Conceptual art

The conceptual art is a movement of the Contemporary art appeared in the years 1970.

Origins

The conceptual art is not a precise period of the contemporary art, nor a structured artistic movement or a group of Artiste S precise. This being, one can all the same allow oneself to in a strict sense go back the current to conceptual art of the term: between 1966 and 1972 (but there exist obviously precursors as well as follower).

One can go back the origin to this tendency with works like Carry-bottles (1914) or Fontaine (1917) of Marcel Duchamp, with paintings such as the series White square on white zone (1918) of Kasimir Malevitch.

Such works constitute according to some the purest form of art such as Emmanuel Kant defined it, or such as spoke about it Léonard de Vinci by affirming that art was “ cosa mental ”, a thing of the spirit.

The conceptual art does not worry seemingly more of know-how about the artist nor even of the idea that a work must be “finished” because the idea takes precedence over the realization: certain artists propose for example only drafts of what could be work or directions for use allowing each and everyone to carry out work, it is the idea which has " valeur" , not its realization. With the conceptual art, one assists, for the permière time in history of art, with a " expression artistique" who could actually do without the object.

In fact, most of the current Art can be described as “conceptual”.

Concerns

One too often confused the conceptual art with an astute activity developing around sending of elliptic messages not to insist on the analytical character of this art:

Valéry said that only reality in art it is art and AD Reinhardt which art is art-in-such an amount of-that art… Applied to painting that took the name of formalism, namely that the table should speak only about the table and although the first texts of the conceptual art were opposed to this formalism for better privileging the concept compared to the concerns on the shape and the composition of the table, one can however deny only this law, stated by Clement Greenberg, corresponded well to a autodéfinition of the work of art, which essentially will be the rule of the conceptual artists: for them also art should be only one exploration of itself.

In addition, in the annexation of its space, minimal art stuck to the setting in scene of the artistic object and called in question conventions which were generally attached to him.

One can consider that the conceptual art is a widening of these two concerns. Indeed the glance which analyzes initially the object then will circulate then towards its context of presentation, the conceptual ones made it relate not only to the redefinition of the artistic object and its environment architectural but also on social environment, ideological, even on its psychological and philosophical context.

In addition in his report/ratio with the producing industry of forms standards, minimal art had contributed much more at the end of the idealism modernism progressist than to the development of new forms in Article Donald Judd clearly said it since 1963: “Progress in art is surely not of strict order” and in 1967 (discussion with Lucy Lippard published in Art in America August 1967 July) " With form that' S neither geometric NOR organic would Be has great discovery' (To manage to create a form which is neither geometrical nor organic would be a great discovery).

This great discovery probably appears with the conceptual art for which Rene Denizot makes the following report in its text " limit of the concept" (International Opus April 70): “The conceptual art presenting art in the form of the concept is the topic par excellence of art since while carrying art with the concept, it makes it occur with the form that it is, in the form which it has ”.

Artists

Under the terms of this form, the conceptual artists then take a distance with regard to the object in the work of art; that leads to an artistic activity where the use of the language and its derivatives: (mathematical graphs, measurements of distances, indexing of years…) ends up being the requirement and often sufficient, with the existence of a work. However when these artists use the language for his capacity to serve a demonstration as well as possible, that does not want to say in so far as one can compare them to critics or writers because, although the speech on art replaces the object, matter does not reside solely in the idea of art, but in the practical application of this idea.

The conceptual artists never set up a homogeneous group even if some of them were joined together first once by Mel Bochner in its exposure (very conceptual by its operating process): Working Drawings and Other Visible Things one Paper not Necessary Meant to Be Viewed ace Art in School off Visual Arts of New York in 1966, then by Seth Siegelaub in exposures which were visible only in the pages of a catalog. All in all, two tendencies continued as of the beginning: the first chooses the interest which the Mathématiques cause, the Sémiologie, the Philosophie or the Sociologie, while the second privilege proposals having a strong poetic load been dependant on the Imaginaire and the transitory .

Some conceptual artists

Quotations

  • "Any art (after Duchamp) is (by nature) conceptual because art exists only conceptuellement." Joseph Kosuth.

  • " What art has of commun run with logic and mathematics, it is that it is a tautology; i.e. the " idea of art" (or the " work of art") and art are the same evaluated thing and can êre as art without it being necessary to leave the context of art as vérification." Joseph Kosuth.
  • " The only requirement of art is addressed to Article art is the definition of the art." Joseph Kosuth.
  • " I try to paint what I do not know. It appears tedious to me to paint what announces what I know already… I try to lean me on things perhaps on which the others did not reflect yet: the vacuum, to paint a painting which is not un." Robert Barry.

External bonds

  • Site conceptual-art
  • Website " Thomas Dreher: Intermedia Art" on conceptual L´art

Random links:Chinatown (Boston) | Gillian Florence | Weak coupling | Turn of Saint-Saving | Eta Centauri | Liste_des_épisodes_crépusculaires_de_zone