107 Received: February 24, 2016 Accepted: March 13, 2016 Original scholarly paper UDC 7.038.54 Башичевић Д. 7.038.54 Брудерс М. 14 Остин Џ. Л. Ivana Bašičević Antić art theoretician and manager in art ibasicevic@yahoo.com The Central Concepts of Ordinary Language Philosophy in the Art of Marcel Broodthaers and Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos Abstract: While claiming that there are no fixed meanings behind words, Wittgen- stein has focused attention on the possibilities of manipulation with linguistic categories. ‘Lan- guage game’ can be changed by rotations of the semantic field. On the trace of this philosophy, language became the most important media in many practices of visual arts of the second half of the 20th century. I will focus on two cases: Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos and Marcel Broodthaers. Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘language game’ and Austin’s concept of the ‘performative’ have become the main tools in building delicate art projects like Broodthaers’ museum or Mangelos’ noart strategy. Here I’d like to prove that Broodthaers’ construction of a museum (Musée d’Art Moderne) was based on the same concept as Austin’s ‘performative’ and that the revolutionary act in this art project was to show that saying that something is art is not a given, it is not a statement. Who is declaring what art is, and how is this ‘action performed’ (Austin), is the main subject of Mangelos’ Picasso phenomenon. When Mangelos asks the spectator to think about the concept of ‘kitsch’ he draws our attention to those who have the power or the license to declare that some art is ‘kitsch’ and some is true art. This issue could be related to Clement Greenberg’s attempt to discard everything popular, commercial in art by naming it ‘kitsch’. The main ideas of ordinary language philosophy were important for both Mangelos and Broodthaers. The idea that the language and more precisely, grammar of the language that defines the rules of connecting names and things is a place where the solution (solution meaning the answer to questions about the nature and definition of art) is hidden (behind the obvious), provided a very fruitful basis for their research. Keywords: conceptual art, language games, performative, speech act, institutional critique ART+MEDIA | Journal of Art and Media Studies Issue No. 9, April 2016 108 Introduction Conceptual art pointed to the parallels between the world of visuality, plas- ticity and the systems of linguistic signs. Major influences on this art were made by Duchamp’s critique of visuality and ideas of analytical philosophy. In considering lan- guage as a artistic tool, the thoughts of many artists were directed towards Ludwig Wittgenstein. His proclamation that there are no fixed meanings behind words gave freedom to many artists to investigate possibilities of manipulation with linguistic categories. In terms of understanding, early conceptual art specifications of text and discourse given in analytical philosophy1 are of the greatest importance. At the same time, as a consequence of the process of the negation of art as mere a thing of techne and under the influence of the Enlightenment’s legacy, art entered the field of philosophy. Artist Robert Morris approached Duchamp’s legacy in a way best described as readymade in analogy with a Saussurean model of language; “a model where meaning is generated by structural relationships.”2 Further on, Morris declared that his “fascination with and respect for Duchamp was related to his linguistic fix- ation, to the idea that all of his operations were ultimately built on a sophisticated understanding of language itself.”3 Language has become the place of understanding and the place of creating art at the same time. Language has also become the primary tool for many other disciplines. In psychoanalysis, the unconscious was defined by language, according to Lacan’s writings. Culture and ideology were defined, built and learned through language. Heidegger claimed that there is no other approach to Da- sein than through language. Traditional painting which symbolized everything emo- tional and irrational in art was attacked by language from inside its frames, starting from analytic cubism4 and going all the way until no visual information was given in painting, as in the works of analytic conceptual art. Those new developments in the field of forms raised the question as to what would be considered art in the future? In his manifesto Art as Art, Ad Reinhardt declared: “No lines or imaginings, no shapes or composings or representings, no visions or sensations or impulses, no symbols or im- pastos, no decorations or colourings or picturings, no pleasures or pains, no accidents or readymades, no things, no ideas, no relations, no attributes, no qualities – nothing that is not of the essence.”5 But who determines what is ‘of essence’? 1 Miško Šuvaković, Teorija umetnosti i analitička filozofija – II deo, unpublished text of doctoral dissertation, 137. 2 Benjamin Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962–1969”, October, Vol. 55, Winter, 1990, 115. 3 Robert Morris, from ibidem. 4 “Cubism, then, originated the two dominant modes of the physical presence of words in modernist art: words actually painted onto the surface freehand or with stencils or other devices and words from preexistent printed sources juxtaposed by collage.” John C. Welchman, “Image and Language: Syllables and Charisma”, in: Howard Singerman (ed.), A selected history of contemporary art 1945–1986, New York, Abeville Press Publishers, 1986, 266. 5 Ad Reinhardt, “Art as Art”, Art International, December 1962; reprinted in: Barbara Rose (ed.), Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, New York, Viking, 1975, 56. DISCUSSIONS | ART+MEDIA 109 Language in visual art “The criticism of the essentialism is the result of radicalization of criticism of traditional continental aesthetics, philosophy of art and criticism, i.e. the attempt to prove that the aspects of one object which are accepted as art works, are conditioned by the linguistic surrounding in which this object is offered as an artwork i.e. cultural conditions of linguistic (discursive, linguistic, semiotic) nature.”6 At the same time when language has become the main tool for understanding problems of psychology or structure of ideological and cultural mechanisms, language in general, but also more specifically language as the linguistic surrounding in which an object is offered as an artwork, becomes the field of research for an artist on a quest to discuss and decipher the nature of art. Mangelos and Broodthaers are paradigmatic examples of this type of art.7 What I wish to prove in this essay is that they were employing the basic principles of Austin’s performatives when they were building their artistic and philosophical systems, whether they were aware of that or not. The question of power in the art world, and those who temporarily ‘own’ posi- tions of power, was a subject of those artistic practices defined as institutional critique. “In the absence of any specifically visual qualities and due to the manifest lack of any (artistic) manual competence as a criterion of distinction, all the traditional criteria of aesthetic judgment – of taste and of connoisseurship – have been programmatically voided. The result of this is that the definition of the aesthetic becomes on the one hand a matter of linguistic convention and on the other the function of both a legal contract and an institutional discourse (a discourse of power rather than taste).”8 The name of Marcel Broodthaers stands at the beginning of this practice. His idea was that in order to understand the way the art world functions, one must see its institutions from the inside (or backside). The same was Wittgenstein’s goal when investigating language and illuminating the processes considered as objective and fixed. “But how we group words into kinds will depend on the aim of classification and on our own inclination.”9 The influence of ideology and our own goals is immense but not obvious. At this instance, the legacy of analytical philosophy became important for these two artists. The starting point for this analysis is Wittgenstein’s investigation of the pro- cess of naming things or, in his terminology, ‘language games’. “What is the relation between name and thing named? – Well, what is it? Look at language-game (2) or at another one: there you can see the sort of thing this relation consists in. This relation 6 Miško Šuvaković, “Ludvig Vitgenštajn i analitička estetika”, in: Miško Šuvaković and Aleš Erjavec (eds.), Fig- ure u pokretu. Savremena zapadna estetika, filozofija i teorija umetnosti, Beograd, Atoča, 2009, 135. 7 What those two artists did, could be well described with the following quote: “[A] person who, using informa- tion, knowledge and material from different disciplines, artistic, humanistic or scientific, creates the networks of meaning which he afterwards uses for creation of the art work itself.” Radoš Mitrović, “Pozicija i status auto- ra, dela i umetničkog doživljaja u okviru koncepta estetike odsutnosti Hajnera Gebelsa”, AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, Issue No. 5, 2014, 65. 8 Benjamin Buchloh, op. cit., 117–118. 9 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1958, 8. ART+MEDIA | Journal of Art and Media Studies Issue No. 9, April 2016 110 may also consist, among many other things, in fact that hearing the name calls before our mind the picture of what is named: and it also consists, among other things, in the name’s being written on the thing named or being pronounced when that thing is pointed at.”10 As Wittgenstein pointed out, the process of naming things is something we learn similar to when a child learns a language. The thing is pointed at and the name is pronounced. It is a process that some neo-avant-garde artists found to be of crucial importance when defining art’s nature and creating new art practices. In this context, the following ‘group’ of statements should be considered: Kosuth: “If someone says it’s art, then it is art…”11 Robert Rauschenberg: “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.”12 R. Mutt’s urinal was an art object if Marcel Duchamp said so. This logic was defined as declaration of art by ‘speech act’13 or the practice in which intentional declaration is foregrounded over contextualization.14 This type of investigation went further on in the field of relations between artwork, object and the name. René Magritte, in his famous artwork The Treachery of Images has written: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” under the image of a pipe. Dealing with relations between images and objects and words, Magritte warned the spectator that obvious things have become forgotten since they are too obvious to consider. It is so obvious that that was not a pipe but an image of pipe. In Wittgenstein’s attempt to abandon metaphysical language and put philosophy in the realm of everyday language, exactly the same point was made. We need words for things that can’t be shown, but not the ones that are difficult to under- stand (being difficult, they cause more problems than they solve) but those from everyday language. For Magritte, it was not possible to show where the act of deception takes place without words. He needed to put words on the canvas as well as image. And the words were simple, everyday words. Magritte made a statement. In case of Broodthaers, the use of language was necessary because “through thinking about language, the problems that art faces take a new shape, and ultimately shift out of the familiar, constraining frameworks.”15 The Museum of Marcel Broodthaers and performative of J. L. Austin Developing two principles, those of Duchamp’s act of appropriating industrial object and and converting them into art objects by the act of his will, and Magritte’s act of stating what something is or i.e. what something is not, Marcel Broodthaers created 10 Ibid, 18. 11 Joseph Kosuth, “Art after Philosophy”, in: Gabriele Guercio (ed.), Art After Philosophy and After: Collected Writings, 1966–1990, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1991. 12 Robert Rauschenberg, This is a Portrait of iris Clert if I say So, 1961, ink on paper and two paper envelopes, 13 5/8 x 17 3/8 in, envelopes approximately 4 3/8 x 8 5/8 in. each, Ahrenberg Collection, Switzerland. 13 Miško Šuvaković has named three important notions from analytical philosophy: propositional statement, performative statements and speech act. Cf. Miško Šuvaković, Teorija umetnosti i analitička filozofija, op. cit., 137, 138, 139, 140. 14 Benjamin Buchloh, op. cit., 126. 15 Rachel Haidu, The Absence of Work, London, The MIT Press, 2010, xxi. DISCUSSIONS | ART+MEDIA 111 one of his most important artworks, Musée d’Art Moderne. Richly detailed and delicately constructed employing different media, this work is primarily based on language. Even the objects exhibited or used purposely to build the museum must be explained or de- scribed by words. The artist became a curator, and at the same time was a theoretician or a philosopher who was deciphering the nature of art at the moment when the old museum was already being attacked by avant-garde movements, from the beginning of the 20th century as well as when the notion of artwork was attacked by Duchamp’s readymades.16 Artists have decided to employ the ‘speech act’ as an artistic maneuver, by which they appropriated the power usually reserved for other participants of the art world. At the same time, they put end to art’s historical position as something sacred, mysterious and related solely to genius. The act of asking ‘What is art?’ – is destroying that sacred- ness. When God was creating man, the procedure consisted of the following acts: “[…] let it be – create – give a name.”17 Nobody should raise the question about that name af- terwards. But, how to appropriate the position of the one who ‘gives name’? Is it enough to give a statement like the one by Rauschenberg (‘this is a work of art because I say so’)? This important question caused many doubts about the nature of those statements as well as this specific way of using language in art. “First came the view, not always formu- lated without unfortunate dogmatism, that a statement (of fact) ought to be ‘verifiable’, and this led to the view that many ‘statements’ are only what may be called pseudo-state- ments”18. The question is whether a statement “This is a work of art” is a statement at all? Could it be verified? Or is this something else, pseudo-statement or even something different than that. Trying to define the group of those ‘pseudo-statements’, Austin has listed four most often used examples from everyday life: “Examples: (E.a) ‘I do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife)’ – as uttered in the course of the marriage ceremony. (E.b) ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ – as uttered when smashing the bottle against the vessel’s bow. (E.c) ‘I give and bequeath my watch to my brother’ – as occurring in a will. (E.d) ‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.”19 Those sentences are specific because although they do look like statements they do not describe anything and they are not stating anything. They are neither true nor false. What they do is make one person ‘indulge’20 in one act or state. When one person during the marriage ceremony says ‘I do’, he/she indulges in this marriage. Taking with those words all the obligations of specific legal act (marriage). Those type 16 Exactly at that time (1968) institutions of social power were attacked by students’ demonstration and Marcel Broodthaers was very active in this process. 17 Walter Benjamin, “O jeziku uopšte i jeziku ljudi”, in: Eseji, Beograd, Nolit, 1974, 37. 18 J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words, Oxford, Oxford Universtity Press, 1962, 2. 19 Ibid, 5. 20 Austin’s word for that state. ART+MEDIA | Journal of Art and Media Studies Issue No. 9, April 2016 112 of sentences Austin named performative sentences, or in short, ‘performatives’.21 The structure of Austin’s procedure of grouping and naming similar sentences as perfor- matives is important for the analysis and understanding of the structure of Brood- thaers’ museum. This specific performative could be described as being built on “anal- ogy of performative act and the act of declaring a readymade [...].”22 At the beginning of the process of creating a museum, Broodthaers has appro- priated the power / function of a “curator, administrator, press agent and museum founder, all in one”23. He was organizing one museum: defining its field of expertise (Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Section XIXéme Siècle) and select- ing the objects to be exhibited, and finally organizing the opening ceremony as well as supporting printed material (invitations, posters). The appropriation took place through the act of speech i.e. language: Broodthaers said ‘This is a museum.’ This mo- ment of declaration was best described by the artist: “I took delivery of the crates and installed them here in a fairly particular manner, in fact as if they were artworks them- selves. So I said to myself: But essentially that’s it, that is the museum.”24 The context is the post-revolutionary atmosphere in Brussels, after the protests in September 1968 that resulted in parliamentary chaos and, afterwards, governmental collapse. Brood- thaers was an active participant of this event, fighting against bureaucracy and the ad- ministrative order built as a way of managing all the issues of one society. He invited a group of artists, critics, collectors and ‘gallery people’ to his studio “to analyze what wasn’t working in the Belgian artistic world, to analyze the relations Art-Society.”25. As a result of this ‘discourse-in-the-making’ (Rachel Haidu), the museum was created. What makes one statement a performative and how can Broodthaers’ statement ‘This is a museum’ become a performative? First of all, Austin stated that with the sen- tence ‘I do’ one does not report a marriage but does ‘indulge in it’.26 But merely saying a few words is not enough in order to get married. And that is the next step in analyzing Broodthaers’ museum. He didn’t just declare: This is a museum. He made numerous steps out of which the museum’s life was consisted (he indulged in it). “The uttering of 21 “The name is derived, of course, from ‘perform’, the usual verb with the noun ‘action’: it indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action – it is not normally thought of as just saying something.”, J. L. Austin, op. cit., 6–7. 22 “Approaches to performative statements in art are different, but in conceptual art three specific approaches could be separated: 1) analogy of performative act and the act of declaring a readymade, 2) formal presentation of ‘nature of performative’ in work of art, when the work is realized by reading the text or when artist is pronouncing in performance and realizing the pronounced, and 3) deconstructive approach to performative, i.e. performative statements are said or offered in the form of text so that some social convention could be discovered, so that it could be subverted or caricatured for example, the typical form of performative conceptual texts is presentation of performative text from specific context (commercial, ideology, moral, etc.) in the context of art where they are seen as performative statements but nobody expects them to be executed or any effect from them, but only carica- ture of social customs.” Miško Šuvaković, Teorija umetnosti i analitička filozofija, op. cit., 139. 23 Dirk Snauwaert, Marcel Broodthaers, Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Section des Figures, 1972, http://moussemagazine.it/taac5-a/, ac. 26. 01. 2016. 24 Marcel Broodthaers in: Rachel Haidu, op. cit., 112. 25 Ibidem. 26 J. L. Austin, op. cit., 6. DISCUSSIONS | ART+MEDIA 113 the words is, indeed, usually a, or even the, leading incident in the performance of the act, […]. Speaking generally, it is always necessary that the circumstances in which the words are uttered should be in some way, or ways, appropriate, and it is very common- ly necessary that either the speaker himself or other persons should also perform cer- tain other actions, whether ‘physical’ or ‘mental’ actions or even acts of uttering further words.”27 At this time, the circumstances of Broodthaers’ museum should be analyzed. A group of artists, art critics and ‘gallery people’ – the type usually found at gallery openings – were gathered for the museum’s opening. On that evening, Dr. Johannes Cladders, director of the Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach, gave a speech, a typi- cal and defining moment of every museum opening. We can conclude that Broodthaers created all the necessary circumstances of one conventional/accepted museum opening. Doing this, he has fulfilled the first condition for his speech act to be effective.28 The next important condition for a performative to be effective is, according to Austin, the following: “Thus, for naming the ship, it is essential that I should be the person appointed to name her, for (Christian) marrying, it is essential that I should not already be married with a wife living, sane and undivorced, and so on: for a bet to have been made, it is generally necessary for the offer of the bet to have been accepted by a taker (who must have done something, such as to say ‘Done’), and it is hardly a gift if I say ‘I give it to you’ but never hand it over.”29 This raises one of the most important questions of the art world after Duchamp and that is who is appointed to do this perfor- mative, in this case to say what art is or what a museum is? So the question is whether or not this Austin’s condition was fulfilled in case of Broodthaers’ declaration of museum. Could Broodthaers be appointed to do that? At first glance, one could conclude that he wasn’t, since he is an artist and his position is not the one entitled to declare what is a museum or even to create one. But, if this were true then, according to Austin, this performative wouldn’t be effective. In this case “In no case do we say that the utterance was false but rather that the utterance – or rather the act, e.g. the promise – was void, or given in bad faith, or not implemented, or the like.”30. Because the performative can’t be true or false, it can be void. So it will take place but it will fail to cause an effect. One might than conclude that Broodthaers didn’t have the power to declare a museum that: “His utterance is perhaps misleading, probably deceitful and doubtless wrong, but is not a lie or misstatement.”31 The essence of this artwork was that by making very precise and realistic moves, similar to everything related to creating a real museum Broodthaers appropriated all the necessary attributes to be in position to declare a museum so that at the end his statement ‘This is a museum’ was not wrong or misleading. Or it was so, but purposely – because it was an artwork and not a real museum?32 27 Ibid, 8. 28 According to Austin performative can’t be false or truth, just void or effective. 29 J. L. Austin, op. cit., 8–9. 30 Ibid, 10–11. 31 Ibid, 11. 32 But, at the same time it can be concluded the Broodthaers wanted us to conclude that he mislead us so that he could prove where the problem in the art world lies. Both ways are efficient for Broodthaers’ point. “With the ART+MEDIA | Journal of Art and Media Studies Issue No. 9, April 2016 114 The following point in Austin’s discussion about performatives equaled Brood- thaers’ concept of museum. In case one or both of those rules – existing accepted con- ventional procedure and that the particular persons and circumstances in a given case are appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure33 – are violated, “[…] our performative will be unhappy.”34. In those cases, what could be said is that the process has been undergone but not that this process has been finalized.35 The main question here is whether there is an existing accepted procedure for declaring one museum and also, whether there is proof that Broodthaers is not an appropriate person for this proce- dure (of declaring a museum). It should be pointed out that the search for those answers is exactly what Broodthaers was pointing at when making this artwork. Those questions were unanswered, and the artist wanted to demonstrate that to the public. Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos and Picasso Phenomenon The other artist whose work is an example of the adoption of rules of ordinary language philosophy in art practice is Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos (1921–1987), a Cro- atian proto-conceptual artist and a founding member of the group Gorgona. Creating art on the border between word and painting, Mangelos considered language an im- portant tool in his noart strategy. Whether the primacy is on the side of word or image is a major dilemma of his work. Words inscribed on different materials have become his most important instrument in creating art.36 Here, I would like to analyze his Picasso Phenomenon37 series of works. The artist defined it as “a critique against Picasso i.e. critique of painting.”38 Using different media, sometimes combining them in a single artwork39, Mangelos expressed the idea that there is no genius – Picasso is no genius – and therefore all about Picasso is a myth. 40 Who has created this myth and why does difference, however, that a work of fiction allows you to capture reality and at the same time what it conceals.” Marcel Broodthaers, “Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles, Section Art Moderne et Publicité” (1972), in: Gloria Moure, Marcel Broodthaers: Collected Writings, Barcelona, Ediciones Poligrafa, 2012, 354. 33 J. L. Austin, op. cit., 14–15. 34 Ibid, 15. 35 In the case of marriage, in case that some rule is being violated, one can say that he/she has ‘went through a form of marriage’ by contrast with ‘married’. Ibid, 16. 36 Mangelos, Am Beginn war es kein Wort, c. 1963–1970, tempera on gold leaf over hardboard, 48.6 x 56.3 cm, Coll. Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto. 37 Mangelos’ first solo exhibition took place in 1972 in Novi Sad. The name of the exhibition was Picasso Phenomenon. 38 Mladen Stilinović, “Mangelos – Umetnik u prvom licu”, in: Vojin Bašičević (ed.), Drugi o njemu, Novi Sad, 1996, 55. 39 One possible explanation how the use of collage improves the deconstruction of myths in art: “Collage is an instrument used by avant-garde artists in order to tear the unity of painting apart, to destabilize its traditional position [...]”, Ivana Bašičević Antić, “Being ‘The Other’ – Analysis of Three Artistic Cases: Nancy Spero, Cy Twombly and Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos”, AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, Issue No. 8, 2015, 81–91. 40 American Poet Getrude Stein Often Used to Remind Picasso..., c. 1967–1972, tempera and collage on cardboard, 30.5 x 45cm, private collection. DISCUSSIONS | ART+MEDIA 115 everyone accept it? “Is this man a kind of Midas, turning whatever he touches into the gold of pure art?”41 This question reminds us of Wittgenstein’s remark: “[…] the concept of naming as, so to speak, an occult process.”42 Mangelos saw the same occult’ness in creating a myth about Picasso as well as the other important Wittgenstein’s principle: “A child uses such primitive forms of language when it learns to talk. Here the teaching of language is not explanation, but training.”43 This is how, according to Mangelos, the myth about Picasso was spread. Nobody asked any questions only, as child does, they were conditioned to accept and use this myth-creating approach to the name and work of Picasso. So, how did Mangelos attempt to deconstruct this myth? Austin defined several different types of breaching the rules of making a suc- cessful performative, developing ‘the doctrine of the Infelicities’ for this cause.44 In some cases there are conventional, accepted procedures but a person ‘sins’ against those accepted procedures, and in some cases there are no conventional, accepted procedures so the person ‘sins’ exactly because of that. A person doing a performative is either aware of this and sins intentionally (this is abuse), or is violating those proto- cols without knowing it. In the case of Mangelos’ Picasso Phenomenon, the scenarios of sinning are to be analyzed since he is not making a performative; on the contrary, he has doubts about those who did it. “There is no genius. What naïve thinking declares genius is a worker who in his narrowly defined field of work inserted several thousands of working hours more than a routine worker on the same job.”45 The question is whether those critics, collectors and curators knew that there is no genius or they didn’t? From this question one can conclude whether when declar- ing that Picasso is a genius and generating a myth about him they made an effective performative or a void one. For Mangelos, this performative “Picasso is a genius”, is void. Because there is no accepted conventional procedure and there are no officially appointed persons46 to do that. If it is said that those people (critics, curators, collec- tors) are appointed for this procedure, then he pointed our attention to the question of whether the creators of this performative sinned against the rule intentionally, know- ing that there is no accepted conventional procedure. In this case, they committed abuse; the act of performative is achieved but can be called in question because of the abuse.47 41 Arthur Danto, “The Artworld”, in: Joseph Margolis (ed.), Philosophy Looks at the Arts, Philadelphia, Temple University, 1987, 163. 42 Ludwig Wittgenstein, op. cit., 26. 43 Ibid, 11. 44 Austin’s Lectures II, III & IV (from: How to do things with words) are devoted to those cases. 45 D. B. Mangelos, manifest o geniju, in: Vojin Bašičević (ed.), Drugi o njemu, Novi Sad, 1996, 152. 46 “The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the par- ticular procedure invoked.” J. L. Austin, op. cit., 15. 47 In order to apply Austin’s rules precisely, I have put the terms he used in italics. ART+MEDIA | Journal of Art and Media Studies Issue No. 9, April 2016 116 “information that provides the foundation for theories and histories of art is unreliable therefore theories and history lose their utilitarian value with information of the legend-generating type instead of history mythology is formed and instead of critical analysis of the activity of a man who may or may have not been in prison because of his resistance or ideas but certainly had not stopped playing since childhood even marxist critics create a myth of the hero of rebellion hero of thought and a genius” Example 1.48 The same analysis could be applied in the case of Mangelos’ Theory of Kitsch. Here, his goal was to deconstruct the moment of declaring a kitsch art. He attempted to prove that to declare that some art is kitsch is a void performative, because nobody is assigned to make this kind of declaration and because there is no accepted conventional procedure. This abuse is made intentionally in order to demean the value of some art. “kitsch does not exist in der kunst kitsch is just an instrument for negating the value of feeling another kind of beauty”49 Conclusion In this essay, I have attempted to demonstrate that in order to conduct a critique of the art world by investigating its frames and revealing it from the inside, those artists have used the same principles that J. L. Austin developed in philosophical theory. Their investigation (which has become art) was initiated by doubting the reverence and silence traditionally associated with the word ‘art’. The difference between the mockery and the true statement is minimal and only by analyzing their statements and the nature of those statements per se, can one see where the artists directed our attention. In the same man- ner in which Wittgenstein embarked on a quest to make metaphysical language use- less in philosophy, Mangelos tried to find painting beyond the borders of metaphysical 48 D. B. Mangelos, American Poet Gertrude Stein Often Used to Remind Picasso…, c. 1967–1972, tempera and collage on cardboard, 30,5 x 45 cm 49 “kič ne egzisitra, in der kunst kič je samo instrument negiranja vrednosti osećanja druge vrste lipote”, D. B. Mangelos, A Sketch For the Kitsch Manifesto, c. 1977–1978, gold leaf and acrylic on globe made of plastic and metal, 38 x 26 (diameter) cm DISCUSSIONS | ART+MEDIA 117 character of painting. In this quest he used letters in a way similar to Broodthaers. Or Manzoni. Letters were on the beginning; not words. And letters are for Mangelos the symbol of rational thinking; nothing emotional, aesthetical or metaphysical. What if in both cases an artist was not sincere when giving those ‘statements’? “[…] where there is not even a pretence of capacity or a colourable claim to it, then there is no accepted conventional procedure; it is a mockery, like a marriage with a monkey.”50 For Austin this case defines a mockery but in case of Broodthaers and Mangelos it is not mockery – it is art. “In order to give more power and realism to its lie […] the fictive museum tries to plunder the authentic and original museum.”51 Finally what is definite is that both artists were investigating the nature of art and art institutions in the field of language and grammar. The legacy of analytical philosophy gave them important material for their work, and what they found specif- ically useful was the investigation of the procedure of naming things, i.e. how names and objects are related. For them, the problem of defining art and works of art is situated in this specific dimension of language usage. Could the non-precision of the naming of things – its duration based only on learning established relations and not questioning them – be the place of importance for new, different and ‘progressive’ art? Example 1: Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos, American Poet Gertrude Stein Often Used to Remind Picasso…, c.1967–1972, tempera and collage on cardboard, 30,5 x 45 cm 50 J. L. Austin, op. cit., 24. 51 Marcel Broodthaers, in: Rachel Haidu, op. cit., 114.