Conceptual Art Discuss the relation of Minimalism and Immateriality to Conceptual art.

Essay by nolejohnUniversity, Bachelor's March 2005

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Conceptual Art

"In Conceptual Art the idea of concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art"

-Sol Lewitt (From "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" 1967)

Conceptual art is a modern art practice in which the idea or ideas that a work expresses are considered its essential point, with its visual appearance being of secondary (often negligible) importance. It challenged traditional notions of an artwork's proper form through new uses of language, actions, and processes to open up artistic fields in unprecedented ways (Osborne 11). Viewers were encouraged to dynamically experience and respond to the art and become critics themselves. This groundbreaking art practice was not without a strong set of roots in other movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, and most importantly Minimalism.

Also paramount to the understanding of Conceptual Art is its inherent slant toward immateriality.

Minimalism

In the mid-1950's, artists began to shift their attention from the existential non-figurative paintings of Abstract Expressionism, which was at the forefront of formalist modernism praised by critic Clement Greenburg, to an interest in the ordinary, and a use of subject matter derived from the everyday world (Osborne 23-24). This shift would come to be known as "Pop Art", most notably associated with the New York artist Andy Warhol. Warhol's serial reproductions of everyday images such as Campbell's soup cans, Coke bottles, money, tabloid photos, and famous people like Marilyn Monroe served to reiterate his idea that works of art could be treated as commodities, in the same way as the actual cans of soup, soap pads, and bottles of coke would be. Warhol eventually...