conceptual art

contemporary art of course goes back to Duchamp; for the artists of the second half of XXth century (and more generally for all artists of XXth century) the beautiful is an idea, an operation of the mind, not a perception. Art is an operation that mines the idea out of undifferentiated perceptions. Take for instance (see the very good site http://www.conceptual-art.net/collection.html) "in and out, out and in, and in and out and out and in" of Lawrence Weiner. These words are written on the glass door of a shop; Weiner very simply says: "look how beautiful is the in and out of people in this magazine. I am an artist because I draw your attention to the beauty of this banal everyday event. You must look with some detachment at the in and out of people to perceive its esthetical meaning, and some attention, and I do so simply by writing a caption on the glass door.

Contemporary artist (in particular conceptual artists) wanted to separate the art from the decoration; unfortunately, the result of their work is often very decorative. For instance, a painting of Jackson Pollock is actually a performance; the artistc lies in the physical expenditure of psichic and physical energy by the artist that drips paint on the canvas; photographs of Pollock painting are in fact very poetic. The resulting entwined lines of color are nonetheless very decorative.
Many highly quoted artist of the late years have separated the decorative from the art, and the art has been remove; for instance Gerhard Richter do paintings very similar in spirti to those of Pollock, but here it imports the painted canvas (to be sell), not the operation of painting.