Art & Language

50 people were associated at the group.[2] Among them,

starting at the beginning of the 70s, Ian Burn, Michael
Corris, Preston Heller, Graham Howard, Joseph Kosuth,
Andrew Menard, Terry Smith and from Coventry Philip
Pilkington and David Rushton. In the facts, to know who
did what, in which way and in which quantity is more
or less well known. The (relative) degree of anonymity
that the name conferred since the beginning, continues to
have, however, an historical signicance.

Art & Language is a conceptual artists collaboration

which has undergone many changes since its creation at
the end of the 1960s. It is said that, their rst works, included the Art-Language Magazine published in November 1969, had got an important inuence on Conceptual
Art as much in The United States as in Great Britain.

The rst issue of Art-Language (Volume 1 Number 1,

May 1969) is named 'The Journal of Conceptual Art'. By
the second issue (Volume 1 Number 2, February 1970)
it became clear that there was some Conceptual Art and
more Conceptual artists for whom and to whom the journal did not speak. The title has been then abandoned.
Art-Language had, however, put in relief the idea of the
group. It was the rst imprint to identify a public entity called 'Conceptual Art' and also the rst to serve the
theoretical and conversational interests of a community
of artists and critics, who were its producers and users.
While that community was far from unanimous on the
nature of Conceptual Art, the editors and most of its historic contributors shared strangely similar opinions: Conceptual Art was critical of Modernism for its bureaucracy
and its historicism and of Minimalism for its philosophical conservatism; the practice of Conceptual Art was primarily theory and its form preponderantly textual.
As the distribution of the journal and the teaching practices of the editors and others contributors were growing, the conversation expanded and multiplied to include by 1971 (in England) Charles Harrison, Philip Pilkington, David Rushton, Lynn Lemaster, Sandra Harrison, Graham Howard, Paul Wood, and (in New York)
Scratched photograph of the cover of Art-Language, Vol.3 No.1, Michael Corris, and later Paula Ramsden, Mayo Thompson, Christine Kozlov, Preston Heller, Andrew Menard
1974.
and Kathryn Bigelow.
The name Art & Language stayed after all precarious. Its signicance (or instrumentality) varied from
1 First years
person to person, alliance to alliance, (sub)discourse to
(sub)discourse from those in New York who produced
The Art & Language group has been founded in 1967/68 The Fox (197476) to those engaged in music projects
in the United Kingdom by Terry Atkinson (b. 1939), or to those who continued the journals edition. There
David Bainbridge (b. 1941), Michael Baldwin (b. 1945) was confusion and by 1976 a dialectically fruitful confuand Harold Hurrell (b. 1940),.[1] Four artists who began sion had become a chaos of competing individualities and
to collaborate around 1966 while they were art teachers in concerns.
Coventry. The name of the group was derived from their Throughout the 1970s, Art & Language dealt with quesjournal Art-Language, which existed as a work conver- tions surrounding art production, and attempted a shift
sation since 1966. Charles Harrison and Mel Ramsden from the conventional non-Linguistic forms of art like
joined the group in 1970. Between 1968 and 1982 up to
1

painting and sculpture to more theoretically based works.

The group often took up argumentative positions against
such prevailing views of critics like Clement Greenberg
and Michael Fried. The Art & Language group that
exhibited in the international Documenta exhibitions of
1972 included Atkinson, Bainbridge, Baldwin, Hurrell,
Pilkington and Rushton and the then America editor of
Art-Language Joseph Kosuth. The work consisted of a
ling system of material published and circulated by Art
& Language members.[3]

EXHIBITIONS AND AWARDS

casional participation of Mayo Thompson and his group

Red Crayola. The political analysis and development
within the group resulted in many members leaving to
work in more activist political occupations. Ian Burn returned to Australia where he joined Ian Milliss, a conceptual artist who had begun to work with trade unions in
the early 1970s, by sitting Union Media Services, a design
studio for social and community initiatives development
of trade unions. Other UK members drifted o into a variety of creative, academic and sometimes politicized
activities.

At the beginning, in the 70s they are about 30. The Art
& Language group uses the language because it is through
it that ideas and concepts are built. That permit to index
Burn and Ramsden co-founded The Society for Theo- words which appear, disappear, and for some that persist;
retical Art and Analysis in New York in the late 1960s. and to analyze the words evolution through the dierent
They joined Art & Language in 197071. New York Art denitions proposed.
& Language has been fragmented after 1975 because of Decisive action had become necessary if any vestige of
disagreements concerning principles of collaboration.[4] Art & Languages original ethos was to remain. There
Karl Beveridge and Carol Cond who had been periph- were those who saw themselves excluded from this who
eral members of the group in New York, returned in departed for individual occupations in teaching or as
Canada where they worked with trade unions and com- artists. There were others immune to the troubles who
munity groups. In 1977, Ian Burn returned to Australia; simply found dierent work. Terry Atkinson had deand Mel Ramsden to Great Britain.
parted in 1974. There were yet others whose depar-

New York Art & Language

ture was expedited by those whose practice had continued (and continues) to be identied with the journal
Art-Language and its artistic commitments. While musical activities continued and continue with Mayo Thompson and The Red Crayola, and the literary conversational
project continued with Charles Harrison (19422009), by
late 1976 the genealogical thread of this artistic work had
been taken into the hands of Michael Baldwin and Mel
Ramsden, with whom it remains.

4 Exhibitions and awards

Art & Language, Untitled Painting 1965. The Tate Modern Collection.

Late 1970s

Art & Language Uncompleted. The Philippe Maille collection.

MACBA 2014-15

In 1986, Art & Language was nominated for the Turner

By the end of the 1970s, the group was essentially re- Prize. In 1999, Art and Language exhibited at PS1
duced to Baldwin, Harrison and Ramsden, with the oc- MoMA, NY with a major installation entitled The Artist

3
Out of Work. This was a re-collection of their dialogical and other practices curated by Michael Corris and
Neil Powell. This exhibition followed closely the revisionist exhibition:'Global Conceptualism:Points of Origin', at the Queens Museum of Art also in New York.
The A & Language show at PS1 oered an alternative
account of the antecedents and legacy of 'classic' Conceptual Art and reinforced a transatlantic rather than nationalistic version of events 196872. In a negative appraisal
of the exhibition art critic Jerry Saltz wrote, A quarter
century ago, Art & Language forged an important link
in the genealogy of conceptual art, but next eorts have
been so self-sucient and obscur that their work is now
virtually irrelevant.[5]

David Bainbridge

The works of Atkinson and Baldwin (working as Art &

Language) are held in the collection of the Tate.[6]

Joseph Kosuth

Papers and works relating to New York Art & Language

are held in the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
On March 2011, Philippe Maille loaned 800 artworks
of Art & Language collective to the Barcelona Museum
of Contemporary Art, also known as MACBA.[7]
In April 2016, the Conseil dpartemental de Maine et
Loire gave the keys of the Chteau de Montsoreau to
Philippe Maille to set up his contemporary art collection
around conceptual art of Art & Language and organize
numerous events : exhibitions, conferences...

Kathryn Bigelow[8]
Ian Burn
Sarah Charlesworth
Michael Corris
Preston Heller
Graham Howard
Harold Hurrell

Christine Kozlov
Nigel Lendon
Andrew Menard
Philip Pilkington
Neil Powell
David Rushton
Terry Smith
Mayo Thompson

Theoretical Installations

Art & Language and the Jackson Pollock Bar have collaborated for the rst time on January 1995 during the Art
& Language and Luhmann symposium, organized by
the Contemporary Social Considerations Institute (Institut fr Sozial Gegenwartsfragen) of Freiburg. This symposium has seen the intervention of speakers as Catherine David, who was preparing the Documenta X, and Peter Weibl, artist and curator. These three days have been
memorable thanks to the theoretical installation of an Art
& Language text produced in playback by the Jackson
Pollock Bar. This theoretical installation was interpreted
by ve German actors playing the roles of Jack Tworkow,
Philip Guston, Harold Rosenberg, Robert Motherwell
and Ad Reinhardt, for a New Conceptual conversation.
The tension of this reconstitution was in the lips movement synchronization of the actors with the pre-recorded
text. Since, this collaboration between Art & Language
and the Jackson Pollock Bar continues and each new Art
& Language exhibition is joined by a Jackson Pollock Bar
theoretical installation.

7 References
[1] Neil Mulholland, The Cultural Devolution: art in Britain in
the late twentieth century, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2003,
p165. ISBN 0-7546-0392-X
[2] Charles Green, The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art
from Conceptualism to Postmodernism, UNSW Press,
2001, p47. ISBN 0-86840-588-4
[3] Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, Trish Cashen, Hazel Gardiner,
Digital Visual Culture: Theory and Practice, Intellect
Books, 2009, p104. ISBN 1-84150-248-0
[4] Charles Green, The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art
from Conceptualism to Postmodernism, UNSW Press,
2001, p48. ISBN 0-86840-588-4
[5] Jerry Saltz, Seeing out loud: the Voice art columns, fall
1998-winter 2003, Georey Young, 2003, p293. ISBN
1-930589-17-4
[6] tate.org.uk
[7] Un tresor al Macba

Past members & associates

Terry Atkinson

[8] Nicolas Rapold, Interview: Kathryn Bigelow Goes

Where the Action Is, Village Voice, 23 June 2009. Access date: 27 June 2009.

External links
Interview with Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden
about Art & Language (2011) MP3
Works by Art & Language at the Mulier Mulier
Gallery
Art & Language page at Lisson Gallery
Art & Language: Blurting in A & L online Hypertext version of a complete print work of 1973 by
American members of Art & Language, with articles and a discussion forum.
Thomas Dreher: Intermedia Art: Konzeptuelle
Kunst with three German articles on Art & Language and a chronology with illustrated works.
Artists group page in Artfacts.Net with actual major
exhibitions.
Andrew Hunt, Art & Language, Frieze, October
2005.
Tom Morton, Art & Language, Frieze, April 2002.
El anlisis crtico de la modernidad de Art & Language
Art & Language at Ren Schmitt Druckgraphik

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1

Text

Art & Language Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_%26_Language?oldid=740078137 Contributors: Camembert, Nommonomanac, Spinster, Bearcat, SimonArlott, Icairns, Two Bananas, Mdd, Clubmarx, Feezo, Sparkit, Gaius Cornelius, Welsh, Syrthiss, Tyrenius,
SmackBot, Psiphiorg, Escdotdot, Ohconfucius, TastyPoutine, Hu12, Istanbuljohnm, Modernist, Delorian, Fitnr, Thepress, Dr Christopher
Heathcote, TXiKiBoT, Matipa, Ethicoaestheticist, Hmoderne, Jparha2, Martarius, Mild Bill Hiccup, Sun Creator, Telrnya, XLinkBot,
Palletknife, Addbot, Aryder779, Tassedethe, Otbon, Lightbot, Yobot, DSisyphBot, Petropoxy (Lithoderm Proxy), Piero79, Art&concepts,
Dgpjlggvtp, Blanchot, Artiquities, Michaelcorris13, Kippelboy, Warrenking, Helpful Pixie Bot, OldSquiyBat, Longchamp123, Canelacanela, KasparBot, Maille, Mariekro and Anonymous: 44

9.2

Images

File:Art-LanguageV3No1-1974.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Art-LanguageV3No1-1974.jpg

License: CC BY 2.5 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Dr John Abbate
File:Art_&_Language,_Untitled_Painting_(1965),_Tate_Modern,_London_-_20130627.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/
wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Art_%26_Language%2C_Untitled_Painting_%281965%29%2C_Tate_Modern%2C_London_-_20130627.
jpg License: CC BY-SA 4.0 Contributors: Photographed by Smuconlaw on 27 June 2013, 17:42:31. Original artist: Art & Language
(Michael Baldwin (born 1945) and Mel Ramsden).
File:Art_&_language_macba.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Art_%26_language_macba.jpg License: CC BY-SA 2.0 Contributors: https://www.flickr.com/photos/macba/16605202870/in/album-72157648985593983/ Original artist:
Miquel Coll

9.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0