The term conceptual art came into use I the 1960’s to describe artworks in which the concept (or idea) behind the art work is more important than traditional aesthetic and material concerns (what it looks like or how it is made).
Conceptual art does not set out to make a painting or sculpture and then fit their ideas to that existing form. Instead they think beyond the limits of those traditional medias, and then work out their cincept or idea in whatever materials and whatever from is appropriate.
Land art:
Land art was usualy documented in artworks using photographs and maps which the artist could exhibit in a gallery. Land artists also made land art in the gallery by bringing in materials from the landscape and using it to create.
Robert Smithson:
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his photography in relation to sculpture and land art.
Performance:
Its origins began in ‘Dada’ and ‘Futurism’ with Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp. Its influence later inspired the likes of Jackson Pollock and the ‘abstract expressionists’.
“At the heart of performance art is a strong social critique. It asks important questions about how we perceive the world around us and our place within it”. Frank Skinner.
Photography and film:
Many artists document the conceptual practice as an artefact on the event using the new form of art photography. This later in the 60’s moves into film and now into digital world.
Arte povera:
Translated means ‘poor art’. It was a move away from traditional materials such as oil paint, bronze and plaster and mover towards no conventional materials such as everyday liquids, soil, rags, redundant objects. Basically anything you can find that no longer has its original purpose. It origins came out of austerity after the second world war and the poverty that followed. Artist took to using unconventional materials as means of still making work and so it began.
Found object:
A found object is a natural or man made object found by an artist and kept because of some intrinsic interest the artist sees in it.
Sarah Lucas:
Sarah Lucas in an English artist, she works frequently employing visual puns and bawdy humour, photography and found object.
Art History 