Conversation bettween Lawrence Wagner and George Brecht

UCI art department is hosting a debate between Lawrence Weiner and George Brecht about the theories of contemporary art. Present in the auditorium are 700 student and faculty members eager to hear from those two great minds.

Lawrence Weiner and George Brecht are central figures of the conceptual art movement. Lawrence Weiner produced works of art out of almost nothing; he is famous for using text as a substitute for sculptures. He believed that text can translate what a sculpture has to say, and that through the interpretation of the text other artist can create unique works that expresses their own individualism. Lawrence Weiner believes that an art work should have three main elements, 1. The Artist may construct the piece. 2. The piece maybe fabricated. 3. The piece need not be built. As a result of Lawrence Weiner’s belief system, he is able to go beyond the traditional boundaries and explorer new territories. George Brecht famous works of art include One and Three Chair and Koan. Just like Weiner he is also an artist and theorist, he is responsible for the development of conceptual art and pushing the boundaries of modern art into new territories.

Lawrence Weiner presence is felt by everyone as he stood on top of the stage. He is tall, rugged, handsome and very serious. Then came George Brecht, he is more skinny, less intimidating, but just as serious.

“Hello Mister Lawrence Weiner, my name is George Brecht I present to you and the audience my work “one and three Chairs.”

Lawrence Weiner then says, “Ahhh, it is an honor to meet the great George Brecht, I have studied all of your works and your theories. I have to say your ideas have influenced my art and artistic thinking. I also like to say it is a great honor for me to meet you!”

As the two men stands facing each other, the audience can feel that they are in the presence of greatness. No one in the audience is fooled by the politeness of the initial encounter. It is like watching Adolf Hitler face to face with Stalin. Everyone in the audience knows both man have come to debate about art and the meeting will not end until both man have made their point.

“It is a great honor for me to meet you too Lawrence, we are here today to critique each other and to talk about art theory. So lets start the debate.”

With that George Brecht sounded the start of the debate.

Lawrence Weiner proceeds to say, “I like to start by critiquing your work One and Three Chairs. I understand where you are coming from. You want to show people that imagery, words and the real object are ultimately the same thing. However, I feel that one simple text can accomplish the same goal. I feel your art work is rather redundant. I do not think it is necessary to use a real chair, a photograph and dictionary definition of chair to get your idea across. I think it would be much simpler to just write on a paper, “chair on the wall, chair off the wall, chair found in the dictionary, are the same.””

George Brecht is a professional artist and theorist. He is not stunned or intimidated by Lawrence Weiners critique. He is prepared to defend his work.

George Brecht defends his art work by saying, “I think the method that I chose to express my theory is not flawed. I understand that you like to use text as a means to get your message across, but there are limitations to text. For example, there are almost infinite variety of sounds two metals makes when crashed into each other. Each sound the crashing metals makes is distinct from every other sound, if you were to only use text how can you show people the distinct and infinite random variations of the crashing metals? Hence, it is imperative that we use a sound recorder, to record the distinct random sound that the metal makes.”

George Brecht felt he made his point and confidently sat onto his chair and stared right into the eyes of Weiner. George is ready for the counter attack.

“It is very clear to me that as art theorists we both have investigated and read Ludwig Wittgenstein’s book “philosophical investigations”. It is very clear from Ludwig’s writing and the many writings of early Dada theorists; that there is no way for people to tell what is real and what is not real. We are all dependent on our own distinct perception organs and hearing organs. What one person hears is not necessarily the same as what someone else hears. Hence, there is no way to duplicate the exact sound that you have just described and therefore the use of text is necessary. Text can be interoperated in many different ways; one word can hold many different meaning to a person depending on the mood, intellectual ability and cognitive consistency of that person. In the end, I use text because text is reality.”

George Brecht immediately stood up after hearing from Lawrence Wagner. He stared at the audience then back at Lawrence. Then he stood next to his art work. George stood there for a long time and everyone can tell he was pondering about his counter attack.

“I agree with what you have said Mister Wagner. But, you have overlooked something fundamental with my art work. I created my art work One and Three Chair so that is encompasses every possible way of human expression. The work contains randomness, coloring, picture, text and artistic effort, it is all there. I think our difference is not whose work of art is more conceptual. Rather our difference is in the way we express our art. I think both of our art expresses conceptualism and if we combine both of our art then we move that much closer to the real conceptualism. And I have done that with my art by including text.

Before Wagner can counter argue the host announces that the debate has run out of time. In the end it was a tie and nobody could decide which artist was more correct!