Essay Sample on Art: The Conceptual Art Revolution

Art has always been arises out of previous art, pertinacious survival, and development of traditions. The succession of step from Impressionism, through Cubism, Matisse and Mondrian, up to Abstract Expressionism could be seen as a development of the means and possibilities of painting itself. The Minimal and Conceptual art from the 1970s through to the 1990s. Over these years art become a big revolution.

Conceptual art forms differed from the general background and practices in at least three different areas of art-making activity which were painting, sculpture, and photography. Conceptual art broke with traditional notions and uses various ways and forms, it was no longer necessary for paintings to be primarily coloured, flat, or for sculptures to be upright or have volume. It’s could be words, light, people, air, sound, refuse, multi-media installations and much else besides. In works that were generally receptive to mass-media, then, was not merely a set of art objects for visual delectation and assessment, but also like accumulating ideas that backwash in the larger context of our culture. During that period conceptual art emphasized ideas more. And it seemed more historical and critical approached. Conceptual art forms around cultural, political, and social content.

Conceptual artists were reacting against the visuality of the conventional art object in a different way. Their works show the rejection of visuality. The concept and idea are behind the purely visual style which is more important.

During sixties, artists tend to be reductive and austere in their way of presentation. For example, Robert Barry’s work projected the slides with typed words or short sentences. Lawrence Weiner painted short statement directly on the wall. In the works, the visual elements of an artwork art challenged, and obviously the text expands, and the contextual element becomes a focal point. The subject of the work becomes reflection on the conventions and it seems self-questioning about how it displayed and communicated. Somehow, conceptual art expanded criticizes the materiality of the art object. And increased emphasis on the thoughts, which broadest possibilities of public. It’s often use a context to display.

During the mid to late 1960, There were several conceptual artists like Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, in their works they were making of art in the very different way like they use form of written or printed texts, this kind of art grasp the special function of texts in the context of visual art. These contextual factors related to the cultural forms of language, and also use critical and theoretical writing directly. But the most notably work is made by Marcel Duchamp. In other words, all art after Duchamp is conceptual because art only exists conceptually.

Duchamp’s work is characterized a wide variety of media and explored of the boundaries of previous art. In his work the ideas instead of the objects; it’s a revolution of notion that effect remarkably the later generations. His notorious work “Fountain” was a manufactured urinal which is “readymade”. He is played with the relationship with the idea, object and vision. The reception of the Fountain into the museum made people think that the object is not “matter”, the thought matter. He is created the new thought of the “non-object”. The process to making art and the thought which is the artist try to emphasis not the object. The way he is display art-the readymade compare to the varieties visual art that come before which were anti-aesthetics and also very “new” for the audience. It was exaggerated the impact of these ideas on the community of later artists.

Some conceptual artists believed art exists in the artist’s mind and ideas not just in the object itself. Therefore produce objects and develop it that becomes pure ideas. Lawrence Weiner was translate the intellectual content with non-object, began to work in purely art context. He was trying to find out the relations between materials and ideas. He always uses words and phrases adhered to gallery walls and taking the forms of a short printed “statement” to represent an expansion of the notion of “sculptural materials”, and equivalent to the more technical proposition. His statements are distinguished by studied neutrality, produced by their linguistic form. During the 1970s and 80s, his works rapidly became more self conscious and graphically stylized. His work evolved from paper to the wall, from the particular space like a gallery to more public location. He’s even painted a statement or the context about social political and culture of the city on the walls of the streets. His installation work incorporated the public into the work.

For example, Joseph Kosuth was alone considered space, and thus by implication, materiality to be kind of irrelevant to his work. In fact, he attempts to put the concept behind his art work to the widest audience. And his ideas and art become more public. He used a stylistic or object based concern to influence his art. Kosuth was insistent that the object is irrelevant to art. He had practiced based on the idea. He had progressed from reality to idea, from image to abstraction. It becomes an idea and then an idea which obviously becomes infinitely circle. His famous works: “art as idea as idea” also is his art practice and creative process. Apparently he emphasized more about the concept in the art work then either reality or image. But the object always persists. In his work he uses different versions into the same physical object and emphasizing the conceptual relationships and disparities between it. It’s redefinition the visual image. Eventually, materiality is unavoidable. Kosuth’s philosophical conception lagged behind Weiner’s notion of language as sculptural material.

Weiner was keeping the conceptual aesthetics that struggling for direction. And in the same time his translation of intellectual content with non-object, began to work in purely art context. He’s trying to find out the relations between materials. He always uses words and phrases adhered to gallery walls. He was taking the forms of a short printed “statement” to represent an expansion of the notion of ‘sculptural materials’, and equivalent to the more technical proposition. His statements are distinguished by studied neutrality, produced by their linguistic form. During the 1970s and 80s, his works rapidly became more self conscious and graphically stylized. His work evolved from paper to the wall, from the particular space like a gallery to more public location. He’s even painted a statement or the context about social political and culture of the city on the walls of the streets. His installation work incorporated the public into the work.

Barry was concerned with visibility. And his work was invisible, yet emphatically material. He used invisible materials to draw attention to the method and style in which the matter has been redefined by different ways. So he has broken the traditional assumption of visibility.