Painting & Conceptual Art

Dada artist Marcel Duchamp thinks that modern painting is too retinal.However, 'eye candy' is not the way to please because thinking is more important in art.Conceptual art emphasizes on the instruction or the produce process of the works.

instruction works eg. 1 smoke painting
Light the cigarette and let the canvas dyed in the smoke.



instruction works eg. 2 record posters
Paste the posters in the city and leave them a week.Then take photos of all the copies and leave them again for a month. Take the photos of them and repeat the behavior until you are fulfilled the result. Make film about the process of  posters disappearing and string all the photos together.

instruction works eg. 3 A+B paintings
A part of painting has been cut out from A and then paste it on the exactly point on painting B. Line up 2 works and hang them adjacent.

Art work is not completed until people realize the meaning. Although many different ways to interpret, there are some understandings the painters may not know. Therefore, instruction paintings do not have the model answer, they depend on viewers' imagination.

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In the past, painting was limited as painter should consider a lot that which elements and ideas could not paint. However, the breakthrough is that painters gradually choose some object as a sign to represent.Hence they can imply much but say little. To avoid being weak in pointing the focus, painters should eliminate some reality and preoccupy the instinctual.

So how to start talking about a painting?
1.compare to our impression-find out the contradiction and observance.

2.distinguish the property of art works such as 'intermedia' or 'specific medium' in order to realize ideas that artists expect us to know

3.move on to the content- figurative? abstractive? intermediary?

4.what draw your quick attention? what you see is what you think.

5.if you are the artist, what comments would you make?