Archive

2014

Les Misérables: Post-Conceptual Art

Dallas Contemporary

Dallas, Texas

An allegory portraying one possible world of art after the “big-bang” of Conceptual Art.

The notation “+ 1 x 10-35 seconds” signifies the crucial moment of inflation in the hypothesized creation of the universe. According to some cosmologists, it is at that point that matter and energy decouple, making possible the formation of stars, planets, galaxies, and one supposes, Conceptual Art . . . and the products of its eventual decay.

Conceptual Art — an emergent art practice of the mid- to late-1960s — has been called modernism’s “nervous breakdown.” Despite Conceptual Art’s traumatic origins we can say with some certainty that it was ratified by curators as a respectable art movement on June 30, 1972, the opening day of Harald Szeemann’s edition of Documenta 5.