Conceptual Art And Beauty
An interest in the circumstances of artwork is an curiosity not simply in the varieties which art can take for its own sake. Although the use of text in art was nothing new by the 1960s – text appears alongside other visible components in Cubist work, for instance – artists corresponding to Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, Ed Ruscha, and John Baldessari adopted textual content as the chief ingredient of a visible murals. From the vantage of conceptual artwork, visible art is perceived as quaint handicraft confined to 2-dimensional rectangles; and from visible art’s standpoint conceptual artwork is visually innocuous, empty novelty, and never even art. Art doesn’t exist on aesthetic grounds and has no inherent or intrinsic properties.
Artist collectives offered anonymity, and thus safety from prosecution by oppressive authorities, and the chance to make strong social statements. But while this can be a viable place to hold in relation to the undertaking of conceptual artwork basically, it cannot be used to attack conceptual artwork by itself grounds. Philosophizing about conceptual art is, then, not merely philosophizing about one particular artform.
Much of the hostility towards conceptual art is solely blowback from people who love visible artwork, and thus are …

