A commodity appears at first sight a very trivial thing and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties -- (Marx 1974, 76).

Since early Modernism, art in the western world has become inextricably linked to the market and capitalism, this is because it has become an institution based on the buying and selling of objects that transcend Marx’s labour theory of value.

When Duchamp placed his ready-mades inside the context of the gallery as one of his ‘’attempts to de-mystify art’’ not only did he create a new dialogue for conceptualism, but in effect he actually turned modern arts value system on its head. Duchamp had risen at one time functional but now redundant (non-commodity) objects to the level of marketable art objects (commodities). If an artist can change the value of an object by merely putting an idea on the object, this means that what was to be valued in art was the idea and not the object.

Abstract art was easy and quick to make which thus gave it the ability to meet market demands. What conceptualism did to effectively emphasize the genius of the artist over craft and labour.

Art was no longer valued by aesthetic beauty; rather it was valued by the concept contained in the work.

In this way the idea becomes inextricably linked to marketable value and the loss of the object has made it easier for the artists to fill galleries as the work is quicker and easier to make.

Roy Lichtenstein once claimed that he wanted to make a picture so ugly that nobody would hang it, but of course history has proven the object of art is not valued by a conventional means of visual aesthetics, rather the art object is valuable because we as a society agree to value it.

It is said that the dematerialisation of art during the sixties was an escape attempt from a capitalist institution that commoditised everything and exploited the world. Lippard references a statement she made in 1969 with the end note (Now that’s utopian); “the people who bought a work of art they can’t hang up or have in their garden are less interested in possession. They are patrons rather than collectors.’’ And indeed it was utopian.


Much of this non-object art sought to shock, but the fact is that this art never encouraged dialectical change it was merely a by-product of it.
"Hopes that the conceptual art would be able to avoid the general commercialization, the destructively ‘progressive’ approach of modernism were for the most part unfounded. . . . Clearly, whatever minor revolutions in communication have been achieved by the process of dematerializing the art object . . . , art and artist in a capitalist society remain luxuries."

If conceptual art was trying to be unsellable by making less craft orientated work and losing some of the authorship of their work, they have failed because in the end they have created a new standard for valuing work. Not only this, but because a lot of conceptual works are easy and quick to make they are extremely efficient at meeting market demands. As Lippard herself admitted ‘’the escape was temporary. Art was recaptured and sent back to its white cell.’’