h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have never seen the actual Mona Lisa. I've only seen reprinted photos of classical Roman sculpture. I have seen slides depicting paintings that were destroyed by the Nazis. Does the fact that I experience these works only through secondhand media automatically turn them into Conceptual Art?

Good question - sorry I took so long to get to you. Conceptualism is so hard to pin down. As long as the idea is the centerpiece of the work - more important than the materials of methods used - you could call it conceptual. There is a photographer (I've forgotten her name) who takes photos of other people's photographs and presents them as her own. She is certainly borrowing imagery to represent her ideas - hence, those photoed photos could be called Conceptual. They could also be postmodern; that's a catch-all for anything that borrows ideas or images from the past.
Peace,
Stephen

Oh I just wanted to say that the name of the photographer is 'Sherrie Levine' - worth looking into, not only does she take reproductions of modern old masters (schiele, degas, van gogh), she also photographs reproductions of famous photographs (Walker Evans),

Exactly right. Thanks.
Peace,
Stephen