Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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knowledge of the Fluxus movement of the early 1960s. Nevertheless, at least with regard to the
invention of the term, it seems correct when Henry Flynt claims that he is “the originator of
concept art, the most influential contemporary art trend. In 1961 I authored (and copyrighted)
the phrase ‘concept art,’ the rationale for it and the first compositions labeled ‘concept art.’ My
document was first printed in An Anthology, ed. La Monte Young, New York, 1962.” (La Monte
Young’s An Anthology was in fact published in 1963.)
A second contestant for the term was Edward Kienholz, with his series of Concept Tableaux
in 1963 (in fact, occasionally he is still credited with the discovery of the term. See for
example Roberta Smith’s essay “Conceptual Art,” in Concepts of Modern Art, ed. Nikos Stangos
[New York: Harper and Row, 1981], pp. 256–270.)
Joseph Kosuth claims in his “Sixth Investigation 1969 Proposition 14” (published by
Gerd de Vries, Cologne, 1971, n.p.) that he used the term “conceptual” for the first time “in a
series of notes dated 1966 and published a year later in a catalogue for an exhibition titled
‘Non-Anthropomorphic Art’ at the now defunct Lannis Gallery in New York.”
And then there are of course (most officially accepted by all participants) Sol LeWitt’s
two famous texts from 1967 and 1969, the “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” first published in
Artforum, vol. 5, no. 10, pp. 56–57 and “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” first published in Art &
Language, vol. 1, no. 1 (May 1969), pp. 11–13.
2. For a typical example of an attempt to write the history of Conceptual Art by blindly adopting
and repeating the claims and convictions of one of that history’s figures, see Gudrun Inboden,
“Joseph Kosuth—Artist and Critic of Modernism,” in Joseph Kosuth: The Making of Meaning
(Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1981), pp. 11–27.
3. Joseph Kosuth, The Sixth Investigation 1969 Proposition 14 (Cologne: Gerd De Vries/Paul
Maenz, 1971), n.p.
4. Stella’s famous statement was of course made in the conversation between Bruce Glaser,
Donald Judd, and himself, in February 1964, and published in Art News (September 1966), pp.
55–61. To what extent the problem of this dilemma haunted the generation of Minimal artists
becomes evident when almost ten years later, in an interview with Jack Burnham, Robert Morris
would still seem to be responding (if perhaps unconsciously) to Stella’s notorious statement:
Painting ceased to interest me. There were certain things about it that seemed very problematic
to me. . . . There was a big conflict between the fact of doing this thing, and what it looked like
later. It just didn’t seem to make much sense to me. Primarily because there was an activity I
did in time, and there was a certain method to it. And that didn’t seem to have any relationship