Concept Art

Pre-Columbian art in all its varied forms offers rich terrain for furthering our insights into the cultural and symbolic lives of Amerindian peoples. This paper studies decorative patterns of Diaguita origin which present a visual logic characterized by the use of complex symmetries, illusory optical vibration, endless variability stemming from simple geometric forms, horror vacui, and gradual structural complication, among other techniques. The features described, the association of this visual art to an animal alter ego (jaguar), and the evidence of hallucinogen use together suggest a cultural link with specific ethnographic (Shipibo-Conibo) and archeological (Mojocoya) visual art. In this case, we are dealing not with a notation system but with visual "technologies of enchantment" (sensu Gell 1998) that are used to produce decorative patterns with social agency that captivate viewers with their visual artifice-the non-mimetic appearance of animation. In 2015, a large cemetery was excavated at the Diaguita site of El Olivar. The graves therein belong to an early Diaguita cultural period, during which the Diaguitas created a techno-stylistic material identity, expressed in visual languages rooted not only in the Andean world, but in ancient cultural traditions of the eastern lowlands of Bolivia and the Peruvian Amazon.

Este libro-catálogo y los contenidos sonoros, textuales y visuales que lo complementan [de acceso libre en www.march.es] se publican con motivo de la exposición "Escuchar con los ojos. Arte sonoro en España, 1961-2016", Fundación Juan March.

A sketch of the development of art to presentations in contexts outside the artworld and to the presentation of reflections of contexts ‘in situ‘ (= in the reflected context, including the contexts of art exhibitions) offers basics for a discussion of Context Art of the seventies and eighties and of the  integration of contextual conditions in the Digital Art of the early nineties.

Nowadays, the entertainment industry relies on a massive visual development which employs all kinds of representation modalities and technologies. Especially as regards the design of imaginary worlds or fictional reconstructions of past eras, there is a huge need of prefiguration in order to visualize an idea before it can be transformed into the final 'on screen' product. The concept artist is now a key-figure in the industry, who has the complex and hyper creative task to condense the atmosphere, the mood, the feeling and the peculiar features of an environment in a single bi-dimensional image. Such kind of evocative artworks are not far from the scenographic designs in use in theatre ever since the Renaissance, which also exploit the possibilities offered by traditional representation techniques like perspective and value composition. These means are used in an imaginative and illusionistic way to serve the visual prefiguration need and to provide a 'vision' of the setting. The paper reflects on the centrality of representation techniques in the conceptualization process of environments for the entertainment industry (videogames, movies, TV shows etc.) and on the similarities between concept art and scenographic design, which are both powerful visual communication tools characterized by the strict, con-sequential relationship between the concept and the mise-en-scène.

This research project examined the potential for circumventing drawing in the ideation process by adopting digital sculpture as the primary conceptual development and design tool for the digital sculpting of creature designs. Through a series of experimental research cycles, multiple frameworks were explored with the aim of identifying a methodology for creating '3D sculpted sketches' for the initial phases of the ideation process. This research project acknowledges that drawing still remains the predominant method of visualising design ideas for characters and creatures for many artists. However, alongside other ideation techniques digital sculpting can function as a rapid and responsive tool to visualize and explore forms in a digital sculpting environment for the conceptualisation of multiple creature design variations. The results of this study are significant for emerging digital sculptors who may not necessarily have a well-defined creative brief or initial concept.

The present master's degree research approaches concept art, its
meanings, and relevance to digital games. Investigating the theme
and perspectives ranging from the classical Renaissance proposal to
an approach to hermeneutic phenomenology, it meets the approach
of current concept artists for games. In this sense, it carries out the
positions of concept artists for games that present a variety and a rich
panorama of the issue in the field of the artistic production oriented
to digital games. From there the research goes towards the problem
of concept art in two significant digital productions. The first of
them, consecrated in the PlayStation platform amongst the entertainment,
shows that it is possible that digital games can be oriented
to an artistic perception within the field of the entertainment media
positioning itself next to blockbuster productions. The second case,
in reverse of the first one, shows the importance of the concept art
within the academic research developed in research groups inside
Brazilian universities. The research closes its perspective analyzing
the position of the artists, the concept art inside the international industry
field and its academic perspectives showing its relevance and
concluding by its own defense to promote the culture and the thought
of the poetic perspective in games.

As Steve Reich (1936– ) admits, his essay “Music as a Gradual Process” (1968), in which he describes the basic idea of minimal music, has some analogies with the claims of sculptor/painter Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) in “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967) and “Sentences on Conceptual Art” (1969). Associating these connections with early 1960s’ pre-minimalist works by La Monte Young (1935– ) which became the model of “concept art” coined by Henry Flynt (1940– ), musical minimalism and conceptualism developed alongside one another in the 1960s. This paper aims to delineate the development of minimal music (from Young to Reich) in connection with the transfiguration of concept [/ual] art (from Flynt to LeWitt).
Young, Reich, and LeWitt shared an aesthetic of concentration on the singular activity of generating work. Attracted to the basis in Young’s works consisting of word instructions, Flynt regarded the instruction as a “concept”; Young, however, focused on the results of the activities following the instructions. As a reaction to Flynt, LeWitt emphasized physical form derived from concepts, making the work-generating process more rigorous; at the same time, Reich established his idea of “musical process” by interpreting Young’s results of activities as results of processes.

In the first symposium on "Art & Language & Luhmann" in 1995 at Kunstraum Wien, I presented the development of the English-American artists' group Art & Language from 1966 to 1993 (in German). I highlighted the discourse possibilities as they were thematised by members of the group in text contributions. In using their theoretical debate based on Analytical Philosophy and the criticism of the Philosophy of Science (by Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Samuel Kuhn and Imre Lakatos)  the members developed a critique of established art theories. This critique was exposed in various ways in art exhibitions: The critique appears as text at places where visitors expect established forms of work - and thus it becomes readable in the criticized context: "self-embedding".
With the new formation of the artist group after 1976 purely linguistic layer models (“Schichtenmodelle”) were followed by "interplays between image and discourse models and thus between material, optical and mental strata", based on the "'plurifunctionality' of signs".
The links in the PDF lead to illustrations on the website "Thomas Dreher Intermedia Art".
URL: https://dreher.netzliteratur.net/3_Konzeptkunst_Art_Lang.html
Print: Institut für soziale Gegenwartsfragen, Freiburg i. Br./Kunstraum Wien (ed.): Art & Language & Luhmann. Passagen Verlag, Vienna 1997, p.41-84.

In the light of the critical disputes of American and British Conceptual artists with former uses of notations and text (Fluxus) as well as with the formal criticism/modernism (Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried) three ways of early Conceptual Art are outlined.
URL: http://dreher.netzliteratur.net/3_Konzeptkunst_Text.html

The aspiration to create distinctive belongings and free restriction to one's imagination helps as a powerful impulsion for development of concept art for animation. Concept art is an appearance of illustration where the focal purpose is to express a visual demonstration of a design, thought, or mood for applying in video games, films , animation, or comic books before it is put into the ultimate creation. Concept art is a major element of idea generation, environment creation, background design, retail design, set design, fashion design, and architecture design. Bangladesh is a suitable ground for producing international quality animation products if capacity building can be done. Moreover, previous study found huge possibilities in animation field due to low labor cost. The main objective of this research was to discover the limitations of producing concept art and identify pragmatic solutions to the problems for overall capacity building. We visited most animation studios in ...

Numéro Libre.
Le cahier des arts a pour vocation de rechercher des savoirs transversaux sur l’objet des arts. Il met en valeur les rapports interdisciplinaires entre les différentes sciences de la création, au sens des fusions, des chiasmes et des entrelacs. L’on peut percevoir, les rapports entre l’artiste et l’œuvre qu’il met en forme ou soumet à la matière sous l’angle poïétique. Les confrontations entre les disciplines sont non seulement possibles, mais fécondes et enrichissantes. Dans chaque numéro, il est à l'objet de saisir les enjeux des grands concepts qui traversent l’art, l’esthétique, l’histoire de l’art, la philosophie, les théories de l’art, les savoirs au sein des cultures. Le cahier des arts est une revue scientifique qui va également axer ses actions-prospectives sur des domaines variés concernant la recherche, la connaissance, l’analyse critique, le savoir théorique et pratique ciblé spécifiquement dans les arts.

Pre-Columbian art in all its varied forms offers rich terrain for furthering our insights into the cultural and symbolic lives of Amerindian peoples. This paper studies decorative patterns of Diaguita origin which present a visual logic characterized by the use of complex symmetries, illusory optical vibration, endless variability stemming from simple geometric forms, horror vacui, and gradual structural complication, among other techniques. The features described, the association of this visual art to an animal alter ego (jaguar), and the evidence of hallucinogen use together suggest a cultural link with specific ethnographic (Shipibo-Conibo) and archeological (Mojocoya) visual art. In this case, we are dealing not with a notation system but with visual “technologies of enchantment” (sensu Gell 1998) that are used to produce decorative patterns with social agency that captivate viewers with their visual artifice—the non-mimetic appearance of animation. In 2015, a large cemetery was...

Nowadays, the intervention and importance of art in videogames has been (and is) an artistic revolution. We have moved from the interaction to the illustrative action of the scenes and characters, from the pixel to the vector or vice versa, arriving to the creation through the digital tool that has been a great rebellion in all the words in art and also in the History of Art. Therefore, the present study aims to bring the current digital art used in videogames as new artistic productions in a brief and concise manner.

Il contributo analizza la funzione ludica degli elementi architettonici in alcuni videogiochi della software house giapponese FromSoftware. L’obiettivo del saggio è quello di ricostruire le modalità con cui gli sviluppatori hanno progressivamente negoziato fra i vari elementi coinvolti nel processo creativo: le dichiarate ispirazioni da architetture reali (come il Duomo di Milano), la fase preparatoria del concept art, il taglio e il riuso dei contenuti semilavorati (che generano dei “collage” di mondi) e l’impiego concreto di quegli elementi all’interno del videogioco, in cui si unisce la loro funzione architettonica con quella ludica, rispondendo alle necessità del level design. Il processo qui riassunto è comune a molti videogiochi, ma le opere prodotte da FromSoftware – come Dark Souls (2011) e Bloodborne (2015) – sono frequentemente citate sia per la qualità del loro level design, sia per la fascinazione che hanno generato le loro ambientazioni. Questi videogiochi costituiscono pertanto un caso particolarmente significativo per la riflessione su un più ampio tema.

The core of the Conceptual artists (Mel Bochner, Sol LeWitt; the Siegelaub group with Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner; English and American members of Art & Language) is situated in the art context of the late sixties and the first half of the seventies. The self-positioning of the Conceptual artists within the art world in texts dealing with art theoretical as well as institutional problems is outlined, and selected works are interpreted.

The "Benjang" performance is one of the many ritualistic performances with the essence value of not only a form of exercise, but also a way to get closer to their God. With careful observation on this dance, there are some value worth futher studying deep within the shell of the presentation itself, but on the value beneath it, values that can be extracted and applied to everyday life. "Rasa" or the essence of "greget" (frustration or eagerness) has the implication on passion, whereas "sedhih" (sadness) leans more towards desperation. Although the presence of "greget" in several occasions could be controlled by "sedhih", and also the other way around, where a prolonged sadness could be controlled by "greget". On another hand, the feeling of "regu" (grand) can be seen present along with the feeling of "prenès" (romance and humor), harmonizing to create an aesthetic nuance.

The article remembers some of Dan Graham‘s works from the sixties to the eighties. In these times he was interested in conceptual as well as contextual aspects. His pavilions with (two-way) mirror glasses combined aspects of art installations and urban contexts (buildings, parks, gardens) in a conceptual manner: They provoke the observing visitor to reflect about his situation within reflections of himself and the environment. The visitor/observer in action between different parts of the installation becomes a central part of the pavilion. This pavilion is recognizable as a model for relations between seeing and memorizing the seen. The built pavilion is a model for conceptualizations of the ways how we perceive the world. For such conceptualizations the “Children’s Pavilion” (1989) is planned with its higher and lower levels and their different relations between the context outside of the pavilion and its interior. Jeff Wall’s light boxes with photographs of children are parts of the pavilion: They reflect these outside/inside-relations. The “Children’s Pavilion” is interpreted as a sculptural model provoking the walking observer to reflect the condensation of time in metaphors of history (English translation: at the end of the German text. Illustrations of an exhibition of the “Children’ s Pavilion” in 1989 at La Villa Gillet in Lyon are added).
URL: http://dreher.netzliteratur.net/9_KontextKunst_Graham_Modelle.pdf

The lecture traces the practice of the members of the artists' group Art & Language in presenting their dialogue on the status of art in the art world. The booklet "Blurting in A & L" is itself part of the art world, whose premises the members of Art & Language criticize in the "Blurts". The relation of sections of the text - the "Blurts" – to each other by means of hypertext enables readers to confront their reading of the relations between the sections with the stated reading of members of the group: The different possibilities offered here by the printed and the web version published in 2002 are presented as refractions of "abductive reading".

The article „Kunst und Geschichte“/“Art and History“ thematises aspects of the relation between art and social life. First, it thematises the relations between precoded signs and forms in paintings. Examples are Jasper Johns’ “Flag” and Helmut Ferderle’ s paintings with swastikas and emblems of the SS. Second, it uses the historical moment of 1989 – the fall of the wall between the GDR and the FRG – to problematize the relation between art museums and history museums. Third: Installations of Jochen Gerz (“Exit – das Dachau Projekt”, 1974) and Gerhard Merz (“Dove Sta Memoria”, 1986) anticipate these problems in their strategies to combine the German past with contemporary problems of the relation between art and life.
Both artists use the discussion of the relation between art and museums for strategies to problematize the relations between art and life. They provoke reflections about the relations between art and history as they became relevant for the concepts of three new museums in Berlin and Bonn. Gerz and Merz offer complementary alternatives to the concept of a “Gefühlstheater” (a “theater of emotions”), as it was planned by Christoph Stölzl, the founding director of the Deutsches Historisches Museum (The Museum of German History) in Berlin.
The article was published in 1990 and remains controversial in the present political situation in Germany (2020) as it is overshadowed by neofascist tendencies.
URL: https://dreher.netzliteratur.net/9_KontextKunst_Kunst_und_Geschichte.pdf

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit zwei nicht realisierten Entwürfen von 1970/71 für ortsspezifische Kunstwerke, die sich auf den Ursprung sogenannter Trümmerberge in Westdeutschland und Polen bezogen: Das Muzeum Archeologiczne Festung Breslau von Zbigniew Makarewicz und Ernest Niemczyk sowie Walter De Marias Olympic Mountain Project für München. Die Arbeiten werden analysiert ausgehend von Walter Benjamins neunter geschichtsphilosophischer These über den Engel der Geschichte, in der die Vergangenheit als „eine einzige Katastrophe, die unablässig Trümmer auf Trümmer häuft“, bezeichnet wird. Dabei werden die Entwürfe auch in Bezug auf die zeitgenössischen internationalen künstlerischen Strömungen der Land Art und der Konzeptkunst diskutiert. Beide Werke thematisierten mit ähnlichen künstlerischen Strategien buchstäblich und metaphorisch Verschüttetes in einem nationalen historischen Kontext, in dem sich das staatssozialistische Polen einerseits und das bundesrepublikanische Deutschland andererseits eine neue politische Identität bescheinigen wollten, die durch die Trümmer in Frage gestellt wird.

This paper deals with two designs for site-specific artworks from 1970/71 that referred to the origin of so-called mountains of rubble in Western Germany and Poland: Muzeum Archeologiczne Festung Breslau by Zbigniew Makarewicz and Ernest Niemczyk, and the Olympic Mountain Project for Munich by Walter De Maria. Both designs were not realized. The paper analyzes the projects based on Walter Benjamin’s ninth thesis on the philosophy of history, in which he speaks about the angel of history and describes the past as "one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage."
The author discusses the works’ relation to international artistic currents of that time, namely land art and conceptual art. The paper concludes that the proposed artworks investigate with similar artistic strategies literally and metaphorically buried content and places them in specific national historical contexts, in which both the state socialist Poland and Federal Germany wanted to demonstrate a new political identity, one that was challenged by the notion of rubble.

Man kann ein Stück von Cage nicht nach denselben Kriterien betrachten wie ein Haydn-Streichquartett. Man muss es betrachten als das, was es ist, eben ein Nicht-Werk. Und zu Cages Einstellung gehört: Alles ist eigentlich beliebig. Wenn ich dies als Kunstwerk be­zeichne, kann alles ein Kunstwerk sein. Ob es Musik ist oder Graphik - eigentlich aus­tauschbar. Auch alltägliche Objekte und Situationen gehören dazu. Diese Auffassung geht übrigens auf Marcel Duchamp zurück.
György Ligeti 1993

Wohin führt diese von Ligeti angesprochene Haltung, die den herkömmlichen Kunstbe­griff so vehement ablehnt?
Piero Manzonis wohl berühmtestes Werk ist von 1961: Merda d'artista, die "Künstlerschei­ße" in 90 signierten Dosen, die er zum aktuellen Goldpreis verkaufte. Ich sah 2006 in der UdK Berlin ein studentisches epigonierendes Kunstobjekt, das vergoldete Scheiße ausstellte. Ich habe Damien Hirsts Tiere in Formalin gesehen, deren Preise im Millionenbereich liegen, also sehr "wertvoll" sind. Wenn ich an sein The Golden Calf in der Hamburger Kunsthalle denke (das Motiv verwendete Hirst mehrfach): Wie banal geschichtsklug von ihm. Ein Kalb wird anbetungswürdig, wie im alten Israel.