FOUND OBJECTS AND CONCEPTUAL ART

FOUND OBJECTS

 1848 - 1880: technical shift in the crisis around painterly craft in French modernism
art as a bourgeois profession like law or medicine and its nascent, undefined, unofficial social role as a critic of bourgeois culture

HISTORY: Found Objects

 Modernism from 1850 to 1950 the making of the new testifies to the continuous unfolding of painterly achievement and technical reassessment
Courbet, Manet, Czanne, Van Gogh, Derain, Picasso, Braque, Miro, Frankenthaler, Rothko and Pollock

modernist painting demonstrates capacity for selfdefinition and formal transformation. the rejection of arts confinement to painterly form and painterly technique as such.

HISTORY: Found Objects

Picassos and Braques papercollages

cubist paper-collages of the 1910s Picasso and Braque introduced collaged elements into the space of painting in, respectively, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper(1912) and Le Quotidian(1913)
Glass, Guitar and Newspaper (1912)

Braques Le Quotidian (1913)

Picassos and Braques paper-collages

the content of modernist negation in art changes; by incorporating found mass-printed materials introduction of non-painterly elements into the space of painting

Paintings can be made of alien, non-painterly, non-artistic things, and consequently can be made with very little labour

 one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage.

Cornell's most characteristic art works were boxed assemblages created from found objects. he was fascinated not by refuse, garbage, and the discarded, but by fragments of once beautiful and precious objects he found on his frequent trips to the bookshops and thrift stores of New York.

Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell

 Rauschenberg's approach was sometimes called "Neo Dadaist," Rauschenberg was quoted as saying that he wanted to work "in the gap between art and life" suggesting he questioned the distinction between art objects and everyday objects

he redefined art as the common things that surround people every day, paving the way for movements like Pop and Conceptual Art.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg

CONCEPTUAL ART

 Renaissance writers invented the idea of artist and the corollary of individual, original, artistic vision
Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Bernini, Vermeer made technique and skill prominent, more important than the subject matter (ex. landscape and still life)

1913-16 coming of non-representational art, all subject matter vanished in favor of pure vision and visual expression

Context

Kenneth Noland

Context

Jules Olitski

Morris Louis

Context

 important precursor to conceptual art critique of art's objecthood

to eliminate passive viewing of aesthetic contemplation

averse to the practice associated with art conceived of in terms of shapes and colors employed for the good of 'superior taste'

condition of art would have to be looked for elsewhere outside institutionalized pictorial fictions and in the world

Minimal Art

 the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all nonessential forms, features or concepts no attempt is made to represent an outside reality
artist wants the viewer to respond only to what is in front of them. 'What you see is what you see' The medium, (or material) from which it is made, and the form of the work is the reality

Minimal Art

Art as language
Art as Language rather than taste as experience
Attack on abstract art of 1960s

Art as Idea
The concept/idea is more important than visual result dematerialization of art object
enabled engagement with society through work of art possibility of one's artistic activity to escape commodification, and therefore, exploitation

 return to content from (aesthetic) formalism

Wrote Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Sentences on Conceptual Art

the idea or concept is the most important aspect all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman

Sol LeWitt

Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually Most ideas that are successful are simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. Ideas are discovered by intuition Once given physical reality by the artist the work is open to the perception of all If the artist wishes to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be eliminated from the making of the art. meant for the sensation of the eye primarily would be called perceptual rather than conceptual

Conceptual art is good only when the idea is good.

Sol LeWitt:

Paragraphs on Conceptual Art

 Art is not utilitarian. When three-dimensional art starts to take on some of the utilitarian characteristics, it weakens its function as art The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution

Sol LeWitt:

Sentences on Conceptual Art

 But Conceptual art is also compatible with the Modernist relationship between artist and spectator
artist's invitation to spectator to participate in the creation or completion of the work's meaning

Artist and Spectator

Performative model
other protocols for engagement can be used ex. text artist is not the sole author spectator completes the work democratizing of art
spectator co-author author maker/empowered to control interpretation completion of work is within a scripted frame structured by artist

Artist and Spectator

 Direct relationship between artist and work

Opposed to art imposed by social constraints Society no longer in position to demand that the artist adhere to its aesthetic and ideological values

Rather than focusing on representation, painters now worked with their material for its own sake in terms of color, form and structure

Artist and their Work

 linguistic and anti-aesthetic possibilities of art Role of the artist is not to cover a given surface or model a given material, but to re-contextualise objects in order to change their sign-value
By locating meaning in the aesthetically-chosen found object (object of artistic discrimination)

any readymade, anywhere might have meaning. Redefinition of art as a matter more of artistic vision or style than of subject matter or materials anything can be art

Marcel Duchamp

 Photography element of chance

Creative process that freed the artist from the alienation of conditioning Photodocumentation instead of pure photography

Poetry abstract
Based on sound antidote to the standardization of language by journalism

 Ed Ruscha - photos as photodocumentation not photograph

straightforward are not generally thought of as having aesthetic qualities

Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations

 Conceptual art in 1970s all art objects banished in favor of ideas written on paper 1960s Happening Art 1980s-90s Performance art

Problems faced by Conceptual Artists

problem of intentionality artist must present other conditions of engagement/spectator must be prepared to do other sorts of work ex. Reading, imaginatively completing a situation how to ensure that the resulting situation is still recognizable as art

Philippine context

Roberto Chabet

Father of Philippine Conceptual art

bread

Roberto Chabet

Father of Philippine Conceptual art

 received his BFA from the University of the Philippines in 1999. interdisciplinary practice, initially utilizing concepts from drawing and painting that deal with analog expression, surface mapping, and color signification, towards the nature of the digital reproducibility of the contemporary image and its indeterminate identity through photography, video, new media, by way of conceptual connections and strategies in the form of installation work. Such interactive approach and participatory process opens Anadings art from singular focus into multiple discourses that affect collective experience and expression.
What he does is telling stories or conducting those within the field of media that is offered to a conceptual artist in this era; material and technique compliments sound and image and not at the least the recipient or participant, respectively, is incorporated in the concept.

Poklong Anading

Poklong Anading

Poklong Anading

Fallen Map

 Santiago Bose (July 25, 1949 December 3, 2002, Baguio City, Philippines) was a mixed-media artist from the Philippines. Bose co-founded the Baguio Arts Guild, educator, community organizer and art theorist. Bose often used indigenous media ranging from bamboo and volcanic ash, to the cast-offs and debris (found objects, bottles, "trash"). His assemblages communicated a strong sense of folk consciousness and religiosity, and the strength of traditional cultures in a culture inundated with foreign cultural influences. conscious avoidance of a single recognizable style, foreign and local influences, and an experimental bent promotes the use of inexpensive, found, and reusable objects in art making

Santiago Bose

Santiago Bose

Santiago Bose

Miguel Luis A. Puyat

Sarah Charlseworth (editor of The Fox): attempts to transform the nature of art beyond formalistic considerations must inevitable begin to involve a consideration not only of the presuppositions inherent in the internal structure of art models, but also a critical awareness of the social system which preconditions and drastically confines the possibility of transformation

SOURCES