http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/jevbratt/readings/burnham_se.html

"Jack Burnham

Systems Esthetics

Reprinted from Artforum (September, 1968). Copyright 1968 by Jack Burnham.

A polarity is presently developing between the finite, unique work of high
art, that is, painting or sculpture, and conceptions that can loosely be
termed unobjects, these being either environments or artifacts that resist
prevailing critical analysis. This includes works by some primary sculptors
(though 0 some may reject the charge of creating environments), some
gallery kinetic and luminous art, some outdoor works, happenings, and mixed
media presentations. Looming below the surface of this dichotomy is a sense
of radical evolution that seems to run counter to the waning revolution of
abstract and nonobjective art. The evolution embraces a series of
absolutely logical and incremental changes, wholly devoid of the fevered
iconoclasm that accompanied the heroic period from 1907 to 1925. As yet the
evolving esthetic has no critical vocabulary so necessary for its defense,
nor for that matter a name or explicit cause. "
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