Installation → Instructions and curatorial judgement at each setup
- Net art → Emulation or migration to a new environment
- Land art → Recording a work that is expected to decay

**Why:** None of the four responses is conservation in the traditional sense of arresting change. Three accept that the work will not persist and concentrate on what should survive it; the fourth reproduces the work in a new environment, which is a form of continuation rather than preservation.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/match-each-practice-to-the-conservation-response-it-requires

### 9. The problems these practices pose are entirely new to art history.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** Medieval art was frequently site-specific, liturgy was time-based and participatory, and altarpieces broken up for the market lost their meaning much as a dismantled installation does. The new languages largely make visible problems the discipline already had and had learned to ignore.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/art-history-i/new-artistic-languages/the-problems-these-practices-pose-are-entirely-new-to-art-history