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Anthropological Art Form
Art and Language as an anthropological art form
Most of the Art and Language texts have a Marxist tenor to them, but they were very much against the radical left-wing view that art should be politicized or used as a tool for any specific ideology. More than anything else they were interested in the process of indexing and reconfiguring symbols; exposing hidden meanings or connecting between contrasting symbols. The anthropological obsession with understanding the interrelations of cultures, social norms and certainly linguistic anomalies were all trademark signatures of this group.
Much like the philosophical writings of the Structuralists, Art and Language set out to determine the veiled meanings in all signs of communication between conflicting views. This is a highly intellectual aspiration coupled with an understanding of how communications reside also within visual frameworks and icons.
They were criticized for being, above all, practically incomprehensible to the public, and even to the art-educated art world. However, this scholarly group played a key role in the birth of Conceptual art, and subsequently the many artistic groups that came after them.
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