Keys for evaluation (areas I will rate on your writing):

• E = level of "engagement" with material! (includes critical thinking, connecting to own life)
• C = connect to other material from class! (connect the dots; be aware of inconsistencies!)
• S = specifics/depth!

Conceptual Art:

Sol Lewitt (minimalist)

• "In concptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work" (See Harrison/Wood, Art in Theory 1900-2000, p. 846).

Art & Language (Terry Atkinson) (See Harrison/Wood, Art in Theory 1900-2000, p. 885).

• if concept is expressed through language, does that mean that conceptual art is really art theory?
• and does that mean that art theory is really conceptual art?

Among the many different approaches Conceptual Art may use:

• language (why? how?)
• photography (why? how?)
• certain subject matter (what is the subject matter? how is it conceptual? why this subject matter?)
• degree of "physicality," "object-ness" or "permanence" (why? how?)

To learn about the complexities of Conceptual Art (because I have to simplify the presentation in class (because it's a whole course in itself)...
so in po-mo speak I had to be "reductionist" about it), see: Robert Morgan, Conceptual Art: An American Perspective (1994),
which provides a narrative linking things together.For reprints of original writings, see Alexander Alberro/Blake Stimson eds.,
Conceptual Art: a Critical Anthology (1999) and for interviews see Alexander Alberro/Patricia Norvell eds., Recording Conceptual Art (2001).

Statement from a 1967 Flyer handed out during demonstration by Daniel Buren,
Olivier Mosset, Michael Parmentier and Niele Toroni. (See Harrison/Wood, Art in Theory 1900-2000, p. 861).

Because painting is a game,
Because painting is the application (consciously or otherwise) of the rules of composition,
Because painting is the freezing of movement,
Because painting is the representation (or interpretation, or appropriation or disputation or presentation) of objects,
Because painting is a springboard for the imagination,
Because painting is spiritual illustration,
Because painting is justification,
Because painting serves an end,
Because to paint is to give aesthetic value to flowers, women, eroticism, the daily environment, art, dadaism, psychoanalysis and the war in Vietnam,
We are not painters.

See photographs of Daniel Buren Retrospective at the Pompidou Center in Paris (summer of 2002) scroll down... they are marked...)

See photographs of Daniel Buren work at the Palais Royale in Paris (scroll down... they are marked...)

Statement from 1978 Whitney Catalogue for "The New Image: Painting in the 1980s" (re: Neil Jenney), also Jennifer Bartlett,
Jonothan Borofsky, Robert Mosckowicz and Susan Rothenberg.

[the "New Image" artists] manipulate image on canvas so it can be experienced as

• a physical object
• an abstract configuration
• a psychological association
• a receptacle for applied paint
• an ambiguous quisi-narrative
• a specifically non-specific experience
• a vehicle for formalist exploration
• or any combination of these

Joseph Kosuth, "Art after Philosophy" excerpts (See Harrison/Wood, Art in Theory 1900-2000, p. 852).

"It is necessary to separate aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals with opinions on perception of the world in general"

"The 'value' of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art;
which is another way of saying 'what they added to the conception of art' or what wasn't there before they started. Artists question
the nature of art by presenting new propositions as to art's nature. and to do this one cannot concern oneself with the
handed down 'language' of traditional art, as this activity is based on the assumption that there is only one way of framing art propositions.
But the very stuff of art is indeed greatly related to 'creating' new propositions."

"Art 'lives' through influencing other art, not by existing as the physical residue of an artist's ideas. The reason why different artists
from the past are 'brought alive' again is because some aspect of their work becomes 'useable' by living artists.
That there is no 'truth' to what art is seems quite unrealized."

"Art's only claim is for art. Art is the definition of art."