Rise of conceptual art

Conceptual art is a movement of the 1960s in which the idea behind a work is considered more important than the finished object. Artists such as Sol LeWitt, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and the group Art and Language produced works in the form of instructions, texts, diagrams or documentation, rather than traditional paintings and sculptures. LeWitt's 1967 essay Paragraphs on Conceptual Art was an early statement of the idea, and Kosuth's One and Three Chairs, which presents a chair, a photograph of it and a dictionary definition, is a famous example. The movement drew on the earlier readymades of Marcel Duchamp. It challenged the commercial art market and the role of the gallery, and it influenced much of the art that followed.

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