Conceptual Art: Definition, Characteristics & 25 Artists Who Defined Conceptual Art 

Dear readers and subscribers, this week we take on conceptual art and the top 25 artists who defined the historical art movement. What do you think about conceptual art, and who did we miss in our selection? For our returning viewers, how do you like our new voice, and, which one the you prefer? Chat soon!

Yes, yes very good, excellent! Thank you CAI as we need to be refreshed we hold on to things. Over time the idea of them become something else- then when first encountered, developed and we smugly concluded something…and now? So refreshing how you place so much, so precisely in so little time. Thank you all of you for leaving the ivory tower and coming to meet us.

Thank you for this great presentation and analysis of conceptual art. Keep on doing this amazing job please!

I extremely love your channel, thanks for the effort

Great video. I think Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik should be included in the list.

Agreed: "great presentation and analysis of conceptual art." I alway learn a good deal with your videos and they are always done well. Thanks for maintaining your channel.

Great video and great channel! Thanks a million for this. In regard to your question "who did you miss on this list?", I do miss Ai Weiwei :)

I think Yves Klein is a must on this list. Allan Kaprow who coined the term happening is also a serious omission. Good video and ambitious. Keep up the good work.

Thank you for this. In the section on Acconci, the guy draped over a plank leaning against the wall is Charles Ray.

Great understanding

This is a very unique video about conceptual art 🎭 great job However after looking at all this I think myself and banksy are missing on your list 🥰👍🥰🏆🏆🏆

helpful video. thanks

Gotta say, HUH. Found it much like writing on minimal Art which often includes ideas and images that have little value in explaining Minimalism. But I appreciate the effort of your video.

Good knowledge of art

It seems incredible not to have included Luis Camnitzer, and other important conceptual artists from Latin America. From your video it seems conceptual art was centered around NY, some European countries and Japan, which is a very narrow and Euro-American view of modern art.

I saw a critique recently (another UTube channel that click baited me) that presented “what is and is not conceptual art”. It was densely-convoluted and arguably a disservice. For me Dada sought a new way of describing meaning not art. The presenter sought a critique that would determine conceptual art as art i.e., sublime-properly effecting. All of this disquieting since how can an Anti art message become art? The history of conventional art esthetic well documents, priori and A priori judgments; experience through observation, theoretical- retinal/cerebral. The presenter used these to decree by wrote Conceptual art. I think the better way here with CAI. The intention is not a perscription but a description. Best informed by the artist themselves. Their ideas by means or things they chose or did not choose, to convey them. Finally for me and I speak only for me but I do speak. Dada is not art it is anti art to make it art deletes the lesson. Or does it reintroduce the lesson? It must be art how else are we to sell it.

Where did Alan Kaprow fit into Conceptual art?

I think you misspelled Joseph Kosuth

You missed Beuys.

Marcel Broodthaers / Hans Haacke / Mary Kelly / Santiago Sierra / Felix-Gonzales Torrez / Piero Manzoni / Yoko Ono / Bas-Jan Ader / Ilya Kabakov / Marina Abramovic & Ulay / Christo & Jean-Claude / Alan Kaprow /...

No.4 Robert Barry's used radiowaves as his medium. It will be interesting to see who may be using AI to Brain as used/being developed in 21st century signals intelligence in their work. Transhumanist Telepathy?

You missed me for your list.

The death of reason 🙂

Marina Abramović and Ulay??

P ex: Francis Alys

Needs Felix gonzales Torres dhit

Barbara Krüger ?

Where is my all-time hero Timm Ulrichs??? :-(

u forgot 2 include ..me. ~ jk. Gordon Matta-Clark / was a unique treat for me to discover! 🙌⛩️🕉️☯️⚛️⛩️🙌.

Conceptual art is basically fake it untill you make it. I'm currently in school of contemporary art. Each week we assign with task eg. Making clay sculpture of 2 animals combine or drawing something using 1 continued line. There is no teaching what so ever. I asked if we going to learn how to draw properly and the answer was "anyone can draw but we just didn't draw like how society told us what is correct what is not. School focusing too much on concept and ideas but without critical skills needed. None of what I have in my head will ever come through. I wanted to go to school of fine arts but it is very expensive. Therefore, I did extra study outside the class from RU-vid or books. I don't appreciate conceptual arts nor planning to make one.

AcconCi...you you read it like Acconchi :)

The misnomer is the word 'Art'. They are conceptual works calling for your attention certainly. Sometimes they are insightful, sometimes thoughtful. sometimes innovative or political and so on - but can everything along those lines be called art? Yes they are criticisms on the concept of art and it is art that they discuss, but those are not artworks. Perhaps statements at best.

Let me begin by telling you that when my brother was just starting school, he rebelled at the rules of spelling. Why did words have to be spelled in a particular way? Why couldn't he spell them as he wanted to spell them? He resented the rules and he resisted the authority of those who made them ! Keep this in mind. I think that Conceptual art originated with people who could not and would not do the difficult work required to become a 'traditional' artist. Can't master the necessary skills ? No knowledge of perspective? Can't draw? Don't want to have to learn color theory? Can't master composition? No knowledge of human anatomy? Can't render tonal values Can’t be bothered ? These are skills that you have to WORK to perfect. It’s difficult. It takes…..effort. You want a fast track to the exalted position of "artist “. Well then, belittle the importance of those skills and debase the notion that they are a prerequisite to creating art. Instead, create an art genre that you CAN do. A new genre. And let's call it Conceptual art. Conceptual artists claim that IDEAS and CONCEPTS are the main feature of their art. They can slap anything together and call it ''conceptual art'' confident that viewers will find SOMETHING to think about it no matter how banal or trivial the artist's concept! There is no way conceptual art pieces can be judged. The promoters of this art have attacked the motives and credibility of authorities and critics who might disparage the work. They have rejected museums and galleries as defining authorities. They reject the idea that art can be judged or criticized . All of this results in a decline in standards. And when you jettison standards, quality suffers. There really IS such a thing as BAD art ! We know this only because we have standards and criteria by which such things can be evaluated. It seems that conceptual art comes down to a basic idea: No one has the right or authority to make any judgements about art ! Art is anything you can get away with ! A whole new language has been created to give the work an air of legitimacy and gravitas. Conceptual art is 'sold' to the unwary public with ....."ArtSpeak". ArtSpeak is a unique assemblage of English words and phrases that the International Art world uses but which are devoid of meaning! Have you ever found yourself confronted by an art gallery’s description of an exhibition which seems completely indecipherable? Or an artist’s statement about their work which left you more confused than enlightened? You’re not alone. Here are examples of ArtSpeak: 'Works that probe the dialectic between innovations that seem to have been forgotten, the ruinous present state of projects once created amid great euphoria, and the present as an era of transitions and new beginnings.'' Or ''The exhibition reactivates his career-long investigation into the social mutations of desire and repression. But his earlier concerns with repression production--in the adolescent or in the family as a whole--give way to the vertiginous retrieval and wayward reinvention of mythical community and sub-cultural traditions.'' This language is meant to convince me that there is real substance to this drivel which is being passed off as art. I don't buy it. But plenty of other people DO buy it. Not because they love the work. They are laying out enormous sums in the belief that their investment will bring them high returns in the future. One Jeff Koons conceptual piece is three basketballs suspended in a fish tank. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Three_Ball_Total_Equilibrium_Tank_by_Jeff_Koons,_Tate_Liverpool.jpg Here is Koons' own ArtSpeak explanation of his floating basketball 'concept' verbatim: “ This is an ultimate state of being. I wanted to play with people’s desires. They desire this equilibrium. They desire pre-birth. I was giving a definition of life and death. This is the eternal. This is what life is like, also, after death. Aspects of the eternal” Rather lofty goals for 3 basketballs suspended in a fish tank!! It sold for $350,000. I wonder what it would have fetched without Koons' name attached to it. Or take the case of Martin Creed's ball of crumpled white copy paper. www.abebooks.com/signed/Work-sheet-paper-crumpled-ball-Creed/7404135374/bd He made almost 700 of them! Some sold for hundreds of dollars. Martin Creed, when asked during an interview how he would respond to those who say the crumpled paper ball isn’t art said : “ I wouldn’t call this art either. Who says, anyway, what’s good and what’s bad?” Interviewer: ''When confronted with conceptual art, we shouldn’t worry whether it’s art or not because no one really knows what art is.'' Is this what art has come to?? _________________________________ Something radical has happened to the art scene in the past 50 years. Cubism slid into non-representational art....what is often called Abstract. Abstract or non-representational art is a legitimate and often profound genre. But to many people, it appeared as if this new style had no structure, principles or standards of evaluation. It’s markings seemed random and arbitrary. Something that anyone could do. Any composition of blotches or scribbles was “Abstract Art”. This was the slippery slope that led to the abandonment of standards in art. Art is what I say it is....and lots of people jumped on the art bandwagon. Anyone can be an artist. Anyone can mount a show. And who is to say if it has value or not ? A tacit agreement has formed among critics, galleries, publications and auction houses to promote and celebrate certain artists and styles. Objects with no artistic merit are touted and praised . Their value increases with every magazine article, every exhibition in a prestigious gallery. And when they come up for auction, sometimes the auction houses will lend vast sums to a bidder so that it appears as if the work of the particular artist is increasing in value. The upward spiral begins and fortunes are made. And many are reluctant to declare that the Emperor is, in fact, naked lest they appear boorish unsophisticated Philistines ! This is what dominates the art market today. The love of money is the root of all evil. It has corrupted politics. It has corrupted sport. It has corrupted healthcare. It has corrupted religion. And now it has corrupted art. But, there is reason to hope. As much of the wisdom of the Greeks and Romans was kept alive through the Middle Ages in small pockets of learning and culture, ateliers have sprung up around the world that are devoted to preserving and handing down the traditional visual arts: drawing, painting and sculpting to each new generation. And when this craze for conceptual art has burned itself out and when visual art is no longer looked on as mere decoration and when schools that have dissolved their art programs want to reestablish them again, the world will find these skills preserved through the atelier movement.

None of the concepts in conceptual art are even remotely interesting. -👈 This is a conceptual art.

Why are all the examples male ??🥴

Art is ಠ_ಠ

robot voices...i need human

Real Art today has to be a potential tax write off or it doesn't count as Art at all ...How is that for a concept ? LOL

I would like to watch this video but I cannot stand that squeaky robot voice All pass

The use of a computer generated voice, that manages to mangle the pronunciation of artists' names, is REALLY annoying.

God, whatever the reason you've used a computer to read out the text of this video, stop it. It's just horrible.

Rubbish from distorted depressed society rejects..

You missed women. Such a bias list. There are only 3 women on this list!!

How on Earth could you not include Jeffery Valance?! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Vallance

Why are all the examples male ??🥴