Sentences on Conceptual Art

by Sol Lewitt 

1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
4. Formal art is essentially rational.
5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
7. The artist's will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
23. The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
24. Perception is subjective.
25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist's mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist's concept involved the material.
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

first published in 0-9, Art and Language, New York: 1969.

present feelings/probable futures 

(forty-six years from now you won't remember but I will), 

embroidery on found image, 2011.

We are on a perpetual quest for identity.  We look for our selfhood in authentic experience.  We situate authenticity in the past - in our youth, and in our learned histories.  In attempt to reclaim these constructed romanticisms, our actions are rituals of longing and also belonging.  Archaic sentiments are no longer yours or my own; but rather, they are ours.  Both inherent and inherited, these desires belong to us with the intent of completing the histories that we have learned and have yet to.  Our effort is without reward, for these histories have been collected and carried across bodies, borders and dinner-tables.  Systems of memory continue to construct our past, present and future.  Conversations between what is the imaginary and the real, what has been given and taken, and what will be forgotten and found articulate our critical discourse: a narrative of which cannot be static.  Instead, we have become martyrs for an identity that is not only unattainable, but of which has never really existed for us.  Our perpetual quest ends where it begins: with the imagination.

Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Imponderabilia, 1977.

vocabularies on selfhood and self-improvement, found book with text, spring 2011.

nostalgic rearrangements, text and type on distressed paper, winter 2011.

being physically present in a place, 

while mentally elsewhere.

francis alys, narcotourism, 1996, graphic documentation of an action,copenhagen.

untitled, embroidery and found text on paper, 2011.

Rebecca Belmore, Ayum-ee-aawach-oomona-mowan:

Procession to the meadow (Speaking to their Mother), 1991.

Belmore, With 13 Native speakers, 27 july 1991:

Ayum-ee-aawach-oomona-mowan: Speaking to their Mother

"This artwork was my response to what is now 

referred to in Canadian history as the "Oka Crisis".  

During the summer of 1990, many protests were mounted 

in support of the Mohawk Nation of Kanesatake 

in their struggle to maintain their territory.  

This object was taken into many First Nation communities -

reservation, rural, and urban.  I was particularly 

interested in locating the Aboriginal voice on the land.  

Asking people to address the land directly 

was an attempt to hear political protest and poetic action."

(new) hand, winter 2011.

"Animals presage earthquakes by several days.  Cattle grow restless, birds fall silent, pets go missing.  They sense the infant seismic stirrings that will mature into catastrophe.  Collapse.  Something is always slipping while our lives sit balanced on the edge.  Put together a world that holds, the way it used to be.  A cup is missing its saucer.  Put this one with this.  If that works, try a bolder move: this couch with these drapes, this body with that time.  Now change your father, become your ancestor, find the family you lost, the purpose you missed."




Liz Magor, "White House Paint," Real Fictions: Four Canadian Artists (Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996).

return, recover, reassemble


your memories

Video: marlon brando oscar award the god father   Tags: oscars

one of my role models: Sacheen Littlefeather




[ the political can be poetic, the poetic can be political ]

Niagara Falls

point of land, part of two.

winter 2011

mine, yours

film still: rat life and diet in north america, joyce wieland, 1968.

resolutions, fall 2010, pencil on found cardboard.

automatic self-portrait, fall 2010.

" we're on a long journey in a landscape with no features; like an endless field of ice.  we're blinded by the whiteness and have to travel with our heads down, pulling heavy loads over the rough surface.  at times we have dogs to help us pull, but they either fight with each other or get tangled in the lines.  their legs come off easily and the trail is littered with their limbs and bits of stuffing.  i pick up a very small dog and put it inside my parka.  i can feel its warmth seeping into my body.  i develop tender feelings toward it and feel distraught when i lose it at some point.  i'm looking for the dog but then we're looking for some food that's supposed to be cached at a depot.  when we get there we find there isn't enough.  my foot hurts.  we're in a tent and someone says "i'm just going outside and may be gone for some time."  he goes out into the blizzard and we never see him again. "


meeting place, liz magor, 1990.

untitled, 2010, ink on found paper.

film still, moonstruck, 1987.

"what i would give

to build a home with you."

for him, october 2010.

rituals: september 1st - septmber 30th, 2010.

jenny holzer, truisms, 1977.

jenny holzer, selection from LAMENTS, 1988-1989.