Why I Love This Monthly Conceptual Art Class at the Art Students League of New York

Why did I pile high all my mom’s living room furniture and top it with a Waterford crystal glass?

Because the Art Students League of New York now has online monthly classes.

Pioneering environmental/installation/conceptual sculptor artist Elizabeth Demaray teaches Conceptual Art: A Master Class for Everyone through The Art Students League of New York, a legendary institution known for fostering the talents of conceptual artists such as Ai Weiwei, Robert Smithson (“Spiral Jetty”), Barbara Kruger, Donald Judd, and Eva Hesse. It caters to artists of all levels looking to deepen their understanding of conceptual art and generative practices.

For the first time in 150 years, artists don’t have to take their physical bodies to 57th Street in midtown Manhattan — they can get the same legendary art training right from home. This class meets weekly over Zoom on Sundays and costs $154 per month. Demaray pairs conceptual art with technology, performance, the environment, conceptual art and writing. 

And as a result of the class’s engaging and inclusive environment, I have a better understanding of how to frame any undertaking as a work of art for public consumption. One project turned into the NYC memorial for art writer Dave Hickey, my former teacher at the University of New Mexico. It was held at a beautiful dive bar in Alphabet City on the Lower East Side. I had a supplementary zine with his talks that I had typed up while he was lecturing at the front of the classroom. People could attend live on Zoom, too, and people came to share stories about Dave or how his writing affected them as artists and as people.

“We make stuff — you can just drop in at the beginning of the month and we learn a tool,” Demaray said. “It might be a conceptual tool, it might be a digital video. There are some generative practices that DADA used; they’d make things under timed duress. They wanted to take the artist’s hand and ego out of what they were making. Don’t let anybody know about what’s about to happen; no chance to plan ahead.”

Class projects are diverse, ranging from video art to hyper contextualization exercises. Each month’s unit introduces a new strategy, allowing students to explore various techniques and mediums. In one notable instance, an 80-year-old artist created her first video art piece for her debut solo exhibition. The assignments are so varied, you’re guaranteed to challenge and delight yourself as an artist in this class, for which anyone can sign up.

“The interesting thing about a generative practice is you can set it in motion, you can make an assignment for yourselves, something for others. But you don’t know what you’re going to get back,” Demaray said. “Typically one’s predilections as an artist will guide you, but you don’t know what territory you’ll end up in and it’s very exciting. I think it helps us to think creatively with divergent thinking. When you don’t know where you’re going to end up, it’s exciting. It feeds back into your process and takes you to new places.”

Another assignment, the Non-Informative Flier, requires artists to design and distribute collage-based fliers — that are noninformative in nature — in public spaces. Utilizing re-contextualization of the kinds of fliers one typically sees, the project tends to attract the attention of passersby. Additionally, the Extra Information Project, using text-based strategies, challenges participants to reinterpret public monuments and statues by adding new elements or altering the original piece’s context.

Leading the sculpture concentration at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ, Demaray saw a need for artists to explore the reasons behind their creations and what they sought to communicate through their work. Her class aims to provide students with a foundation in generative practices and the history of conceptual art, fostering creative thinking and encouraging unique ideas. 

The class covers many conceptual strategies, sourcing practices from as far back as 1916 to the mid 1920s. At the time DADA artists, reacting to World War I, began challenging the idea of what constitutes a work of art. Following the line of the avant-garde, the class follows these practices through Surrealism, Pop art, and Conceptual art.

Demaray encourages artists to look beyond traditional forms and create art that challenges the norm, often leading to performance and installation-based projects.

“I noticed that a lot of studio artists get really good at making things, but, as artists, we don’t always know why we create or what we want to say,” Demaray said. “I found that having a basis in generative practices can help us come up with new ideas that can lead us to what we want to talk about or say.”

She said this is like a class she wishes had existed when she was in graduate school.

“It would have been very helpful to have a class like this as an artist, as a maker,” Demaray said. “My own art making is based on generative practice. These are the strategies I think are really enlightening and helpful for artists to know about and to know how to utilize.”