Synopsis

Conceptual art is a movement that prizes ideas over the formal or visual
components of art works. An amalgam of various tendencies rather than a tightly
cohesive movement, Conceptualism took myriad forms, such as performances,
happenings, and ephemera. From the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s Conceptual
artists produced works and writings that completely rejected standard ideas of art.
Their chief claim - that the articulation of an artistic idea suffices as a work of art -
implied that concerns such as aesthetics, expression, skill and marketability were all
irrelevant standards by which art was usually judged. So drastically simplified, it
might seem to many people that what passes for Conceptual art is not in fact "art" at
all, much as Jackson Pollock's "drip" paintings, or Andy Warhol's Brillo
Boxes (1964), seemed to contradict what previously had passed for art. But it is
important to understand Conceptual art in a succession of avant-garde movements
(Cubism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, etc.) that succeeded in self-
consciously expanding the boundaries of art. Conceptualists put themselves at the
extreme end of this avant-garde tradition. In truth, it is irrelevant whether this
extremely intellectual kind of art matches one's personal views of what art should be,
because the fact remains that Conceptual artists successfully redefine the concept
of a work of art to the extent that their efforts are widely accepted as art by
collectors, gallerists, and museum curators.

Key Ideas

Conceptual artists link their work to a tradition of Marcel Duchamp, whose

Readymades had rattled the very definition of the work of art. Like Duchamp before
them, they abandoned beauty, rarity, and skill as measures of art.
Conceptual artists recognize that all art is essentially conceptual. In order to
emphasize this, many Conceptual artists reduced the material presence of the work
to an absolute minimum - a tendency that some have referred to as the
"dematerialization" of art.
Conceptual artists were influenced by the brutal simplicity of Minimalism, but they
rejected Minimalism's embrace of the conventions of sculpture and painting as
mainstays of artistic production. For Conceptual artists, art need not look like a
traditional work of art, or even take any physical form at all.
The analysis of art that was pursued by many Conceptual artists encouraged them
to believe that if the artist began the artwork, the museum or gallery and the
audience in some way completed it. This category of Conceptual art is known as
'institutional critique,' which can be understood as part of an even greater shift away
from emphasizing the object-based work of art to pointedly expressing cultural
values of society at large.
Much Conceptual art is self-conscious or self-referential. Like Duchamp and other
modernists, they created art that is about art, and pushed its limits by using minimal
materials and even text.

Most Important Art

One and Three Chairs (1965)

Artist: Joseph Kosuth
A physical chair sits between a scale photograph of a chair and a
printed definition of the word "chair." Emblematic of Conceptual
art, One and Three Chairs makes people question what
constitutes the "chair" - the physical object, the idea, the
photograph, or a combination of all three. Joseph Kosuth once
wrote, "The art I call conceptual is such because it is based on an
inquiry into the nature of art. Thus, it is...a thinking out of all the
implications, of all aspects of the concept 'art.'" One and Three
Chairs denies the hierarchical distinction between an object and a
representation, just as it implies a conceptual work of art can be
 object or representation in its various forms. This work harks back
to and also extends the kind of inquiry into the presumed priority
of object over representation that had been earlier proposed by
the Surrealist Rene Magritte in his Treachery of Images (1928-9),
with its image of a pipe over the inscription "Ceci n'est pas un
pipe" (This is not a pipe).
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Beginnings

One of the most important precedents for Conceptual art was the work of Dada artist
Marcel Duchamp, who in the early twentieth century established the idea of the
"Readymade" - the found object that is simply nominated or chosen by the artist to
be a work of art, without adaptations to the object beyond a signature. The first and
most famous true Readymade was Fountain (1917), which was nothing more than a
porcelain urinal, reoriented ninety degrees, placed on a stand and signed and dated
under the alias "R. Mutt." Duchamp described his Readymades as "anti-retinal," and
dismissed the popular conception that works of art need demonstrate artistic skill. In
the 1950s, long after several of his original Readymades had been lost, Duchamp
re-issued Fountain and other Readymades for the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York.
These acts sparked a resurgence of interest in his work, which not only brought the
emergence of Neo-Dada led by John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper
Johns, but also rekindled a widespread interest in idea-based art throughout the
contemporary art world.

Fluxus and Minimalism to Conceptualism

While the late 1950s witnessed modern art's progressive shift from Abstract
Expressionism to Neo-Dada and Pop, the late 1960s witnessed a similar shift, only
this time from Fluxus and Minimalism to Conceptualism. Fluxus began in the early
sixties, and has many affinities with Dada. Embracing "flux", or change, as an
essential element of life, Fluxus artists aimed to integrate art and life, using any
found objects and sounds, simple activities and situations as stimuli. George
Maciunas, Allan Kaprow, and composer John Cage are important Fluxus figures
who impacted Conceptual art.

Adding to Conceptual art's diverse genealogy, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert
Morris and other Minimalist artists who emerged in the mid-1960s extended
modernist abstraction by embracing repetition, formal simplification, and industrial
fabrication of their artworks. Judd and others rejected much that was traditional in
creating works that occupied space differently, often on a scale too large for a
pedestal or home, and usually made of nontraditional artistic materials like bricks or
sheets of steel, the production of which was outsourced. A number of burgeoning
artists during this time paid close attention to the paradigm shifts inherent in Fluxus
and Minimalism, seeing that a so-called work of art was not dependent upon the
object/work itself, and that it could therefore exist chiefly as an idea. Most saw their
works in direct defiance of the art market, with its promotion of artistic personalities
and rare and original "masterpieces."

LeWitt's "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art"

In 1967, Sol LeWitt published "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" (considered by many

to be the movement's manifesto), in which he wrote: "What the work of art looks like
isn't too important. It has to look like something if it has physical form. No matter
what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the process of
conception and realization with which the artist is concerned." The notion of placing
concept before object, and the value of realization over any aesthetic concerns
importantly contradicted the theories and writings of formalist art critics like Clement
Greenberg and Michael Fried. Their work rather focused chiefly on the examination
of objects, materials, colors and forms - had helped to define the aesthetic criteria of
the preceding generation of artists.