Such disappointment is becoming routine as conceptualism tightens its grip on the art world. So frequent is this lowering of expectation, we seem on the verge of peculiar relationship to institutional art: one of learnt and reluctant disinterest. Yet great and ponderous meanings are attributed to the banal ‘conceptual’ artefacts wheeled out for our enrichment. As our desire for mystery and beauty is thwarted, ever more elaborate justifications are heard, couched in non sequitur and opaque terminology. The world of fine art now appears exclusively concerned with semiotics, “the crisis in representation” and other academic matters. Visiting a gallery in the hope of being made to stare in wonder is, according to the prevailing critical theory, “sentimental” and “naïve”. Beauty, it would seem, is merely something to be analysed in a cloud of righteous deconstruction.

However, as Ware found out, the rapidity with which conceptual art evaporates from our consciousness undermines such grandiose pretensions. Once the tribal rituals of endorsement or derision have passed, the oeuvres of our more prominent artists actually evoke very little sense of meaning or avant-garde unease. Cleared of momentary hype and notoriety, what remains is often merely a residue of mild-mannered nihilism and terminal ennui, apparently the result of some tragicomic mismatch between ego and imagination, between theory and practice. Of course, it’s just about conceivable that the artists’ inadequacy could be a conceptual point of some kind, but then again, I could be clutching at straws in search of some deeper explanation.

It seems more probable that a preoccupation with semantics and theoretical abstraction has left many conceptual artists hamstrung by their own self-conscious post-modernism. Despite the pantomime of rebellious gestures, these outlaw figures appear inhibited by an air of fashionable indifference and vague anomie. Sarah Lucas might once have offended the sensibilities of Daily Mail readers with her 1992 vaginal gag Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab, in which the aforementioned food items were positioned to represent the female erogenous zones, but what of note has followed since? Outrage has always been exploited as a selling point like any other, and now, more than ever, young artists understand the commercial imperatives of branding. Tracey Emin (“Mad Tracey from Margate”) is arguably the foremost exponent of this theatrical strategy. But while infamy offers the most immediate road to recognition, the outrageous artist is easily commodified and never far from being parodied and redundant.

The Publicness exhibition, which runs at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in the early months of 2003, showcases work by three contentious artists –Jens Haaning, Matthieu Laurette and Aleksandra Mir. All three are said to “interrogate the notion of the public realm”, and their works are conceived not for gallery display, but are instead “developed within larger economies”. According to the ICA’s four-page press release, the exhibition will "offer a variety of works, ranging from projects either under development or constantly evolving, and proposals for projects that may never be realised..." Evidently, because the exhibition is so conceptual in nature, the artists can short-circuit their own ostensible function and simply pin up "proposals for projects that may never be realised". This supremely efficient approach saves everyone -particularly the artist- a great deal of time and trouble. (Although one wonders how the artists would feel, should the audience adopt a similar approach to visiting the ICA: “Let’s not and say we did…”)

Of the exhibits, Jens Haaning’s Redistribution seems to epitomise a rudderless drift and lassitude that typifies contemporary conceptual art. According to the press release, Haaning’s work "creates a one-to-one exchange between the art institution and the external environment". Faced with the wide-open ambiguity of this claim, questions necessarily come to mind. One of which is: how will this one-to-one exchange be brought about? I refer to my copious notes: "The work will consist of removing all the chairs from the ICA cafe and placing them in a street in Pakistan. At the ICA cafe there will be a framed photograph of the chairs in situ in Pakistan.”

After entertaining the possibility that Redistribution could in fact be an ICA insurance scam masquerading as a prank masquerading as art, another, more serious, question comes to mind: what will this feat of intercontinental furniture removal achieve? What will it mean? Why is it being done? Again, the press release provides the obligatory non-specific clue: “The work aims to question the Western world's perception of, and relation to, the rest of the world and to raise issues around topics such as the global economy, culture and cultural exchange..."

Setting aside the explanation’s opacity, you may want to note how conceptual artists love to “raise issues”. Yet, despite conceptualism’s intellectual leanings, the artists rarely specify which particular issues, or exactly how they will be raised, let alone what might be newly illuminated as a result. This preoccupation with validation -generally by means of ill-defined associations with social issues- could in part be explained by conceptualism’s dogmatic aversion to dangerously metaphysical qualities such as beauty and awe -qualities that require no press release or external validation. Even in terms of raising issues, institutional art fails to deliver. Set against the incisive, unsettling satire of Chris Morris and his Brass Eye TV series –a product of mainstream commercial culture- Haaning’s Redistribution seems both whimsical and obsolete.

The fundamental shortcoming of conceptualism is best illustrated by one artist’s approach to that most metaphysical of art forms, music. In 1961, Robert Ashley offered the following statement of (theoretical) intent: "The most radical redefinition of music would be one that defines 'music' without reference to sound." On first hearing, Ashley’s pronouncement sounds impressive, profound and daring. But, like so many conceptual maxims, its meaning is oblique and the assumptions on which it’s based are, to say the least, tendentious. However, one might deduce that, in the quest for conceptual ‘purity’, music is to be stripped of the bourgeois sensual attributes that ultimately give it meaning. Melody, harmony, texture and tone are, apparently, peripheral or irrelevant -as is music’s most significant quality: its ability to move the listener, often with a poignancy that is difficult to express. But, deprived of these ‘irrelevant’ physical and metaphysical factors, consider what is left to the conceptual musician: An exercise in notation? Vibrating air? Ones and zeroes? Surely Ashley had confused ‘music’ with ‘musicology’ and ‘physics’? Such maxims seem designed to dazzle us with the glare of their superficial brilliance. However, they also seem ill suited to sustained examination (under which their meaning all too typically evaporates). This knack for superficial plausibility suggests that, at heart, conceptual artists are really frustrated advertising executives.

Few conceptual artists show great interest in whatever tools and materials happen to be employed for any particular piece of work. As the new breed of conceptual artist is often a Jack-of-all-trades, flitting from one medium to the next in an endless search for novelty, this lack of engagement is all but unavoidable. Consequently, the construction of any unusual or elaborate components is outsourced to industry or specialist craftsmen as a matter of routine -and perhaps with a glimmer of self-satisfaction. Doubtless there are artists who pride themselves on having transcended the apparently obsolete conventions of the hands-on approach. But, in doing so, the conceptual artist dismisses any insights that might be won only through the trials and errors of the very craftsmanship being purchased to realise their concepts.

As the American installation artist Sol LeWitt informed readers of Artforum in 1967: "In conceptual art, the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.  All planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair." Clearly, conceptualist dogma assumes nothing of significance could possibly be learnt during the execution of the work. (One might also note LeWitt’s pointed use of the word ‘execution’ and its connotations of the terminal and robotic.) But in dismissing out of hand the wisdom gained exclusively by doing a thing -and by doing it well- conceptualists risk losing the very essence of creativity.

Practical interaction, not academic theory, is at the heart of the activity we call ‘art’. Whether idly doodling on a napkin or improvising the archest of freefall jazz, the means and the end of the exercise are the same -an immersion in the periphery of consciousness. One might plausibly define art as a particularly effective interface between the ego and the subconscious mind –one that allows the participant to watch what he doesn’t know being delivered and discovered. The Lithuanian-born painter Ben Shahn described what is missing from the conceptualist equation in his book The Shape of Content: "Painting is both creative and responsive. It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form..." The denial of this semi-subconscious interaction with a physical medium is, I suspect, precisely why conceptual art is so unlikely to send a shiver down your spine.

Incidentally, doesn’t it seem curious just how closely conceptual art mirrors modern market theory, which also denies the value of tangible artefacts such as factories, lorries and, arguably, employees? To many market gurus, the brand is everything, the very foundation of economic life. As the management consultant Ron Nicol famously announced in the Wall Street Journal: “It’s just not cool to make things anymore.”

Conspicuous use has, of course, been made of outlandish or ‘shocking’ materials. Carcasses, congealed blood and faecal matter most readily come to mind. Predictably, the use of such materials results in fits of moral indignation and protestations of distaste. Thus, whether championed or reviled, the artist’s first step towards celebrity has been taken. However, a question remains: what has actually been registered, favourably or otherwise, beyond the raw material itself? Marc Quinn’s Self, a sculpture of the artist’s head composed entirely of frozen blood, lingers in the memory not because of any artistic significance or sculptural ingenuity, but because of its impromptu disintegration due to an unplugged Saatchi freezer.

The hair-trigger defensiveness shown by many of conceptual art’s custodians also invites suspicion. In the wake of his criticism of conceptual art and its protective cabal, Ivan Massow was promptly ejected from the ICA’s executive washroom. This knee-jerk response to heresy from within, along with Massow’s subsequent bad-mouthing by ICA director Philip Dodd and other massed defenders of the new faith, inevitably made the original criticism all the more persuasive. Indeed, the impression given by such intolerance of dissent is one of ideological tyranny and a fear of being rumbled. Evidently, the argument so favoured by advocates of conceptual art -that art should raise questions and provoke re-evaluation- can only go so far, and only in certain prescribed directions.

With similar disingenuousness, the Turner Prize is routinely defended with manoeuvres along the lines of: “Ah, yes, you may think it’s crap, and so might everyone else, but at least we’re all talking about art, and that’s the point…” But if all of the column inches and dinner table discussions ultimately revolve around art’s barefaced inadequacy, surely credibility is lost and art is further marginalized as trivial, dishonest and redundant? Surely such ‘provocation’ reduces ‘high’ culture to little more than a knockabout sport?

Even the name ‘conceptual’ is misleading. From the early experiments of Duchamp and Klein, through to the political pretensions of John Baldessari, and on to our own Emin, Hearst and Wearing, a scaling back of ambition and intellectual rigour has apparently taken place. Taken as a movement, contemporary ‘conceptual’ art is, more precisely, notional -an art of gestures, nods and shorthand, of knowing understatement and esoteric reference. As Ludwig Wittgenstein, a hero to many conceptualists, famously pointed out: “’Concept’ is a vague concept”. This lack of intellectual lucidity finds expression not only in the famed inability of artists to define the value of their work, but also in one of the most common defences of conceptual art: “Yes, but that’s just your opinion, and mine is equally valid.” The critic Brian Sewell challenged this eerie misappropriation of democracy by pointing out the distinction between an opinion and a judgement. A judgement requires some attempt at analytical coherence. An opinion, however, does not. Plenty of people hold opinions that have never been given a moment’s thought. And the same can be said of concepts.

As conceptual art continues its decline from found object to background noise and cultural irrelevance, it seems appropriate to ponder why its self-destruction is unavoidable, and to note the suitably ironic cause of this terminal condition. Since the seed of destruction is not entirely obvious, I’ll attempt to make it clear. The conceptual artist, to his credit, is rarely less than well read and culturally informed. He is, therefore, painfully aware of what has already been done and by whom. He’s also aware of how interpretations can change with mainstream assimilation and the benefit of hindsight. Consequently, the artist is wary of being earnest or bold, or of showing overt sentiment -just in case such unambiguous commitment should seem naïve or cheesily melodramatic at some point in the future. He is, at best, ‘playful’. In addition, he’s fearful of inadvertently repeating what has been done before, which would be wasteful of his talents and, more to the point, uncool. As history accumulates, the space left to him diminishes. Inevitably, he arrives at a uniquely post-modern nightmare: with all of popular culture and art history at his fingers, the conceptual artist is, with awful irony, confined by self-regard and rendered impotent through knowledge. And, finally, what is left? A joke, sneerily told, laughing at itself.

© David Thompson 2002

www.ica.org.uk

An abbreviated version of this article was published in Eye #47, March 2003.

A translated version appeared in El Malpensante magazine #46