"Romanticism brought the mixture of genres. Symbolism and the avant-garde completed the fusion of prose and poetry. T he results were marvelous monsters, from Rimbaud's prose poem to Joyce's verbal epic. The mixture and ultimate abolition of genres culminated in the criticism of the art object. The crisis of the idea of oeuvre became apparent in all the arts--painting, sculpture, poetry, the novel--but its most radical expression was Duchamp's 'ready-mades'. Derisive consecration: what counts is not the object but the artist's act in separating from its context and placing it on the pedestal of the old work of art. The gesture takes the place of the work."
"The end of art and poetry? No: the end of the 'modern era' and, with it, the end of the idea of 'modern art and literature.' Criticism of the object prepares the way for the resurrection of the work of art, not as something to be possessed, but as presence to be contemplated. The work is not an end in itself nor does it exist in its own right: the work is a bridge, an intermediary. Nor does criticism of the subject imply destruction of poet or artist but only of the bourgeois idea of author. For the Romantics, the voice of the poet was the voice of ALL; for us it is the voice of NO ONE. 'All' and 'no one' are equal to each other and both are equally far from the author and his 'I'."
