Universal Principles of Art

19 CONCEPTUAL ART

IDEAS AS ART

An artwork can be simply an idea or something generated totally by an idea, an approach known as conceptual art. Although examples of such artworks go back at least to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp in the early twentieth century, conceptual art emerged as an identifiable movement only in the 1960s. In Art Forum, in 1967, American artist Sol Lewitt wrote, “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.”

STRATEGIES

• Imaginary works

The artist supplies a description of something ...