Wesley Cray, "Some Ideas about Ideas and the Idea Idea"

Abstract: Elisabeth Schellekens and Peter Goldie have advanced the Idea Idea, the thesis that “in conceptual art, there is no physical medium: the medium is the idea.” Duchamp’s Fountain is not really a urinal, we are told, but is instead an idea. But what is an idea? How does the idea relate to the urinal? In answering these questions, I think we see that the Idea Idea is mistaken. Conceptual artworks are something other than ideas. Using recent work by Timothy Schroeder and Anthony Everett as a springboard, I offer arguments for these claims and sketch a new ontology of conceptual artworks according to which such works are, not ideas, but artifacts imbued with ideas.