Hey kids, read these interesting short pieces about specific works of conceptual art and then print it out on your computer. Piss on it and give it to your father. Viola! You are a conceptual artist. As am I for suggesting this. As is the Shrubbery for printing this piece. As is your father for receiving the piece. Art is art is art.

A Discourse on Conceptual Art as Told Through Anecdotal/Work-based Semi-Chronological Errata

JASON/JESSICA: Feel free to trim it to any size you want. Make sure you keep this note in the actual article because it makes it even more conceptual. The actual title of this piece it the title above in all caps. Include "TITLE:" in its actual title for the reasons stated above. Out!

• Pliny tells this story: Two artists were having a competition to see who could paint the most lifelike painting. Zuexis painted a bunch of grapes so realistically that the birds tried eating them. He lost. Parrhasios won by painting a curtain so life-like that Zuexis tried to open it to see the painting he assumed was behind it.
• Surrealist Benjamin Peret publicly insulted Catholic priests in the street.
• Ernst and Baargeld had their works removed from an "open exhibition" in 1920. In response, they rented a courtyard that could only be reached via the men's bathroom of the Brasserie Winter in Cologne, Germany. Those who came to the exhibit were invited to destroy anything they didn't like.
• In 1952, the Lettriste Guy Debord screened his film, Howls in Favour of Sade. A monochrome black was projected on the screen interrupted by short bursts of white light, which were accompanied by insulting dialogue.
• Guy Debord and other Lettristes invaded a press conference being given by Charlie Chaplin and denounced him as a hypocrite.
• A splinter group of the Lettristes, the Ultra-Lettriste, had member Michel Mourre dress as a Dominican friar and infiltrate the Easter mass at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. He read out a blasphemous sermon to the horror of the parishioners assembled.
• Composer John Cage premiered 4'33" in 1952. This piece consisted of a pianist who sits at a concert piano, lifts his hands as to begin, then lifts his hands twice more during the piece, ostensibly mimicking three movements.
• Robert Rauschenberg approached Willem de Kooning and asked him to donate an artwork, so Rauschenberg could erase it, then display it as his own. De Kooning agreed. The piece was entitled Erased de Kooning Drawing.
• Frenchman Yves Klein gave an exhibition entitled Le Vide (The Void) which consisted of purely white walls. Before visitors entered they were given a blue cocktail which consisted of gin, Cointreau, and methylene blue. For days afterwards, all who imbibed the cocktail pissed blue.
• Daniel Spoerri published a book entitled Anecdoted Topography of Chance in which he analyzed the hundred and one objects that happened to be on his table February 21, 1962 at 8:07 p.m.
• Piero Manzoni sold his breath in a rubber balloon for $30. He offered to reinflate the balloon for $0.30.
• In the same year, Manzoni sold "Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility" (which translates to literally nothing) for a set amount of gold. He then dispersed half the gold in the Seine. The buyer then burned the receipt. Therefore there is no proof that the buyer ever owned the non-existent work.
• At an exhibition in Copenhagen, Manzoni boiled eggs, stamped them with his thumbprint, and invited the audience to eat them. The entire exhibition was consumed in 70 minutes.
• Members of the Second Situationist International allegedly cut off the head of the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen to decry institutionalized sentimentality.
• At a Happening engineered at the Rueben's Gallery in New York, specifically 18 Happenings in 6 parts, Claes Oldenburg ordered the assembled to "Don't sit down, stand!" in a dictatorial tone. John Cage and Marcel Duchamp, in attendance, sat down.
• Andy Warhol produced films such as Blowjob, in which a man's head is shown for 35 minutes, Empire, in which the Empire State Building is shown for 6 hours, and Sleep, in which a sleeping man is shown for 6 hours.
• At a 1965 retrospective for Andy Warhol, all works were removed and the only thing on show was Andy Warhol being famous.
• La Monte Young turned in a composition in graduate school entitled Trio for Strings I which a viola played a single C-sharp note for 102 seconds, after 51 seconds a violin started with a sustained E-flat for 77 seconds, then a cello joined in with a monotone D-natural for 102 seconds. Then the cello stopped, 40 seconds later the violin stopped, then 48 seconds later the viola stopped. His professor failed him.
• La Monte Young's Composition #5 detailed that any number of butterflies should be released in the concert hall until all the butterflies fly out open windows.
• Dancer Simone Forti exposited an idea for a dance which consisted of one man who is told he must lie on the floor during the entire piece and another man who must tie the first man to the wall.
• In 1962, Robert Morris's made Box with the Sound of its Own Making, a 23 cm square box containing a tape recorder playing a cassette of the hammering and sawing when the box was made.
• Later that year Morris made a piece called Litanies. When the buyer, architect Philip Johnson, refused to pay Morris reproduced the exact same piece. Included with this exact duplicate was a certificate stating that all aesthetic content had been withdrawn from the original and was now solely in the reproduction.
• In 1967, Richard Long walked up and down a field in a straight line for hours until the grass became trampled in his path.
• John Baldessari produced a series of works entitled The Commissioned Paintings. He took photographs of his friends pointing at things then sent the photographs to Sunday painters and asked them to paint the photograph. Each painter had his name written in a large font under the work. All the paintings were displayed together.
• The seminal rock band Mothers of Invention played a show at the Garrick Theater in New York in 1967. Only ten people showed up so the band gave their instruments to the audience and sat in the auditorium.
• Sol LeWitt made his drawings on the gallery walls themselves. Actually, the drawings were made by draughtsmen who were given specific instructions.
• Since 1965, Polish painter Roman Opalka has done nothing but paint in white on a gray background the series of integers starting at one. As he does so, he speaks each number into a tape recorder. After each canvas is filled, he adds one percent white paint to the gray. At the end of each day of painting he takes a picture of himself. He is now in the 4 millions.
• Reclusive painter On Kawara began on January 4, 1966 to paint the date on a black background. They are made meticulously, with up to 5 coats of paint on each work. They are sold in boxes, which contain a piece of that day's newspaper. Sine 1991 he has sent enigmatic telegrams to friends stating that he has not died yet.
• Bas Jan Adler performed many pieces one of which he fell from a chair, another from a bicycle, and a third from a roof.
• Robert Barry held a famous show at the Art & Project Gallery in Amsterdam in 1969. He pinned a sign to the front door, which stated, "during the exhibition the gallery will be closed."
• Messianic German artist Joseph Beuys proposed that the Berlin Wall should be heightened by 5 cm to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
• The Art Workers' Coalition interrupted a meeting of the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and threw cockroaches at the members.
• IN 1971, John Balderassi had students write "I will not make any more boring art" on the walls of a gallery in Nova Scotia because he was not able to be there.
• In September of 1970, Balderassi showed his Cremation Project, where he had cremated all his unsold artwork from 1953 to 1966.
• Collector Isi Fiszman bought a work by Marcel Broodthaers and subsequently smashed it to pieces as his own work of art.
• Paul Kos exhibited a piece entitled The Sound of Ice Melting, in which 2 11-kg blocks of ice were surrounded by 8 microphones, which amplified and broadcast the sound of the ice melting.
• Adrian Piper painted her clothes sloppily with white paint and scrawled "WET PAINT" over her shirt in black. She proceeded to shop at Macy's for gloves and sunglasses.
• Michael Craig-Martin exhibited An Oak Tree, which was a glass of water on a glass shelf held to the wall with two chrome brackets. Included with the piece was the following interview:
  Q: To begin with could you describe this work?
  A: Yes, of course. What I've done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water.
  Q: The accidents?
  A: Yes. The colour, feel, weight, size.
  Q: Haven't you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?
  A: Absolutely not. It is not a glass of water anymore. I have changed its actual substance. It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree…
  Q: Do you consider that changing a glass of water into an oak tree constitutes an artwork?
  A: Yes.
• Keith Arnett attempted to do nothing for his exhibition at the Haywood Gallery in London in 1972.
• IN 1974, a building owned by gallerist Holly Solomon was cut in half by Gordon Matta-Clark.
• In 1981, Vitaly Komar and Aleksander Melamid did a work in which they were both on opposite sides of the world. They dug a hole 1-meter into the ground at the same time. It was entitled Let's come one metre closer.
• Laurie Anderson took photographs of all the men who made unsolicited remarks to her during the course of one day and exhibited them.
• Ana Mendieta's most confrontational piece was entitled Rape Scenes. She invited friends and colleagues to her apartment. They found her tied to a table, naked from the waist down, and covered in blood.
• Sherrie Levine took photographs of Walker Evan's photographs taken in the 1930's and displayed her photographs of photographs.
• Rachel Whiteread had a house filled with concrete and then the walls were peeled away.
• In Untitled (portrait of Marcel Brient) Felix Gonzalez-Torres placed a monstrous pile of Hershey Kisses in a corner of the gallery and invited viewers to have a couple.
• Gabriel Orozco showed a piece at the Museum on Modern Art in New York in 1993. He asked all businesses and homeowners who had windows facing the gallery to place an orange on their window.

Todd McCafferty once ate Christmas jingle bells for money. --Jason