Art Magazines of the Era of the Formation of Postmodernism (The Second Half of the 1970s): The Problem of Influence on the Processes in Art. ‘October’

Abstract

This article examines the influence of art magazines on processes in art of the twentieth century — and the possibility of constructing a typology of periodicals based on this principle. General characteristics of the “magazine of influence” are based on the material of the second half of the twentieth century. The model of this type of periodical is considered on the example of Artforum, the most authoritative magazine of the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, whose experience (positive and negative) was used to form the editorial policy of October. From the history of October, the main periodical on contemporary art of the last four decades, the early stage (when its influence was maximum) was selected. The formation of the journal is examined from different points of view. The first point is the art and art history methodologies of the 1960s and the legacy of Artforum associated with the name Rosalind Krauss. The second point, presented by Annette Michelson, refers to the semiotics of French theory and the problem of the “political.” The third subject is built around Douglas Crimp and his curatorial project, the “Pictures” exhibition: this is the newest art (postmodernism of the second half of the 1970s, its specificity, its connection with the “photographic” and postmedial nature of this “photographic”) and the methodology of its analysis. The combination of new art with a journal of a new type (creating an apparatus for its methodological description) creates a situation that allows us to speak about the beginning of a new era, the era of postmodernism, a specific version of conceptual art, where the border between art itself and its critical and theoretical interpretation almost disappears.