Conceptual Art

First published Thu Jun 7, 2007; substantive revision Wed Mar 23, 2022

The philosophy of art addresses a broad spectrum of theoretical issuesarising from a wide variety of objects of attention. These range fromPaleolithic cave painting to postmodern poetry, and from the problemof how music can convey emotion to that of the metaphysical status offictional characters. Until recently, however, philosophical interestin conceptual art, or conceptualism, has been notably sparse. Why?After all, both philosophy and the myriad kinds and styles of art andart-making that fall under the conceptual tradition all have one thingin common: they are both intended to make you think and ask pressingquestions. What are those questions and how do we go about answeringthem?

1. Conceptual Art – What Is It?

1.1 Introduction

Few artistic movements have attracted so much controversy and debateas conceptual art. By its nature, conceptual art has a tendency toprovoke intense and perhaps even extreme reactions in its audiences.While some people find conceptual art very refreshing and relevant,many others consider it shocking, distasteful, and conspicuouslylacking in craftsmanship. Some even simply deny that it is art at all.Conceptual art, it seems, is something that we either love orhate.

This divisive character is, however, far from accidental. Mostconceptual art actively sets out to be controversial in so far as itseeks to challenge and probe us about what we tend to take as given inthe domain of art. In fact, this capacity to evoke argument and debatelies at the very heart of what conceptual art sets out to do, namelyto make us question our assumptions not only about what may properlyqualify as art and what the function of the artist should be, but alsoabout what our role as spectators should involve. It should come as nosurprise, then, that conceptual art can cause frustration or vexation– to raise difficult and sometimes even annoying questions isprecisely what conceptual art in general aspires to do. In reactingstrongly to conceptual art we are, in some important sense, playingright into its hands.

The first difficulty that a philosophical investigation of conceptualart encounters has to do with identifying the object of examination,or at least the category of objects under scrutiny. In the words ofthe art historian Paul Wood,

[i]t is not at all clear where the boundaries of ‘conceptualart’ are to be drawn, which artists and which works to include.Looked at in one way, conceptual art gets to be like LewisCarroll’s Cheshire cat, dissolving away until nothing is leftbut a grin: a handful of works made over a few short years by a smallnumber of artists… Then again, regarded under a differentaspect, conceptual art can seem like nothing less than the hingearound which the past turned into the present. (Wood 2002, 6)

On a strict historical reading, the expression ‘conceptualart’ refers to the artistic movement that reached its pinnaclebetween 1966 and 1972 (Lippard 1973).^[1] Among its most famous adherents at its early stage we find artistssuch as Joseph Kosuth, Robert Morris, Joseph Beuys, Adrian Piper, toname but a few. What unites the conceptual art of this period is theabsorption of the lessons learnt from other twentieth-century artmovements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Suprematism, AbstractExpressionism and the Fluxus group, together with the ambition onceand for all to ‘free’ art of the Modernist paradigm. Mostimportantly, perhaps, conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s sought toovercome a backdrop against which art’s principal aim is toproduce something beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. Art, earlyconceptual artists held, is redundant if it does not make us think. Intheir belief that most artistic institutions were not conducive toreflection but merely promoted a conservative and even consumeristconception of art and artists, conceptual artists in the mid-1960s tothe early 1970s instead tried to encourage a revisionary understandingof art, the artist, and artistic experience.

While conceptual art in its purest form might arguably be limited toworks produced during these five or six years half a century ago, itseems overly narrow – certainly from a philosophical perspective– to limit our inquiry to works produced during that periodalone. For although the work created during that time might generallybe conceived as more directly anti-establishment and anti-consumeristthan later conceptual art, the spirit of early conceptual art seems tohave carried on relatively undiluted into the very late twentieth andtwenty-first centuries, as witnessed by pieces such as TraceyEmin’sUnmade Bed, Damian Hirst’sThePhysical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,and Ai Weiwei’sSurveillance Camera.

The highly individualised character of the intellectual explorationthat conceptual art urges us to engage in has always been such thatany attempt to pinpoint a specific common denominator other than thisgeneral vision and approach to art, art-making and society at largeinvariably fails to catch its very essence. The means of artisticexpression, we are told, are infinite and the topics available forquestioning and discussion are limitless. It belongs to the verynature of conceptual art, then, to be – like Lewis’Cheshire cat – elusive and slippery. Conceptual artists, be itJoseph Beuys or Marina Abramovic, pursue artistic originality andrepresentation inevery possible way. For that reason, onemight find oneself obliged to replace the slightly lofty clichéaccording to which there are as many definitions of conceptual art asthere are conceptual artists, with an even more extreme version of theclaim, namely, that there are as many definitions of conceptual art asthere are conceptual artworks.

Nevertheless, in the midst of this deliberately produced uncertaintyabout the nature of conceptual art, a handful of characteristics andgeneral aims do seem to recur, and although they should not be seen ascriteria for conceptual art strictly speaking, they may be consideredtenets fundamental to (most) conceptual art.

1.2 The Limits of Art and the Role of Artists

First and foremost, conceptual art challenges our intuitionsconcerning the limits of what may count as art and what it is anartist does. It does so, on the one hand, by postulating ever morecomplex objects as candidates for the status of ‘artwork’,and, on the other hand, by distancing the task of the artist from theactual making and manipulating of the artistic material.

A characteristic way in which conceptual art explores the boundariesof the artwork is by a process of questioning where the realm of theartistic ends and that of utility begins. Continuing the tradition ofMarcel Duchamp’s readymades such asFountain, orBottlerack, it sets out to overthrow our traditionalconceptions of what an art object should be made of and what it shouldlook like. The artwork is aprocess rather than amaterial thing, and as such it is no longer something thatcan be grasped merely by seeing, hearing or touching the end productof that process. The notion ofagency in art-making is thusparticularly emphasised. In many cases, the ‘art-making’and the ‘artwork’ come together, because what is sought isan identification of the notion of the work of art with the conceptualactivity of the artist. Conceptual art, politicised and influenced byevents such as the ‘May Days’ in Paris (1968), the‘Hot Autumn’ in Italy (1969), the Vietnam War, and therise of feminism, promotes arapprochement between art-makingand criticism – both artistic and social – by raisingquestions about the products of artistic activities and the verypurpose of art. To use the words of Joseph Kosuth, it ‘annexesthe functions of the critic, and makes a middle-manunnecessary.’ (Guercio 1999, 39).

1.3 Artistic Media

As a direct result of its examination of what may properly qualify asart, and of the markedly broad conception of what may constitute anart object resulting from this examination, conceptual art tends toreject traditional artistic media such as conventional painting orsculpture. Instead, it has found itself drawn to alternative means ofexpression, including performances, photography, films, videos,events, bodies, new ready-mades and new mixed media. In a nutshell,nothing can be ruled out in principle for use as possible artisticmedia, as can be seen, for example, in Richard Long’s photographof a line made in the grass by walking^[2], Bruce Nauman’s nine minute film of the artist himself playingone note on a violin whilst walking around in his studio^[3], Janine Antoni’s use of chocolate and soap, MarinaAbramovic’s display of an array of everyday objects, includingknives, torches and feathers, which the audience is invited to applydirectly on to the artist’s body, and Piero Manzoni’s actof signing a woman’s arm^[4].

1.4 Art as Idea

The most fundamentally revisionary feature of conceptual art is theway in which it proclaims itself to be an art of the mind rather thanthe senses: it rejects traditional artistic media because it locatesthe artwork at the level ofideas rather than that ofobjects. Because more weight tends to given to creativeprocess than physical material, and because art should be aboutintellectual inquiry and reflection rather than beauty and aestheticpleasure (as traditionally conceived), the identity of the work of artis said to lie in the idea at the heart of the piece in question. Inthe words of Kosuth, ‘[t]he actual works of art are ideas’(Lippard 1973, 25). For conceptual art, ‘the idea or concept isthe most important aspect of the work’ (LeWitt 1967, 166). Artis ‘de-materialised’, and in this sense held to be priorto its materialisation in any given object.

The claim that the conceptual artwork is to be identified with an ideathat may be seen to underlie it has far-reaching ramifications. It notonly affects the ontology of the conceptual artwork but alsoprofoundly alters the role of the artist by casting her in the role ofthinker rather than object-maker. Moreover, it calls for a thoroughreview of the way in which we perceive, engage and appreciateartworks. Further still, it links art so intimately to ideas andconcepts that even a principled distinction between the domain of artand the realm of thought seems difficult to preserve.

1.5 Semantic Representation

For all these reasons, the kind of representation employed inconceptual artworks is best described in terms of the transmission ofideas. In conceptual art, the representation at work can generally beseen assemantic rather thanillustrative. That isto say, it sets out to have and convey a specific meaning rather thanto depict a scene, person or event. Even in cases where a work makesuse of illustrative representation, conceptual art is still puttingthat representation to a distinctively semantic use, in the sense ofthere being an intention to represent something one cannot see withthe naked eye. Accordingly, the conceptual artist’s task is tocontemplate and formulate this meaning – to be a‘meaning-maker’.

2. The Philosophy of Conceptual Art – What is it?

On the whole, the philosophical concerns raised by conceptual art canbe divided into two main categories. First, there are specificquestions to do with conceptual art itself, and the claims whichunderpin the project that drives it. Philosophical investigationsmight thus be called for not only in relation to the internalconsistency and coherence of the project and its set goals, but alsowith regards to the particular tenets outlined above. For example,what does it mean to say that every single thing, person or event is apossible candidate for an artistic medium and does that suggestion notrender the category of art, as we know it, redundant?

Second, conceptual art poses philosophical problems from a widerperspective, in so far as one might expect philosophy to provide uswith unitary accounts of the nature of art, the role of the artist,and artistic experience. In many important respects, conceptual artsits very uncomfortably with other, often more traditional artformsand artworks, and this tension highlights a pressing issue for anyoneinterested in the possibility of a universal theory of art. For ifthere is to be one rule for conceptual art and another for all otherkinds of art, are there still good grounds for thinking of conceptualart as a kind of art? Moreover, could not every particular kind ofartform or artwork demand a separate theory of art, artist andartistic experience?

If we are to sidestep such an intrinsic division between conceptualart on the one hand, and other kinds of art on the other, thentheories concerned mainly with art that is not conceptual will have tomake many significant concessions in order to incorporate theproblematic case that conceptual artworks present. At the very least,a compromise will have to be reached concerning what we mean by theterm ‘artwork’.

One of the over-riding concerns that beset the philosophy ofconceptual art is thus whether and, if so, why one should activelypursue unified accounts in the philosophy of art. Whether one comesout of that investigation embracing a broader – albeit perhapsvaguer – set of concepts and tools than one started off with, orwhether one considers oneself forced to abandon any hope of anythingbut very specific theories of art, artist, and artistic experience,conceptual art obliges us to think about where we stand on theseissues.

Philosophizing about conceptual art is, then, not merelyphilosophizing about one specific artform. It is philosophizing aboutthe most revisionary kind of art, one that sees its own task as beingprofoundly philosophical in nature. Let us now turn to five morespecific philosophical themes that conceptual art urges us toconsider.

3. Five Philosophical Themes

3.1 The Definition of Art

The problem of defining art is by no means a problem for conceptualart alone. Two principal difficulties immediately arise in the contextof any attempt to form a definition. First, the category of art isparticularly heterogeneous. Simply put, there seems to be an infinitevariety of things, or kinds of thing, that need to fall under itsjurisdiction. Second, there is great variety of opinion on what anyputative definition of art should actually consist of.

On the standard conception, a definition is something that provides uswith necessary and sufficient conditions for some thingx tobe F, so that, for example, it is a necessary and sufficient conditionfor a number to be an even number that it is (i) an integer and (ii)divisible by two. Accordingly, a definition of art must be capable ofoutlining a clear set of conditions that must be satisfied.

There have been no shortages of attempts to define art in this manner.Most prominently perhaps, it has been suggested that art ought to bedefined in terms of its aesthetic character, so that, roughly,x is an artwork if and only ifx gives rise to anaesthetic experience (e.g., Beardsley 1958). Notwithstanding thedifficulties that this particular suggestion entails (we shall returnto this in §3.3), the advent of a kind of art that is asprofoundly revisionary and difficult to classify as conceptual artrenders the attempt to provide a general definition applicable toall art particularly complex. It is no coincidence, then,that a neo-Wittgensteinian approach came to dominate the philosophy ofart in the late 1950s and 1960s. Drawing support fromanti-essentialist theories of language, it was suggested that art wasnumbered among the various concepts that are, by their very nature,‘essentially contested’ (Gallie 1948; see also Weitz1956). That is to say, some concepts – such as that pertainingto sports, for example– simply do not allow for definitions interms of necessary and sufficient conditions, and art is best asunderstood as one of them. In the words of Morris Weitz, art maybe

an open concept. New conditions have constantly arisen and willundoubtedly constantly arise; new art forms, new movements willemerge, which will demand decisions on the part of thoseinterested… as to whether the concept should be extended ornot. (Weitz 1956, 32)

The act of proposing a definition of art thus becomes a less stringentexercise of conceptual analysis. The alternative method proposed byneo-Wittgensteinians such as Weitz in attempting to identify art andexplain how we are to distinguish it from non-art is the notion offamily resemblance (see Wittgenstein 1953,§66–71). Faced with the question ‘IsX anartwork?’, what we should do is try to detect strands ofresemblance with paradigmatic instances of an artwork. If somesignificant resemblance to such a paradigmatic case is observed, wecan rightly call the object of our scrutiny a work of art.

The proposal, though interesting, is not without its own difficulties.One problem that immediately arises relates to the idea of resemblanceitself, and the way it rapidly expands in such a way as to render itclose to useless. This is for the simple reason that we can alwaysfind some way in which some given thing may be said to resemble anyother given thing. This kind of openness, it is important to note, isnot something that fits in with the programme of conceptualart. Whilst conceptual art does hold that any kind of object could bea work of art, it is not saying that every objectis a workof art. Far from it. Much conceptual art, in exploring the boundariesbetween the realms of the artistic and that of function and utility,is perceptually indistinguishable from non-art, such as AndyWarhol’sBrillo Boxes. In that sense, conceptual artpresents a particularly difficult case for the neo-Wittgensteinianmethod of identification. After all, the only way in whichWarhol’s Brillo Boxesdoes not resemble any other stackof Brillo Boxes is the sense in which the former is a work of art andthe latter is not. The notion of resemblance is clearly of little usehere.

Picking up on this concern, Arthur Danto has famously suggested thatit is in fact a non-manifest relation that makes something an artworkrather than an observable property (Danto 1981). That is to say,artworks acquire that status in virtue of their relations to thehistorical and social setting constituted by the practices andconventions of art, our artistic heritage, the intentions of artists,and so on — the ‘artworld’ (see also Dickie1974). The general idea here is that artworks are generated within asocial and artistic context, and so being an artwork is a function ofcertain social relations. Conceptual art reinforces the idea that artand non-art can be perceptually indistinguishable and so cannot bemarked off from each other by ‘exhibited’ properties alone.^[5]

Setting aside the details of such an account, one of the thingsconceptual art has helped philosophers to grasp more fully is that anysuccessful general definition, or indeed principled theory of theidentification of art, will need to have the non-manifest propertiesof artworks at its centre. It is the meaning that the artist infusesinto the work and the meaning that we as audience stand to gain fromit that contains the key to its status as art (more on this in§3.4). To use the example of Warhol’sBrillo Boxesagain, the work of the conceptual artist seems primarily to be thework of imbuing objects with a particular kind of meaning.

A more promising line of enquiry has been developed by David Davies.Taking his cue from the problems posed by conceptual art, Daviesargues that a unified definition of art can only be found if we thinkof art primarily in terms of the creative process or series of actionsresulting in a material thing or other ‘focus ofappreciation’. In that sense, the artwork is primarilyidentified with the intentional acts through which it comes into beingrather than with the end-product of that process (Davies 2004). Art,on this view, is better understood as a kind of performance than as amanifest object. By shifting the focus of our attention in this way,we can overcome many of the difficulties associated with defining art,most notably that of its heterogeneity. It may be, then, that the mostenduring lesson to be learnt from conceptual art with regards to thedefinition of art is not so much that a conceptual analysis of art iscompletely unattainable, as that we simply have been looking in thewrong place.

3.2 The Ontology and Media of Art

The claim that conceptual art is to be identified less with aperceivable object than with the meaning or idea it aims to convey,gives rise to a host of complex ontological questions. The rejectionof traditional artistic media, together with the de-materialisation ofthe art object, forces us to reconsider what seemed to be relativelyuncomplicated aspects of artistic experience. The answers to questionssuch as ‘Is there in fact any one thing (or set of things) thatwe must perceive in artistic appreciation?’, and ‘Is it anecessary condition for the existence of an artwork that it have amedium?’ suddenly become a good deal less obvious.

In the first instance, conceptual art drives us to review the commonassumption that appropriate appreciation and engagement with anartwork must involve a direct first-hand experience of that pieceitself. The idea here, to use Frank Sibley’s words, is that

[p]eople have tosee the grace or unity of a work,hear the plaintiveness or frenzy in the music,notice the gaudiness of colour scheme,feel thepower of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone. They may bestruck by these qualities at once, or they may come to perceive themonly after repeated viewings, hearings, or readings, and with the helpof critics. But unless they do perceive them for themselves, aestheticenjoyment, appreciation, and judgement are beyond them… thecrucial thing is to see, hear, or feel. (Sibley 1965, 137).

The assumption in question is, then, that although we seem to gainsomething from looking at, for example, a postcard or poster ofKatsushika Hokusai'sFine Wine, Clear Morning orÉlisabeth Vigée Le Brun’sSelf-Portrait in aStraw Hat , a genuine judgement about its artistic characternecessitates one’s own un-mediated perceptual experience of it.But – and herein lies the crux of the problem for conceptual art– what if there is nothing for us to get a first-hand perceptualexperience of? In the case of Walter De Maria’sVerticalEarth Kilometer (1977)^[6], a kilometre-long metal shaft plunged into the surface of the earth sothat only the very top is visible, first-hand perceptual experience issimply not something that can be had. More pertinently, what does iteven mean to have a perceptual engagement with an artwork that claims,basically, to be an idea?

Perhaps the most pressing question, however, has to do with the extentto which we are to take conceptual art’s claim ofde-materialisation seriously. Does the de-materialisation of such artnot suggest that there is not only a rejection of traditional artisticmedia in conceptual art, but an outright refutation of artistic mediain general? One possible way of making sense of this idea is with adistinction outlined by Davies, namely that betweenphysicalmedium andvehicular medium (Davies 2004). Crucially, avehicular medium is said to incorporate not only physical objects(such as paintings and sculptures, say) but also actions, events, andgenerally more complex entities. In Davies’ words, ‘[t]heproduct of an artist’s manipulation of a vehicular medium willthen be thevehicle whereby a particular artistic statementis articulated… The vehicle may, as in the case ofPicasso’sGuernica, be a physical object, or, as in thecase of Coleridge’sKubla Kahn, a linguisticstructure-type, or, as arguably in the case of Duchamp’sFountain, an action of a particular kind.’ (Davies2004, 59). Adhering to this vehicular medium in art, may then at leastequip philosophers with a notion that can deflate the concern ofwhether conceptual art, by rejecting physical media, denies the needforall artistic media.

Clearly, conceptual art is not the first kind of art to raiseontological concerns of this kind. After all, music and literary art,be it traditional oravant-garde, hardly presentstraightforward cases either. The question of what exactlyconstitutes, say, a novel or a musical work have been widely discussedfor some time (e.g. Davies 2001; Ingarden 1973; Wollheim 1980)Building on the suggestion that artworks such as musical pieces andliterary works are best understood in terms of universals or‘types’, one view that has been widely discussed in thelast two decades or so is based on the idea that not only musical andliterary artworks, butall artworks, are types. Morespecifically, they are to be conceived of as ‘event- oraction-types’ (Currie 1988). According to this theory, theartwork is thus not the material thing itself but, rather, the way inwhich the artist arrived at the underlying structure shared by allinstances or performances of that work.

Whilst the general approach fostered by both Currie and Davies isclearly congenial to some aspects of conceptual art, it mightnevertheless still be the case that further work needs to be done ifthe view that artworks are basically event- or action-types is toaccommodate all art in the conceptual tradition. Further questionsinclude what role, if any, is played by the (set of) material thing(s)that many conceptual artists undeniablydo present us with.What, in other words, are we to make of the object (be it a human bodyor a video-recording) that is supposed to transmit the idea which, inturn, is said to be the genuine artwork? A good philosophicalexplanation needs to be given as to how the material thing that isregularly presented to the audience is, in fact, relevant to theartwork itself. Is the vehicular medium constitutive of the artwork,and if so, how exactly does that square with the claim ofde-materialisation?

3.3 The Aesthetic Value of Art

Underlying the claim that we need to have a direct experientialencounter with an artwork in order to appreciate it appropriately isthe fact that some of the properties that bear on the value of a workcan only be grasped in this way. The properties in question here aregenerallyaesthetic properties, and the assumption motivatingthe experiential requirement is that the appreciation of artworksnecessarily involves an aesthetic element (i.e. not necessarily beautyper se, but something aesthetically pleasing orrewarding).

However, one of the most distinguishing features of conceptual art,setting out as it does to replace illustrative representation withsemantic representation, is that it does not prioritise aestheticexperience in a traditional sense. Conceptual art is intended as anart of the mind: it generally appeals to matters of the intellect andemphasises art’scognitive rather thanaesthetic value. In the words of Timothy Binkley, traditionalaesthetics is preoccupied ‘with perceptual entities’ andthis ‘leads aesthetics to extol and examine the “work ofart”, while averting its attention almost entirely from themyriad other aspects of that complex cultural activity we call“art” ’ (Binkley 1977, 271).

We can now see that the experiential requirement may well fail to haveany bite with regards to conceptual artworks because theartist’s aim does not necessarily involve conferring to the workof art properties that must be experienced directly in order to begrasped and fully appreciated. If there is to be any kind offirst-hand experiential requirement for the appropriate appreciationof conceptual artworks, it will perhaps be of a kind that focuses onan imaginative engagement with the idea central to the artwork ratherthan a perceptual experience of its aesthetic properties (seeSchellekens 2007)

The main philosophical question highlighted by conceptual art in thiscontext, then, is the following: ‘Does art really need to beaesthetic, and, if so, in what sense?’. In Binkley’sopinion, and in support of conceptual art, one does not necessarilyhave to think of art in terms of aesthetic value –whilst a lotof ‘art has chosen to articulate in the medium of an aestheticspace’, there is ‘no a priori reason why art must confineitself to the creation of aesthetic objects. It might opt forarticulation in a semantic space instead of an aesthetic one so thatartistic meaning is not embodied in a physical object or event’(Binkley 1977, 273).

However, not everyone has endorsed such a liberal view about theseparation between the aesthetic and the artistic^[7]. If art does not aim at having aesthetic value, what, one might argue,will set it apart from non-art? Which view one decides to favour onthis point may well end up being an issue about definition. If onewishes to define art in terms of aesthetic experience, the questionfinds a clear-cut answer, namely that conceptual art simply cannot beconsidered a kind of art. The down-side of that position is, however,a whole set of difficult concerns to do with things, such as nature orpersons, that hardly qualify as art even though they invite aestheticexperiences. If one is impressed by these worries and cannot see anydecisive philosophical reason to uphold the aesthetic view, there islittle, if anything, to block a conception of art which is notnecessarily aesthetic. One may, then, think of aesthetic value asone kind of artistic value that, alongside with moral,religious, political, historical and financial value, some artworkshave and others do not.^[8]

Now, even if it is granted that art need not be aesthetic, it is stillpossible to hold that conceptual art does not qualify asgoodart because it does not (aim to) yield aesthetic experiences. Butwhile this may be a viable position to hold in relation to the projectof conceptual art in general, it cannot be used to attack conceptualart on its own grounds. Saying, for example, of MichaelCraig-Martin’sAn Oak Tree that one cannot consider ita great work of art because it fails to give rise to a distinctivelyaesthetic kind of pleasure does not actually undermine the project.Conceptual art, as we now know, is more about conveying meaningthrough a vehicular medium than about furnishing its audiences withexperiences of, say, beauty. Any attack on this fundamental feature ofconceptual art targets not so much an individual work of art butrather finds fault with the artistic tradition itself.

3.4 The Interpretation of Art

At the most basic level of inquiry, two queries arise aboutinterpretation in art: (i) what ‘tools’ do we use tointerpret artworks?, and (ii) what is it we do when we interpretartworks? In the case of conceptual art, a satisfactory answer to (i)will most probably appeal to elements such as the narrative aidsprovided by artists or curators (e.g. catalogues, titles, exhibitedexplanations, labels, etc.); the appropriate mode of perception (i.e.looking or listening); and what we know about the artwork’s andartist’s social, historical, political or artistic context.Depending on the ontological status of the particular piece (if it is,say, a ready-made or a performance), these elements can be combined indifferent ways to explain our interpretative habits and practices.

In addressing (ii) we will most likely need to refer to the variousmental abilities we put to use in such interpretative exercises (e.g.imagination, empathy); and also to ask precisely what the target ofour interpretation is. This latter task is not as unproblematic as itmay seem, for it is not always clear whether it is the object itselfthat should be under scrutiny, the object’s perceptualproperties (and, if so, which), the idea at the heart of the work, orthe artist’s intentions in making the piece. It seems unlikelythat the question will find an adequate answer until we find anacceptable solution to the problem mentioned above, namely ‘Isthe vehicular medium a constitutive part of the conceptual artwork ornot, and if so how?’.

Two further philosophical questions about the notion of artisticinterpretation take on a particularly complex dimension in relation toconceptual art. First, exactly what information is relevant inartistic interpretation? And, more importantly, to what extent shouldtheartist’s intention be allowed to determine theappropriate interpretation? Views differ widely on this topic. Intheir article, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, William Wimsattand Monroe Beardsley famously argue in relation to the literary artsthat the only kind of evidence that is relevant to interpretation isthat which is internal to the work in question. (Wimsatt &Beardsley 1946). An artist’s intention or design is of nointerpretative significance. Obviously, this position seems difficultto defend in the case of conceptual art: when we are dealing withpieces such as Warhol’sBrillo Boxes, where theinternal evidence is clearly insufficient to discern that it is anartwork in the first place, it seems that we need to know that Warholintended the boxes to be viewedqua art, at the veryleast.

Now, even if we do wish to defend the view that the artist’sintention needs to be taken into account somehow in the interpretationof conceptual art, further questions still require our attention here.Most centrally, should the artist’s intention always beconsidered thedecisive factor in interpretation andmust it always be involved? Generally speaking, there are twomain strands of intentionalist positions available. On the one hand,there is an approach which holds that the artist’s intentiondetermines an artwork’s meaning, and thus cannot be overlooked– or indeed superseded – in artistic interpretation (e.g.,Carroll 1992). On the other hand, there is a view that the interpreterought to construct the best hypothesis concerning the artist’sactual intention with the help of, say, the text and biographicalnotes, and that this hypothesis confers meaning on the work inquestion (e.g., Levinson 1992).

At least at a first glance, it may seem that conceptual art presents astronger case for the first approach to interpretation, since theartist’s intention is all we have to go by, quite literally, inworks such as Robert Barry’s simple statement entitledAllthe Things I Know But of which I am Not at the Moment Thinking(1969) (see, e.g., Maes 2010 and Gover 2012). Nevertheless, thequestion cannot be settled quite so easily, for many conceptualartists make a point of putting all the interpretative onus on thespectator. How often are we told, after all, that a specificartwork’s meaning rests entirely in our hands; that ‘itmeans whatever you want it to mean’?

This leads us to the second question that is especially pertinent fora kind of art that sets out to convey an idea or meaning, namelywhether there can be more than one correct or appropriateinterpretation of an artwork. Again, several theories presentthemselves as eligible candidates in relation to this problem. Onesuggestion has centred around the idea that there can be amultiplicity of appropriate or correct divergent interpretations ofone and the same artwork which cannot be reduced to one underlyinginterpretation or ranked in relation to each other (e.g., Margolis1991; Goldman 1990). In opposition to this view, however, anotherapproach has it that there is in fact always a single bestinterpretation which is better than any other (e.g., Beardsley 1970).The aim of artistic interpretation is, then, in Matthew Kieran’swords, ‘restricted to discovering the one true meaning of anartwork.’ (Kieran 1996, 239). Whilst conceptual art certainlyseems to rest on something like the interpretative plurality of thefirst view, it is not obvious how a kind of art that presents itselfas an idea can, in reality, accommodate such indeterminacy.

There are good reasons to believe that of all the questions conceptualart gives rise to, interpretation is the most problematic from aninternal point of view. The conundrum can be put in the followingterms. If the conceptual work is the idea, it seems reasonable toassume that artistic interpretation will consist primarily in comingto understand that idea (which is conceded by the artist to theartwork considered as such). In other words, if we take conceptualart’s de-materialisation claim seriously, we are left with anotion of interpretation which is relatively constrained to theartist’s intention and to the claim that that intentiondeterminesthe appropriate or correct interpretation for thatparticular work.

As we have seen, though, we are often encouraged by conceptual artiststo take the interpretative exercise into our own hands, so to speak,and not be shy to use features about ourselves and our own lives asinterpretive tools. We are, in other words, asked to combine the ideaof art as idea with the claim that we can, as spectators, convey anentirely new and fresh interpretation onto an artwork that is nothingbut an idea which, by definition, needs to be about or concerned withsomething. So, if the idea is the art, then how can my idiosyncraticinterpretation of that idea be anywhere near valid? It seems, thenthat in order to be coherent, conceptual art must give up either theclaim that the actual artwork is nothing other than the idea, or theclaim that the interpretative onus lies on the viewer.

3.5 The Cognitive Value of Art

In seeking to convey a semantic representation through a vehicularmedium, conceptual art arguably aims to have cognitive – ratherthan aesthetic – value. By cognitive value, what is meant issimply the value an artwork may have in virtue of enhancing orincreasing our understanding of some topic, notion or event.Interestingly, conceptual art seems to assume that the aestheticdetracts from or divests art of its possible cognitive value in such away as to render the two kinds of value close to mutually exclusive(Schellekens 2007).

The attempt to separate the aesthetic from the cognitive is far from arecent investigative endeavour in philosophical circles. In the veryfirst section of Kant’sCritique of the Power ofJudgement, a clear-cut distinction is outlined between aestheticand cognitive (or ‘logical’) judgements. However, fewartistic movements have pressed these questions about the divisionbetween aesthetic value on the one hand, and cognitive value on theother, as scrupulously and explicitly as conceptual art. In fact,conceptual art makes things very difficult for itself by holding thattheonly kind of artistic value that is entirely legitimateis cognitive value.

Clearly, conceptual art is not the only kind of art that may havecognitive value – many other artforms aim to have cognitivevaluein addition to aesthetic value – and most of uswould agree that part of why we find art rewarding is preciselybecause it often yields some kind of understanding. That is to say, weread novels, look at paintings and listen to music not only because ofthe pleasure it may afford, but also because it tends to make usricher human beings, better able to make sense of the world aroundus.

Uncontroversial as this claim may seem, some philosophers have deniedthat art should either have or seek to have cognitive value. Mostfamously perhaps, expressivists such as Clive Bell and Roger Fry heldthat art should only seek to express and arouse emotions (Bell 1914;Fry 1920). James Young has defended a view wherebyavant-garde art, like conceptual art, cannot yield anysignificant knowledge or understanding (Young 2001, 77).

Young’s argument focuses on the notion of exemplification whichhe locates at the heart of the only kind of semantic representationand cognitive value that can be ascribed to artworks such asconceptual ones. Exemplification is a form of reference to propertiesby means of a sample (or exemplar). An exemplar ‘stands for someproperty by [non-metaphorically, literally] possessing theproperty’ (Young 2001, 72). In the case of conceptual art, awork then exemplifies an idea or concept. So, for example, TomMarioni’sThe Act of Drinking Beer with One’s Friendsis the Highest Form of Art (1970)^[9] – a piece involving the artist and his friends drinking beertogether – is an exemplar of the idea at the heart of the work,namely that drinking beer with one’s friends is the highestart-form of all. This is the work’s statement. However, as Youngpoints out, it doesn’t follow from the fact that somethingexpresses a statement or has meaning that it has significant cognitivevalue. All things considered, the kind of statement that conceptualartworks and their like are typically able to make, according toYoung, are merely truisms. If conceptual art yields cognitive value,that is to say, it tends to be so trivial that it barely deserves thename.

The argument puts a finger on an experience shared by many spectatorsof conceptual art who feel conned or deceived by it. Not only areconceptual artworks not beautiful, one might object, they don’teven tell us anything over and beyond banal clichés. What,then, is conceptual art really good for?

If there is to be a way out of this difficulty, we will have to takethe bull by the horns and discuss exactly what (kind of) understandingone may gain from it. This answer will have to be cashed out in termsof two concerns: one about thecontent of the knowledge, andanother about thekind of knowledge in question. First,knowledge yielded by art can be about the artwork – not only thetechniques employed, the work’s history and tradition, and soon, but also the meaning and thoughts that the work conveys. Second,art can yield either propositional knowledge or knowledge byacquaintance. Whereas the first consists of knowledge given to us interms of propositions and can either be concerned with the artworkitself (e.g. knowledge ‘that [Manet's famous painting]represents the Emperor Maximilan’s execution') or a realitybeyond that work (e.g. knowledge ‘that horrible things are oftendone in the name of political revolutions’), the second kind ofknowledge has the potential to enable one to imagine what it would belike to be in a certain position or situation, to empathize, to comevery close to experiencing what it would be like to have that kind ofexperience first-hand (e.g. what it is like to witness the executionof a dishonoured Emperor).

The notions of knowledge and cognitive value, whilst at the very heartof the conceptual project, raise a manifold of important questionsthat require solid and cogent philosophical answers. Perhapsexemplification can still serve an epistemological purpose by invitingus to engage with the issues raised by a work of art in a richer andmore imaginative way; in a way that makes us think about questions ofphilosophical interest in particular way – a way thatpropositions alone cannot do? Perhaps the key to conceptualart’s value lies in a more challenging intellectual relationshipwith the work, a genuine engagement with the idea in question.Exploring this avenue may yet help us see what kind of non-trivialcognitive value conceptual art is capable of yielding.

4. Further Questions

Many more questions centred around these five philosophical themesremain to be examined in relation to conceptual art. With regards toconcerns about defining art, we need to address the increasing numberof worries to do with exactly how we are to distinguish art fromnon-art, and indeed whether there really is a distinction (if onlytheoretical) to be drawn here. That is to say, if conceptual art is attimes not only perceptually indistinguishable from non-art but it isalso the case that everything is alleged to be (part of) a potentialartwork, perhaps the inevitable outcome is that there simply cannot bea principled distinction between art and non-art. So, does theconceptual project lead to the end of the category of art as such?

From the ontological perspective, this set of concerns acquires aneven more aggressive flavour: if art should be all about puttingforward ideas and making statements, why, one might wonder, do we needthe conceptual artwork at all? Can we not merely ask the samequestions and make the same statements directly?

In addition to these questions, the host of issues that have beenraised about interpretation, intention, appreciation and the way theyare (or should be) related have not yet been silenced. For art that isas discourse-dependent as most conceptual art is, it is not alwaysclear whether there is anything more to interpreting conceptual artthan just being told what the idea in question is. And if so, can westill call thisinterpretation?

Finally, what are we to make of the relation between aesthetic andcognitive value in conceptual art – should they be considered asin opposition or even as mutually exclusive? If the only kind of valuethat is of genuine artistic importance is cognitive value, it will bedifficult to avoid the definitional and ontological concerns mentionedabove. Also, it will call for a deeply revisionary conception of art,one fundamentally hostile to the very notions we are probably mostused to associating with art, namely beauty and aestheticpleasure.

Central to the philosophy of conceptual art is thus the provocativespirit of the project under investigation – conceptual artthrows down the gauntlet by challenging us to reconsider every aspectof artistic experience, and it may well be up to philosophy to pick itup and address some of the questions conceptual art makes its businessto raise. Conceptual art actively aims to be thought-provoking,stimulating and inspiring, and if only for that reason, philosophersinterested in art should not pass it by unaffected.

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