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'.