In 1967, artist Sol LeWitt wrote that in “Conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.” He was giving a name to an art movement that had emerged in the 1960s in which artists were less focused on their medium being something traditionally “artistic” and instead engaged in using any object, movement, form, action or place to express an idea.
LeWitt’s work was featured alongside an assemblage of notes, drawings and outlines by other artists in “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art,” a groundbreaking show at New York City’s School of Visual Arts curated by Mel Bochner, another leading exponent of Conceptualism. Building on radical 20th-century statements, like Fountain (1917) by French artist Marcel Duchamp, Conceptual artists around Europe and North and South America were not interested in the commercial art scene and rather directly challenged its systems and values.
Stretching into the 1970s, this movement has also been called Post-Object art and Dematerialized art. Conceptual art reflected a larger era of social and political upheaval. Pieces associated with the style range from Roelof Louw’s Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges) (1967) — a work of installation art that sees fresh oranges stacked into a pyramid from which visitors are allowed to take one orange away — to On Kawara’s “Today” series, which saw the Japanese artist carefully painting a date in white acrylic on canvases consisting of a single color from 1966 to his death in 2014. Artists such as Ed Ruscha, who created the Twentysix Gasoline Stations book — a collection of photos of gas stations that is widely said to be the first modern artists’ book — made photography a major platform for Conceptual art, as did Bruce Nauman, who burned one of Ruscha's books and then photographed it for his own.
Conceptual art’s legacy of questioning artistic authorship, ownership and how to work with complex ideas of space and time had a significant influence on the decades of culture that followed, and it continues to inform art today.
The collection of Conceptual photography, paintings and sculptures on 1stDibs includes artworks by John Baldessari, Jenny Holzer, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth and others.
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Split Level
Located in London, GB
Signed and numbered on label affixed to reverse of mount Pigment print 44 x 34 inches From an edition of 7 + 2 APs
Archival Pigment
Price Upon Request
Breakout - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Breakout - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1995 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with outfits...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Presentation - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Presentation - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 2004 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with out...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Look There - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Look There - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1996 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with outfi...
Polaroid
Armed and Matching - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Armed and Matching - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1989 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked wi...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Leggings - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Leggings - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Two unique colour Polaroid prints, printed 1998 24 x 20 inches each The dogs, bewigged and bedecked wi...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Left to Right - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Left to Right - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Three unique colour Polaroid prints, printed 1989 24 x 20 inches each The dogs, bewigged and bede...
Polaroid
Dressed from Below - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Dressed from Below - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Two unique colour Polaroid prints, printed 1994 24 x 20 inches each The dogs, bewigged and b...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Towelling - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Towelling - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1993 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with outfit...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Climber - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Climber - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1991 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with outfits ...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Side Views - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Side Views - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique black and white Polaroid print, printed 1998 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked w...
Polaroid
Posed on Pedestal - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Posed on Pedestal - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1994 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked wit...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Primary Trio - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Primary Trio - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1991 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with out...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Chair Piece - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
Chair Piece - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1991 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with outf...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
3 Out of Four - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
3 Out of Four - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1988 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with ou...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
My Coo Kie - William Wegman (Colour Photography)
Located in London, GB
My Coo Kie - William Wegman (Colour Photography) Signed and inscribed with title Unique colour Polaroid print, printed 1991 24 x 20 inches The dogs, bewigged and bedecked with outfi...
Polaroid
Price Upon Request
Theater, or Eye
By Sofia Borges
Located in New York, NY
Sofia Borges Theater, or Eye, 2014 Pigment print on cotton paper mounted on Sintra Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP Size 1: 47 ¼ x 74 inches (120 x 188 cm) Size 2: 150 x 235 cm Edition of 3 + 1 AP (⅓ printed in Brazil) Sofia Borges makes haunting, large-format photographs of archival objects and illustrations such as museum dioramas, taxidermy animals, Cold War-era ephemera, and archaic medical drawings...
Archival Pigment
Price Upon Request
It was finally my day! 2015
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Jennifer Greenburg challenges social norms and the nature of vernacular photographs in her series Revising History. Interjecting herself in mid-century images from the 1940’s – 60’s,...
Archival Pigment
Price Upon Request
Two years later, I was drunk enough to sing at the St. Pat's party. 2014
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Jennifer Greenburg challenges social norms and the nature of vernacular photographs in her series Revising History. Interjecting herself in mid-century images from the 1940’s – 60’s,...
Archival Pigment
Price Upon Request
Napping with Floyd, 2011
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Jennifer Greenburg challenges social norms and the nature of vernacular photographs in her series Revising History. Interjecting herself in mid-century images from the 1940’s – 60’s,...
Archival Pigment
Price Upon Request
Fragile
Located in New Orleans, LA
As a conceptual artist, Joe Zammit-Lucia works with a photographic medium to explore issues within the human-animal relationship. He is one of the world’s leading animal portrait art...
Archival Pigment
Price Upon Request
Joseph Beuys & Nam June Paik, Sogetsu Hall Tokyo, Japan
By Paul Garrin
Located in New York, NY
Joseph Beuys & Nam June Paik, Sogetsu Hall Tokyo, Japan, 1982 Vintage silver gelatin print 11 × 14 in 27.9 × 35.6 cm signed
Silver Gelatin
Price Upon Request
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE #112, South Africa 2014
Located in Santa Monica, CA
This large format, color-photograph belongs to Jay Mark Johnson's wave series - the images from which depict the rhythmic cycling and recycling of oceanfront waves as recorded on remote coastlines around the world--in Hawaii, Florida, California, the Caribbean, Great Britain, Australia and South Africa. These artworks belong to the artist’s ongoing inquiry into the possibilities for timeline photography. For this decades-long project Johnson employs an unconventional camera system to produce seamless delineated renderings of familiar events as they occur over time. The results present an altered view of our surroundings. Artworks from Johnson’s timeline series have been exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. They can be found in the permanent collections of the Bundestag (German Parliament) in Berlin, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie at Karlsruhe, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Langen Foundation, Hombroich, Germany, the Peter Klein...
Aluminum