During the Exhibition the Gallery Will Be Closed: Contemporary Art and the Paradoxes of Conceptualism

In this collection of essays, Amsterdam art historian and critic Camiel van Winkel digs up the conceptual roots of contemporary art, design and photography to argue that the art of today is, as a whole, “post-conceptual.” Focusing on the conceptual artists of the years 1965–1975, van Winkel examines how the art of that era continues to inform the art world today. Highly polemical and very readable, During the Exhibition the Gallery Will Be Closed looks at the cultural dominance of information in art discourse, the professionalization of artistic practices, the debate over “good design” in art and the role institutions play in art theory. It is an essential collection for any understanding of that idea, belief and desire we today call “the artist.”