Conceptual art

Unpacking the term Conceptual art is not quite as straightforward as other art movements. It’s easy to get
confused by the different ways in which the word is used. While it most commonly refers to the art
movement between the 1960s and 1970s that emerged in the United States, there are several other ways of
understanding it. What exactly does this word connote? When was Conceptualism an art movement, and
does it still exist? In his comprehensive book Conceptual Art, art historian Paul Wood distinguishes between
the different ways the term is used:

1: Conceptualism is often used as a negative term for what people dislike about contemporary art which
revolves around the concept.

2: Conceptualism refers to the Anglo-American art movement that blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s. The
idea, planning and production process of the artwork were seen as more important than the actual result.

3: A more expanded notion of Conceptualism holds that men and women in all corners of the world had
been working in a conceptual manner since the 1950s on themes ranging from imperialism to personal
identity. In this sense, Conceptualism becomes a Global Conceptualism.

This article will explore both the Anglo-American and the global Conceptual art movement.

What is Conceptual Art?

Conceptual art emerged as an art movement in the 1960s, critiquing the previously ruling modernist
movement and its focus on the aesthetic. The term is usually used to refer to art from the mid-1960s to the
mid-1970s. In Conceptualism, the idea or concept behind the work of art became more important than the
actual technical skill or aesthetic. Conceptual artists used whichever materials and forms were most
appropriate to get their ideas across. This resulted in vastly different types of artworks that could look like
almost anything – from performance to writing to everyday objects. The artists explored the possibilities of
art-as-idea and art-as-knowledge, using linguistic, mathematical, and process-oriented dimensions of
thought as well as invisible systems, structures and processes for their art.

Key dates

Mid-1960s to mid-1970s

Key regions

USA, Soviet Union, Japan, Latin America, Europe

Key words

Concept, idea, language, transitional, political, postmodernist art

Key artists

Sol LeWitt, Joseph Kosuth, Mel Bochner, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Hans Haacke, On Kawara,
Lawrence Weiner, Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden, Yoko Ono, John Baldessari, Art & Language group

Joseph Kosuth, Four Colours Four Words (Blue, Red, Yellow, Green), 1966. Conceptual art

Joseph Kosuth, Four Colours Four Words (Blue, Red, Yellow, Green), 1966. Photo courtesy of Widewalls
Conceptual art Mel Ramsden (Art & Language Group) Secret Painting, 1967-1968. Photo courtesy of Tate

Mel Ramsden (Art & Language Group) Secret Painting, 1967-1968. Photo courtesy of Tate

Conceptual art Cildo Meireles, Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project, 1970. Photo courtesy
of Tate

Cildo Meireles, Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project, 1970. Photo courtesy of Tate

The Origins and Artists of Conceptual Art

Duchamp’s Urinal

The origins of Conceptual art can be said to date back to 1917 and Marcel Duchamp. The artist famously
bought a urinal from a plumber’s shop and submitted it as a sculpture in an open sculpture exhibition in New
York, for which he was on the selection committee. The jury rejected the work, deeming it immoral, and
refusing to accept it as art. Duchamp’s questioning of where the boundaries of art lie and his critique of the
art establishment paved the way for Conceptual art.

Fluxus

In the early 1960s, the term ‘concept art’ was already in use by members of the Fluxus movement like Henry
Flynt. Fluxus was a group that embraced artists from Asia, Europe and the United States. The movement
was all about creating an open attitude towards art, far removed from modernism’s exclusivity. Fluxus artists
were interested in broadening the range of reference of the aesthetic towards anything, from an object to a
sound or an action. Famous Fluxus artists include Yoko Ono, who was active in a wide range of Fluxus
activities in both New York and her native Japan, and Joseph Beuys in Germany. Though not always exactly
deemed part of the Conceptual art movement, Fluxus is without a doubt one of its influences. It was an
important tendency on the same wavelength as Conceptualism, and its artists are often regarded as
Conceptual artists.

Frank Stella’s ‘Black Paintings’

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Frank Stella created his series of ‘Black Paintings’, which marked a
crucial point of fracture between Modernism and Counter-Modernist practices. This series of works would
lead to the emergence of Minimalist and Conceptual art. The point of these works was to literally emphasise
and echo the shape of the canvas, getting the work off the wall and into three-dimensional space. This was
an attack on Modernism that gave rise to something that was entirely anti-form. The work of art became
about actions and ideas, and from this point onwards, it seemed like the floodgates had opened and artists
had moved into totally new territory. Modernism had really come to an end.

Sol LeWitt’s ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’

Sol LeWitt’s 1967 article ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’ in Artforum was one of the most important writings
on Conceptualism. The article presented Conceptual art as the new avant-garde movement. In fact, the term
‘Conceptual art’ appeared for the first time in this article. The opening of LeWitt’s article has come to
constitute the general statement of a Conceptual approach: ‘In Conceptual art the idea or concept is the
most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a Conceptual form in 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.’

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The Peak of Conceptual Art

Joseph Kosuth

Conceptual art as a clear movement started emerging in the late-1960s. In 1967, Joseph Kosuth organised
the exhibitions Nonanthropomorphic Art and Normal Art in New York, where works by Kosuth himself and
Christine Kozlov were shown. In his notes accompanying the exhibition, Kosuth wrote: ‘The actual works of
art are the ideas.’ In the same year, he exhibited his series of Titled (Art as Idea as Idea). This series of
works consisted not of visual imagery, but of words that were at the core of the debate surrounding the
status of modern art – ‘meaning’, ‘object’, ‘representation’, and ‘theory,’ among others.

Art & Language Group

Meanwhile in England, the Art & Language Group were investigating the implications of suggesting more
and more complex objects as works of art (examples include a column of air, Oxfordshire and the French
Army). The first generation of the Art & Language Group was formed by Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin,
David Bainbridge and Harold Hurrell in 1966-67. Later, the group also expanded to the USA. In 1972, they
produced the Art & Language Index 01 for Documenta V. This was an installation consisting of a group of
eight filing cabinets containing 87 texts from the Art-Language journal.

Lucy Lippard’s Six Years

Lucy Lippard’s book Six Years, covering the first years of the Conceptual art movement (1966-1972), came
out in 1973. In keeping with the confusing and complex nature of Conceptual art, the American artist Mel
Bochner condemned her account as confusing and arbitrary. Years later, Lippard would argue that most
accounts of Conceptualism were faulty and that nobody’s memory of the actual events related to the
development of Conceptual art could be trusted – not even the artists’.

Global Conceptual Art

Europe

As stated before, Conceptualism was not only important in the USA and England, but was also widely
explored and developed in other parts of the world, where the work was often far more politicised. In France,
around the time of the 1968 student uprisings, Daniel Buren was creating art that was meant to challenge
and critique the institution. His aim was not to draw attention to the paintings themselves but to the
expectations created by the art context they were placed in. In Italy, Arte Povera emerged in 1967, focused
around making art without the restraints of traditional practices and materials.

Latin America

In Latin America, artists opted for more directly political responses in their work than Conceptual artists in
North America and Western Europe. The Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles reintroduced the readymade with his
Insertions into Ideological Circuits series (1969). He would interfere with objects from systems of circulation
like bank notes and Coca-Cola bottles by stamping political messages onto them and returning them into the
system like that.

Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, art critic Boris Groys labeled a group of Russian artists active in the 1970s the ‘Moscow
Conceptualists’. They mixed Soviet Socialist Realism with American Pop and Western Conceptualism.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #359, 2000. Photo courtesy of MoMA

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #359, 2000. Photo courtesy of MoMA

Contemporary Conceptual Art

Conceptualism in contemporary practice is often referred to as Contemporary Conceptualism. Contemporary
Conceptual artworks often employ interdisciplinary approaches and audience participation, and critique
institutions, political systems and structures, and hierarchies. Artists who clearly use various techniques and
strategies associated with Conceptual art include Jenny Holzer and her use of language, Sherrie Levine and
her photographic critique of originality, Cindy Sherman and her play with identity, and Barbara Kruger’s use
of text and photography.

As we’ve explored the complex and extensive history and present of Conceptual art, several things come to
mind. One of its greatest strengths was taking the responsibility to truly investigate the nature of art and
institutions. At times, it was an art of resistance to the dominant order. At other times, it was a cynical mirror
held up to the art world, or a deeply philosophical undertaking. Many artists despised being put in the box of
Conceptual art, as they despised being put into any box. Yet, we have attempted to draw certain lines
between various artists, events and thought systems that circled around a similar orbit for some time and
which can be better understood under the umbrella of Conceptualism.

Feminism and art

Historically speaking, women artists, when they existed, have largely faded into obscurity: there is no
female Michelangelo or Da Vinci equivalent.[4][5] In Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists Linda
Nochlin wrote, "The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal
spaces, but in our institutions and our education".[4] Because of women's historical role as caregiver, most
women were unable to devote time to creating art. In addition, women were rarely allowed entry into schools
of art, and almost never allowed into live nude drawings classes for fear of impropriety.[4] Therefore, women
who were artists were largely wealthy women with leisure time who were trained by their fathers or uncles
and produced still lives, landscapes, or portrait work. Examples include Anna Claypoole Peale and Mary
Cassatt.
Feminist art can be contentious to define as it holds different personal and political elements, different to
each individual. Is all art made by a feminist then feminist art? Can art that is not made by a feminist be
feminist art? Lucy R. Lippard stated in 1980 that feminist art was "neither a style nor a movement but
instead a value system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life."[6] Emerging at the end of the 1960s, the
feminist art movement was inspired by the 1960s student protests, the civil rights movement, and Second-
wave feminism. By critiquing institutions that promote sexism and racism students, people of color, and
women were able to identify and attempt to fix inequity. Women artists used their artwork, protests,
collectives, and women's art registries to shed light on inequities in the art-world. The first wave of feminist
art was established in the mid 19th century. In the early 1920s, with woman gaining the right to vote in
America, liberalization wave spreading through the world. The slow and gradual change in feminist art
started gaining momentum in 1960's.[7]

Promoting feminist art[edit]

In the 1970s, society started to become open to change and people started to realize that there was a
problem with the stereotypes of each gender. Feminist art became a popular way of addressing the social
concerns of feminism that surfaced in the late 1960s to 1970s. The creation and publication of the first
feminist magazine was published in 1972. Ms. Magazine was the first national magazine to make feminist
voices prominent, make feminist ideas and beliefs available to the public, and support the works of feminist
artists. Like the art world, the magazine used the media to spread the messages of feminism and draw
attention to the lack of total gender equality in society. The co-founder of the magazine, Gloria Steinem,
coined the famous quote, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle", which demonstrates the
power of independent women; this slogan was frequently used by activists.[6]

Effect of feminist art on society[edit]

Lucy R. Lippard argued in 1980 that feminist art was "neither a style nor a movement but instead a value
system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life." This quote supports that feminist art affected all aspects of
life. The women of the nation were determined to have their voices heard above the din of discontent, and
equality would enable them to obtain jobs equal to men and gain rights and agency to their own bodies.
[27]
 Art was a form of media that was used to get the message across; this was their platform. Feminist art
supports this claim because the art began to challenge previously conceived notions of the roles of women.
The message of gender equality in feminist artworks resonates with the viewers because the challenging of
the social norms made people question, should it be socially acceptable for women to wear men's clothing?
[27]

Example of feminist art[edit]

The magazine and the rise of feminism occurred during the same time feminist artists became more popular,
and an example of a feminist artist is Judy Dater. Starting her artistic career in San Francisco, a cultural hub
of different kinds of art and creative works, Dater displayed feminist photographs in museums and gained a
fair amount of publicity for her work.[27] Dater displayed art that focused on women challenging stereotypical
gender roles, such as the expected way women would dress or pose for a photograph. To see a woman
dressed in men's clothing was rare and made the statement of supporting the feminist movement, and many
people knew of Dater's passionate belief of equal rights. Dater also photographed nude women, which was
intended to show women's bodies as strong, powerful, and as a celebration. The photographs grabbed the
viewers attention because of the unusualness and never-before-seen images that do not necessarily fit into
society.[28]

Environmental art
Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art
and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works.[1][2] Environmental art has evolved away
from formal concerns, worked out with earth as a sculptural material, towards a deeper relationship to
systems, processes and phenomena in relationship to social concerns.[3] Integrated social and ecological
approaches developed as an ethical, restorative stance emerged in the 1990s.[4] Over the past ten years
environmental art has become a focal point of exhibitions around the world as the social and cultural aspects
of climate change come to the forefront.
The term "environmental art" often encompasses "ecological" concerns but is not specific to them.[5] It
primarily celebrates an artist's connection with nature using natural materials.[1][2] The concept is best
understood in relationship to historic earth/Land art and the evolving field of ecological art. The field is
interdisciplinary in the fact that environmental artists embrace ideas from science and philosophy. The
practice encompasses traditional media, new media and critical social forms of production. The work
embraces a full range of landscape/environmental conditions from the rural, to the suburban and urban as
well as urban/rural industrial.

History: landscape painting and representation[edit]

It can be argued that environmental art began with the Paleolithic cave paintings of our ancestors. While no
landscapes have (yet) been found, the cave paintings represented other aspects of nature important to early
humans such as animals and human figures. "They are prehistoric observations of nature. In one-way or
another, nature for centuries remained the preferential theme of creative art."[6] More modern examples of
environmental art stem from landscape painting and representation. When artists painted onsite they
developed a deep connection with the surrounding environment and its weather and brought these close
observations into their canvases. John Constable's sky paintings "most closely represent the sky in nature".
[7]
 Monet's London Series also exemplifies the artist's connection with the environment. "For me, a landscape
does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding
atmosphere brings it to life, the air and the light, which vary continually for me, it is only the surrounding
atmosphere that gives subjects their true value."[8]
Contemporary painters, such as Diane Burko represent natural phenomena—and its change over time—to
convey ecological issues, drawing attention to climate change.[9][10] Alexis Rockman's landscapes depict a
sardonic view of climate change and humankind's interventions with other species by way of genetic
engineering.[11]

Challenging traditional sculptural forms[edit]

The growth of environmental art as a "movement" began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In its early
phases it was most associated with sculpture—especially Site-specific art, Land art and Arte povera—
having arisen out of mounting criticism of traditional sculptural forms and practices that were increasingly
seen as outmoded and potentially out of harmony with the natural environment.
In October 1968, Robert Smithson organized an exhibition at Dwan Gallery in New York titled “Earthworks.”
The works in the show posed an explicit challenge to conventional notions of exhibition and sales, in that
they were either too large or too unwieldy to be collected; most were represented only by photographs,
further emphasizing their resistance to acquisition.[12] For these artists escaping the confines of the gallery
and modernist theory was achieved by leaving the cities and going out into the desert.
”They were not depicting the landscape, but engaging it; their art was not simply of the landscape, but in it
as well.”[13] This shift in the late 1960s and 1970s represents an avant garde notion of sculpture, the
landscape and our relationship with it. The work challenged the conventional means to create sculpture, but
also defied more elite modes of art dissemination and exhibition, such as the Dwan Gallery show mentioned
earlier. This shift opened up a new space and in doing so expanded the ways in which work was
documented and conceptualized.[14]

Entering public and urban spaces[edit]

Just as the earthworks in the deserts of the west grew out of notions of landscape painting, the growth of
public art stimulated artists to engage the urban landscape as another environment and also as a platform to
engage ideas and concepts about the environment to a larger audience. While this earlier work was mostly
created in the deserts of the American west, the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s saw works
moving into the public landscape. Artists like Robert Morris began engaging county departments and public
arts commissions to create works in public spaces such as an abandoned gravel pit.[15] Herbert Bayer used a
similar approach and was selected to create his Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks in 1982. The project served
functions such as erosion control, a place to serve as a reservoir during high rain periods, and a 2.5 acre
park during dry seasons.[16] Lucy Lippard's groundbreaking book, on the parallel between contemporary land
art and prehistoric sites, examined the ways in which these prehistoric cultures, forms and images have
"overlaid" onto the work of contemporary artists working with the land and natural systems.[14]
Alan Sonfist introduced a key environmentalist idea of bringing nature back into the urban environment with
his first historical Time Landscape sculpture, proposed to New York City in 1965, and visible to this day at
the corner of Houston and LaGuardia in New York City's Greenwich Village.[citation needed]
Environmental art also encompasses the scope of the urban landscape. Pioneering environmental
artist, Mary Miss began creating art in the urban environment with her 1969 installation, Ropes/Shore, and
continues to develop projects involving extended communities through City as a Living Laboratory.[17] Agnes
Denes created a work in downtown Manhattan Wheatfield - A Confrontation (1982) in which she planted a
field of wheat on the two-acre site of a landfill covered with urban detritus and rubble. The site is now Battery
Park City and the World Financial Center, a transformation from ecologic power to economic power.[citation
needed]

Andrea Polli's installation Particle Falls made particulate matter in the air visible in a way that passersby
could see.[18] For HighWaterLine Eve Mosher and others walked through neighborhoods in at-risk cities such
as New York City and Miami, marking the projected flood damage which could occur as a result of climate
change and talking with residents about what they were doing.[19][20]

Ecoart[edit]
Ecological art, also known as ecoart, is an artistic practice or discipline proposing paradigms sustainable
with the life forms and resources of our planet.[22] It is composed of artists, scientists, philosophers and
activists who are devoted to the practices of ecological art.[23] Historical precedents include Earthworks, Land
Art, and landscape painting/photography. Ecoart is distinguished by a focus on systems and
interrelationships within our environment: the ecological, geographic, political, biological and cultural.
[24]
 Ecoart creates awareness, stimulates dialogue, changes human behavior towards other species, and
encourages the long-term respect for the natural systems we coexist with. It manifests as socially engaged,
activist, community-based restorative or interventionist art. Ecological artist, Aviva Rahmani believes that
"Ecological art is an art practice, often in collaboration with scientists, city planners, architects and others,
that results in direct intervention in environmental degradation. Often, the artist is the lead agent in that
practice."[25]
There are numerous approaches to ecoart including but not limited to: representational artworks that
address the environment through images and objects; remediation projects that restore polluted
environments;[26] activist projects that engage others and activate change of behaviors and/or public policy;
[27]
 time-based social sculptures that involves communities in monitoring their landscapes and taking a
participatory role in sustainable practices; ecopoetic projects that initiate a re-envisioning and re-
enchantment with the natural world, inspiring healing and co-existence with other species; direct-encounter
artworks that involve natural phenomena such as water, weather, sunlight, or plants;[28] pedagogical artworks
that share information about environmental injustice and ecological problems such as water and soil
pollution and health hazards; relational aesthetics that involve sustainable, off-the-
grid, permaculture existences
There is discussion and debate among ecoartists, if ecological art should be considered a discrete discipline
within the arts, distinct from environmental art. A current definition of ecological art, drafted collectively by
the EcoArtNetwork is "Ecological art is an art practice that embraces an ethic of social justice in both its
content and form/materials. Ecoart is created to inspire caring and respect, stimulate dialogue, and
encourage the long-term flourishing of the social and natural environments in which we live. It commonly
manifests as socially engaged, activist, community-based restorative or interventionist art."[29] Artists who
work in this field generally subscribe to one or more of the following principles: focus on the web of
interrelationships in our environment—on the physical, biological, cultural, political, and historical aspects of
ecological systems; create works that employ natural materials or engage with environmental forces such as
wind, water, or sunlight; reclaim, restore, and remediate damaged environments; inform the public about
ecological dynamics and the environmental problems we face; revise ecological relationships, creatively
proposing new possibilities for coexistence, sustainability, and healing.[30]
Contributions by women in the area of EcoArt are significant, many are cataloged in WEAD, Women
Environmental Artists Directory founded in 1995 by Jo Hanson, Susan Leibovitz Steinman and Estelle
Akamine.[31] The work of ecofeminist writers inspired early male and female practitioners to address their
concerns about a more horizontal relationship to environmental issues in their own practices. The feminist
art writer Lucy Lippard, writing for the Weather Report Show she curated in 2007 at the Boulder Museum of
Contemporary Art, which included many environmental, ecological and ecofeminist artists, commented on
how many of those artists were women.[32]

Considering environmental impact[edit]

Within environmental art, a crucial distinction can be made between environmental artists who do not
consider the possible damage to the environment that their artwork may incur, and those whose intent is to
cause no harm to nature. For example, despite its aesthetic merits, the American artist Robert Smithson's
celebrated sculpture Spiral Jetty (1969) inflicted permanent damage upon the landscape he worked with,
using a bulldozer to scrape and cut the land, with the spiral itself impinging upon the lake. Similarly, criticism
was raised against the European sculptor Christo when he temporarily wrapped the coastline at Little Bay,
south of Sydney, Australia, in 1969. Conservationists' comments attracted international attention in
environmental circles and led contemporary artists in the region to rethink the inclinations of land art and
site-specific art.[
Sustainable art is produced with consideration for the wider impact of the work and its reception in
relationship to its environments (social, economic, biophysical, historical, and cultural). Some artists choose
to minimize their potential impact, while other works involve restoring the immediate landscape to a natural
state.[2]
British sculptor Richard Long has for several decades made temporary outdoor sculptural work by
rearranging natural materials found on site, such as rocks, mud and branches, which will therefore have no
lingering detrimental effect.[citation needed] Chris Drury instituted a work entitled "Medicine Wheel" which was the
fruit and result of a daily meditative walk, once a day, for a calendar year. The deliverable of this work was a
mandala of mosaicked found objects: nature art as process art.[
Leading environmental artists such British artist and poet, Hamish Fulton, Dutch sculptor Herman de Vries,
the Australian sculptor John Davis and the British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy similarly leave the landscape
they have worked with unharmed; in some cases they have revegetated damaged land with appropriate
indigenous flora in the process of making their work. In this way the work of art arises out of a sensitivity
towards habitat.[
Perhaps the most celebrated instance of environmental art in the late 20th century was 7000 Oaks, an
ecological action staged at Documenta during 1982 by Joseph Beuys, in which the artist and his assistants
highlighted the condition of the local environment by planting 7000 oak trees throughout and around the city
of Kassel.[citation needed]

Ecological awareness and transformation[edit]

Other eco-artists reflect on our human engagement with the natural world, and create ecologically informed
artworks that focus on transformation or reclamation. Ecoart writer and theoretician Linda Weintraub coined
the term, "cycle-logical" to describe the correlation between recycling and psychology. The 21st century
notion of artists' mindful engagement with their materials harkens back to paleolithic midden piles of
discarded pottery and metals from ancient civilizations.[33] Weintraub cites the work of MacArthur
Fellow Sarah Sze who recycles, reuses, and refurbishes detritus from the waste stream into elegant
sprawling installations. Her self-reflective work draws our attention to our own cluttered lives and connection
to consumer culture.[34] Brigitte Hitschler's Energy field drew power for 400 red diodes from the to-be-
reclaimed potash slag heap upon which they were installed, using art and science to reveal hidden material
culture.[35][better  source  needed]
Ecological artist and activist, Beverly Naidus, creates installations that address environmental crises, nuclear
legacy issues, and creates works on paper that envision transformation.[36] Her community-based
permaculture project, Eden Reframed remediates degraded soil using phytoremediation and mushrooms
resulting in a public place to grow and harvest medicinal plants and edible plants. Naidus is an educator
having taught at the University of Washington, Tacoma for over ten years, where she created the
Interdisciplinary Studio Arts in Community curriculum merging art with ecology and socially engaged
practices.[37] Naidus's book, Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame is a resource for teachers,
activists and artists.[38] Sculptor and installation artist Erika Wanenmacher was inspired by Tony Price in her
development of works addressing creativity, mythology, and New Mexico's nuclear presence.[39] Various
artists, have worked in different ways using living mold as an artistic element.
Renewable energy sculpture is another recent development in environmental art. In response to the growing
concern about global climate change, artists are designing explicit interventions at a functional level,
merging aesthetical responses with the functional properties of energy generation or saving. Practitioners of
this emerging area often work according to ecologically informed ethical and practical codes that conform
to Ecodesign criteria. Andrea Polli Queensbridge Wind Power Project is an example of experimental
architecture, incorporating wind turbines into a bridge's structure to recreate aspects of the original design
as well as lighting the bridge and neighbouring areas.[41] Ralf Sander's public sculpture, the World Saving
Machine, used solar energy to create snow and ice outside the Seoul Museum of Art in the hot Korean
summer.[42]

Suprematism
(Russian: Супремати́зм) is an art movement focused on basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares,
lines, and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colors. It was founded by Kazimir Malevich in Russia, and
announced in Malevich's 1915 Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10, in St. Petersburg, where he,
alongside 13 other artists, exhibited 36 works in a similar style.[1] The term suprematism refers to an abstract
art based upon "the supremacy of pure artistic feeling" rather than on visual depiction of objects.[2]
Birth of the movement
Kazimir Malevich developed the concept of Suprematism when he was already an established painter,
having exhibited in the Donkey's Tail and the Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) exhibitions of 1912
with cubo-futurist works. The proliferation of new artistic forms in painting, poetry and theatre as well as a
revival of interest in the traditional folk art of Russia provided a rich environment in which a Modernist culture
was born.
In "Suprematism" (Part II of his book The Non-Objective World, which was published 1927 in Munich
as Bauhaus Book No. 11), Malevich clearly stated the core concept of Suprematism:
Under Suprematism I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual
phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such,
quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.
He created a suprematist "grammar" based on fundamental geometric forms; in particular, the square and
the circle. In the 0.10 Exhibition in 1915, Malevich exhibited his early experiments in suprematist painting.
The centerpiece of his show was the Black Square, placed in what is called the red/beautiful corner in
Russian Orthodox tradition; the place of the main icon in a house. "Black Square" was painted in 1915 and
was presented as a breakthrough in his career and in art in general. Malevich also painted White on
White which was also heralded as a milestone. "White on White" marked a shift
from polychrome to monochrome Suprematism.

Distinct from Constructivism[edit]

Malevich's Suprematism is fundamentally opposed to the postrevolutionary positions of Constructivism and
materialism. Constructivism, with its cult of the object, is concerned with utilitarian strategies of adapting art
to the principles of functional organization. Under Constructivism, the traditional easel painter is transformed
into the artist-as-engineer in charge of organizing life in all of its aspects.
Suprematism, in sharp contrast to Constructivism, embodies a profoundly anti-materialist, anti-utilitarian
philosophy. In "Suprematism" (Part II of The Non-Objective World), Malevich writes:
Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners, it
wants to have nothing further to do with the object, as such, and believes that it can exist, in and for itself,
without "things" (that is, the "time-tested well-spring of life").
Jean-Claude Marcadé has observed that "Despite superficial similarities between Constructivism and
Suprematism, the two movements are nevertheless antagonists and it is very important to distinguish
between them." According to Marcadé, confusion has arisen because several artists—either directly
associated with Suprematism such as El Lissitzky or working under the suprematist influence as
did Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova—later abandoned Suprematism for the culture of materials.
Suprematism does not embrace a humanist philosophy which places man at the center of the universe.
Rather, Suprematism envisions man—the artist—as both originator and transmitter of what for Malevich is
the world's only true reality—that of absolute non-objectivity.
...a blissful sense of liberating non-objectivity drew me forth into a "desert", where nothing is real except
feeling...

— "Suprematism", Part II of The Non-Objective World

For Malevich, it is upon the foundations of absolute non-objectivity that the future of the universe will be built
- a future in which appearances, objects, comfort, and convenience no longer dominate.

Influences on the movement[edit]

Malevich also credited the birth of suprematism to Victory Over the Sun, Kruchenykh's Futurist opera
production for which he designed the sets and costumes in 1913. The aim of the artists involved was to
break with the usual theater of the past and to use a "clear, pure, logical Russian language". Malevich put
this to practice by creating costumes from simple materials and thereby took advantage of geometric
shapes. Flashing headlights illuminated the figures in such a way that alternating hands, legs or heads
disappeared into the darkness. The stage curtain was a black square. One of the drawings for the backcloth
shows a black square divided diagonally into a black and a white triangle. Because of the simplicity of these
basic forms they were able to signify a new beginning.
Another important influence on Malevich were the ideas of the Russian mystic, philosopher, and disciple
of Georges Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, who wrote of "a fourth dimension or a Fourth Way beyond the three
to which our ordinary senses have access".[4]

The Supremus journal[edit]
The Supremus group, which in addition to Malevich included Aleksandra Ekster, Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda
Udaltsova, Ivan Kliun, Lyubov Popova, Lazar Khidekel, Nikolai Suetin, Ilya Chashnik, Nina Genke-
Meller, Ivan Puni and Ksenia Boguslavskaya, met from 1915 onwards to discuss the philosophy of
Suprematism and its development into other areas of intellectual life. The products of these discussions
were to be documented in a monthly publication called Supremus, titled to reflect the art movement it
championed, that would include painting, music, decorative art, and literature. Malevich conceived of the
journal as the contextual foundation in which he could base his art, and originally planned to call the
journal Nul. In a letter to a colleague, he explained:
We are planning to put out a journal and have begun to discuss the how and what of it. Since in it we intend
to reduce everything to zero, we have decided to call it Nul. Afterward we ourselves will go beyond zero.
Malevich conceived of the journal as a space for experimentation that would test his theory of nonobjective
art. The group of artists wrote several articles for the initial publication, including the essays "The Mouth of
the Earth and the Artist" (Malevich), "On the Old and the New in Music" (Matiushin), "Cubism, Futurism,
Suprematism" (Rozanova), "Architecture as a Slap in the Face to Ferroconcrete" (Malevich), and "The
Declaration of the Word as Such" (Kruchenykh). However, despite a year spent planning and writing articles
for the journal, the first issue of Supremus was never published.[5]

El Lissitzky: a bridge to the west[edit]

The most important artist who took the art form and ideas developed by Malevich and popularized them
abroad was the painter El Lissitzky. Lissitzky worked intensively with Suprematism particularly in the years
1919 to 1923. He was deeply impressed by Malevich's Suprematist works as he saw it as the theoretical
and visual equivalent of the social upheavals taking place in Russia at the time. Suprematism, with its
radicalism, was to him the creative equivalent of an entirely new form of society. Lissitzky transferred
Malevich’s approach to his Proun constructions, which he himself described as "the station where one
changes from painting to architecture". The Proun designs, however, were also an artistic break from
Suprematism; the "Black Square" by Malevich was the end point of a rigorous thought process that required
new structural design work to follow. Lissitzky saw this new beginning in his Proun constructions, where the
term "Proun" (Pro Unovis) symbolized its Suprematist origins.
Lissitzky exhibited in Berlin in 1923 at the Hanover and Dresden showrooms of Non-Objective Art. During
this trip to the West, El Lissitzky was in close contact with Theo van Doesburg, forming a bridge between
Suprematism and De Stijl and the Bauhaus.

Architecture[edit]
Lazar Khidekel (1904–1986), Suprematist artist and visionary architect, was the only Suprematist architect
who emerged from the Malevich circle. Khidekel started his study in architecture in Vitebsk art school under
El Lissitzky in 1919–20. He was instrumental in the transition from planar Suprematism to volumetric
Suprematism, creating axonometric projections (The Aero-club: Horizontal architecton, 1922–23), making
three-dimensional models, such as the architectons, designing objects (model of an "Ashtray", 1922–23),
and producing the first Suprematist architectural project (The Workers’ Club, 1926). In the mid-1920s, he
began his journey into the realm of visionary architecture. Directly inspired by Suprematism and its notion of
an organic form-creation continuum, he explored new philosophical, scientific and technological futuristic
approaches, and proposed innovative solutions for the creation of new urban environments, where people
would live in harmony with nature and would be protected from man-made and natural disasters (his still
topical proposal for flood protection – the City on the Water, 1925).
Nikolai Suetin used Suprematist motifs on works at the Imperial Porcelain Factory, Saint Petersburg where
Malevich and Chashnik were also employed, and Malevich designed a Suprematist teapot. The
Suprematists also made architectural models in the 1920s, which offered a different conception of socialist
buildings to those developed in Constructivist architecture.
Malevich's architectural projects were known after 1922 Arkhitektoniki. Designs emphasized the right angle,
with similarities to De Stijl and Le Corbusier, and were justified with an ideological connection to communist
governance and equality for all. Another part of the formalism was low regard for triangles which were
"dismissed as ancient, pagan, or Christian".[6]
The first Suprematist architectural project was created by Lazar Khidekel in 1926. In the mid 1920s to 1932
Lazar Khidekel also created a series of futuristic projects such as Aero-City, Garden-City, and City Over
Water.
In the 21st century, architect Zaha Hadid aimed to realize Malevich's work and advance Suprematism by
building a completely abstract building.[7]

Social context[edit]
This development in artistic expression came about when Russia was in a revolutionary state, ideas were in
ferment, and the old order was being swept away. As the new order became established, and Stalinism took
hold from 1924 on, the state began limiting the freedom of artists. From the late 1920s the Russian avant-
garde experienced direct and harsh criticism from the authorities and in 1934 the doctrine of Socialist
Realism became official policy, and prohibited abstraction and divergence of artistic expression. Malevich
nevertheless retained his main conception. In his self-portrait of 1933 he represented himself in a traditional
way—the only way permitted by Stalinist cultural policy—but signed the picture with a tiny black-over-white
square.
How the Invention of
Photography Changed Art
Photography radically changed painting. It is popularly taken to have been invented in 1839, when Louis-
Jacques-Mandé Daguerre burst onto the scene with his ‘daguerreotype’- world’s first commercial camera.
De Font- Reaulx noted that although the medium was immediately and enthusiastically embraced by the
public at large, “photography gave rise to a new relationship to reality and its representation, which then
boomeranged on its elder sister (painting).”  The reproduction of art objects was also a key development in
the use of photography. It had a profound effect on changing the visual culture of society and making art
accessible to the general public, changing its perception, notion and knowledge of art, and appreciation of
beauty.
Photography democratised art by making it more portable, accessible and cheaper. For instance, as
photographed portraits were far cheaper and easier to produce than painted portraits, portraits ceased to be
the privilege of the well-off and, in a sense, became democratised. This also lead to a mild opposition
against photography from upper class sections of the society who felt that it was cheapening art. That was
what gave ‘kitsch’ its meaning: an attempt to reproduce massively and cheaply something artistic and
unique. Baudelaire described photography as the “refuge of failed painters with too little talent”. In his view,
art was derived from imagination, judgment and feeling but photography was mere reproduction which
cheapened the products of the beautiful.
Perhaps the greatest contribution which the new technique of photography could make to painting was to
liberate Art from its ties to realism, to factuality. Until that point in history, painting relied on fixed subjects
and was a process that took a certain amount of time to achieve the desired realistic result. Photography
offered a new way of viewing the world in images that could capture fleeting, momentary effects of light and
movement that were impossible under traditional studio conditions. There was, ultimately, no need for the
artist’s pencil or brush to labour intensively to depict and record people, occasions or things which the
photographer could document through his lens with practical ease and speed. Painting flourished through
the 19th century within a largely traditional set of conventions and moved on in the first half of the 20th
century to the ambitious challenges of abstraction, pure form and colour, leaving to photographers the task
of making visual records. Painters began to look for things that painting could do that photography could not
and painting started to change.
Chronophotography, or what is now referred to as time-lapse photography, influenced the development of
the work of Cubist and Futurist painters in the early 20th century. In the 40s and 50s, Jackson Pollock,
Robert Motherwell and other Abstract Expressionists pushed this trend to the point where painting had left
behind representations of the physical world completely. These artists were interested in expressing ideas,
experiences, and feelings through completely abstract methods. Painting was no longer concerned with
creating an illusion of a real space. Painting eventually came back to using real images, but still tended to
treat them in a different way. For instance, Andy Warhol often repeated the same image in a painting.
Rauschenberg would use images like objects within a painting. In a way, these painters tried to incorporate
images without returning to the rejected practice of creating an illusion of a real space. All of these modern
forms of painting involve the depiction of a different way of visualizing reality.
Since the invention of photography, Western painting’s branched into diverse new genres such as
impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, cubism and more. In these and other ways, innovations in
photography led to new artistic movements and challenged conventional notions about painting as the only
form of art, a belief several art & culture hubs such as Pearey Lal Bhawan uphold.