Conceptual Art
The center of the artwork shifts from the object to the idea behind it. In 1965, Kosuth placed a single chair, a photograph of that chair, and a dictionary's definition of the word “chair” side by side. Which one was the artwork? Making you ask that question was the artwork. In 1967, Sol LeWitt wrote that the idea becomes the machine that makes the art. This movement picked up, a generation later, the question Duchamp had thrown out half a century earlier — tracing the line back to Duchamp is close to the consensus view. It's a reminder that the line of return on this map doesn't only run back through history; it can run back through a question, too. Sol LeWitt took the idea-as-work furthest. With his wall drawings, the drawing on the wall is not the thing itself. The thing itself is a typed set of instructions and a certificate he signed. Each time it is shown, someone else reads the instructions and draws it; when the run ends it is painted over, and somewhere else it is drawn again. Apart from the very first one, LeWitt never drew them himself. He compared the instructions to a musical score — the kind of thing that sounds new every time it is played. A work that is not an object but an instruction: that idea travelled a long way outside the museum. A recipe has this shape. So does software. So does the prompt somebody is typing right now. The person who wrote it need not lift a hand; it stands up wherever it is read. What art did in 1967 is now part of most people's ordinary day.