Pierre Restany
Before talking about the birth of conceptual art, it is important to bear in mind the actual date when it all started,1966. A key year for Argentina's cultural environment, in that it saw the emergence of the lnstituto Di Tella and the winds of change sweeping through the United States and Western Europe.
This was the second quest for the source of self - expression in urban civilization-the first was the birth of constructivism in 1922 - within the awareness of a unique urban and metropolitan climate, the relationship with the streets, in particular with life on the streets.
This was the moment-at least my intuition tells me so-when the concept of art in expansion was verified in all its power, John Cage's theory and the concept of George Maciunas which was subsequently developed in a more semantic fashion by Umberto Eco. This was a major mark on the landscape of general culture, for this first essay in what I call consumerism was as visible a manifestation in the United States as it was in Europe and Argentina.
The socio-economic conditions in Argentina were very stable, and the optimistic view of an urban world prevailed in much the same way as it did in North America and Europe. This was practically a mystic vision of the possibilities of technology and the imminence of prosperity and economic wealth, encouraged by the myth of space travel.
The contribution, or union, of art and production is a matter of great significance. The artist's view of industrial production-hence the relevance of the date, 1966-had as its objective the conferral of a second life on the object, one both semantic and poetic, a dematerialized existence following on from its first functional life.
Before, we were utterly entrapped in the kingdom of the object as something manipulated, transfigured and valued from an aesthetic point of view; this was the first chapter in the adventure of the object, followed, as from 1966, 1967 or thereabouts, by this current of the dematerialization of art which led to conceptualization: the shift from object to idea, from object to concept.
The first time that voyeurism was questioned in Europe was in 1967, with the Arte Povera movement
spearheaded by Germano Celant. This is highly significant as, in fact, this was the first dimension of existential urban art, invented by a forceful opposition to the exaggerated optimism and portrayal of the wealthy urban world popular at the time. Let us not forget that American pop Art was a direct contemporary of the Vietnam War. Yet there is not one single work in pop art which refers to this agonizing episode in North American history, one which was at once an individual, collective and dramatic problem, as well as one full of pathos.
Neither Rauschenberg's Neodada, nor Jasper Johns, nor Alan Kaprow, the inventor of the happening and the environment, nor Nam June Paik, the inventor of video art, ever talked about Vietnam. These people assume the poetically optimistic mantle of the times, eschewing any criticism of the consumer society. Doubts only began to surface a little later, in 1966 -1967, with, for instance, Homenaje a Vietnam, where you in Argentina, particularly Margarita Paksa, and León Ferrari, took it upon yourselves to be the active protagonists of this moment of truth. You can seek out other Argentine authors, such as Floreal Amor, Rubén Santantonin or Rodriguez Arias-Stoppani, Cancela-Mesejean or others, but in none of them will you find a critical work that describes this dramatic social situation. But before this, you had already begun to develop minimal art and this period resounded with the powerful vibrations of your presence, of David Lamelas and Margarita Paksa, using light, and you yourself, using both light and sound to synthesize different motivations. In part, this is the resurgence of the kinetic and geometric movement in Argentina; it should not be overlooked that when I founded the Nouveau Réalisme movement in Paris in 1960, Le Parc was at the same time founding the Groupe de Recherche d´Art Visuel (GRAV). Our fundamental motivation was purely spontaneous, and consisted of interventions on urban territory which added a new dimension to the view of consumer urban life, a way of creating distance and analysis which were increasingly minimalist and synthesized, akin to the search for fundamentalism in thought. To return to the conceptual issue under discussion, Ricardo Carreira's work has always been fundamental, as it has an individualist dimension; he never made declarations in the style of Kosuth and he was permanently assailed by existential doubts, primarily about two leading issues, chance and the existential game we play, which were the typical features of that era, the second urban and existential quest, which on this occasion took the form of conceptual art, an analytical form imbued
with the reality of the times. It is interesting to note that Romero Brest also possessed the admirable virtue of admitting and confessing his omissions in public; a reasonably perceptive man, but one whose distance held him back, even though he did not reject things openly. Thus it was that he permitted the exhibition of Experiencias Visuales 67 and 68, which were clearly conceptual, and in which you participated. The conceptual temptation in the Bony's work La familia obrera was also key, an unexpected and intriguing development, as I did not think that this was a matter of particular concern for him. Another major moment was when Garcia Uriburu dyed the waters of the Grand Canal in Venice, before the researches carried out by Beuys and Christo, who made the first major art intervention on the Australian coast in 1969.
Pierre Restany (1930-2003) spent his formative years in Morocco, before undertaking his studies in France, Italy and
As a witness to all these processes during my frequent visits to Argentina, I could say that my first interest lay in lunfardo pop, as it offered up so many analogies-neither quotes nor imitations, but true fundamental and organic analogies-with other similar phenomena in the United States and Europe. This is most significant, because Argentina at the time was living a uniquely local version of this manifestation. This was the golden age, before the military took over. It is likely that the civil government of Humberto Illia will go down in history as a wondrously human and generous end to a chapter of incomparable importance in the cultural history of Argentina.
Ireland. From 1963 onwards, he worked with the architecture D´ARS magazine, and in 1985 took over the position of director of the D'ARS magazine. In 1955 he met Yves Klein, which led him to the theory of "new realism" which he would present in 1960, the year when the group of artists that went under the same name was created. A great friend of Argentine art, he often traveled to these shores, particularly during the period when the lnstituto Di Tella was at its peak.He authored several publications about 2oth-century art. These statements are from work Restany carried out with Margarita Paksa for the research project on Los inícios del Arte Conceptual en la Argentina en los´60, based at the Facultad de Bellas Artes of the Universidad de la Plata