Some Relations between Conceptual and Performance Art – Summary

 Frazer Ward

Conceptual art can be considered as a form that focuses more on the underlying conditions of art as language and analysis of meaning as opposed to the audience’s aesthetic experience with the work. Over the years there has been debate surrounding the absolute definition of conceptual art, which still continues today. Essentially this form undertook the removal of traditional elements of aesthetic expression from art.

 Performance art is a type of art in which some kind of activity takes place in a certain space at a certain time, often engaging the artist. The audience plays a large role in this form, whether that is purely observation or a more interactive piece. One aspect of performance art that separates it from many other forms is that it is a temporal action or event which has a definite beginning, middle and finish.

Conceptual and performance art have often coincided in many works, with particular increase during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It has been suggested that such an overlap has produced thought that performance art is in opposition to the critical investigation conceptual art takes into the objects status and presence in a work. Performance art can also be viewed to challenge the limitations conceptual art poses. One such limitation is the notion of rationality when viewed from within the conceptual framework.

A collection of writings was put together by Rosalind Krauss and Gregory Battcock which included critics’ and artists’ writings about conceptual art in 1973 entitled Idea Art. This collection can be viewed as the rationalisation of conceptual art and an attempt to make it less ‘elitist’ and more understandable for the audience considered as ‘nonart’ by demystifying the underlying conditions and language of the works.