Abstract

In Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art (2022), I argue that in creating contemporary artworks, artists articulate rules for artwork display, conservation, and audience participation. Artists' communications about these rules are work-constituting, and the process of refining the rules (and thus the work itself) sometimes continues long after the work is first displayed. In a critical notice, Diarmuid Costello questions the power that my view gives to artists' remarks about their work, which often seem offhand or whimsical. Especially when such remarks are made long after the work's initial creation, Costello suggests, taking them too seriously may undermine the work's integrity or value. In this reply, I argue that even when artists' remarks seem whimsical, they are often engaged in the sort of fine-grained, aesthetically responsive creative activity that might characterize an artist's work with a physical material like paint or clay. I also outline some strategies that my view affords in situations where an artist's new communications seem to significantly alter the work in an undesirable way.