Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
|“||In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.||”|
Tony Godfrey, author of Conceptual Art (Art & Ideas) (1998), asserts that conceptual art questions the nature of art, a notion that Joseph Kosuth elevated to a definition of art itself in his seminal, early manifesto of conceptual art, "Art after Philosophy" (1969). The notion that art should examine its own nature was already a potent aspect of the influential art critic Clement Greenberg's vision of Modern art during the 1950s. With the emergence of an exclusively language-based art in the 1960s, however, conceptual artists such as Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and the English Art & Language group began a far more radical interrogation of art than was previously possible (see below). One of the first and most important things they questioned was the common assumption that the role of the artist was to create special kinds of material objects.
Through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, in popular usage, particularly in the UK, "conceptual art" came to denote all contemporary art that does not practice the traditional skills of painting and sculpture. It could be said that one of the reasons why the term "conceptual art" has come to be associated with various contemporary practices far removed from its original aims and forms lies in the problem of defining the term itself. As the artist Mel Bochner suggested as early as 1970, in explaining why he does not like the epithet "conceptual", it is not always entirely clear what "concept" refers to, and it runs the risk of being confused with "intention." Thus, in describing or defining a work of art as conceptual it is important not to confuse what is referred to as "conceptual" with an artist's "intention."
Read more about Conceptual Art: History, The Critique of Formalism and The Commodification of Art, Language And/as Art, Conceptual Art and Artistic Skill, Contemporary Influence, Controversy in The UK, Notable Examples of Conceptual Art, Notable Conceptual Artists, Further Reading
Other articles related to "conceptual art, art, conceptual, arts":
... by year of publication Ermanno Migliorini, Conceptual Art, Florence 1971 Klaus Honnef, Concept Art, Cologne Phaidon, 1972 Ursula Meyer, ed ... Conceptual Art, New York Dutton, 1972 Lucy R ... Lippard, Six Years the Dematerialization of the Art Object From 1966 to 1972 ...
1968, Fugate-Wilcox and his wife Valerie Shakespeare moved to New York City, when Conceptual Art was at its peak ... to his frustration about the state of the art world, Fugate-Wilcox picked a non-existent address on 57th Street, then the center of art in New York, and created the ... that I knew I had to do something to expose the political structure of the art scene." It was called "the conceptual artwork that ended conceptual art" by Nancy Foote in an article, "Ripping off the Art Magazines ...
... he was a pioneer of computer-based conceptual art, with the aim of trying to resist technological determinism and "state of the art" technology which might merely produce "state ... interactive artworks at the Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1983 he was invited by the French Ministry of Culture to intervene in art education, and was later appointed to a teaching ... École nationale supérieure d'art, Bourges, France ...
... Conceptual art became an important development in Contemporary art in the late 1960s, It delivered an influential critique on the status quo ... expanded and contracted during the late 1960s and for some, Conceptual art made a complete break with modernism ... because it is expressly involved in deconstruction of what makes a work of art, "art" ...
... Michael Corris is an artist, art historian and writer on art ... He is currently Professor and Chair of the Division of Art, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States ... Previously, Corris held the post of Professor of Fine Art at the Art and Design Research Center, Sheffield Hallam University (Sheffield, United Kingdom) ...
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