The more I get into Lanny May Freedman’s What Happened to Art? the more irritated I get. It does seem to be turning, in some respects, into a classic compendium of fuddy-duddyism. A primary target of her anger appears to be “conceptual art”.
Now, I have sometimes wondered why “conceptual art” needs a special label, and at least Freedman makes that clear. Her criteria for determining those qualities that define art is revealing. To merit the label “art” a work has to be characterised by creativity, skill and imagination, and these attributes set off any art object from simple works of nature. So far so good: but it strikes me immediately that something is missing. This might not be a necessary component of all art, but surely there ought to be space in there for ideas.
If I am to make sense at all of the meaning of “conceptual art” it would probably be along the lines of an approach to art which prioritises ideas above the other things one might look for. I might accept that this kind of work can become rather “top heavy”, but I am not sure that this necessarily qualifies a work for exclusion altogether from the canon of “art”, unless, of course, one reaches a situation in which all one has is ideas. For the most part, however, those pieces that have come to be labelled as “conceptual art” do contain at least something that can be recognised as involving either creativity, skill or imagination.
To mount an assault on “conceptual art” in general, however, strikes me as perhaps betraying a profound ignorance of the history of art (at least in the West). How, I would want to know, does Freedman regard the history of religious art? Let’s face it, while not exhausting art for several centuries this comprised the greater part of what has come down to us. Isn’t there a case to be made for claiming that religious art is, in some meaningful sense, “conceptual art” The ideas concerned, of course, are theological ideas. Is there any way in which one might approach an understanding and appreciation (say) of a nativity scene without relating this to the concept of incarnation? Unless one evacuates the work entirely of meaning, and reduces it to the level of pure formalism, how might it be possible to make sense of an image of the crucifixion without reference to the concept of “salvation”?
It is, of course, open to us to criticise “conceptual art” because it is unclear or muddle-headed or because the formal aspects of there work are badly adapted to the ideas in question. To try to write concepts out of the history of art does seem to me, however, to be a very odd enterprise indeed.