1945) presents a photograph of a chair, a physical chair and a dictionary definition of a chair and asks, which is the real chair? The physical chair could be considered a reproduction of the definition, as is the photograph a reproduction of the physical chair. He explained, 'In Conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work … all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair.' LeWitt’s 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' (1967), published in the widely read magazine 'Artforum,' helped solidify some of the tenets shared by many Conceptual artists. Rather than merely responding to our perceptions of the colours red and white, we are forced to think about our conceptions of 'red' and 'white' and how they are delimited by language. In this piece he subverts that tendency by placing the names of the colours on the piece. In the 1960s Sol LeWitt (1928– 2007) felt that colour distracted from the idea of art by drawing attention to art’s mere physical properties. For Conceptual artists, Duchamp proved that art is not defined by the qualities of particular objects, but by the discourse surrounding them as works of art-discourse generated by artists, critics, and art historians, and by museums, galleries, and art publications. These objects became art simply because Duchamp chose to call them art, and he had the authority to do so because the art world considered him an artist. Duchamp’s ready-mades-found objects that he exhibited as art-defied all traditional notions of art: they were not beautiful, they did not express anything personal about the artist, they were not original or unique objects, they had not been crafted by the artist. The importance of Duchamp cannot be underestimated, particularly for young American artists who were looking for an alternative to the dominance of New York’s Abstract Expressionism in the years following the Second World War.

They are not interested in craft and form, but in the definition of art in general. You’re doing it right! As explained in Phaidon’s The Art Museum, the world’s most comprehensive exhibition of fine art to be collected and presented in book format (each page is its own gallery room!), Conceptual Art “is not meant to be looked at aesthetically, but to be thought about intellectually.” In the following excerpt, we present 9 distinct approaches to this mind-boggling movement to see how different artists force our chin into our hands, and have us either scratching our heads, exclaiming “eureka!” or (most probably) pretending to get it in like, a really profound way.įollowing the precedent set by Marcel Duchamp, Conceptual artists 'dematerialize' art in order to emphasize the importance of the ideas and concepts behind it. If you’re looking at a Conceptual work of art and look like this:

Instant artist drawing projects