[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: You're in a museum. In one room, you
admire an exquisitely rendered painting
of a lush garden by Spanish artist
Santiago Rusinol. In another you encounter one
of the most famous paintings in the world, a monumental work
by Picasso that bowls you over with its dynamic
composition of abstracted but still recognizable
figures and forms, telling you of the
horrors of the 1937 bombing of the
village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. And in another room you come
across something completely different-- a picture of a
chair, a chair, and a blown up dictionary definition of a chair
by Toledo, Ohio born artist Joseph Kosuth. What the actual [NO AUDIO]. Can we really call this art? This thing that is entirely
unlike those other things in the rooms before it? That exhibits no technical skill
and transports due to nowhere but right where you are,
in an empty feeling, slightly chilly gallery? How can this be art and what
am I supposed to do with it? This is the case
for conceptual art. Kosuth made this work
in New York in 1965. In the years leading up, the
Equal Pay Act had been passed, President John F Kennedy
was assassinated, the Civil Rights Act was
freshly signed into law, and the Vietnam War and protests
against it were in full effect. The decade's identity as one
of counter-cultural revolution was crystallizing. And the art of the
time likewise reflected a widespread questioning
of tradition. There was pop art and minimalism
and happenings and fluxus. Paintings, when they did happen,
were coming off of the wall and invading your space. And there was also
this thing that Kosuth was doing which came to
be called conceptual art. In 1967, artist Sol Lewitt
explained it like this-- "In conceptual art
the idea or concept is the most important
aspect of the work. It means that all the
planning and decisions are made beforehand
and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the
machine that makes the art." For Lewitt, this often meant
creating specific instructions and diagrams for large
scale wall drawings that could be carried out by others. Even after Lewitt's death, a
drafts person or many of them can make the drawing
happen as long as the instructions and
certificate of authenticity are on hand. The resulting works
can be magnificent but it's not the individual
touch of the artist that makes them so. It's the idea supported
by proper execution. Sometimes people were the
machines that made the art. Like for a 1969
piece, Vito Acconci challenged himself to follow
randomly selected passers by until they entered
a private space. He said of it, "I'm
almost not an 'I' anymore; I put myself in the
service of this scheme." And sometimes it was
actually machines that were the machines
that made the art. Ian Burn's "Xerox Book" came
to be when he photocopied a blank sheet of white paper
and then copied that copy and so on and so forth 100 times
with more and more visual noise appearing as he went. Documentation is
often how we come to know about conceptual art. And that's OK because
the physical presence is secondary to the idea
that brought it into being. You didn't have to be there
to see Eleanor Antin parade 50 pairs of rubber boots on a trip
around California and New York. She took photos and
made postcards of them and mailed them to hundreds
of artists and museums and libraries and friends. And when you see one
of those postcards or hear about them
in a YouTube video, your understanding isn't
really distorted or diminished. Art critic and
curator Lucy Lippard described what was
happening at the time as a dematerialization. It wasn't often as literal as
John Baldessari's cremation piece of 1969. In which he burned
all of his paintings and had the ashes interred in
a wall of the Jewish Museum. Because materials were
almost always involved, it's just that they
were often ephemeral-- maps, diagrams, photos,
books or at least not the primary concern. Even molten lead became
fleeting, as much as it can be, in the hands of Richard
Serra who in the late '60s focused on action and
process over finished object. None of his original splash
or cast pieces still exist. They were made for temporary
shows and discarded after. Uniqueness wasn't important. He has since made new iterations
following the same procedure. More characteristic
of conceptual art is Douglas Huebler's
"Duration Piece #6" for which he made a rectangle
of sawdust in a doorway and documented it every
half hour for six hours. The sawdust was then cleared
away and what you see here is the final piece. Huebler said at the time,
"The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I
do not wish to add any more. I prefer simply to state
the existence of things in terms of time and/or place." Which brings us
back to those chairs because what Kosuth is
doing is pointing out the existence of things
in time and place. Taking it a few steps further
than when Magritte reminded us that this painting of
a pipe is not a pipe. Like when we look at
this painting of a chair, we know it's not a real chair. But we're probably not thinking
about how it's a kind of sign we recognize as
indicating a chair. Just as a dictionary definition
is a verbal sign that points to something in
the world and a photograph is a visual sign that
points to something that is or used to be in the world. Which of these
three chairs do we perceive to be more
chair than the other, especially now that this real
one is in a museum collection and will likely never
be sat in again? If this putting regular stuff
in a museum sounds familiar, it's because Duchamp, who made
conceptual art way before it was cool or even had a name. In 1913, Marcel Duchamp
attached a bicycle wheel to a wooden stool and called
it a ready made work of art. It was art because
he said it was and because he put
it in a gallery. Kosuth's operation
here is similar. He said, "The art consists of my
action of placing this activity in an art context." But the art context didn't
have to be a gallery. Sure, there were
exhibitions that chronicled this kind of
art but more often the art was its own means
of distribution. Seth Siegelaub thought
of his "Xerox Book" as an exhibition
venue in itself, giving each artist
included 25 pages to make a work that responded
in some way to the format. On Kawara made art by
documenting his everyday life and mailing news
of it on postcards to friends, acquaintances,
and art collectors. Eleanor Antin photographed
herself naked every morning to document her weight loss of
10 pounds over the course of 37 days. And Mary Kelly
recorded the activity of taking care of her young
son, reflected on motherhood and conversations with him. And eventually allowed
him to scribble over her documentation. As Lippard wrote
in 1973, "Much art now is transported
by the artist, or in the artist himself." Conceptual art was a
way of working around the power structures of the
art world, which as it happens, was rife with himself's
and around market concerns. Lee Lozano began her general
strike peace in 1969, declaring her withdrawal
from the art world and documenting her final
visits to gallery openings and museums. Conceptual art was
out in the world, often blending with activism. The Art Workers Coalition
organized in 1969 to agitate for artists rights
and against Vietnam, racism, and sexism. But for the most
part, conceptual art was political not in its
illustration of current events but in its commitment to
rethink the status quo. There was a worker
mentality and pragmatism to much first generation
conceptual art. A deadpan recording and
structuring of life, almost aggressively
unartful, that replaced the careful
consideration of composition and form and flourish
normally associated with art and artists. Ed Ruscha's book "Twenty-six
Gasoline Stations" recorded exactly that,
26 gasoline stations. Bernd and Hilla Becher took
straightforward pictures of water towers. That's what they did,
across years and continents. There was no trickery at play,
no need for an interpreter. What's needed for this kind of
art, more than interpretation, is a shift in perspective. An opening of a door that allows
an idea by Douglas Huebler to be art. A piece of paper that
reads, the line above is rotating on its
axis at a speed of one revolution each day. Or a sign to be art, like
this one by Luis Camnitzer. You can sit with this
for a few seconds. In 1969, artist and
writer Victor Burgin contended "It may now be said
that an object becomes or fails to become a work of
art in direct response to the inclination
of the perceiver to assume an appreciative role. As Morse Peckham has put
it, 'Art is not a category of perceptual fields
but of role playing.'" So it's up to you. Do you want to play a
role and call this art? If you do, congratulations. In some cases, you
might now own it. Laurence Weiner's "Two Minutes
Of Spray Paint Directly Upon The Floor From A
Standard Aerosol Spray Can" is exactly what it sounds like. And according to the artist
the year after it was made, "They don't have to
buy it to have it. They can have it
just by knowing it." We're used to art
galleries being places where visual
experience reigns supreme. But conceptual art asks us
to understand the gallery experience as never having
been purely visual-- always informed by our other
senses, the arts context, and the invisible perceptual
operations happening in our minds to process it. Conceptual art has
given us new words to describe what we encounter
and new levels of interaction. We can still appreciate
a masterful painting, but in a world after conceptual
art we do so with our blinders off. Understanding that art
is composed of signs. It illustrates, it lives
in specific buildings, it decorates rich
people's homes. Once conceptualized lessons
have been internalized we see that this
is not a garden. This is not what
happened at Guernica. Conceptual art still
lives and blends with many other ways of making. But it's a slippery
art, one that avoids living in just one spot,
one that resists ownership and being turned into
other luxury good. Despite its utopian
aims, conceptual art was and is still gobbled
up by institutions and put on the auction block. But when it's good,
it lives far outside of our art stores and
places of art worship. And in this way,
these ephemeral works are strangely more permanent
for there never having much physicality to begin with. Marble crumbles, paintings
fade, but ideas-- ideas can last forever. Hey, guys. PBS Digital Studios is
conducting its annual audience survey. Over 35,000 of you
responded last year and helped PBS make
important decisions about what kind of shows to
make and experiments to try. It helps us
understand who you are and what you like
and don't like. If you have a few minutes,
please click the link and take a survey. Oh, and 25 random participants
will receive an awesome PBS Digital Studios t-shirt. So there's that too. NARRATOR: Like our show? Subscribe. Really like our show? Support us by giving a
little each month on Patreon. Many thanks to all
of our patrons. Especially our grand
masters of the arts-- Vincent Apa and
Indianapolis Homes Realty. [MUSIC PLAYING]
