Change in the Conception of Art and the Year 1968 in America.

This essay examines the effect of social change on artists and artworks in the 1960s in America. It focuses on the significance and meaning of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s, as artists reconsidered art theories and discourse in the context of the epoch-making events of 1968. Conceptual Art is not about forms or materials or styles, but about ideas and meanings. It is defined by the way it questions both the meaning of art and the inherent values of Modernist culture and society. The year 1968 represents the climax of the crisis of authority for which Conceptual Art is both symptom and diagnosis. As artists became acutely aware of the institutional and political context in which they showed their works, Conceptual Art revolutionized the way in which art was exhibited and conceptualized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]