Art As Idea, The Roots Of Conceptual Art

POSTMODERNISM IN ART: AN

INTRODUCTION

Art as Idea: the roots of conceptual art

Tutor: James Clegg

# 12v3: The lecture

Put tables and chairs in a formal arrangement within a room.

Put on a slide.

Invite people to a lecture about conceptual art.

Wait for 2 hours.

Carl Sagan (1972)Plaque for Pioneer space probe.

the roots of conceptual art The assault on ‘Culture’

Critique of Everyday Life, Dada’s legacy, CoBrA, Situationism, Gutai,, Fluxus and Happenings.

(Interlude: The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel De Certeau.)

Art as IdeaYves Klein, Pier Manzoni and Robert

Rauschenberg. Idea as Art: Conceptual Art and beyond...

Sol Lewitt, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Art & Language, Words, Victor Burgin and Mary Kelly.

Art as Idea: the roots of conceptual art

Questioning the Value of Art

The Critique of Everyday Life (1947), Henri Lefebvre.

“The true critique of everyday life will have as its prime object the separation between the human (real and possible) and bourgeois decadence, and will imply a rehabilitation of everyday life” (p.127)

Dada’s legacy...

Have the expressionists fulfilled our expectations of an art that burns the essence of life into our flesh?

No! No! No!

Life appears as a simultaneous muddle of

noises, colours and spiRITUAL rhythms, which is taken

unmODifieD into Dadaist art, with

ALL THE sensational sCREAMs and fevers

of its reckless everyday psyche and with all its brutal reality.

Dada’s legacy...

“The name of ‘artist’ is an insult. The denomination ‘art’ demolishes equality between men” (Heartfield and Grosz in Godfrey 1998, p. 48)

to be an artist only by accident

Fountain (1917)

CoBrA (1948-51)

Asger Jorn (1959) Le Canard Inquietant

Situationists: Détournement

Jorgen Nash (1972) Decaptitated Little Mermaid

Dérive (drift)

Gutai (1954~1974)

Saburu Murakami (1956)

Sadamasa Motonaga

Fluxus (1963~ 1978)

Shigeko Kubota (1965) Vagina Painting. Performed in New York.

Bandaged Orchestra during the Fluxus Festival arranged by Yoko Ono at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York (1965).

George Brecht Re-enactment.

Allan Kaprow - happenings

Detail of a poster for Fluids (with score), Allan Kaprow, 1967.

Photo: Nancy Popp/LA Art Girls 2008

Remake in 2008 by the LA Art Girls, Museum of contemporary art Los Angeles.

Allan Kaprow - happenings “The Happenings are the one art activity

that can escape inevitable death-by-publicity to which all other art is condemned, because, designed for a brief life, they can never be overexposed; they are dead, quite literally, every time they happen.”(Kaprow [1966] 2003, p.59)

Art as Idea: the roots of conceptual art

Art as Idea

Yves Klein (1928-62)

[Detail] from a Single Day Newspaper [spoof] (1960). The caption read “The Painter of space Hurl Himself into the Void”.

Pier Manzoni (1933-63)

Artist’s Shit (1961)

Base of the World (1961)

Robert Rauschenberg (1926 -2008)

Erased De Kooning (1953)

Art as Idea: the roots of conceptual art

Art as Idea: Conceptual Art and beyond...

Sol LeWitt (1928-2007)

142, Metropolotan Museum of Art

“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 make the art.” (Le Witt [1967] 2003, p. 846)

“The idea itself, even if not made visual is as much a work of art as any finished product” (Ibid. 848)

On Kawara (1932 – “I am still alive”)

Date paintings begun in January 1966.

Joseph Kosuth

Titled (Art as Idea as Idea) (1967)

Joseph Kosuth

One and Three Chairs (1965)

Art & Language

Index 01, Documenta 5, Kassel 1972

Words...Mel Bochner [backgound] (2008)

Robert Smithson (1966) A Heap of Language

Victor Burgin

Possession (1976)

“By 1973 Victor Burgin had come to see ‘pure’ Conceptual art as the last gasp of formalism.” (Godfrey 1998, p.255) He was more interested in the way conceptual art had opened up new ways of questioning the ideologies underlying representation.

Mary Kelly

Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document: Documentation IV: Transmitional Objects, Diary and Diagram, mixed media, 1976

Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document: Documentation VI: Prewriting Alphabet Exerque & Diary, mixed media, 1976-1977

Jape-O-Meter

References De Certeau, M (1988) The Practice of Everyday Life. London, University

of California Press. Godfrey, T (1998) Conceptual Art. London, Phaidon Press Limited. Home, S (1988) The Assault on Culture. Edinburgh, AK Press. Huelsenbeck, R ([1920] 2003) First German Dada Manifesto in W and

Paul Wood (eds) Art in Theory: 1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Kaprow, A (2003) Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. London,

University of California Press. Kosuth, J ([1969] 1991) Art After Philosophy. Massachusetts Institute of

Technology. Lefebvre, H ([1948] 2000) The Critique of Everyday Life. London, Verso. Le Witt, S ([1967] 2003) Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, in Art in Theory:

1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Marcus, G ([1989] 2001) Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth

Century. London, Faber and Faber. Yoshihara, J ([1958] 2003) Gutai Manifesto, in W and Paul Wood (eds) Art

in Theory: 1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Pp. 698-701.