Conceptual Art: Critical Operations in Context

One and Five Ideas: on Conceptual Art and Conceptualism : Terry Smith : Duke University Press (2017)

and

Image and Text in Conceptual Art: Critical Operations in Context : Eve Kalyva : Palgrave Macmillan / Springer Nature (2016)

Reaction could be dismissive as there were careers and investments embedded in institutionalised structures where the role of the critic was to affirm or deny the efforts of the artist hero according to a historical sense of aesthetic revision; or in the context of Cold War politics, national prestige. Critical theory in practice became the antidote, where the context of production and its point of reception were considered a part of the artwork, thus placing meaning-making into permanently contested space. .... Creating interpretive space can be regarded as a radical assault on the sensibilities of gallery goers who, prior to a range of practices emerging under the rubric Conceptual Art, were attuned to the appreciation of an artwork rather than its interrogation. Both writers acknowledge the primacy of language as a component of the experience of art, having roots in the philosophical work of Wittgenstein among others.