4.651 Lecture 17: Early Conceptual Art - Sol LeWitt and Others

MIT 4.651 ART SINCE 1940 LECTURE NOTES Week 9, Lecture 17, Early Conceptual Art: Sol LeWitt and others “The idea is the machine that makes the art” – Sol LeWitt key decade: 1970s terms: Conceptual Art I. Conceptual Art – late 1960s New York, quickly international, peaked in 1970s, still going strong today A) Roots and precursors 1) Minimalism and Pop (Stella, Warhol) 2) Fluxus attitudes (George Brecht) 3) transcendental signifiers in Europe (Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni) 4) above all, the growing influence of Duchamp and the “anti-retinal” B) Practitioners from various places (centered on New York and English language) 1) Robert Morris 61-63 (later Minimal, Performance, Process artist) 2) Joseph Kosuth ‘65-66 + (writer/theorist, infl.by Duchamp readymades) 3) Sol LeWitt ‘66-67 + (formulator of “Paragraphs” ‘67 /“Sentences” ‘69) 4) On Kawara ‘66 + (b. Japan, dialogue with LeWitt, postcards/ calendar boxes) 5) Douglas Heubler ca. ‘70 + (time-based) 6) Pop-inflected stand-alone Richard Artschwager ‘63 + (simulated furniture) 7) Art & Language, Coventry U.K. ‘68 + (Terry Atkinson, Mel Ramsden, Michael Corris et al.) C) Main characteristics of Conceptual Art 1) Idea-based (form is incidental, medium supposedly of conceptual interest only, but note that photo + text are key components) 2) Artist role anti-heroic and impersonal (bureaucratic, administrative aesthetic?) 3) Execution impersonal (if made at all), often delegated, sometimes readymade 4) Language a crucial component 5) “The work can be made. The work does not have to be made to be art.” (LeWitt) 6) Anti-object, anti-market? II. California variants A) Practitioners 1) Bruce Nauman (studied in Davis California) 2) John Baldessari (teaches still in Los Angeles) 3) Edward Ruscha (still based in L.A.) B) Characteristics 1) Typically funnier, “stupider,” more deadpan than New York 2) More interested in engaging Pop as a way art can look, mass media as readymade SLIDE LIST on verso SLIDE LIST (selected) prime precursor: Duchamp Fountain 191 7, W ith Hidden No ise 191 6, Air de Paris 191 9, Mo nte Carlo Bond 1924 added impetus from: Cage 4'33" 195 2, Stella black paintings 195 8-59 , W arhol Campbells Soup Cans 196 2, Klein mon ochromes and “Zone of imm aterial pictorial sensibility,” 1960 s, George Brecht’s Ev ent sco res: (Chair Event 196 0, Three A queous E vents 1961) Manzo ni, Socle du Monde (Base of the W orld)1961 Morris, Litanies, 1963 (and withdrawal certificate) Morris, Fountain 1963 Morris, Three Rulers 1963 Ko suth, One and T hree Chairs, ‘65 LeW itt, wall drawings, 1968 to the present Heubler, Duration Piece, 1970 Artsch wager, Table with Pink Tableclo th, 1964 Artsch wager, 100 Lo cations, 1968 Nauman, Portrait of the A rtist as a Fo untain, 1966-60 Nauman, My Last N ame Exaggerated 14 T imes V ertically, 1967 Nauman, Aco ustic W all, 1969, and Wilder Gallery Installation, 1970 Nauman, One Hundred Live and Die, 1984 Baldessari, An Artist is not merely the Slavish Announcer, 1967-68 Baldessari, Cremation Project, 1970 Rusc ha, Every Building on the Su nset Strip , 1966 Rusc ha, W ax, 1970 Rusc ha, Metal Shavings 1974 Rusc ha, Not a B ad W orld, Is It? 1984 On Kawara, Wednesday, Dec. 12, 1978