The constant questioning and declassification of what art is and what the content is has lead to this so called crisis in painting (there as always been a crisis in painting) – Painting is dead – the exponents of Conceptual Art tried to destroy the art object but failed – thought and the idea is the object. The primary aims of Conceptual Art in the 1960’s was to carry out a theoretical examination of ‘art’ and through understanding propose ‘concepts as art’.
In all cases the created image lies about its representation. A representation/illusion takes on more realness than the actual physical object, the object then becomes a metaphor for the created illusion. This in turn creates an additional reference for the object, an extra visual adjective eg. ‘The sky was very Turneresque.’ Turner’s illusion becomes a metaphor for the real thing, which vividly describes [in words] the actual sky. The concrete object cannot say everything about itself – it has a limited vocabulary and is unable to say what is required of it, it is on many levels mute. Read more...