Introduction
For years I have struggled to
come to terms with the meaning and significance of conceptual art and, in
particular, conceptual photographic art, which plays such a prominent role
within modern teaching and practice. I therefore welcomed the opportunity to
visit Tate Britain in order to get a better understanding about the origins of
this key development in modern art.
Review
Conceptual art appears to regard
the concept or idea behind its creation as being more important than its material
form. It is appropriate and perhaps not coincidental that this ostensibly
liberating development should have begun during a period (the 1960s) when young
people, in particular, were for the first time freeing themselves from the
shackles of conformity. One consequence of this new way of thinking was the
development of new art forms, such as performance art, land art and ephemeral
art (the latter referring to art works that were created and then destroyed within seconds, minutes or days). One problem with these new art forms was how they could be recorded for
posterity, if indeed the artist wished to record them at all. Most artists
featured here used photography, maps and texts to document their work and one
or two filmed their art. However, how do you represent (say) a performance act, seen
in front of a small audience 50 years ago, in an exhibition of this type? One
or two videos are featured, but in many cases the performances are archived as
faded photographs in yellowing news sheets or journals which fail to reproduce
the excitement that this new art form must have generated at the time.
Representations of land art by Richard Long (its best known practitioner) and
others using photographs is rather more straightforward, but even here the
usually small and often monochrome records lend the exhibition a somewhat
austere feel.
Whilst I have come to appreciate
that in conceptual art the idea behind the work is more important than the end
product I still prefer to observe art that has aesthetic appeal. A few works,
such as John Hilliard’s “Camera Recording its own Condition (7 Apertures, 10
Speeds, 2 Mirrors)” (Image 1) stood out for me in this respect – a simple
concept, with a well-produced end product.
Image 1 (John Hilliard)
Some of the works displayed a
degree of self-deprecating humour, almost as if the artists felt slightly
guilty about being able to express themselves so freely. An example is Keith
Arnatt’s “self-burial” (Image 2) which, in addition to being featured as a
sequence of still frames, was also shown during its creation at hourly intervals, on television.
Image 2 (Keith Arnatt)
The exhibition features several
contributions from Bruce McLean, who was clearly a prominent voice for
conceptual art during the 1960s and 1970s. His extreme body language in “Nice
Style Pose Band”, a type of performance art that was also recorded on camera
for posterity in a series of portraits (Image 3) is apparently a send-up of the
works of established sculptors such as Henry Moore. This work also carries a
degree of humour.
Image 3 (Bruce McLean)
Perhaps it is to be expected
that, given the dominance of the concept over the material end-product, very
few original works of art or reproductions are present in the exhibition. One
exception is the pyramid of thousands of oranges piled on the floor near the
entrance to the exhibition, a reproduction of the work by the South African
artist Roelof Loew. The idea is for each visitor to take an orange as they
pass, thus altering or defacing the art work. On the day I visited very few had
accepted the offer (are the oranges replaced regularly or is the art work
allowed to evolve throughout the exhibition?), but the work does at least add a
splash of colour to an otherwise austere exhibition and probably gets closer to
the core of what conceptual art is trying to say than any of the other exhibits.
Final Comments and Learning Points
Despite my reservations regarding
the representation of the art works in the exhibition I enjoyed learning more
about the origins and meaning of conceptual art. The practice of creating
conceptual art has evolved considerably over the intervening years – nowadays
it is integrated with abstract art (which it originally sought to replace) and
other art forms. Photography, which in the period 1964 – 1979 was used
primarily to document and archive conceptual art and its performance, now leads
the way as a means of expressing artists’ concepts.
The exhibition has given me a
better understanding of how to create conceptual art although I would like my
art, at least, to retain some aesthetic value and to carry a message rather
than simply being regarded as conceptual and/or “playful” (I hate that word!).
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