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Lippard -3
than they covered; then he worked with nylon lines in space and [[strikethrough]] it [[/strikethrough]] they disappeared into radiation, magnetic fields, carrier waves and gases and then into the "psychic series", like the piece in the Vancouver show: "Something which can never be any specific thing". They all deal with physical energy, even when invisible.

UM: He [[strikethrough]] really [[/strikethrough]] refused the object. But even if he works with mental energy alone, there's still a carrier, and that's the human brain. So you cannot really avoid the object.

LL: A lot of this business about object and non-object gets very confused. People use it like a value judgement. "It's still an object", or "He's finally got past the object". It [[strikethrough]] doesn't [[/strikethrough]] isn't really a matter of how much materiality a work has, but what the artist's doing with it.

UM: [[strikethrough]] The way I look at it, it's also a matter of what is the direction of the endeavour, but [[/strikethrough]] I think it's very obvious that concern with the object is the fundamental issue of what has been going on the last few years. It was the same with the minimalists, with Pop, and with the conceptualists.

LL: But in that sense it's been the same since Mondrian put his paintings in front of the framing edge, mounted them, or Rothko refused to strip his paintings and painted the edges. Probably it's typical of the first half of the 20th century, taking the 60's as being in the first half, counting modern art from 1912, that is. Ad Reinhardt's doing the black square identical paintings in 1960 was by implication a very important ending point. Now I think things have opened up to where the business of going "beyond" anything is less important. The fragmentation is so obvious. There's more chance of people doing what they want and not having it measured against the Greenbergian standard or anyone else's standard.

UM: The Greenbergian standards ar e very much related to the notions that have prevailed in Western art for a milennium. The old Greek standards.

LL: It's strange how Reinhardt relates so closely to much of the new art and the artists because they [[strikethrough]] it [[/strikethrough]] they often [[strikethrough]] seem to [[/strikethrough]]make art out of life and Reinhardt was so very determined that art should relate to nothing but art. Doug Huebler sees the connection