Meaning Creators: The Communicative Power of Language and Conceptual Art via Fashion Phenomena

Conceptual Art was an avant-garde movement that gave special attention to the idea, meaning, andconcept rather than the beauty, form and art piece. From the early days of the movement in the۱۹۶۰s, Conceptual Art and language have tied together. In fact, some conceptual artists attemptedto make a bridge between language and art. Language offers many artists, such as John Baldessari,Joseph Kosuth, and Jenny Holzer, a lot of possibilities to convey their provocative messages topeople. In this way, they succeeded to engaged people directly. This communicative power ofConceptual Art and language has inspired the design world, in particular, the fashion world. Thepurpose of this research is to investigate the connections between Conceptual Art and language infashion. At first sight, it seems that there is no relationship between Conceptual Art, language andfashion phenomena. Because fashion is a big business and selling products play a vital role forfashion designers. On the contrary, in Conceptual Art, the concept or the idea is more importantcompared to the final product and market needs. This paper will also discuss how some fashiondesigners succeeded to show the relationship between Conceptual Art, language and the finalproduct. It can be concluded, for these fashion designers, fashion is beyond the clothing itself.Through language, they become a kind of meaning creator which is the ultimate goal in ConceptualArt.

Keywords:

Language-Based Artwork , Conceptualism , Fashion Phenomena , Meaning Creators