Knowra Conceptual art Conceptual art Conceptual art is an art practice in which the idea or concept takes precedence over the creation of a traditional physical artwork. Its works may take the form of instructions, documents, performances, or objects.
Artistic idea : An organizing thought or proposition that gives an artwork its direction and significance. In conceptual art, the idea can constitute the work rather than merely guide its making.
Marcel Duchamp : A French-American artist whose readymades challenged assumptions about authorship, craft, and what can count as art. His readymades supplied a major precedent for treating selection as an artistic act.
Lawrence Weiner : An American artist known for text works that state actions or conditions without requiring their physical execution. His practice makes the possibility of an unrealized work explicit.
One and Three Chairs : A 1965 installation by Joseph Kosuth pairing a chair, its photograph, and a dictionary definition of chair. It stages competing forms of representation as the subject of the artwork.
Minimalism : An art movement that uses reduced forms, industrial materials, and direct spatial presence. Minimalism foregrounds the physical object that conceptual art often demotes.
Instruction-based art : Artworks whose realization depends on written or spoken directions that can be followed by others. Instructions let an artwork persist as an idea even when no single object is definitive.
Dada : An avant-garde movement that used absurdity and anti-art gestures to challenge established cultural values. Dada's attacks on artistic convention shaped conceptual art's suspicion of traditional craft.
On Kawara : A Japanese conceptual artist known for date paintings, telegrams, and other works tracking time and existence. His serial works turn routine records into sustained conceptual structures.
Wall Drawing #1 : Sol LeWitt's 1968 wall drawing, executed according to written instructions using straight lines in four directions. The work separates its repeatable concept from the labor of each installation.
Performance art : Art in which live or staged bodily action is a principal medium. Performance art centers enacted presence, while conceptual art may center the proposition or record.
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