Conceptual art is art Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions, and/or intellect. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a in which the concept A concept is a cognitive unit of meaning—an abstract idea or a mental symbol sometimes defined as a "unit of knowledge," built from other units which act as a concept's characteristics. A concept is typically associated with a corresponding representation in a language or symbology[citation needed] such as a single meaning of a term(s) or idea In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images. Many philosophers consider ideas to be a fundamental(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however the boundaries between these terms overlap. Installation art can be either temporary or permanent. Installation artworks have been constructed in exhibition spaces such as museums and galleries, as well as public- and private spaces, of the artist Sol LeWitt Sol LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism. LeWitt rose to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he preferred instead of "sculptures") but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, and painting may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions.^[1] This method was fundamental to LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:

Tony Godfrey, author of "Conceptual Art" (1998), asserts that conceptual art questions the nature of art^[3], 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 Clement Greenberg was an influential American art critic closely associated with Modern art in the United States. In particular, he promoted the abstract expressionist movement and was among the first critics to praise the work of painter Jackson Pollock'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 Joseph Kosuth is an American conceptual artist, Lawrence Weiner Lawrence Weiner is a central figure of conceptual art, whose work often takes the form of typographic texts. He lives and works in New York and Amsterdam and the English Art & Language Art & Language is a shifting collaboration among conceptual artists that has undergone many changes since its inception in the late 1960s. Their early work, as well as their journal Art-Language, first published in 1969, is regarded as an important influence on much conceptual art both in the United Kingdom and in the United States 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.^[4][5][6]

Through its association with the Young British Artists Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom, most (though not all) of whom attended Goldsmiths College in London. The term Young British Artists is derived from shows of that name staged at the Saatchi Gallery from 1992 onwards, which and the Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised art award. Although it represents all media, and during the 1990s, in popular usage, particularly in the UK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land, "conceptual art" came to denote all contemporary art Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced since World War II that does not practise the traditional skills of painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects may be used. In art the term describes both the act and the result which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, and sculpture Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials, typically stone such as marble, metal, glass, or wood, or plastic materials such as clay, textiles, polymers and softer metals. The term has been extended to works including sound, text and light.^[7] 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 Mel Bochner is an American conceptual artist. Mr. Bochner received his BFA in 1962 and honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2005 from the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. He lives in New York City 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."

History

The French artist Marcel Duchamp Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works — the readymades The term found art—more commonly found object or readymade—describes art created from the undisguised, but often modified, use of objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function. Marcel Duchamp was the originator of this in the early 20th century, for instance. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was Fountain Fountain is a 1917 work by Marcel Duchamp. It is one of the pieces which he called readymades , because he made use of an already existing object—in this case a urinal, which he titled Fountain and signed "R. Mutt". The art show to which Duchamp submitted the piece stated that all works would be accepted, but Fountain was not actually (1917), a standard urinal basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York (it was rejected).^[8] In traditional terms, a commonplace object such as a urinal cannot be said to be art because it is not made by an artist or with any intention of being art, nor is it unique or hand-crafted. Duchamp's relevance and theoretical importance for future "conceptualists" was later acknowledged by US artist Joseph Kosuth Joseph Kosuth is an American conceptual artist in his 1969 essay, "Art after Philosophy," when he wrote: "All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually."

In 1956, recalling the infinitesimals Infinitesimals have been used to express the idea of objects so small that there is no way to see them or to measure them. The word infinitesimal comes from a 17th century Modern Latin coinage infinitesimus, which originally referred to the "infinite of G.W. Leibniz, quantities which could not actually exist except conceptually, the founder of Lettrism Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory. The movement has its theoretical roots, Isidore Isou Isidore Isou , born Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist. He was the founder of Lettrism, an art and literary movement which owed inspiration to Dada and Surrealism, developed the notion of a work of art which, by its very nature, could never be created in reality, but which could nevertheless provide aesthetic rewards by being contemplated intellectually. Also called Art esthapériste ('infinite-aesthetics'). Related to this, and arising out of it, is excoördism, the current incarnation of the Isouian movement, defined as the art of the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

In 1961 the term "concept art," coined by the artist Henry Flynt Henry Flynt is a philosopher, avant-garde musician, anti-art activist and exhibited artist often associated with Conceptual Art, Fluxus and Nihilism in his article bearing the term as its title, appeared in a Fluxus Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning, architecture, and design. Fluxus is often publication.^[9] However it assumed a different meaning when employed by Joseph Kosuth Joseph Kosuth is an American conceptual artist and the English Art and Language Art & Language is a shifting collaboration among conceptual artists that has undergone many changes since its inception in the late 1960s. Their early work, as well as their journal Art-Language, first published in 1969, is regarded as an important influence on much conceptual art both in the United Kingdom and in the United States group, who discarded the conventional art object in favour of a documented critical inquiry into the artist's social, philosophical and psychological status. By the mid-1970s they had produced publications, indexes, performances, texts and paintings to this end. In 1970 Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects, the first dedicated conceptual art exhibition, was mounted at the New York Cultural Center.^[10]

The Critique of Formalism and the Commodification of Art

Conceptual art emerged as a movement during the 1960s. In part, it was a reaction against formalism In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content. In visual art, formalism is a concept that posits that as it was then articulated by the influential New York New York City, the most populous city in the United States, is known for its status as a financial, cultural, transportation, and manufacturing center, and for its history as a gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, it is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both state and art critic An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites. Art collectors and patrons often utilize the advice of art critics as a way to enhance their appreciation of the art they are viewing Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg was an influential American art critic closely associated with Modern art in the United States. In particular, he promoted the abstract expressionist movement and was among the first critics to praise the work of painter Jackson Pollock. According to Greenberg Modern art Modern art refers to artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with followed a process of progressive reduction and refinement toward the goal of defining the absolutely essential, formal In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content. In visual art, formalism is a concept that posits that nature of each medium. Those elements that ran counter to this nature were to be reduced. The task of painting, for example, was to define precisely what kind of object a painting truly is: what makes it a painting and nothing else? As it is of the nature of paintings to be flat objects with canvas surfaces onto which colored pigment is applied, such things as figuration Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational, 3-D perspective Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface (such as paper), of an image as it is seen by the eye. The two most characteristic features of perspective are that objects are drawn: illusion and references to external subject matter were all found to be extraneous to the essence of painting, and ought to be removed.^[11]

Some have argued that conceptual art continued this "dematerialization" of art by removing the need for objects altogether^[12], while others, including many of the artists themselves, saw conceptual art as a radical break with Greenberg's kind of formalist Modernism. Later artists continued to share a preference for art to be self-critical, as well as a distaste for illusion. However, by the end of the 1960s it was certainly clear that Greenberg's stipulations for art to continue within the confines of each medium and to exclude external subject matter no longer held traction.^[13]

Conceptual art also reacted against the commodification Commodification is the transformation of goods and services (or things that may not normally be regarded as goods or services) into a commodity of art; it attempted a subversion of the gallery or museum as the location and determiner of art, and the art market as the owner and distributor of art. Lawrence Weiner Lawrence Weiner is a central figure of conceptual art, whose work often takes the form of typographic texts. He lives and works in New York and Amsterdam said: "Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it." Many conceptual artists' work can therefore only be known about through documentation which is manifested by it, e.g. photographs, written texts or displayed objects, which some might argue are not in themselves the art. It is sometimes (as in the work of Robert Barry, Yoko Ono Yoko Ono is a Japanese-American artist, musician, author and peace activist, also known for her marriage to John Lennon and her groundbreaking work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking. Ono brought feminism to the forefront through her music, and is also considered a pioneer and major influence of the 1970s new wave genre. She is a supporter, and Weiner himself) reduced to a set of written instructions describing a work, but stopping short of actually making it—emphasising that the idea is more important than the artifact.

Language and/as Art

Language was a central concern for the first wave of conceptual artists of the 1960s and early 1970s. Although the appearance of text in art was by no means novel, it was not until the 1960s that the artists Lawrence Weiner Lawrence Weiner is a central figure of conceptual art, whose work often takes the form of typographic texts. He lives and works in New York and Amsterdam, Edward Ruscha^[14], Joseph Kosuth Joseph Kosuth is an American conceptual artist, Robert Barry, and the English Art & Language Art & Language is a shifting collaboration among conceptual artists that has undergone many changes since its inception in the late 1960s. Their early work, as well as their journal Art-Language, first published in 1969, is regarded as an important influence on much conceptual art both in the United Kingdom and in the United States group began to produce art by exclusively linguistic means. Where previously language was presented as one kind of visual element alongside others, and subordinate to an overarching composition In the visual arts — in particular painting, graphic design, photography and sculpture — composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art, as distinct from the subject of a work. It can also be thought of as the organization of the elements of art according to the principles of art (see for example Synthetic Cubism Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between), the conceptual artists used language in place of brush and canvas, and allowed it to signify in its own right.^[15] Of Lawrence Weiner's works Anne Rorimer writes, "The thematic content of individual works derives solely from the import of the language employed, while presentational means and contextual placement play crucial, yet separate, roles."^[16]

The Australian philosopher and theorist of conceptual art, Peter Osborne, suggests that among the many factors that influenced the gravitation toward language-based art, of vital importance for conceptualism was the turn to linguistic theories of meaning in both Anglo-American analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century. In the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, the overwhelming majority of university philosophy departments identify themselves as "analytic" departments. Analytic, and structuralist and post structuralist Continental philosophy during the middle of the twentieth century. This linguistic turn "reinforced and legitimized" the direction the conceptual artists took.^[17] Osborne also notes that the early conceptualists were the first generation of artists to complete degree-based university training in art.^[18]

Conceptual Art and Artistic Skill

"By adopting language as their exclusive medium, Weiner, Barry, Wilson, Kosuth and Art & Language were able to sweep aside the vestiges of authorial presence manifested by formal invention and the handling of materials."^[19]

An important difference between conceptual art and more "traditional" forms of art-making goes to the question of artistic skill. Although it is often the case that skill in the handling of traditional media plays little role in conceptual art, it is difficult to argue that no skill is required to make conceptual works, or that skill is always absent from them. John Baldessari, for instance, has presented realist pictures that he commissioned professional sign-writers to paint; and many conceptual performance artists (e.g. Stelarc, Marina Abramovic) are technically accomplished performers and skilled manipulators of their own bodies. It is thus not so much an absence of skill or hostility toward tradition that defines conceptual art as an evident disregard for conventional, modern notions of authorial presence and individual artistic expression (or genius).

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