Conceptual Art

Conceptual Art: 1960s-1970s

Conceptual Art movement was developed in the 1960s and 1970s to release art from gallery and pedestal boundaries, so that the artistic idea presided over the art object. It emerged as a reaction against formalism and was a term first employed by New York art critic Clement Greenberg. However, by the mid-1970’s it had assumed a new meaning when Joseph Kosuth and the English Art and Language group decided to disregard the art object and explore the artist’s social, philosophical and psychological status instead. As a result, the art object became neither an aim nor an end in itself.

Marcel Duchamp could be classed as an early conceptual artist since his ‘readymades’ were famous for resisting formal classification. The conceptual art movement displayed an aversion towards galleries and museums as the natural adjudicators of art because conceptual art was more reliant on the discourse surrounding it, and the work could only be known and appreciated through additional texts or displayed objects that weren’t necessarily objects of art themselves. Lawrence Weiner summarised the ethos of conceptual art by saying, “Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it."

Whilst the movement is said to span the years between 1967 and 1978, its influence can be felt throughout art history. Even the Young British Artists (YBAs) like Damien Hirst that gained reputation in the 1990s can be viewed to demonstrate conceptual elements, since despite the work’s reliance on the art object to provide the impact, the object is not the artwork and has not needed any artistic expertise in its invention.

Our Art on Demand gallery contains the following conceptual art prints, posters and canvases: