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Conceptual Art is art where the idea matters more than the actual piece of work. The artist doesn't require any skill in the traditions of drawing, painting or sculpting, and rearranges objects to fit a concept - or an idea.
My whole critique of conceptual art would be too long for a blog posting. Suffice to say that it irritates me endlessly. Although I "get" it each and every time, I can never make art (or design) with such criteria, because really, my mind doesn't work that way. I feel that I would be cheating myself, and whomever sees my humble efforts, by using mental jig-saw puzzles to put my artistic projects across.
I also find contemporary conceptual artists to be cold and indifferent to the public despite the inordinate amount of time they spend to come up with "public art". This is very clear to me with a contemporary "artist" Gwen MacGregor, who recently used giant jello cubes to fill up a "public space" - a fountain, in this case.
There is something creepy about wading through jello cubes, of the very type that you might eat as dessert one of these days. I'm quite sure that the young children walked through it with trepidation, and it is only the adults who were gleefully amused.
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The shortcoming is of course that MacGregor can never design a real fountain, either as a two-dimensional painting or drawing, or as an architectural piece. So, her "concept" becomes the art of the gimmick. And an arrogant snub.