Conceptual Art (Does It Suck?)

Okay so I have mixed and unsolid feelings about conceptual art in general. Let us take an example and talk about it. I heard about some artist who copied another artist’s works, like with a copy machine or something. And that was the concept. Hence, conceptual art. Okay. Then another artist copied that artist’s work placing it on the internet. And this was another concept. Much vigorous debate ensued. And you can imagine questions arose concerning whether or not so and so was an artist and such and such was art. You can see I’m not painting a flattering picture.

I suppose my default position is that I tend to value a work on some sort of loose amalgam of the basic principles of sincerity, expressiveness, genuineness as well as the general aesthetic theories of yesteryear. I see nothing wrong with ideas. And those ideas can drive or inform a work of art. But an idea is just an idea. It is in the execution of the idea in which good art may or may not happen. In the aforementioned example, the internet person was basically creating a tribute to the previous conceptual artist who had first thought of the idea of copying the paintings (or whatever he actually did; I sincerely apologize for not caring about the details of that story). So he reminded us of the other person’s idea and raised some questions about copyright. I think the main problem in this story is any critic who bothers to discuss it for more than five minutes. My time is just about up.

Okay, so is painting dead? Please. Is photography dead? Please. Are movies dead? Is that the next thing to be dead? Whatever. Maybe in Hollywood. But seriously, there is no medium that can ever be dead, they just get unpopulated at times. Letter writing for example, may re-emerge one day, from the ashes. Oh yes, I just remembered another twist in that first example. Someone else copied the person’s website who had copied the person who had copied some paintings. See how clever that is?

Anyway here is an excerpt from an email I had fired off to someone when I was feeling insecure. Before my great turning point. It was in response to some essay someone wrote about art which I did not like very much. Oh, and also he had criticized some of my own work, by not mentioning it. So I wrote this to one of my friends who was studying art history at the time (and probably still is):

“We are so going to fuck his shit up. Bolstered by your comments on conceptual art and motivated by the simple credo that anyone who doesn’t praise my work must suck ass and deserves to be publicly humiliated, we are together going to blow up his entire essay.”

April 2007