CategoriesStyles and Movements
Conceptual Art
Art of the 1960s and 1970s in which the idea behind a work matters more than its look, often carried by language, instructions or documents.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for Conceptual Art are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Marcel Duchamp's readymades had already suggested that an artist's choice could count for more than skill of hand. From the mid-1960s many artists went further. Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs (1965) set a real chair beside a photograph of it and a dictionary definition. Yoko Ono's Grapefruit (1964) is a book of instructions for imagined or performed works. Sol LeWitt wrote instructions for wall drawings that others could execute, and Lawrence Weiner declared that a work need not be built at all.
The results often look plain: typed pages, photographs, lists, lettering on a wall. Much of this art questioned the systems around it. Hans Haacke polled museum visitors on political questions, and in Brazil Cildo Meireles printed messages on returnable Coca-Cola bottles and returned them to circulation (1970). John Baldessari burned his earlier paintings the same year. Look for the rule or system behind what is shown.