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logan--you miss the point. first off, thinking about materials or a medium is a skill. trust me on this one. it is not obvious how to go about it. if malevich was interested in purity of form and was working with painting as a medium, then the square kinda follows. after he did it, and after the frame became known, it definitely followed...alot of art historian types line that series of pieces up against the emergence of photography, which the argument goes undermined the need to representational painting--so malevich was one of the earlier folk to turn painting on itself. this is why i keep saying its all in the framing of an action---the emphasis on framing is what makes art from the last century--you know, the main narrative (regardless of the problems that narrative has)---very different from 19th century art.
the move to framing also meant that works became more specialized and addressed mostly either other artists or an audience that knew the ground rules. so you have to bring something into the experience to in a way complete it. if you don't know the drill, it won't do much for you. so it's more a shift in the location and meaning of craft---but it doesn't obviate technical skill in making pieces. there are some folk out there with amazing levels of skill. have a look an anselm keifer's work sometime.
one effect of this is to exclude people from being able to "see" what's going on in the piece. personally, i have no problem with that---i don't buy the idea that a democratic "culture" is easy, that it means that no-one has to do any work to understand what a piece might be doing.
what i've left out of this little game so far is the role of the artworld itself in constructing or making work what it comes to be. not everything ends up in museyrooms. not everything ends up in galleries. not all sound work is performed, not all is shown. it matters very much who you know---if you want your stuff out in the wider world, it has to be talked about, written about--other folk have to legitimate themselves by legitimating your work. this mostly because people typically want what they are told they want, one way or another. people typically don't explore-they gravitate toward what they know, and what they like that's new is a version of what they already know. if you're making stuff, more can happen for you in the course of a single party---if its the "right" party--than will happen for you in many years of working outside the networks. so the spaces in which you encounter new things are rarely neutral.
it mattered very much *where* duchamp put up the readymades in 1919.
if he had done the same thing in, say, a grange hall in rural iowa, it would functionally never have happened.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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