ABSTRACT
Certain artworks since Duchamp have deviant artistic identities that I call “radical.” Many such works have a degree of abstraction that invites the question of just how far something can be pushed toward pure thought, immateriality, or even nothingness and still be a work of art. To answer this question, it must be considered how something can also be radical in the sense of being fundamental. As a result, the question of the extremes of identity in art is complex in having both an artistic and a philosophical aspect. Consideration of the fundamental aspect of radicality involves identifying the basic requirements of making and apprehending works of art; showing how certain matters in the epistemology and ontology of artwork identity are relevant to this investigation; and looking at how the notion of where a work is can include situations, events, or circumstances that, in being determined by thoughts and actions, extend that notion beyond the customary concept of place and its relation to three-dimensional space. Given the dependence of any artistic identity on the temporal events of thinking, perceiving, and choosing, the relation of artistic identity to time, and the fluid framework that underlies, and is affected by, the social construction and consumption of artworks as cultural objects must also be recognized. All these things are relevant to the deviant sense of radical identity in art and can be seen to underlie a particular kind of exploration of the artistic possibilities for radical artworks that, in also being radical in the fundamental sense, I call “Essentialist.” Some novel ways are identified in which “artwork identity” can be understood to be radical, both in the sense of being fundamental and in the sense of departing from the norms of established artistic practice.
