Conceptual Art


Book Description

Conceptual Art has set out to undermine two concepts associated with art - the production of objects to look at, and the act of contemplative looking itself. This introduction explores the reasons why the new avant-garde chose to produce such work.




Philosophy and Conceptual Art


Book Description

The fourteen prominent analytic philosophers writing here engage with the cluster of philosophical questions raised by conceptual art. They address four broad questions: What kind of art is conceptual art? What follows from the fact that conceptual art does not aim to have aesthetic value? What knowledge or understanding can we gain from conceptual art? How ought we to appreciate conceptual art? Conceptual art, broadly understood by the contributors as beginning with Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades and as continuing beyond the 1970s to include some of today's contemporary art, is grounded in the notion that the artist's 'idea' is central to art, and, contrary to tradition, that the material work is by no means essential to the art as such. To use the words of the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, 'In conceptual art the idea of the concept is the most important aspect of the work . . . and the execution is a perfunctory affair'. Given this so-called 'dematerialization' of the art object, the emphasis on cognitive value, and the frequent appeal to philosophy by many conceptual artists, there are many questions that are raised by conceptual art that should be of interest to analytic philosophers. Why, then, has so little work been done in this area? This volume is most probably the first collection of papers by analytic Anglo-American philosophers tackling these concerns head-on. Contributors Margaret Boden, Diarmuid Costello, Gregory Currie, David Davies, Peter Goldie, Robert Hopkins, Matthew Kieran, Peter Lamarque, Dominic McIver Lopes, Derek Matravers, Elisabeth Schellekens, Kathleen Stock, Carolyn Wilde, and the 'Art & Language' group.




Between Modernism and Conceptual Art


Book Description

Art critic and artist Robert C. Morgan proposes that the Postmodernism popular in the 1980s failed to address, and even misrepresented and suppressed, conceptual art while marketing the notion of "Neo- conceptualism," a concept the author rejects as insignificant for advanced art. He argues instead that it is in the tension between Modernism and Conceptual Art that vitality in art was in the 1980s, and is still, found. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Conceptual Art


Book Description

What is art? Must it be a unique, saleable luxury item? Can it be a concept that never takes material form? Or an idea for a work that can be repeated endlessly? Conceptual art favours an engagement with such questions. As the variety of illustrations in this book shows, it can take many forms: photographs, videos, posters, billboards, charts, plans and, especially, language itself. Tony Godfrey has written a clear, lively and informative account of this fascinating phenomenon. He traces the origins of Conceptual art to Marcel Duchamp and the anti-art gestures of Dada, and then establishes links to those artists who emerged in the 1960s and early 1970s, whose work forms the heart of this study: Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, Victor Burgin, Marcel Broodthaers and many others.




A LOOK AT CONCEPTUAL ART


Book Description

1.INTRODUCTION Imagine a profession that is thought to have no limits, but the job itself can set its limits. Whether the field of this profession is human and everything that belongs to human beings, you have in your hands your self and the fact that you live in the world. Let these seemingly small facts be interpreted by being shaped, and now I ask, are there not explicit or hidden symbols in the thought you have formed? Here, in Conceptual Art, he tells us that we can apply art and the symbols in the work to everything, anywhere. However, it should be known that if you are going to make Conceptual Art, your infrastructure must be ready. Where do we find the factors that make up thought that has been transformed into a form that we can apply everywhere? Isn't it the symbols that are involved in the work done voluntarily or involuntarily? The events we experience form the final state of our psychology. When the artist puts aside the "concern about where and how" and only makes form, this form will be nothing at first, but then it will turn into many things, this process can even make us someone else later on. People can find the latest state of their psychology in every action they take to get rid of the troubles of life. We can find ourselves in every movie we watch in every article we read. It's about how we look. Art does this to us, and when we go outside, it places many facts that we think are nothing. So why should the artist be stuck with dogmas during the production and transmission of his work? The artist can see his wish to transfer in a tree stump. Isn't it natural to consider the ceremony of throwing out a garbage disposal as an act of getting rid of the excess in our lives and presenting it to the audience as a work of art? Well, wouldn't the artist displaying this interpretation offer us symbols at some point? Although the artist hides this, maybe not in the first reading, but after that he will definitely give it away. Is the artist's most natural state his primitive state? Everything is hidden in primitiveness. The foundations of many formations that we consider new today are hidden in the "Cro-Magnon", the first race of the "Homo Sapiens" subspecies. Maybe it was magic, maybe it was the ingredients of the magic, maybe it was the ceremony. Regardless of how these ceremonies are, they are the factors that naturally make up the theater. Doesn't it point to the earth's art that they have made on the mountain, the stone and the soil? Of course, there are many effects. Let's take a subject, the first invention of primitive man was a needle. Let's say you make your clothes with this invention. Doesn't the position of the person that they think while making this dress affect the dress they have seen and experienced until that day? Is it not possible to place images that distinguish the owner of the relevant dress from other people? Yes, it is possible and very normal action. Now, let's fictionalize this person superficially, there is a tribe and the owner of the dress is the leader of the tribe, and the person who makes the dress is the man he loves, the father of the children he has given birth to. The only woman of the tribe who sews a dress will inevitably place images that distinguish it from the other men of the tribe. We can even find the distinguishing feature in the differences in the seams hidden in the dress. This has influenced fashion, painting and many other branches of art. He disciplined all the arts within himself. Of course, his thoughts and dreams during production are scenarios. It is fiction and he is a screenwriter himself. Dreaming is the most natural impulse and often a life support unit that cannot be inhibited. It has been scientifically proven that even animals dream. The dream is a fiction. The human being, who is more developed than the animal, knows the way of conveying this fiction. The "must have" is the type of person who sets the rules. So it is human who can lift it. Let him choose his own presentation as he constructs and shapes what he imagines. Whatever the material is, let him do it just for art, for himself or to give a message to people, without worrying about color and balance. The artist, who makes conceptual art, contains his own truth that hides all the elements, no matter where he conveys and expresses. This truth is hidden in icons. The purpose of this research is to convey the existence of this fact to the reader.




Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity


Book Description

An examination of the origins and legacy of the conceptual art movement.




One and Five Ideas


Book Description

In One and Five Ideas eminent critic, historian, and former member of the Art & Language collective Terry Smith explores the artistic, philosophical, political, and geographical dimensions of Conceptual Art and conceptualism. These four essays and a conversation with Mary Kelly—published between 1974 and 2012—contain Smith's most essential work on Conceptual Art and his argument that conceptualism was key to the historical transition from modern to contemporary art. Nothing less than a distinctive theory of Conceptual and contemporary art, One and Five Ideas showcases the critical voice of one of the major art theorists of our time.




Conceptual Art


Book Description

This landmark anthology collects for the first time the key historical documents that helped give definition and purpose to the conceptual art movement. Compared to other avant-garde movements that emerged in the 1960s, conceptual art has received relatively little serious attention by art historians and critics of the past twenty-five years—in part because of the difficult, intellectual nature of the art. This lack of attention is particularly striking given the tremendous influence of conceptual art on the art of the last fifteen years, on critical discussion surrounding postmodernism, and on the use of theory by artists, curators, critics, and historians. This landmark anthology collects for the first time the key historical documents that helped give definition and purpose to the movement. It also contains more recent memoirs by participants, as well as critical histories of the period by some of today's leading artists and art historians. Many of the essays and artists' statements have been translated into English specifically for this volume. A good portion of the exchange between artists, critics, and theorists took place in difficult-to-find limited-edition catalogs, small journals, and private correspondence. These influential documents are gathered here for the first time, along with a number of previously unpublished essays and interviews. Contributors Alexander Alberro, Art & Language, Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Gregory Battcock, Mel Bochner, Sigmund Bode, Georges Boudaille, Marcel Broodthaers, Benjamin Buchloh, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, Luis Camnitzer, John Chandler, Sarah Charlesworth, Michel Claura, Jean Clay, Michael Corris, Eduardo Costa, Thomas Crow, Hanne Darboven, Raúl Escari, Piero Gilardi, Dan Graham, Maria Teresa Gramuglio, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Roberto Jacoby, Mary Kelly, Joseph Kosuth, Max Kozloff, Christine Kozlov, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Lee Lozano, Kynaston McShine, Cildo Meireles, Catherine Millet, Olivier Mosset, John Murphy, Hélio Oiticica, Michel Parmentier, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Mari Carmen Ramirez, Nicolas Rosa, Harold Rosenberg, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Jeanne Siegel, Seth Siegelaub, Terry Smith, Robert Smithson, Athena Tacha Spear, Blake Stimson, Niele Toroni, Mierle Ukeles, Jeff Wall, Rolf Wedewer, Ian Wilson




Systems We Have Loved


Book Description

By the early 1960s, theorists like Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, and Barthes had created a world ruled by signifying structures and pictured through the grids of language, information, and systems. Artists soon followed, turning to language and its related forms to devise a new, conceptual approach to art making. Examining the ways in which artists shared the structuralist devotion to systems of many sorts, Systems We Have Loved shows that even as structuralism encouraged the advent of conceptual art, it also raised intractable problems that artists were forced to confront. Considering such notable art figures as Mary Kelly, Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, and Rosalind Krauss, Eve Meltzer argues that during this period the visual arts depicted and tested the far-reaching claims about subjectivity espoused by theorists. She offers a new way of framing two of the twentieth century’s most transformative movements—one artistic, one expansively theoretical—and she reveals their shared dream—or nightmare—of the world as a system of signs. By endorsing this view, Meltzer proposes, these artists drew attention to the fictions and limitations of this dream, even as they risked getting caught in the very systems they had adopted. The first book to describe art’s embrace of the world as an information system, Systems We Have Loved breathes new life into the study of conceptual art.




Words to Be Looked At


Book Description

A critical study of the use of language and the proliferation of text in 1960s art and experimental music, with close examinations of works by Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, John Cage, Douglas Huebler, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, La Monte Young, and others. Language has been a primary element in visual art since the 1960s—in the form of printed texts, painted signs, words on the wall, recorded speech, and more. In Words to Be Looked At, Liz Kotz traces this practice to its beginnings, examining works of visual art, poetry, and experimental music created in and around New York City from 1958 to 1968. In many of these works, language has been reduced to an object nearly emptied of meaning. Robert Smithson described a 1967 exhibition at the Dwan Gallery as consisting of “Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read.” Kotz considers the paradox of artists living in a time of social upheaval who use words but chose not to make statements with them. Kotz traces the proliferation of text in 1960s art to the use of words in musical notation and short performance scores. She makes two works the “bookends” of her study: the “text score” for John Cage's legendary 1952 work 4'33”—written instructions directing a performer to remain silent during three arbitrarily determined time brackets—and Andy Warhol's notorious a: a novel—twenty-four hours of endless talk, taped and transcribed—published by Grove Press in 1968. Examining works by artists and poets including Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, George Brecht, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Jackson Mac Low, and Lawrence Weiner, Kotz argues that the turn to language in 1960s art was a reaction to the development of new recording and transmission media: words took on a new materiality and urgency in the face of magnetic sound, videotape, and other emerging electronic technologies. Words to Be Looked At is generously illustrated, with images of many important and influential but little-known works.