Tuesday, October 10, 2017

skill vs concept in visual art


















Abramović performing The Artist Is PresentMuseum of Modern Art, March 2010
By Shelby Lessig - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12134088

An old and continuous debate about skill vs. concept in visual art came up on Facebook recently. I thought this post by Eric Wayne, THE DEBATE OVER SKILL IN VISUAL ART AND CONCEPTUAL ART delivers a great overview on the topic. The article is from 2015, but still relevant.

This is an excerpt from the article “Both the positions of the conceptualists and their opposites miss the point. The more conservative artists mistake facility at strict representation for the only or most relevant skill, and the conceptualists conveniently forget that visual art requires an underlying ability with visual language that must be cultivated”.


Click on the link above to read the entire article. Comment and let us know which side of the debate you are on. 

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