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What’s notable about the present attack on "conceptual" art by Dutton and many, many others is that it is a symmetrical, distorted reflection of the very critique of "traditional" art that led artists to adopt diverse "conceptual" strategies in the first place. A great many of these (e.g. process art, abject art, performance art) attracted the zeal of their purveyors in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s because they seemed to promise some kind of critique of the art market. Traditional art forms like painting and sculpture were -- and still are, in some circles -- considered to be corrupt, because the objects they produce lend themselves to being sold, owned and traded. Barbara Rose expressed this silly conception in a particularly hyperbolic passage from the Partisan Review: "For some time now I have felt that the radicalism of Minimal and Conceptual art is fundamentally political, that its implicit aim is to discredit thoroughly the forms and institutions of dominant bourgeois culture."

The fact that such strategies devolved inexorably into their own sort of market-friendly style just proves a point. On both sides, "traditional" and "conceptual," the perceived ill of the other is actually just the displaced face of the market itself, with its tendency to transmogrify and vulgarize everything. Which should provide a lesson for critics about the kind of promises they make for art: There are no formal or esthetic solutions to the political and economic dilemmas that art faces -- only political and economic solutions. Consequently, the only critical temperament that makes any real sense is an eclectic one that doesn’t build up one or the other side into the answer for problems that they both share.

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From 1967 to 1969, Tommy and Dick Smothers challenged the censors at CBS and the political establishment who tried to tame their wildly popular — and politically left-leaning — show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The brothers lost their show, but later won a battle in court. TV critic David Bianculli joins host Terry Gross to talk about the legendary comedy duo who tackled political issues and censorship.

Based on extensive interviews with the Smothers Brothers and other key players, Bianculli describes the siblings' lives both onscreen and behind the scenes in a new book, Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

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used theatrical drapes

via vz
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706rago

706 TEPPER/MEYER / FRED MEYER (San Francisco) Versitable with birch laminate top on enameled wrought-iron base. (Included in the Museum of Modern Art"s Good Design Exhibition, New York, 1953.) Tepper/Meyer decal. 29 1/2" x 60" x 29 3/4"


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Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive



The music was written by Harold Arlen and the lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and it was published in 1944.


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Beach Coastal Summer House Vestfold 2 by Jarmund Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL (JVA)


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Beach House with Open Space Patio in Huentelauquen by Izquierdo Lehmann

justin found this one
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11357u0


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center for documentary studies duke univ


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9h capsule hotel tokyo


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fire in my bones


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diggers papers

Idea-rich early announcement broadside for an event that happened on either April 2, 1967 or April 9, 1967. Author is anonymous, as most of the best Diggers documents are, but one would guess that Peter Berg, Lenore Kandel and (perhaps?) Peter Coyote and Emmett Grogan had something to do with the specific text laid down here. The concept of “life-acting” is made explicit; street theater is made literal; life becomes play.
via vz
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the ciao manhattan tapes


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Railway luggage racks

justin found this one
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Dieter Rams at the Design Museum


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sweh

Price £554.00 The Heaven Freestanding Stepladder is made from aluminium sheet metal and unlike most step ladders doesn't have a corresponding support side. Instead the Heaven ladder's all in one construction means the base forms the overall support - giving Heaven a sculptural appearance.
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shed house, skye


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opart

Optical Art (Ovals) 1966 LBH ink drawing 12 x 9 in. Price: $60
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coca-cola out of costco


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music from free creek



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absolute

Everything Must Go This sign was used to close down stores all across America. Hand-painted by Amish artist Margret Fine. acrylic on posterboard 44 x 28 in. / reference library found this


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gw bush library (place where they keep the incriminating evidence?) plans revealed / this place is so dallas. yeach!


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Reporting from Atlanta - In a ruling that could leave the government open to billions of dollars in claims from Hurricane Katrina victims, a federal judge said late Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had displayed "gross negligence" in failing to maintain a navigation channel -- resulting in levee breaches that flooded large swaths of greater New Orleans.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval peppered his 156-page decision, issued in New Orleans, with harsh criticism of the Army corps, at one point citing its "insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness" in failing to maintain the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known locally as MRGO.

For more than 40 years, the judge said, the corps had known that a crucial levee protecting suburban St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood would be compromised by the deterioration of the channel. The corps had "myriad" ways to address the problem, he wrote, but failed to do so.

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the hound on tony joe white


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