\"No matter what form [the artwork] may finally have it must begin with \nan idea. It is the process of conception and realization with which the \nartist is concerned.\"

Conceptual art is a movement that prizes ideas over the formal or visual

components of art works. An amalgam of various tendencies rather than a

tightly cohesive movement, Conceptualism took myriad forms, such as

performances, happenings, and ephemera. From the mid-1960s through the

mid-1970s Conceptual artists produced works and writings that completely

rejected standard ideas of art. Their chief claim - that the

articulation of an artistic idea suffices as a work of art - implied

that concerns such as aesthetics, expression, skill and marketability

were all irrelevant standards by which art was usually judged. So

drastically simplified, it might seem to many people that what passes

for Conceptual art is not in fact \"art\" at all, much as Jackson Pollock\'s

\"drip\" paintings, or Andy Warhol\'s Brillo Boxes (1964), seemed to

contradict what previously had passed for art.

But it is important to understand Conceptual art in a succession of

avant-garde movements (Cubism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, Pop,

etc.) that succeeded in self-consciously expanding the boundaries of

art. Conceptualists put themselves at the extreme end of this

avant-garde tradition. In truth, it is irrelevant whether this extremely

intellectual kind of art matches one\'s personal views of what art

should be, because the fact remains that Conceptual artists successfully

redefine the concept of a work of art to the extent that their efforts

are widely accepted as art by collectors, gallerists, and museum curators.

conceptual?