Conceptual art is generally defined as art in which the idea is more important than the actual object or thing that is created.
It has a lengthy history and has taken on many shades but in the beginning, was largely a protest against traditional modes of art making and the “white cube” gallery system.
Conceptual artists did a lot of performance and also installations that used the traditional gallery space in unique ways.
In the 60s, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude completely wrapped Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art in fabric and rope.
French artist, Arman, filled a gallery in Paris from top to bottom with trash that he had found. At the other end of the spectrum, Andy Warhol filled a room at the Leo Castelli gallery with helium filled silver balloons and called it Silver Clouds. It made for a beautiful, ethereal experience for the gallery-goer and activated the entire space of the room.
Often, a traditional painting or sculpture is complete in every way. It is fully formed and ready for the viewer to enjoy. Such work is often concerned with colour, shape, materials, storytelling, composition, etc.
Works of conceptual art are seldom that way.
They are open in their interpretation and allow the viewer to mentally enter and “walk around in” the work to contribute to it.
Often what the viewer actually sees is pretty minimal and sometimes not even particularly attractive but potentially, the ingredients are there to stimulate a whole world of emotional or even spiritual activity.
In the 90s, British badboy artist, Damien Hirst, created the infamous Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, an actual tiger shark displayed in a glass cabinet filled with formaldehyde.
Such works require a lot of input from the viewer but because of this involvement, can allow for a highly personal and perhaps even profound experience.
Felix Gonzales Torres did a Portrait of Ross, a friend who had died of AIDS. It was a huge pile of wrapped candy in the corner of the gallery. The pile was the same weight as Ross and gallery-goers were encouraged to take pieces of candy from the pile. The piece was remarkably evocative of loss as the pile of candy slowly diminished each day.
I personally have had to come to terms with conceptual art because I am more and more drawn to making this idea-based work in my own art.
I like that it doesn’t insist that the viewer read it in any one way. In August, I did an outdoor installation in Wells, B.C., an old mining town just outside Barkerville. In one area there were large pieces of old mining equipment, rusting into the landscape.
They were quite beautiful as they sat amongst the wild greenery.
I spent a weekend painting directly on to a pile of rusting metal using colours and techniques to make it look like itself.
When I left, it looked like all the other metal, but actually had its own portrait painted directly on to its surface. Interpretation? Entirely open.
Conceptual art often elicits comments like, “Where’s the art?” “That’s not art,” or “Ugh!” Or it can trigger the profound.
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-submitted by Nora Curiston