艺术边界的失与得

The Loss and Gain of Artistic Boundary

20世纪前卫艺术家致力于挑战艺术边界,艺术理论热衷于辩护这类艺术实践。但是,艺术家对艺术边界的消解并不彻底,因为艺术家挑战边界的效力来源于艺术家身份,而艺术家身份的获得建立在艺术边界的基础之上。真正消解艺术边界的不是艺术家,而是工程师。在信息领域,艺术与非艺术之间的边界彻底模糊。通过艺术品来划出艺术边界已经变得不再可能。但是,这并不意味着艺术边界将彻底消失。或许我们可以从艺术家的角度来重新发现艺术边界。有鉴于此,针对艺术家研究的人类学,有可能取代针对艺术品研究的批评学。

The avant-garde in the 20th century was fascinated in erasing artistic boundary. Meanwhile, the challenge to art theory from art practice was endorsed by new art theories. However, artistic boundary cannot be totally erased by artists, since the status of artists comes from artistic boundary. Without artistic boundary, artists cannot get their status; without the status, their challenge would be no longer effective. The real threat to artistic boundary would not be from artists, but from engineers. In the world of information, the boundary between art and non-art has totally disappeared. Both of art and non-art are identical ontologically in the field of information. Therefore, it is impossible to sustain artistic boundary through artworks. But it does not necessarily result in the disappearance of artistic boundary. Instead, artistic boundary might be gotten through artists. Given that, the criticism that is aimed at the interpretation of artworks would be replaced by the anthropology that is devoted to the study of artists.