Conceptual art, sometimes simply called
Conceptualism, is
art in which the
concept(s) or
idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional
aesthetic and material concerns. Many works of conceptual art, sometimes called
installations, may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to American artist
Sol LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
Tony Godfrey, author of
Conceptual Art (Art & Ideas) (1998), asserts that conceptual art questions the nature of art, a notion that
Joseph Kosuth elevated to a definition of art itself in his seminal, early manifesto of conceptual art, "Art after Philosophy" (1969). The notion that art should examine its own nature was already a potent aspect of the influential art critic
Clement Greenberg's vision of Modern art during the 1950s. With the emergence of an exclusively language-based art in the 1960s, however, conceptual artists such as
Joseph Kosuth,
Lawrence Weiner and the English
Art & Language group began a far more radical interrogation of art than was previously possible (see below). One of the first and most important things they questioned was the common assumption that the role of the artist was to create special kinds of
material objects. Through its association with the
Young British Artists and the
Turner Prize during the 1990s, in popular usage, particularly in the
UK, "conceptual art" came to denote all
contemporary art that does not practice the traditional skills of
painting and
sculpture. It could be said that one of the reasons why the term "conceptual art" has come to be associated with various contemporary practices far removed from its original aims and forms lies in the problem of defining the term itself. As the artist
Mel Bochner suggested as early as 1970, in explaining why he does not like the epithet "conceptual", it is not always entirely clear what "concept" refers to, and it runs the risk of being confused with "intention." Thus, in describing or defining a
work of art as conceptual it is important not to confuse what is referred to as "conceptual" with an artist's "intention."