Arty Debate — The concept or the craft: Art as a pretentious idea, Art as aesthetic beauty?

5th Nov 2009

Con­cept Comes First:

IT’S 1917 and Duchamp presents a piece of con­cep­tual art for an exhi­bi­tion that claims to present all work sub­mit­ted. It is named ‘Foun­tain’ but in real­ity it is just a uri­nal and appar­ently is not art either. It is rejected from the exhi­bi­tion and later lost. The uri­nal is now con­sid­ered to be one of the most influ­en­tial pieces of mod­ern art of all time.

The argu­ment for the valid­ity that con­cep­tual art is a notable art form is one that has been debated for decades. Damien Hirst, known for his sus­pended dead ani­mals, has recently hung his paint­ings in the tra­di­tional Wal­lace Col­lec­tion. He has been met with immea­sur­able abuse yet remains the wealth­i­est liv­ing artist. JMW Turner was crit­i­cised for his rad­i­cal new meth­ods of paint­ing but his name now reflects one of the most pres­ti­gious con­tem­po­rary art com­pe­ti­tions in the world.

Con­cep­tual art is a micro­cosm of soci­ety. It demon­strates change, which is not always imme­di­ately liked. It dis­plays not a final prod­uct, which is expected, but the process taken to get there. It is enig­matic and thus wrongly accused of being illog­i­cal. It ques­tions what art is and acknowl­edges its flaws; it is inse­cure and unsta­ble and it is this, which the mod­ern audi­ence can­not com­pre­hend. With so much in today’s world being under con­stant scrutiny, the idea of con­cep­tu­al­ism may be crit­i­cally panned but it is a nec­es­sary art form in that it doc­u­ments and cap­tures the moods and trends in soci­ety in a way far more effec­tive yet sub­tle man­ner. Hirst’s extrav­a­gant and expen­sive works are so, because in rack­ing up a huge bill they actu­ally are a cri­tique on wealth rather then suc­cumb­ing to it.

Con­cep­tual art may not be con­ven­tional but it does probe the artist and the viewer’s psy­che and requires time and thought in order to be under­stood. It is this com­plex­ity that makes it genius, endear­ing and revolutionary.