Conceptual Art Essay

Conceptual art is an avant-garde art form which began in the mid-1960s and was stimulated by Marcel Duchamp’s DADA movement and the minimalist movement. It focuses more specifically towards the concept behind the artwork rather than the aesthetics and physical product whilst embodying the notion that art can exist as an idea even with the absence of a physical object to represent its’ concept. It initially instigated when artists pushed the limits to minimalism and questioned the next reduction to art – would it be no art at all, or as it turned out to be, art which exists as an idea. Duchamp’s idea was that the art process and the emotional output was far more important than the final product, influenced the development of Conceptual art and allowed artists to document their works as an input to the final outcome. As Conceptual art is rarely linked to an object, it is associated with the acknowledgement of human actions and the effects, responses and consequences. Through the close study of Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty,’ George Segal’s ‘Walk, Don’t Walk,’ and Kenneth Dewey’s ‘Museum Piece,’ reveal the ideas of Duchamp’s DADA art in their respective forms of Conceptual art.

Conceptual Art emerged in the 1960s where the term was initially used by Henry Flynt, a musician and anti-art activist. However his initial use of the term ‘Concept Art’ referred to his philosophy of the vulnerabilities of logic and mathematics. Soon after, the term was implemented by the Art and Language group, directed by artist Joseph Kossuth. The group believed that Conceptual art was composed when the exploration of the idea of art succeeded the object itself. Furthermore, it was a reaction against Formalism; a study of art by comparing style and form...

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..., and adopted the ideas of Duchamp and his concept of art that exists as an idea. Additionally, Conceptual art has incorporated many of Duchamp’s technique used in DADA art, including whimsy, the experience of the audience, nonsense and irrationality. Marcel Duchamp is significant to the emergence of conceptual art as it was his ideas that manifested into a new, radical art movement.

Through Duchamp’s embrace of irrationality, chance and play, his approach to art demonstrated that the conceptual side of an artwork was far more important than the physical product, and even more important to the audience. After the minimalistic movement, it was his ideas that furthered and supported artists of the time to adopt a new artistic movement. It is because of this, why society has recognised Marcel Duchamp as being a major influence on the development of Conceptual Art.