As general condition
Conceptual art at the end of the 20th Century spread to become a general tendency, a resonance within art practice that became nearly ubiquitous. [13] Thus the widespread use of the term “post-conceptual” as a prefix to painting such as that of Gerhard Richter [14] and photography such as that of Andreas Gursky. [13] Benjamin Buchloh in Art After Conceptual Art points out that post-conceptual art is already emerging in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the photo-based appropriation art of Martha Rosler, Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman, Peter Nagy, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Barbara Rosenthal, and Dara Birnbaum.
The idea of post-conceptual art was clearly articulated by Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo in the early 1980s in New York City, [16] when within their Collins & Milazzo Exhibitions they brought to prominence a new generation of conceptual artists through their copious writings and curatorial activity. [17] It was their exhibitions and writings [18] [19] that originally fashioned the theoretical context for a new kind of neo (or post) conceptual art; one that argued simultaneously against Neo-Expressionism and The Pictures Generation. [20]
British philosopher and theorist of conceptual art Peter Osborne makes the point that "post-conceptual art is not the name for a particular type of art so much as the historical-ontological condition for the production of contemporary art in general...." Osborne first noted that contemporary art is post-conceptual in a public lecture delivered at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Villa Sucota in Como on July 9, 2010. Osborne's main thesis is that the convergence and mutual conditioning of historical transformations in the ontology of the artwork and the social relations of art space make contemporary art possible. [22]
Art is a diverse range of human activity and its resulting product that involves creative or imaginative talent generally expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that continue the challenging of boundaries that was already well underway in the 20th century. Diverse and eclectic, contemporary art as a whole is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform, organising principle, ideology, or "-ism". Contemporary art is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger contextual frameworks such as personal and cultural identity, family, community, and nationality.
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.
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.
Joseph Kosuth is an American conceptual artist, who lives in New York and London, after having resided in various cities in Europe, including Ghent and Rome.
Information art, which is also known as informatism or data art, is an art form that is inspired by and principally incorporates data, computer science, information technology, artificial intelligence, and related data-driven fields. The information revolution has resulted in over-abundant data that are critical in a wide range of areas, from the Internet to healthcare systems. Related to conceptual art, electronic art and new media art, informatism considers this new technological, economical, and cultural paradigm shift, such that artworks may provide social commentaries, synthesize multiple disciplines, and develop new aesthetics. Realization of information art often take, although not necessarily, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches incorporating visual, audio, data analysis, performance, and others. Furthermore, physical and virtual installations involving informatism often provide human-computer interaction that generate artistic contents based on the processing of large amounts of data.
Michael Corris is an artist, art historian and writer on art. He is professor emeritus of art, Division of Art, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States. Previously, Corris held the post of Professor of Fine Art at the Art and Design Research Center, Sheffield Hallam University. From 2005-6, he was a Visiting Professor of Art Theory at the Bergen Art Academy.
Robert C. Morgan is an American art critic, art historian, curator, poet, and artist.
Daniel Graham was an American visual artist, writer, and curator in the writer-artist tradition. In addition to his visual works, he published a large array of critical and speculative writing that spanned the spectrum from heady art theory essays, reviews of rock music, Dwight D. Eisenhower's paintings, and Dean Martin's television show. His early magazine-based art predates, but is often associated with, conceptual art. His later work focused on cultural phenomena by incorporating photography, video, performance art, glass and mirror installation art structures, and closed-circuit television. He lived and worked in New York City.
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit and tax-exempt organization, was established in 1967 to develop collaborations between artists and engineers. The group operated by facilitating person-to-person contacts between artists and engineers, rather than defining a formal process for cooperation. E.A.T. initiated and carried out projects that expanded the role of the artist in contemporary society and helped explore the separation of the individual from technological change.
Joseph Nechvatal is an American post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses.
Seth Siegelaub was an American-born art dealer, curator, author, and researcher. He is best known for his innovative promotion of conceptual art in New York in the 1960s and '70s, but was also a political researcher and publisher, textile history bibliographer and collector, and a researcher working on a project on time and causality in physics.
Neo-conceptual art describes art practices in the 1980s and particularly 1990s to date that derive from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These subsequent initiatives have included the Moscow Conceptualists, United States neo-conceptualists such as Sherrie Levine and the Young British Artists, notably Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in the United Kingdom.
Richard Milazzo is a critic, curator, publisher, independent scholar and poet from New York City. In the 1970s, he was the editor and co-publisher of Out of London Press. He is the co-founding publisher and editor of Edgewise Press. In the 1980s, under the rubric of Collins & Milazzo, he co-curated numerous Collins & Milazzo Exhibitions and co-wrote with Tricia Collins essays on art and art theory.
The Thing is an international net-community of artists and art-related projects that was started in 1991 by Wolfgang Staehle. The Thing was launched as a mailbox system accessible over the telephone network in New York feeding a Bulletin Board System (BBS) in 1991 before their website was launched in 1995 on the World Wide Web. By the late 1990s, The Thing grew into a diverse online community made up of dozens of members' Web sites, mailing lists, a successful Web hosting service, a community studio in Chelsea (NYC), and the first website devoted to Net Art: bbs.thing.net.
Peter Osborne is a British philosophy teacher who is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University, London. He is a former editor of the journal Radical Philosophy.
Steven Parrino (1958–2005) was an American artist and musician associated with energetic punk nihilism. He is best known for creating big modernist monochrome paintings that he violently slashed, torn or twisted off their stretchers. He died in a motorcycle traffic accident in Greenpoint, Brooklyn at the age of 46.
Tricia Collins is an American art critic, art gallerist and curator of contemporary art. She was half of the curatorial team Collins & Milazzo, with Richard Milazzo, who together co-published and co-edited Effects : Magazine for New Art Theory from 1982 to 1984. She later ran the art galleries Grand Salon, Tricia Collins Grand Salon, and Tricia Collins Contemporary Art in New York City until the year 2000.
Christine Kozlov was an American conceptual artist.
Effects: Magazine for New Art Theory was an American arts magazine. It was co-published and co-edited by Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo from 1983 to 1986 in New York City. All issues were offset-printed staple bound 27.7 x 21.3 cm.
