The Synthetic Proposition: Conceptualism and the Political Referent in Contemporary Art - Paperbackby Nizan Shaked (Author) The synthetic proposition examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and sexual liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the 1990s. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with abstract ideas, as articulated by Joseph Kosuth, and traces key strategies in contemporary art to the reciprocal influences