Conceptual art

"Compared to other neo-avant-garde movements that emerged during the 1960s, conceptual art is conspicuous by virtue of the lack of serious discussion by art historians and critics over the last two decades. This gap in the reception is particularly ironic given the tremendous influence conceptual art has had on subsequent artistic developments, on the critical discussion surrounding the concept of postmodernism, and on the recognition and use, more generally, of various forms of theory by artists, curators, critics, and historians."

"Well sure, my sculptures are floor pieces. Each one, like any area on the surface of the earth,, supports a column of air that weighs – what is it? – 14.7 pounds per square inch. So in a sense, that might represent a column. It’s not an idea, it’s a sense of something you know, a demarked place. Somehow I think I always thought of it going that way, rather than an idea of a narrowing triangle going to the center of the earth... I have nothing to do with conceptual art. I’m not interested in ideas. If I were interested in ideas, I’d be in a field where what we think in is ideas... I don’t really know what an idea is. One thing for me is that if I can frame something in language, I would never make art out of it. I make art out of things which cannot be framed in any other way. (December 1969, talking with the audience)"

"the price of Conceptual Art's entry into the polite society during the 70s was surrender of its abrasiveness and anomalousness. By the middle of the decade much of what had been the Conceptual Art movement was transformed into a 'radically responsible' publicity through appropriation of the methods of semiology."

"Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing."

"Concept art is first of all an art of which the material is concepts, as the material of e.g. music is sound. Since concepts are closely bound up with language, concept art is a kind of art of which the material is language."

"Great art – or good art – is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different. There's boring conceptual art and there's boring traditional art. Great art is if you can't stop thinking about it, then it becomes a memory."

"The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more."

"The main qualifications to the lesser position of painting is that advances in art are certainly not always formal ones."

"The main virtue of geometric shapes is that they aren't organic, as all art otherwise is. A form that's neither geometric or organic would be a great discovery."

"I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but if I were to accept this business of conceptual art I would have no reason to exist."

"The general ignorance of the visual arts, especially their theoretical bases, deplorable even in the so-called intellectual world; the artist’s well-founded despair of ever reaching the mythical “masses” with “advanced art”; the resulting ghetto mentality predominant in the narrow and incestuous art world itself, with its resentful reliance on a very small group of dealers, curators, critics, editors, and collectors who are all too frequently and often unknowingly bound by invisible apron strings to the “real world’s” power structure—all of these factors may make it unlikely that conceptual art will be any better equipped to affect the world any differently than, or even as much as, its less ephemeral counterparts."

"Conceptual Art in the broadest sense was a kind of laboratory for innovations in the rest of the century. An unconscious international energy emerged from the raw materials of friendship, art history, interdisciplinary readings and a fervor to change the world and the ways artists related to it."

"We are still spellbound by a tradition that arranged psychological faculties hierarchically, relegating ‘sensuousness’ — that is, perception — to a lower position in comparison to higher, reflective functions of reason and understanding. The most advanced versions of ‘conceptual art’ still follow this tradition. By refusing to base themselves in sensuously perceptible distinctions between works of art and other objects, these works seek to avoid reducing art to the realm of sense perception."

"Conceptual Art is a sounding instrument between printed words, luminous writings, and letters scrawled in a hasty nervous instinctive calligraphy."

"By adopting language as their exclusive medium, Weiner, Barry, Wilson, Kosuth and Art & Language were able to sweep aside the vestiges of authorial presence manifested by formal invention and the handling of materials"

"Not only were the minds of artists formed by the university; in the same mold were formed those of the art historians, the critics, the curators, and the collectors by whom their work was evaluated. With the rise of Conceptual art, the classroom announced its final triumph over the studio."

"Roy Ascott... powerfully demonstrates the significant intersections between conceptual art and art and technology, exploding the conventional autonomy of these art historical categories."

"After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations."

"Conceptual art, more than all previous types of art, questions the fundamental nature of art. Unhappily, the question is strictly limited to the exclusive domain of fine art. There is still potential of it enabling an examination of all that surrounds art, but in reality, conceptual artists are dedicated only to exploring avant-garde aesthetic problems."

"If we are the best, it is only fair that they imitate us."

"I do not mind objects, but I do not care to make them."

"Language is the most formless means of expression. Its capacity to describe concepts without physical or visual references carries us into an advanced state of abstraction."

"In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work . . . all planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art."

"In conceptual art the idea or the 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. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive; it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman."

"Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach."

"All of the significant art of today stems from Conceptual art. This includes the art of installation, political, feminist and socially directed art."

"... the first Cubist painting might be said to have attempted to evince some outlines as to what visual art is, whilst, obviously, being held out as a work of visual art. But the difference here is one of what shall be called 'the form of the work'. Initially what conceptual art seems to be doing is questioning the condition that seems to rigidly govern the form of visual art -that visual art remains visual."

"The price of Conceptual Art's entry into the polite society during the 70s was surrender of its abrasiveness and anomalousness. By the middle of the decade much of what had been the Conceptual Art movement was transformed into a 'radically responsible' publicity through appropriation of the methods of semiology."

"It was no doubt as much in a spirit of opportunism as of catholic solidarity that the first issue of Art-Language was given the subtitle 'The Journal of Conceptual Art'. Art & Language was never a broad church, but within the wider grouping which Conceptual Art suggested, the publication of Art-Language served to rally those unwilling to accept the traditional division of labour according to which 'artists' delegated responsibility for the meaning and interpretation of their work to 'critics'."

"To talk of a blank painting is not simply to conceive of an empty canvas. On the contrary, the typical blank painting is a canvas made blank through the application of paint ... It is not possible that this surface should exclude all possibility of figuration or association."

"The blank painting cannot be painted in good faith unless it presents itself as the only painting to be painted - unless blankness is the only significant property painting can be though to possess."

"The idea of an 'image' or 'icon' as a loaded cultural entity was almost never considered in the (fabulous) heyday of conceptual art."

"Those who seek moral or intellectual refuge in irony are liable to become ironical spectacle themselves. The potency of irony is that, once inaugurated, it is endless; once necessary, it is interminably so. The irony of irony-as-refuge is that it is a closure only for its victims. We proceed, therefore, ironically, in the principled understanding that there is no refuge in this, that our speech will shortly become its own next victim."

"The process was designed like that: my performance partner and I were standing opposite each other at a distance of about three meters. While reading the text, with arms straight up and slightly apart (palms outward), we gradually raised our arms in a stylized gesture of a traditional intercessory prayer iconographically referring to the classical image of the Virgin Hodegetria. The incense was burning. A whitish trickle of sweet smoke was slowly stretching towards the ceiling, emphasizing the sacredness of the two-voiced hosanna repeated over and over again: Art is a Business; Business is an Art. Art is a Business; Business is an Art. Art is a Business; Business is an Art; Art is a Business; Business is an Art.... A rhythmic, monotonous sound."

"A marker of post-urban tendencies in contemporary society, to a certain extent, is the ever-increasing interest in archaic practices of clan-tribal identification: tattoos, scarification, piercing, various types of body deformation, implantation and branding. Modern subcultures are no longer limited solely to slang, graffiti, or image. This social vector is not a random and temporary phenomenon. Rather, on the contrary, human nature, the archetypal nature compressed by artificial boundaries, seeks a way out."