Why are Conceptual Artists Painting Again? Because they Think its a Good Idea.

Brian O'Doherty suggests a more flexible definition in Inside the White Cube. He describes the conceptual gesture not only in terms of the logic of strategic intervention in history, but also in terms of an aesthetics of its own:

 I suppose the formal content of a gesture lies in its aptness, economy and
  grace. It dispatches the bull of history with a single thrust. Yet it needs
  that bull, for it shifts perspective suddenly on a body of assumptions and
  ideas. It is to that degree didactic, as Barbara Rose says, though the word may
  overplay the intent to teach. If it teaches, it is by irony and epigram, by
  cunning and shock. A gesture wises you up. It depends for its effect on the
  context of ideas it changes and joins. It is not art, perhaps, but artlike and
  thus has a meta-life around and about art. Insofar as it is unsuccessful it
  remains a frozen curio, if remembered at all. If it is successful it becomes
  history and tends to eliminate itself. It resurrects itself when the context
  mimics the one that stimulated it, making it 'relevant' again. So a gesture has
  an odd historical appearance, always fainting and reviving.⁵

^{In terms of gesture i see my work constantly repetitive and accumulated through gesture, the process involves layering and marking the paper, yet through the materiality of paint, parts are left to chance. It was interesting to read this piece of Jan Verwoarts essay Why are Conceptual Artists Painting Again? Because they Think its a Good Idea. with a quote from O'Doherthy i find important as gesture can be something so subtle, yet "it depends for its effect on the context of ideas it changes and joins" what i get from this statement is that through painting and mark making, an artwork begins to emerge and decline (through erasure) but through the unfolding desire to know more, these marks, change and join, "A gesture wises up to you."}