Conseptual Art Essay, Research Paper

I believe that conceptual art, as a whole, is a very one sided art form. To make a piece of art that focuses only on the concept and pretty much eliminate the aesthetic factors is, in my opinion, not good art. It seems to me that with conceptual art, the creator, most of the time is so wrapped up in the Idea, that in the long run, he or she looses the important element of clarity.

What I mean by clarity is the artwork’s ability to convey it’s message or idea to the viewer. Yes, I do believe that the thoughts behind a piece is crucial, but one of the challenges an artist faces, is to be able to convey their thoughts, ideas, emotions, and reactions in some way readable to the viewer. I also think that one’s artwork should have a certain finnished or composed quality to it. It has been hard for me in the past, when viewing or expieriencing coneptual art, to really connect with the artists work, because it usually has been very scattered, or the idea is to make the art look poor in quality on purpose. Take for instance a film movement called “The French New Wave”, in particular, a film called Breathless by Jean Luc Godard. The only thing that I could focus on was the cinematography, which was designed to look like a two year old had filmed it and maybe a three year old edited it. There are jump cuts everywhere, and there were numerous instances where mistakes in the films continuity were blatently obvious. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do understand that these mistakes were purposly made, and the reason he did it was to draw the viewers attention away from the other elements of the film to focus mainly on the cinematography, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that I found it very hard to sit through, which, in the long run, made me lose interest in the piece all togeather. Basically what I am trying to say, is that initally, conceptual art can be incredibly vague and boring. I also realize that conceptual art is better understood if the viewer is aware of what kind of angle the piece would be taking, which leads me to my next point. Why is conceptual art rarely explained before the piece is viewed or performed? If it obviously doesn’t make sence just from viewing it, don’t you think that it would be wise to cue your audience in on what it is they are about to endure. I have noticed that endurance is also a common area of exploration in world of conceptual art.