Profs & Pints: A Guide to Conceptual Art

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “A Guide to Conceptual Art,” on the origins and evolution of an art movement that produced signed urinals, floating sheds, and wall-mounted bananas, with Jennifer Gagliardi, independent curator and contemporary art lecturer at Middle Tennessee State University and Pratt Institute in New York. [Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7.] Few art movements have met with as much buzz and backlash as conceptual art, associated with installations and performances that often leave people scratching their heads or deep in thought. Come to Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom for a talk on conceptual art that will deepen your appreciation and understanding of it. We’ll consider works such as Martin Creed’s empty room with lights going on and off, Maurizio Bolognini’s programming of computers to generate images no human will ever view, and Tracey Emin’s exhibition of an unmade bed, exploring their deeper meaning. To frame her discussion, Gagliardi will talk about how the history of art is big and wild, with the first work of "art" technically being made around 28,000 BCE. When we think about art, we often consider paintings, sculptures, or digital objects, but Marcel Duchamp sparked a radical shift in the art world by presenting a urinal as art in 1917. After World War II, artist groups began experimenting with the very definition of art, and by the 1970s, the focus had shifted from the finished product to the idea of art itself. We’ll look at how art and philosophy blended in the 20th century to inspire conceptual artists to transform art from functional object to form of intellectual entertainment, favoring idea over physical product. Gagliardi will discuss Japan’s avant-garde Gutai artists, who ran through paper, as well as works focused on the conceptual definition of a chair. We’ll talk about Yves Klein’s exhibition of an empty gallery and Clement Greenberg’s theories on avant-garde and kitsch. Attendees will come away with a new understanding of some of contemporary art’s most famous—and seemingly impenetrable—works. Among the questions Gagliardi will tackle: Is art the concept or is it the finished piece? (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.) Tickets