"Conceptual Art Questions"
1). Without the viewer it couldn’t be conceptual art. Conceptual art means that the idea is more important than the artwork. The whole art piece is about what the viewers get out of it; the idea/meaning itself. Once the art is finished the artist has no control over the way a viewer perceives the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way.
2). Artists and viewers were so comfortable with the idea of “Modern Art” at the time, and so blinded by the true meaning of art itself (that no one may ever know) that seeing “The Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp the entire public found it to be inappropriate. But this “Readymade” artwork brought to the viewers a different perception, meaning, participation with art, and what is art?
3). An artist does not need to create a piece himself to have it be considered art; the specific features lies not in the work itself, but in the idea behind it. Readymade becomes the focus of a meditation on the relation between external things and our perception of them. Maybe art doesn’t need a definition; perhaps it just needs an opinion.
4). Artists/viewers were so caught up in the “Traditional form” (the style, and forms) that conceptual art became a violent reaction against such Modernist notions of progress in the arts at that point in time. Language played a role; modernist (traditional art) became a refined and hermetic discourse while conceptual art opened up into philosophy, linguistics, popular culture, etc.
5). “Conceptual art was, and is, a truly international phenomenon” (Page 6). I find this quote interesting because it says it all for conceptual art. This type of artwork really has no boundaries; where as most of other artwork has boundaries, specific styles, and certain forms. But conceptual art can be whatever the artist wants to portray, and what expressions and meanings the viewers gets out of the piece. This quote relates back to the question, “What is art?” I believe there will never ever be a true and exact definition of art, because art has no limits; no boundaries.
