Konceptualizm jako konceptyzm
Conceptualism as Conceptism

Summary/Abstract: We know, how valuable the role of the functor ‘as’ played in conceptualism. The functor was a basic linguistic tool of conceptual art infrastructure – the minimal part of speech that allowed for the production of concepts, engaging ingenium in its primary function as ingenium comparans. The criticism of conceptualism, mainly comparison or identification of the artwork and analytic proposition revealed the fact that the tautological model of Kosuth is just one of many art concepts and remains a product of paralogical thinking. What is therefore decisive for conceptualism is an attempt to build a universal art theory: an idea, that for centuries has remained the basis for logical thinking, or the concept itself, in which paralogy cannot be eliminated. The tendency to narrow the meaning of a concept and limit art to its idea was marked in the text by Daniel Buren “Beware!” (1969-1970). How did it happen, that the formula of conceptism, used in the beginning of the decade by Henry Flynt in the text entitled “Concept Art” (1961) was replaced by conceptual art? For Flynt concept art was art whose materials were the language and concepts. According to him, a concept is a trace of an idea by Plato and means the intension of a name, but with today’s state of knowledge demanding an objective relationship between a name and its intension this meaning is incorrect. Therefore, if the relationship is subjective, then the concept as a possible opposition towards the objective idea occupies a privileged space in a language and keeps its strength. Also in Sol LeWitt’s “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967) and “Sentences on Conceptual Art” (1969), in which despite the fact that the expression ‘conceptual art’ appears explicitly, the term ‘concept’ remains an alternative to the idea, that may be simple and does not need to be complex. So according to Sol LeWitt, the concept implies a general direction, and ideas are its components. To radicalise this issue, let’s ask, if conceptualism privileges the conceptual, as its literally understood name would indicate? Or on the other hand is what is called a concept, that being something ingenial and that even though it includes a moment of ideation (abstracting and transcending sensuality, that is crossing the borders of the material paradigm of art towards the idea), it is not reduced to a conceptual element, but rather expresses sensuality or its basic modus? The text is an attempt to show the tension in the art of Polish conceptists who referred in their paralogical discourse to conceptualism, especially with reference to the example of Andrzej Partum’s work.

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