Lucy Lippard, ed. (1997), Six Years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 [...], London: University of California Press.


The concept of the dematerialisation of the art object, first published in 1968 by Lucy Lippard and John Chandler, characterises art in two ways: 'art as idea and art as action' (Lippard, 1997: 43). Dematerialisation in this connection aims to deemphasise the material aspects of art, and especially of art as object, and its prevailing orthodoxies of 'uniqueness, permanence, and decorative attractiveness' into an 'anti-form' or 'process art' (Lippard, 1997: 5). Lucy Lippard quotes Sol Lewitt's statement that comes across as a slogan for generative art: 'The idea become a machine that makes the art' (1997: xiv). 

Lewitt's 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' also define the terms in more detail (in Lippard, 1997: 28-9) and his 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' are presented as a series of aphorisms such as:
'10. Ideas alone can be works of art; they are a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be physical.[...] 14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.[...] 29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.[...] 35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.' (1997: 75-6)

This approach departs from minimalist arts practice of preceding years and its apolitical, 'anti-intellectual, emotional intuitive processes of art-making' and replaced with 'an ultra-conceptual art that emphasizes the thinking process almost exclusively' (Lippard, 1997: 42) derived more from Dada, and Duchamp but also from Fluxus artists like Henry Flynt who allegedly coined the term 'concept art', from Alan Kaprow's 'happenings', as well as concrete poetry, mail art, performances, body and street works. Thus, conceptual art established an attack on the conventions of the art-world and the commodity status of the work of art. It also acted as a bridge between the visual and verbal forms of expression. Even criticism adopted similar tactics (departing from Clement Greenberg) for such as Lippard's example of her catalogue essay to accompany Duchamp's work at that time in which she simply selected readymades from a dictionary (1997: x). Appropriation became a standard strategy to undermine authorship and ownership, with artists, critics and curators engaged in this practice necessarily. Even pedagogy was considered an art form as it exemplified the issues of communication and distribution that conceptual art posed. Beuys coined the term 'social sculpture with this in mind:
'To be a teacher is my greatest work of art. The rest is waste product, a demonstration.... Objects aren't very important to me any more.... I am trying to reaffirm the concept of art and creativity in the face of Marxist doctrine.... For me the formation of the thought is already sculpture.' (in Lippard, 1997: xvii)   

Much of this is exemplified by claims that information wants to be free; such as John Baldessari declaring 'that information could be interesting in its own right...'. Hans Haacke with a more overt political or even activist agenda claimed that: 'Information presented at the right time and in the right place can potentially be very powerful. It can affect the general social fabric.... The working premise is to think in terms of systems: the production of systems, the interference with and the exposure of existing systems....' (both in Lippard, 1997: xiii)

And yet, even overtly political art becomes incorporated. Benjamin's words about political art echo here: that it is simply not enough to make political art without at the same time attending to the technical apparatus. Lippard thinks the important legacy of conceptualism now, when it has become a commonplace activity, is that art can be found in social energies not yet recognised as art (1997: xxii). It is also worth adding that the term 'dematerialised' (like immateriality) is misleading as really my purpose (at least) is to recognise the materiality of ideas, instructions and actions, and in so doing to register these as social practices.