Synthetic Proposition Conceptualism and the Political Referent in Contemporary Art

Traces two intersecting trajectories in American art. It shows how rights-based 1960s politics and the identity politics of the 1970s influenced the development of Conceptual art (with a capital 'C') into the diverse set of practices generally characterised as conceptualist (with a lower-case 'c').

The synthetic proposition examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, and the student, feminist and sexual-liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the 1990s. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with philosophically abstract ideas, as articulated by Joseph Kosuth, and traces key strategies in contemporary art to the reciprocal influences of conceptualism and identity politics, movements that have so far been historicised as mutually exclusive. A vast delta lies between the river of conceptualism and that of identity politics; this book traces some of the major streams that have flowed between, and demonstrates that while identity-based strategies were particular, their impact spread far beyond the individuals or communities that originated them.

Commencing with the early oeuvre of Adrian Piper, a first-generation Conceptual artist, this book offers a study of interlocutors that expanded the practice into a broad notion of conceptualism, including David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, and Charles Gaines. By turning to social issues, these artists analysed the cultural conventions embedded in modes of reference and representation such as language, writing, photography, moving image, and installation and exhibition display. Influenced by the social movements of the 1960s, they used them as models towards a cross-identity politics, where the issue is not one's sense of self, but the positing of identity as a universal principle.

The synthetic proposition examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and sexual-liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the 1990s. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with abstract ideas, as articulated by Joseph Kosuth, and traces key strategies in contemporary art to the reciprocal influences of conceptualism and identity politics: movements that have so far been historicised as mutually exclusive.

The book demonstrates that while identity-based strategies were particular, their impact spread far beyond the individuals or communities that originated them. It offers a study of Adrian Piper, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser and Charles Gaines. By turning to social issues, these artists analysed the conventions of language, photography, moving image, installation and display.