Conceptual Art

Survey: philosopher and art historian Peter Osborne provides a complete overview of the movement, its origins and its legacy, tracing its early development from the experimental music scores of John Cage, through the 1961 instruction paintings of Yoko Ono to scores or instructions for events and actions in the mid 1960s work of artists such as Lawrence Weiner and Vito Acconci; the survey discusses in depth each of the six categories of work illustrated in work sections. Work: the colour plate section, each image accompanied by a full description is divided into eight sections - pre-history 1940-1960; instruction, performance, documentation; process, systems, series; word and sign; appropriation, intervention, everyday; politics and ideology; institutaional critique; afterwards, 1980-2000. Documents: critical anthology including cultural context texts by writers and thinkers who were influential on the movement alongside key original texts by artists, critics, curators and art historians.