Each time I see an Abstract Expressionist painting sell at auction for millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, my heart sinks. Not solely because we live in a world where the ultra-wealthy can barter works by dead artists, which often sold for measly sums during their lifetime, in money-laundering, profit-making schemes, but because it is likely nobody will see those paintings, in-person, again.

Poor Abstract Expressionism; it has been weathered down by the age of Instagram. Seeing a painting, or worse, a sculpture, on your dim, pixelated phone screen can’t compare to seeing it in person. The work of artists such as Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell in particular fall victim to photo reproductions which create flattening, shrinking, warping effects, and remove the art from spatial context. (Of course, this isn’t helped by auction sales. Surely nothing short of a school can be worth the $30 million price tag of Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XXII sold for at Sotheby’s.) The emotional impact and, to an extent, the intellectual and aesthetic impact of Abstract Expressionist paintings is dependent on space.

 Those open to Abstract Expressionist pieces are often overcome with emotion before them. According to the art critic Philip Hook, Mark Rothko is “the most wept-over” artist in galleries. How one navigates and positions their body around the piece and the environment is what allows us to, as Agnes Martin would put it, “accept pure emotion” without “demand[ing] explanation” from Abstract Expressionism. It is no wonder then that the reproductions of these works in digital and print form can leave many who are not already invested in the work conspiring that Abstract Expressionism was one big gimmick on the part of a few shrew con-people.

Conceptual art, while indebted to the work of artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, had its genesis during the decline of Abstract Expressionism in the early 1960s. The rise of conceptual art was a reactionary one as many conceptual artists opposed the inward-looking, small, and sometimes dogmatic art world of the 1950s. As such there was no Conceptualist movement with a capital ‘c’ but a worldwide aesthetic and cultural shift which encompassed a diverse range of artistic communities and practices which individual artists would drift in and out of. Fluxus was possibly the most influential and long-lasting movement in conceptual art. Centralised in New York (the former capital of Abstract Expressionism), Fluxus began as a form of institutional critique. As its founder George Maciunas put it in a 1963 manifesto, Fluxus would “promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, promote living art, anti-art”.

In terms of its artistically revolutionary nature, Fluxus was opposed to the creation of new objects for the rich to hoard, choosing instead to create interdisciplinary, ephemeral “Happenings” which were then recorded. One of the most famous (notorious?) members of Fluxus was Yoko Ono. Ono’s work in the 1960s was never about creating an object; she invited participation, physically or in the imagination, to step on a painting, cut clothes from her body, look to the sky. In her work the process was the concept, and the concept was the art. Ono’s work is concerned with the space, environment, and the body as much as (if not more than) most Abstract Expressionist work, but it is actually able to transcend the space and time in which it ‘happened’ or is being exhibited. Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s flows between the active or material and the conceptual or contemplative.

An artist who perfectly exemplifies this is Ana Mendieta about whom Olivia Laing writes, “She knew that the body was many things at once, that it is always in flux.” Though she evades categorisation Mendieta’s work showcases much of what defines conceptual art, she worked across disciplines, her works were fleeting then captured, her ‘processes’ (synonymous with what others would call ‘concepts’) were the focus of her art, not a final piece. Her magus opus, the ‘Silueta’ series she created through the 1970s, was made in this vein. Shocking and visceral, they perform in an almost transcendental way. Part of what makes Mendieta’s work so powerful is that while the work speaks of the earth and body,  you do not have to witness the, to use the Fluxian word, Happening, nor do you have to travel to a gallery or museum to be touched by the material. Even if someone buys Mendieta’s original photographs or they become blurrier every time they are screenshotted and reshared it doesn’t really matter because once we encounter her work, we carry the concept and process, and therefore the emotions or thoughts her work may ignite, forever.

This is not Abstract Expressionism, in which the bodily experience is robbed along with the artwork as it was intended to be shown. Instead, the conceptual art by Mendieta, Ono, Maciunas, and the many other conceptual artists of these decades, Vito Acconci, Jenny Holzer, Alison Knowles, and so on, is untethered from the object. The ideas, the activities; they are the art. The recordings can exist online, in books, in conversation, outside of institutions because what they really serve to do is keep the ideas and expressions of the artists alive. Conceptual art has become rarer and shallower, making headlines again in 2019 with Maurizio Cattelan’s work ‘Comedian’. ‘Comedian’, or the infamous banana-ducted-taped-to-the-wall, is a reminder that conceptual art is only as interesting as its concept, however, ‘Comedian’ did not manage to dull conceptual art’s challenging notions of ownership. Only those who paid the six-figure price for the certified artwork can display ‘Comedian’ under Cattelan’s name but anyone who ‘Comedian’ outraged or inspired, in a sense, owns their own version of ‘Comedian’. 

The drama and presence of Abstract Expressionism will have its time yet. But it seems to me that in this world of priceless paintings being kept indefinitely in temperature-controlled warehouses, the dominance of algorithms in determining what art is seen, sold, and made, corporate theft of art, and those nauseating celebrity NFTs, now is the time to usher in a new era of conceptual art. One which unabashedly circumnavigates and takes advantage of institutions like the art market or social media. One which allows people to flow in and out of creation, participation, and recollection. One which pushes for a diverse range of ideas, ways of doing, ways of seeing, to be spread, inviting artists and ‘non-artists’ of all backgrounds and perspectives. The many ways a conceptual art renaissance would manifest is a mystery but perhaps a good (if not, at least whimsical) start might be doing as Yoko Ono instructed in 1960 and, “Carry a bag of peas. / Leave a pea wherever you go.”