conceptual art in movies

... Blow Up by 'you know who' with the mimes et al ..and a very obscure film starring Anthony Newley called "Can Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercey Humph and Find True Happines." one of the funniest movies of all time...

What about all the bare Scottish bums in Braveheart - surely a radical concept in the art of war :)

Can someone give me a definition of 'conceptual art'? Ta.

It's when the leading lady gets laid, Emma.

Life of Brian. Brian has to paint the corrections of his Latin a hundred times all the over the Roman's walls. Hmm... and other great Life of Brian moment: Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Attendee: Brought peace? Reg: Oh, peace - shut up! There is not one of us who would not gladly suffer death to rid this country of the Romans once and for all. Dissenter: Uh, well, one. Reg: Oh, yeah, yeah, there's one. But otherwise, we're solid.

I don't know if it's the *standard* definition, but what I mean by "conceptual art" is art where the idea is as important as the actual artifact. So, for example, the Mona Lisa doesn't count. The idea was "paint a picture of woman". Tracy Emin's bed does count, but it's not in a film. With the bed, it was crucial to the art work that it was her bed etc - the concept was the important thing, it wouldn't have been the same if it was just any old bed. (Sorry Spack, but the dialogue from Life of Brian doesn't count either - to me that's situation comedy rather than conceptual art.)

thinking further, it may not be conceptual art I'm after. It might be that it's art with a formula: take a photo from this spot each day; collect photos from beneath passport photo booths...

Now he tells us, but I still don't know what you mean, James.

The killer in texas chainsaw massacre genuinely tries to make art out of bodies and bits of animals. I think something similar goes on in House of a 1000 Corpses but I really wouldn't recomend watching that - it's rubbish. In the iron giant one of the characters makes conceptual sculptures from scrap. But neither of those are really made with a formula.

From your definition above I think 'conceptual art' must be a modern label to describe a particular modern phenomenon, because to my mind all great art has a concept or concepts behind it (excluding lesser artists paintings/drawings which do still life/landscape/portrait simply for what it is, but even then the concept is compostion/beauty etc) It seems that conceptual art finds the meaning more important than the means, where as really great artists give importance to both. I can see therefore that movies might fancy making use of conceptual art. Hmm, ong time since I pondered art... Damien Hirst, for example, said that it didn't matter that his sheep was vandalised because it had already made its statement. I found this website, incase you haven't already.

How about the weird kid in American Beauty who films stuff with his camcorder, including a plastic carrier bag blowing sadly in the wind? The whole serial killer as art thing is quite interesting - I did see a very poor film recently about a photographer who was also a killer, and he had on the back of all his gallery portraits, a picture of his victims. So, while a load of people strolled round munching vol au vents and looking at arty black and white stuff, they were only inches away from his confession. You've also got that DeQuincey essay 'murder as one of the fine arts'

What about that head Tom Hanks' character makes for himself (out of a football) to talk to in Castaway?

Oh, and don't forget Being John Malkovich, where the John Cusak character desperately wants to turn Puppetry into the highest art-form, and does street theatre re-enacting Heloise and Abelard, and when he finally possesses the body of John Malkovich, uses Malkovich's fame to launch a masterclass of puppetry. There's a mini-documentary in the film about Malkovich's puppetry career...

The female lead in 'Kalifornia' is taking pics of the scenes of seriaL killers. Or how about Buffallo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, he takes the skin of his victims to make clothes and sees it as art. Or Kevin Spacey in Seven, he sets up scenes of his victims, each a tableau of one of the deadly sins...creative? If you're going to allow these then any film where a killer takes a 'trophy' from his victims or leaves some kind of set up image or message could be included. There may be a whole chapter on this element of art and concepts in movies, the killer is often seen as creative, like a mad artist, and ALWAYS sees his work as art even if it is fuelled by revenge or religious fervour. Then there's the art of the movie makers themselves. The art direction and imagery of people like Terry Gilliam and Roman Polanski and, of course, Stanley Kubrick is entirely conceptual.

Yeah, loads of photographic stuff is conceptual art isn't it? Sometimes the whole movie is conceptual arty stuff - like 'The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.'

At the moment there's David Beckham filmed asleep by Sam Taylor-Wood, at the National portrait gallery. There was "Blue" by Derek Jarman. "Drowning by Numbers" by Peter Greenaway. * This is a difficult, almost pointless essay, in my opinion. Unless you use it to show the impossibility of conceptualism in film, an inherently naturalistic medium.

Greenaway? Didn't he do the Draughtsman's Contract? Conceptual Sex

If they ever get round to making a movie of Preacher (comic by Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon) - which is supposedly in progress. They may just include the character of Johhny Lee, the wannabe astronaut so miffed at being turned down by nasa that he spends the rest of his life in the desert dynamiting, in letters so big they can be seen from space, the words FUCK and YOU.

Representations of conceptual art in films are suprisingly common, I think, in the 'this kooky character is an artist' way. My favourite's are contained in 'The Big Lebowski' with Lebowski's daughter "Do you find my work vaginal?" and the german nihilists "You can say what you like about the tenets of national social but at least it was an ethos."