As a student, I was taught that art history is a linear progression from one movement, or “-ism”, to the next. Terms like Romanticism, Cubism, and Modernism package art into defined boxes that are easy to understand, but too often, have the net-negative effect of excluding other important, co-existing narratives.
Thankfully, those ways of looking at art are over! Art can’t be contained: in reality, movements and styles ping-pong all over the place, with threads that appear across time, cultures, and different mediums.
One of the most enduring of these threads, spanning the 20th and 21st Centuries, is Conceptual art.
How do you know you’re looking at a work of Conceptual art?
“The Emperor’s New Clothes” immediately comes to mind
Your first thought is, “huh?”
You think it’s the fire extinguisher 🧯
Conceptual art requires extra work because it’s a mind-game. But it’s also inclusive, because the artist is proposing an idea for you to consider. You’re invited to the party! Please RSVP yes.
THE OG CONCEPTUAL ARTWORK
In 1917, the French artist Marcel Duchamp was invited to participate in THE exhibition of Modern art in New York at the time. He purchased a urinal from a plumbing store, placed it on a pedestal, and signed it R. Mutt.
Why should you care?
Duchamp introduced a new idea: why can’t a piece of plumbing be art if the artist says it is?
Machine-made objects are often as beautiful as a traditional work of art (there’s a reason you want the Sub-Zero fridge).
By placing a urinal in an art show, Duchamp invited us to think differently.
The artist may decide that it’s art, but it’s the viewer who gets to decide what it means.
Q. So, what does it mean?
Hint: Duchamp placed the urinal upside down.
A. It’s a vagina. (You can figure out the rest for yourself, but here’s a visual comparison for reference.)
Show me the 💰 (collect with caution ⚠️)
Is there a market for Conceptual art? YES!
Will you be able to retire on the sale of your Conceptual art collection? NO!
Duchamp’s OG urinal disappeared from view in 1917. He released another version in 1964, which sold for $1.7 million at Sotheby’s in 1999. But this pales in comparison to the price achieved by Jeff Koons’ Rabbit (1986), which sold for $91 million at auction in 2019. While Koons is more of a neo-Pop artist (more on that in the next Art Snack), Rabbit is indebted to Duchamp’s urinal, because it is a replica of a commercially available children’s balloon. Some Conceptual art works are highly collectable and realize prices well into the millions when traded, but there are wild discrepancies within the genre.
Having fun?
CHEATSHEET:
Conceptual art themes to suit every type of OCD personality!
Text-based art: for the word nerd ✍️
This work is classic Conceptual art in that Holzer posits a tricky sentence: she talks about potential meaning nothing until it’s realized. But the sculpture, an LED display, disappears before it’s realized, its potential is constantly denied. Of course, it’s up to you to interpret the sentence as you see fit––that’s just how I read it.
Image-based art: for the film buff 🎞
Baldessari was one of the first artists to appropriate images from the media and movies to show us the artifice behind those scenes. By obscuring faces with price stickers, Baldessari directs our eye to notice other information. The nuns, the cross on the nurse’s uniform, and the beach boys holding the bikini babe are assembled in such a way that makes you think, medieval Christian altarpiece!
Numbers-based art: did someone say “algorithm”? 🔢
Since the late 70s, Gaines has overlaid both mathematical and color systems onto his signature images of trees, which are broken down into sections on a grid. These systems serve to interrupt the eye as it searches for meaningful, representative imagery. Gaines uses the strategies of Conceptual art to critique the eye-mind connection.
Time-based art: for you morning alarm people ⏰
González-Torres explores the concept of “doubles,” in which a thing can be simultaneously similar and different. Like Duchamp’s urinal, the clocks are store-bought objects. Set to the same time, one clock eventually slows down faster than the other due to their batteries, which expire at different rates. The clocks are a poetic metaphor on life and love, as they refer to the artist and his lover, who were diagnosed with AIDS, and eventually died of the disease.
Appropriation: calling all copycats 👯♀️
Levine copies art by male artists, faithfully re-making the object, sometimes with new materials. Like a traditional sculpture, her urinal is cast bronze, not porcelain. Levine’s work has an inherent Feminist bias because it’s no longer by a male artist. For Levine, this idea is more important than the art object itself. Appropriation of an existing image or object is a key aspect of Conceptual art.
Let’s Link Up 🔗
Conceptual art is
…bananas (literally)
…so easy you can do it yourself?
If you’re enjoying this biweekly bite of art world knowledge, but want extra cookies, click to learn about the Collectors’ Club.