Robert Ryman, No Title Required, 2006
Every
thought, method, or artwork exists inside of system.
At
the base of any system is a set of premises that defines the system’s
boundaries and methods. These cannot be questioned from within that system
because the system needs them to remain coherent. (A dog chasing his own
tail.)*
No
system can ever capture the entire truth of a thing because it (the system) is
necessarily restricted by its premises.
Systems
are like windows. You may need to gaze through a number of them to understand exactly
what is on the other side.
A
system comprised of a network of different systems is still a system. Such a
system offers a wider view of things, but may lack the internal coherence of
its constituents.
The validity of system can be determined by a number of
different criteria: correspondence to external reality, aesthetic pleasure, life affirmation, and so on. We adopt
different systems based on the criteria of the task at hand. (It is better to be a problem thinker than a system thinker.)
Art exists in a system with different criteria than regular
life. A urinal in an art gallery thereby takes on different significance.
*Even Kant, who sought to rigorously critique of a system by
using its own terms, left implicit premises unquestioned, namely
the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori. (His problem was only how such judgments were possible.)
