Conceptual Art

Conceptual art is a form of art in which the idea or meaning of the work takes priority over how it was constructed and the materials used. An important conceptual artist, Sol LeWitt, defined this method in the 60s quoting: “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”. Toney Godfrey, author of ‘Conceptual art (art and ideas)’ suggests that conceptual art questions the foundations of art itself and wanted to challenge the assumption that the role of an artist was to create an attractive object out of materials. This is why conceptual art is so controversial as it challenges the viewer to understand the true meaning of the piece of art as opposed to labeling it ‘bad’ or ‘unworthy’. Some artists have even gone the extra length to leave instructions on how to view their work, such as John Baldessari (see bellow). Once the viewer can understand the form of conceptual art they can then recognize an important statement about society the artist is conveying. I look to experiment with this strategy in my work, by capturing images of no significant or technical attrition however integrating text within the image to highlight the concept. Theres a large relationship between conceptual art and language. A lot of conceptual pieces have captions, bold titles or is just made up on a selection of words or phases, for example Annette Lemieux's 'Where am I'.

Barbra Kruger

Barbra Kruger is an American conceptual artist working in New York and LA. Most of her work is of black and white found photography overlaid by words and phrases. Her images are so famous that the white text over red background is now a trademark to her work. A lot of her ideas centre around feminism, consumerism and society. Kruger juxtaposes her images with text criticising society and the power of the media. The 1980s photographs she uses sort of has conventions of an advertising poster, reflecting the control advertising has on the community. Her phrases such as "I shop, therefore I am" is her opinion on how robotic our culture is; if you like shopping you are human, if you cannot afford to shop then you are not. The interesting thing about her photographs is, without the text they do not portray any criticism or opinions. But with the text you can see how it makes sense. She uses her text to change the meaning of the images. Like in the photograph bellow, the text is reflecting her views on war and the army however without the text the image is just showing a boy and his mother. Kruger interestingly quoted about her own work: "If you and I think that we are not susceptible to these images and stereotypes then sadly we are deluded"

Research: John Baldessari

John Baldessari

Born 1931, Baldessari is a well-known American artist working with conceptual art and photography. He started off as a painter and didn’t focus on photography until the mid 1960s. In his work he integrated text to demonstrate the power of language and to push the boundaries of art.
Baldessari’s early work consisted of blank canvases with hand painted statements such as: “Suppose it was true after all? WHAT THEN?” Baldessari then progressed to use commercial font instead of hand written forms in his work in order to emphasize the meaning more then the text itself.


We can see this theory works within these two examples of his work, where on top the purpose
of the image is almost hiding behind the colour, italic font and lowercase letters. On the bottom Baldessari’s plain background and bland lettering stands out and catches the eye of the audience. These paintings are a response to the critical feedback of his paintings being a “private language” so Baldessari used plain text and photography to make his statements more clear.

In 1967 John Baldessari exhibited his ‘wrong’ series. He uses a selection of photographic images anchored by text. The most famous of which titled ‘wrong’ shows an image with poor composition juxtaposed by the text ‘wrong’ bellow the photograph. This image references a chapter on composition in a photography techniques book.
The irony of the word is what makes the image so appealing, just blatant judgement of the photograph. The message that Baldessari was trying to say in the image is why should we conform to conventional aspects of art or photograph, why does our work have to be judged? The interesting fact is that an idea cannot be wrong or right as it is executed as a personal response. John Baldessari once stated: "You don't want anyone to say 'You can't do that!' But you do get a lot of that in New York. One of the healthiest things about California is - 'Why not?'”

Balderssari's conceptual art approach consists of photographs with peoples faces blanked out by blocks of colour. He has removed the detail and important parts of the images to emphasise his statement with pop art influences.