Michael Max Asher was a conceptual artist, described by The New York Times as "among the patron saints of the Conceptual Art phylum known as Institutional Critique, an often esoteric dissection of the assumptions that govern how we perceive art." Rather than designing new art objects, Asher typically altered the existing environment, by repositioning or removing artworks, walls, facades, etc.
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work are prioritized equally to or more than traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art 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:
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.
Joseph Heinrich Beuys was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and, with Heinrich Böll, Johannes Stüttgen, Caroline Tisdall, Robert McDowell, and Enrico Wolleb, created the Free International University for Creativity & Interdisciplinary Research (FIU). He previously in his talks and performances also formed The Party for Animals and The Organisation for Direct Democracy. He was a member of a Dadaist art movement Fluxus and singularly inspirational in developing of Performance Art, called Kunst Aktionen, alongside Wiener Aktionismus that Allan Kaprow and Carolee Schneemann termed Art Happenings. Today, internationally, the largest performance art group is BBeyond in Belfast, led by Alastair MacLennan who knew Beuys and like many adapts Beuys's ethos.
Daniel Buren is a French conceptual artist, painter, and sculptor. He has won numerous awards including the Golden Lion for best pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1986), the International Award for best artist in Stuttgart (1991) and the prestigious Premium Imperiale for painting in Tokyo in 2007. He has created several world-famous installations, including "Les Deux Plateaux"(1985) in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais-Royal, and the Observatory of the Light in Fondation Louis Vuitton. He is one of the most active and recognised artists on the international scene, and his work has been welcomed by the most important institutions and sites around the world.
Marcel Broodthaers was a Belgian poet, filmmaker, and visual artist.
Hans Haacke is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of Institutional Critique.
Benjamin Heinz-Dieter Buchloh is a German art historian. Between 2005 and 2021 he was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art in the History of Art and Architecture department at Harvard University.
Georg Paul Thomann was purported to be a renowned Austrian conceptual artist of the late 20th century. In reality, he was the fictitious creation of the Austrian art group monochrom who started working on his biography in the summer of 2000.
Relational art or relational aesthetics is a mode or tendency in fine art practice originally observed and highlighted by French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud. Bourriaud defined the approach as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." The artist can be more accurately viewed as the "catalyst" in relational art, rather than being at the centre.
The Wide White Space gallery was an art gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. It opened on the ground floor of the house known as "Het Bootje" in Antwerp's Plaatsnijdersstraat in Autumn 1966. Early exhibitions included works by Dr Hugo Heyrman and Panamarenko. In its first years the gallery hosted many of the leading lights of the European art scene. The gallery was an initiative of Anny De Decker and Bernd Lohaus. It closed in 1976. During its existence the gallery showed work by artists such as Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Christo, Dan Flavin, Gotthard Graubner, Edward Kienholz, Bruce Naumann, Richard Long, Piero Manzoni, Gerhard Richter, Dieter Roth, Bernard Schultze, Niele Toroni, Günther Uecker, Victor Vasarely and Andy Warhol. Wide White Space worked particularly closely with Joseph Beuys, In 2012 Anny De Decker was honoured with the ART COLOGNE prize of €10,000 for her work with Wide White Space Gallery. For a more comprehensive overview see the corresponding German Wikipedia page.
The Biennale de Paris is a noted French art festival, established in 1959. In 1983, the organization ceased functions, until its reestablishment in 2000 with the first exhibition of the new era occurring in 2004.
Marian Goodman is owner of the Marian Goodman Gallery, a contemporary art gallery opened in Manhattan, New York in 1977. Goodman has been called one of the most respected and influential gallerists of contemporary art in the world. She is known for introducing European artists like Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, and Marcel Broodthaers to the United States and has represented a number of important artists including Steve McQueen, Thomas Struth, Pierre Huyghe, Thomas Schütte, Lothar Baumgarten, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Tacita Dean, Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Chantal Akerman, Niele Toroni, Gabriel Orozco, Maurizio Cattelan, Giuseppe Penone, Giovanni Anselmo, Jeff Wall, Rineke Dijkstra, and William Kentridge. Marian Goodman gained prominence in the art world in the 1970s and 1980s, a time when few women worked in this sector.
The term Context art was introduced through the seminal exhibition and an accompanying publication Kontext Kunst. The Art of the 90s curated by Peter Weibel at the Neue Galerie im Künstlerhaus Graz (Austria) in 1993 (02.10.–07.11.1993).
The Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques (IHEAP) is a post-graduate art school based in Paris for research and experimentation in art.
Orchard was an artist-run exhibition and event space located at 47 Orchard Street in New York's Lower East Side from 2005-2008. The gallery was run as a for-profit limited liability corporation founded for the project. The partners included artists, filmmakers, critics, art historians, and curators. Orchard was among early contemporary art projects and galleries that moved onto Orchard and generally the Lower East Side below Delancey Street along with Miguel Abreu Gallery, Reena Spaulings, and Scorched Earth. Brandon Joseph noted, "the Orchard 'project' treaded a fine—and perhaps ultimately impossible—line between self-reflexivity and self-complicity, which could veer at times into self-promotion."
The art exhibition Bilderstreit – Widerspruch, Einheit und Fragment in der Kunst seit 1960 was a retrospective in the Rheinhallen in Cologne from 8 April 1989 to 28 June 1989 and was held by the Museum Ludwig shortly before the German reunification.
The John Gibson Gallery was a contemporary art gallery in New York City, in operation from November 1967 to 2000, and founded by John Gibson. Early on, the gallery specialized in selling contemporary monumental–sized sculptures.
Maria Eichhorn is a German artist based in Berlin. She is best known for site-specific works and installations that investigate political and economic systems, often revealing their intrinsic absurdity or the extent to which we normalize their complex codes and networks. She represented Germany at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
Herman J. Daled was a Belgian art collector and radiologist.
Dan Levenson is a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, California. He works in painting, sculpture, installation, performance and video.
