Conceptual Art

Modern art is one of many fields in which I am far from expert. This page is my attempt to cover what I might describe as "the modern avant garde". Damien Hirst is the best–known and the best example of the type of artists whose work it covers.

Title of Marcel Duchamp's urinal (stood on its back) submitted to an exhibition in New York in 1917 – an early example of his "Readymades", part of the Dada movement		Fountain
Crack in the floor at Tate Modern, by Bolivian artist Doris Salcedo (2007)		Shibboleth
Carl Andre's pile of bricks (constructed in 1966, bought by the Tate Gallery in 1972, first exhibited there in 1976)		Equivalent VIII
Tracey Emin's tent with people's names appliquéd on it – shown at Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibition held at the Royal Academy in London (1997); destroyed in 2004, in a fire at an art storage warehouse		Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995
Antony Gormley's "public art project" that put 2,400 members of the public on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square for one hour each (July – October 2009)		One & Other
Rachel Whiteread's concrete cast of the inside of a Victorian terraced house, for which she became the first woman to win the Turner prize (1993)		House
Damien Hirst's cow and calf cut in half (1993)		Mother and Child Divided
Damien Hirst's pickled sheep (1994)		Away from the Flock
Damien Hirst's shark preserved in formaldehyde (1991) – commissioned by Charles Saatchi		The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

Collaborative duo: born on the same day in 1935, in Bulgaria and Morocco (Casablanca) respectively, met and married in Paris in the 1950s; noted for their large–scale, site–specific environmental installations, often large landmarks and landscape elements wrapped in fabric, including Running Fence (1976) in California, The Pont Neuf Wrapped (1985) in Paris, the Wrapped Reichstag (1995) in Berlin, The Gates (2005) in Central Park, New York, and The London Mastaba (2018) on the Serpentine in Hyde Park		Christo and Jeanne–Claude
French–American artist (1887–1968), associated with the Cubist and Dada movements: rejected art that was intended only to please the eye ("retinal art"), arguing that art should please the mind; presented found objects (e.g. a bicycle wheel and a urinal) as art ("readymades")		Marcel Duchamp
My Bed – a 'readymade' art work, controversially nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999; sold at auction by Christie's in 2014 for £2,546,500		Tracey Emin
Collaborative duo (surnames Prousch and Passmore), known for their distinctive and highly formal appearance and manner in performance art, and also for their brightly coloured graphic–style photo–based artworks including Naked Shit Pictures (1994), Dirty Words Pictures (1977, first exhibited together in 2002) and Jack Freak Pictures (2009); won the Turner Prize in 1986		Gilbert & George
Designer of the holiday home in Wrabness, Essex (overlooking the River Stour), opened in 2015 – known as "A House for Essex" and described as "a concept"		Grayson Perry

© Haydn Thompson 2017–22