Conceptual

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Scope note
Refers broadly to a variety of art created in the 1960s and 1970s; for earlier art emphasizing the idea rather than the object, use "conceptual art (art genre)." Critiquing the concept of art as commodity, the style Conceptual is characterized by an emphasis on communicating an idea and the artist's intent, rather than the production of the artwork itself, often including documentation referring to the creation process, such as maps, photographs, and notes. A genre of art in which the ideas or concepts that a work expresses or refers to are considered to be its defining characteristic, and the finished material result, if it exists at all, is regarded primarily as a form of documentation rather than as the art work. The genre emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, arising at virtually the same time in North America, Europe and Latin America, and helping to inspire the acceptance of nontraditional media such as photographs, architectural drawings and performance art as art of equal status as traditional painting and sculpture. It directly inspired the medium of artists' books as an individual type of art. The term entered common art parlance through an article by Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" published in Artforum in 1967.
Conceptual
Accepted term: 29-Apr-2024