It appears we do not understand the complex and perplexing world of today. What used to be familiar and conventional has been transformed into something twisted and foreign. From the 1960s onwards, postmodernism has influenced this undermining of our past understanding. Postmodernism was a response to a highly ordered view of the world that had become outdated and unhelpful in society. It created new ways of thinking and prompted artists to push beyond the traditional boundaries of art and emphasise the abstract. Within this movement, a new form of art known as Conceptualism emerged, championing intangible ideas over the formal or visual components of traditional work. Conceptual art, since its zenith from 1965 to 1972, has influenced not only subsequent art practices but has made a major contribution to contemporary art (Frieling, 1997). Art’s interlaced relationship with time breeds new and revolutionised movements.
Perceptions of art transform with each era, and this is naturally caused by socio-cultural factors. Changes in art ‘practices, institutions, political contexts, and theoretical paradigms’ have formed the basis of shifting art styles throughout history (Avanessian and Skrebowski, 2011). Historically, aesthetics were a value that formed the strict criterion for traditional art (Ratiu, 2010). However, the idea that art is transitory has surfaced within the modern age. Since the Conceptualist movement of the 1960s, new art practices aimed to break traditional limits and constraints. The dominance of the canonical genres, such as painting and sculpture, were superseded by mixed or inter-media genres (Ratiu, 2010). This is due in part to the technological leap, the union between art and technology, that resulted in a conceptual era that no longer required aesthetics (Shanken, 2002). Nam June Paik is an... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline