Conceptual Art

1960-1975 - Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works of the artist Sol LeWitt 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: “ In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of 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, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", Artforum, June 1967. ” For the layman, this quotation highlights a key difference between a conceptualist installation and a traditional work of art - that the conceptualist's work may require little or no physical craftsmanship in its execution, whereas traditional art is distinguished by requiring physical skill and the making of aesthetic choices. As Tony Godfrey has put it, after Joseph Kosuth's definition of art, conceptual art is an art which questions the very nature of what is understood as art. The first text in which the category "concept art" appeared was written by Henry Flynt around 1961-1963. The original essay can be found in the following link [1] The inception of the term in the 1960s referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art. Through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, its popular usage, particularly in the UK, developed as as synonym for all contemporary art that does not practise the traditional skills of painting and sculpture.[2] This last remark is not quite precise since it assumes that the YBA are a group of conceptual artists. Conceptual art is a form of art and an international movement established by artists and art institutions (critics, curators, etc) in the 1960's and 70's. YBA in this case is a term coined for artists that may or may not work under the influence of conceptual art but nonetheless are not directly affiliated in any term with the conceptual art programme of the 1960s or 70s.