Conceptual art is based on the simple but revolutionary premise that art should be mainly about ideas instead of objects. It emerged as a movement during the 1960s. Strongly influenced by previous movements such as Dada and Futurism, conceptual art evolved as a reaction against more conventional forms of art and most importantly against the expectation that art had to be a commodity - an object to be bought, sold, and collected. In this revolutionary manner, conceptual art moved away from the conventional art object and served to express itself as ideas and information. In many ways, I believe, conceptual art can be compared more to science than to art. The sole purpose of much conceptual art is to do something in order to see what happens.

Often, conceptual art consists simply as written statements or instructions. Some of it takes the form of land art, performance art, or web art on the Internet. While traditional materials may be used, it must be remembered that conceptual art is not meant to be experienced in the same way as the decorative art you may be accustomed to viewing.

Ideas, when expressed conceptually, are more central to the art than the means used to create it. Being anti-materialistic as it often is, the art sometimes produces no end product at all. It is primarily a time-based art. Once the idea has been expressed, it sometimes ceases to exist, at least in any material form. For this reason, drawings, maps, written text, photographs, videos, or sounds are often used to document the piece of art and act as place-holders for the actual art - the idea.

As expressed by the artist Sol LeWitt, "In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."

Dave Scott
August 16, 2005

You can learn more about conceptual art from this page on Answers.com.

Suggested reading:

Conceptual Art by Ursula Meyer, E.P Dutton & Co., Inc., 1972
Futurism by Caroline Tisdall and Angelo Bozalla, Thames and Hudson, 1977
Digital Art by Christiane Paul, Thames and Hudson, 2003
Conceptual Art by Tony Godfrey, Phaidon Press, Limited, 1998
Recording Conceptual Art by Patricia Norvell, University of California Press, 2001
Dada - Art and Anti-Art by Hans Richter, Thames and Hudson, 1964
Rewriting Conceptual Art by Michael Newman and Jon Bird, Reaktion Books, 1999
New Media in Late 20th-Century Art by Michael Rush, Thames & Hudson, 1999
Conceptual Art by Daniel Marzona, Taschen GmbH, 2005
Out of the Box - The Reinvention of Art, 1965-1975 by Carter Ratcliff, Allworth Press, 2000