Conceptual ArtConceptualism

TOK Questions● Should art be beautiful?

● Is an artist always a craftsman?

● How important is the message behind an artwork?

● How important is it that the artists intention is perceived or understood by the audience?

What is art?

What does it mean?The term ‘conceptual art’ came into use in the late 1960s, it is used to describe artworks in which the concept (or idea) behind the artwork is more important than traditional aesthetic and material concerns (what it looks like or how it is made)

‘’The Art Story: Movements and styles in Modern Art.’’ Web. 01 Aprl 2015<http://www.theartstory.org/section_movements.htm>.

Conceptual art

pop artCubism

Minimalism

DADA

Impressionsm Surrealism

Joseph Beuys, Felt Suit, 1970

Conceptual artists do not set out to make a painting or a sculpture and then fit their ideas to that existing form. Instead they think beyond the limits of those traditional media, and then work out their concept or idea in whatever materials and whatever form is appropriate. They thus give the concept priority over the traditional media - hence conceptual art.

From this follows that conceptual art can be almost anything, but from the late 1960s certain prominent trends appeared such as performance (or action) art, land art and the Italian movement arte povera (poor art). Poor here meant using low-value materials such as twigs, cloth, fat, and all kinds of found objects and scrap.

Some conceptual art considered simply of written statements or instructions. Many artists began to use photography, film and video. Conceptual art was initially a movement of the 1960s and 1970s but has been hugely influential since.

Key ideas

● Conceptual artists link their work to a tradition of Marcel Duchamp, whose ‘Readymades’ had rattled the very definition of thework of art. LIke Duchamp before them, they abandoned beauty, rarity, and skill as measures of art.

Duchamp was a artist involved with DADA, an anti-rational, anti-art cultural movement, in New York City. Duchamp described his intent with the piece was to shift the focus of art from physical craft to intellectual interpretation.

‘Fountain, Marchel Duchamp, 1917

● Conceptual artists recognize that all art is essentially conceptual. In order to emphasize this, many of them reduced the material presence of the work to an absolute minimum.A tendency that some have referred to as the ‘’dematerialization’’ of art.

● 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.

Robert Rauschenberg

Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Raushenberg, 1953

In 1953 Robert Rauschenberg visited the loft of another artist named de Kooning. He requested one of his drawings in order to completely erase it. He believed that in order for this idea to become a work of art, the work had to be someone else’s and not his own. Although disapproving at first, de Kooning understood the concept and he handed over a piece of work that he would miss and that would be a challenge to erase entirely.

It took Rauschenberg over a month and an estimated 15 erasers to finish the work.

‘’ It’s not a negation, it’s a celebration, it’s just an idea’

● Conceptual artists were influenced by the brut simplicity of ‘Minimalism’, but they rejected to their embrace of using painting or sculpting as their media of artistic production. For conceptual artists, art need not look like a traditional work of art, or even take any physical form at all.

Sol LeWitt

Burial of a cube containing an object of importance but of no value, Sol Lewitt, 1968, photo.

The burial of the cube reportedly took place in a local garden, but these photographs are the only proof that the event actually took place. \Without seeing the event taking place, or knowing what is held within the cube, ‘buried’ cube relies on the idea, as opposed to a finished object.

In his own words: ‘’Once it is out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way.’’

● Many conceptual artists believed that the artist began the artwork and that the museum, gallery and the audience in some way completed it. This category is known as ‘institutional critique’, which can be understood as moving further away from object-based artworks but moving closer to expressing cultural values of society.

Damien Hirst

‘A Thousand Years’, Damien Hirst, 1990

Feeling the need to make something about something important. He decided to make a ‘life cycle in a box’. It took him over 2 years to plan the work.

Hirst explain that you can frighten people with death or an idea of their own mortality, or can actually give them vigour.

Other artists

● Joseph Beuys● Soll Lewitt● Robert Rauschenberg● Robert Smithson● Walter de Maria● Damien Hirst● Jenny Holzer● Joseph Holzer● Lawrence Weiner ● Yves Klein

and many more…..