Art & Language International by Robert Bailey

8/17/2019 Art & Language International by Robert Bailey

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I n A r t &

L a n g u a g e I n t e

r n a -

t i o n a l : C o n c e p t u a l A

r t b e t w e e n A

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W o r l d s R

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A r t &

L a n g u a g

e , s i t u a t i n g i t i n a g e o g r a p h i c

a l c o n t e x t

t o r e t h i n k i t s i m

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d e r h i s t o r i e s o f

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o z e n s o f a r t i s t s a n d c r i t i c s i n a

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t h e c o l l e c t i v e b e t w

e e n 1 9 6 9 a n d 1 9 7 7 ,

B a i l e y p o s i t i o n

s

A r t

& L a n g u a g e a t t h e c e n t e r o f a

h i s t o r i c a l s h i f t f r o m

E u r o - A m e r i c a n

m o d e r n i s m t o

a g l o b a l c o n t e

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w o r k i n g

g r o u p s i n N e w

Y o r k a n d E n g -

l a n d t o t h e c o l l e c t i v

e ’ s l a t e r w o r k


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A r t & L a n g u a

g e

Duke University Press Durham and London 2016

b e t w e e n A r t W

o r l d s

C o n c e p t u a l A r

t

I n t e r n a t i o n a l


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© 2016 Duke University Press

All rihts reserved

Printed in the United States o America on acid-ree paper ♾

ext desined by Mindy Basiner Hill

Cover desined by Amy Ruth Buchanan

ypeset in Garamond Premier Pro by sen Inormation Systems, Inc.

Library o Conress Cataloin-in-Publication Data

Names: Bailey, Robert, [date]

itle: Art & lanuae international : conceptual art between art worlds /Robert Bailey.

Other titles: Art and lanuae international

Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2016. |

Includes biblioraphical reerences and index.

Identifiers: 2015044900|

9780822361497 (hardcover : alk. paper) |

9780822361688 (pbk. : alk. paper) |

9780822374121 (e-book)

Subjects: : Art & Lanuae (Group)—History. | Conceptual art—

Enland—History.

Classification: 6768.5.63 355 2016 | 700.942—dc23

record available at http://lccn.loc.ov/2015044900


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For Maura


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C o n t e n t s

ix List o Illustrations

xiii Acknowledments

1 Introduction

13 One A Model o a Possible Art World

44 wo A Research Proram

77 Tree Interplay

109 Four Foxes and Hedehos 141 Five Keep All Your Friends

172 Conclusion

183 Notes

215 Biblioraphy

231 Index


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14 Figure 1.1 Art & Lanuae, Art- Language 1, no. 1 (1969),

ront cover 19 Figure 1.2 Joseph Kosuth,One and Tree Chairs, 1965 20 Figure 1.3 Ian Burn, Mirror Piece, 1967 20 Figure 1.4 Mel Ramsden,Secret Painting , 1967 27 Figure 1.5 Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, ( ( (. . .))),

1970 31 Figure 1.6 Art & Lanuae,Comparative Models, first version,

1971–1972

36 Figure 1.7 Art & Lanuae,Comparative Models, second version, 1972

37 Figure 1.8 Art & Lanuae,Comparative Models, second version,1972, detail

45 Figure 2.1 Art & Lanuae, Index 01, 1972 46 Figure 2.2 Art & Lanuae, Index 01, 1972, detail o wall-

mounted text

47 Figure 2.3 Art & Lanuae, Alternate Map for Documenta(Based on Citation A), 1972

51 Figure 2.4 Art & Lanuae, Index 04, 1973 54 Figure 2.5 Art & Lanuae, manuscript pae, 1973 59 Figure 2.6 Art & Lanuae, Blurting in , 1973, ront cover 62 Figure 2.7 Art & Lanuae, Blurting in , 1973, pp. 30 and 31 62 Figure 2.8 Art & Lanuae, Blurting in , 1973, pp. 36 and 37 66 Figure 2.9 Art & Lanuae, Index 002 Bxal , 1973

67 Figure 2.10 Art & Lanuae, Index 002 Bxal , 1973, detail

I l l u s t r a t i o n s


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x Illustrations

67 Figure 2.11 Art & Lanuae, Index 002 Bxal , 1973, detail 69 Figure 2.12 Art & Lanuae,77 Sentences, 1974, detail o the

concatenations 71 Figure 2.13 Art & Lanuae, “Draf or an Anti-extbook,”

Art- Language 3, no. 1 (1974)

89 Figure 3.1 Art & Lanuae,o the Commission o Homage toSalvador Allende, 1974

92 Figure 3.2 Promotional flyer or Art & Lanuae exhibition inMelbourne, 1975

95 Figure 3.3 Art & Lanuae exhibition in Melbourne, 1975,

installation view 95 Figure 3.4 Art & Lanuae exhibition in Adelaide, 1975,installation view

100 Figure 3.5 erry Smith and Lucy Lippard, 1975 102 Figure 3.6 Art & Lanuae, Art & Language: Australia 1975, 1976,

ront cover 104 Figure 3.7 Promotional poster or the Art & Lanuae exhibition

in Auckland, 1976

106 Figure 3.8 erry Smith, Art & Lanuae exhibition in Auckland,1976, installation view

106 Figure 3.9 erry Smith, Art & Lanuae exhibition in Auckland,1976, installation view

112 Figure 4.1 Art & Lanuae,Te Fox 1, no. 1 (1975) 113 Figure 4.2 Art & Lanuae,Te Fox 2 (1975) 113 Figure 4.3 Art & Lanuae,Te Fox 3 (1976)

127 Figure 4.4 Artists Meetin or Cultural Chane preparinor its protest at the Whitney Museum, 1976

127 Figure 4.5 Artists Meetin or Cultural Chane protestinat the Whitney Museum, 1976

132 Figure 4.6 Art & Lanuae meetin, 1976 138 Figure 4.7 Carole Condé and Karl Beveride, cartoon rom

Te Fox 3 (1976) 139 Figure 4.8 Carole Condé and Karl Beveride, cartoon rom

Te Fox 3 (1976)


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Illustrations xi

143 Figure 5.1 Art & Lanuae,What Would Canada Do without a Flavin? , 1976

144 Figure 5.2 Art & Lanuae exhibition at John Weber Gallery,1976, installation view

144 Figure 5.3 Art & Lanuae exhibition at John Weber Gallery,1976, installation view

150 Figure 5.4 Panel rom Art & Lanuae,Te Organization oCulture under Self- Management Socialism, 1976

151 Figure 5.5 Panel rom Art & Lanuae,Te Organization oCulture under Self- Management Socialism, 1976

157 Figure 5.6 Music-Lanuae, Corrected Slogans, 1976, ront cover

157 Figure 5.7

Music-Lanuae,Corrected Slogans

, 1976, back cover 159 Figure 5.8 Art & Lanuae, “Te Intellectual Lie o the RulinClass Gets Its Apotheosis in a World o Doris Days,” 1976

161 Figure 5.9 Art & Lanuae, Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors,1975, video still

163 Figure 5.10 Art & Lanuae, banner displayed at the VeniceBiennale, 1976

169 Figure 5.11 Art & Lanuae, Art- Language 3, no. 4 (1976),

ront cover 169 Figure 5.12 Art & Lanuae, “ . . . And Now or Somethin

Completely Different . . . ,” 1976, film still


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A c k n o w l e d g m

e n t s

Researchin and writin about an art collective provides constant remind-

ers that production is always social. With this in mind, I want to acknowl-ede several people without whom I could not have completed this book.First, I must thank a number o people involved with Art & Lanuae.

For archival materials, imaes, conversations, correspondence, hospitality,or some combination o these thins, I thank Mel Ramsden and MichaelBaldwin; Avril, Dan, and Rebecca Burn; the Smith amily; Mayo Tomp-son; Carole Condé and Karl Beveride; Joseph Kosuth; Michael Corris;

the late Sarah Charlesworth; Niel Lendon; and Zoran Popović. Circum-

stances did not allow me to meet or correspond with Charles Harrison be-ore his passin, but I would still like to reconize here the sinular example

he provides or all scholars o Art & Lanuae.Tis project bean durin my time as a student in the Department o

History o Art and Architecture at the University o Pittsburh. While I was studyin there, erry Smith encouraed my interest in conceptual art,

and he remains a most valued mentor, colleaue, and riend. Special thanksare also due to Josh Ellenboen and Kirk Savae or challenin me to think

about conceptual art in unamiliar ways that proved essential to the direc-tions that my research and writin took. Doulas Fole, Gao Minlu, andGiuseppina Mecchia were attentive readers o my work in proress, and

each provided important uidance and advice.A number o other people ave me sustainin reassurance, flashes o in-

siht, or both, and each deserves my heartelt thanks: Alexander Alberro,Cristina Albu, Drew Armstron, Bruce Barber, Gretchen Bender, ony

Bond, Dan Byers, Luis Camnitzer, Kathleen Christian, Brianne Cohen,


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xiv Acknowledgments

Tomas Crow, Goran Djordevic, Okwui Enwezor, Hal Foster, Charles

Green, Boris Groys, David Joselit, Branden Joseph, Grant Kester, Sandy

Kirby, Alison Lanmead, Katheryn Linduff, Lucy Lippard, Chips Mac-

kinolty, Chris McAuliffe, Barbara McCloskey, Ian Milliss, Melissa Raona,

Bennett Simpson, Henry Skerritt, Ann Stephen, Reiko omii, Zhilian Wan, Paul Wood, and Komozi Woodard. I also thank or their valuable

eedback those o my students in Pittsburh and Norman with whom I

have discussed Art & Lanuae as well as the audiences at the many venues where I presented my ideas in the course o their development. My col-

leaues in the School o Art and Art History at the University o Okla-

homa created a welcomin environment in which I could complete work

on this book, and I thank them or that. Near the end o the writin pro-cess, two anonymous readers or Duke University Press provided invalu-able eedback on a draf manuscript, and their sugestions proved especially

helpul as I finished writin.Te staff at a number o institutions acilitated my research and de-

serve my sincere ratitude. Amon them are Getty Research Institute, LosAneles; Museum o Modern Art, New York; Archives o American Art,Smithsonian Institute, Washinton; Frick Fine Arts Library, University o

Pittsburh; Hillman Library, University o Pittsburh; Barco Law Library,University o Pittsburh; Fine Arts Library, University o Oklahoma; Biz-zell Memorial Library, University o Oklahoma; Te Esther RaushenbushLibrary, Sarah Lawrence Collee; Lisson Gallery, London; British Library,London; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartord; Schaeffer Library, Power Insti-tute, University o Sydney; Museum o Contemporary Art, Sydney; Na-

tional Gallery o Victoria, Melbourne; National Gallery o Australia, Can-berra; Art Gallery o New South Wales, Sydney; Galerie Daniel emplon,

Paris; castillo/corrales, Paris; Blackwood Gallery, University o oronto;and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona. revor Fuller

at Place Gallery in Melbourne kindly made the archives o Pinecotheca

Gallery available. In Pittsburh, Veronica Gazdik helped with diitizin

imaes. Brent Goddard did the same in Norman.For monetary support, I rateully acknowlede the enerosity o the

Mellon Foundation; the Luce Foundation; the vice president or researcho the University o Oklahoma; the School o Art and Art History at the

University o Oklahoma; and, at the University o Pittsburh, the Collee


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Acknowledgments xv

o Arts and Sciences, the Friends o Frick Fine Arts, and a Wilkinson ravelGrant.

My editor, Ken Wissoker, showed an early and abidin interest in my

work, and or that I am deeply rateul. I must also thank Jade Brooks and

the rest o the staff at Duke University Press or all that they did to makethis book a reality.

Te dependable support o my parents, Bob and Gwyn, and my brotherDavid is a tremendous source o comort to me, and it played an essentialrole throuhout my research and writin process. Last, Maura McAndrew,I dedicate this book to you with love.


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I n t r o d

u c t i o n

Not quite an art movement, not quite a research institute, not quite an

activist roup, and not quite a rock-and-roll band, Art & Lanuae is aninternally contested and outwardly perplexin entity that has drasticallyreconfiured itsel numerous times since its inception in the mid-1960s.

Constant throuhout its existence, however, is an intensely intellectual-

ized and deliberately contrarian collaboration involvin its two namesakes:art and lanuae. Te specifics o these chanes and continuities have ledthe collective to produce some o the most unorthodox, complex, difficult,misunderstood, and important art o the twentieth and twenty-first cen-

turies. Tis art has not one but many histories that intersect and divere indizzyin ways. While this book examines several o them, it ocuses on onein particular depth: the history o Art & Lanuae’s international collabo-rations, which spanned the years 1969 to 1977 and involved dozens o art-ists, art critics, and others livin and workin in the United States, Enland,

Australia, Yuoslavia, and elsewhere. At a time when established modern-ist and avant-arde approaches to radicalizin art became inadequate to alobalizin world then and still rapidly transormin itsel and art alon

with it, those who participated in these collaborations ound in their inter-nationality opportunities to strenthen their intellectual rip on the worldand to reoranize their capacities or actin within it by rethinkin toether

what art is and does. Te pedaoically and politically oriented work thatemered rom those collaborations shaped Art & Lanuae’s substantive

contributions to the development o the conceptual art movement and the wider conceptualist tendency in art, both o which remain crucial or how

contemporary art’s history continues to unold, especially where the theory

and practice o artistic radicalism are concerned.


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2 Introduction

At the center o Art & Lanuae’s international collaborations was a sec-

tion o the larer collective based in New York City. Tis is not Art & Lan-uae’s better-known Enlish cohort, which ounded the roup, persists

today, and has been the subject o much more commentary and interest

rom art historians, art critics, curators, and collectors. Te lesser-knownNew York roup was, rom its inception in 1969 until its dissolution in

1977, a multinational association that athered in or near the SoHo neih-borhood rom which some o the most celebrated art o its time emered.Meetins took place at Joseph Kosuth’s studio, Ian Burn and Mel Rams-den’s lof, and Karl Beveride and Carole Condé’s apartment. Tose whoassembled conversed about art; the makin, display, and viewin o art;

the attitudes, discourses, markets, and institutions that accrue around art;and the cultural and societal unctions o art worlds. Trouh seminarsin Melbourne, Adelaide, Auckland, and Belrade conducted by other par-ticipants, includin erry Smith, Michael Corris, Andrew Menard, and

Jill Breakstone, the collective’s sociality extended urther afield. Te workthat these people did toether and, on occasion, apart rom one another

ound in conceptual art a set o strateies or makin art by neotiatin

its entanlements with lanuae and an incredible rane o other thins,

includin philosophy, education, politics, capitalism, socialism, science,technoloy, communication, music, travel, culture, identity, anthropoloy,society, overnment, nations, states, institutions, and history. Te roup’s

practice was as interdisciplinary as it was international.alkin to one another, always includin the messiness o aruments, di-

ressions, and lapses into nonsense alonside the hihlihts o insiht andbreakthrouh, became this roup’s distinctive mode o collectively directed

autodidacticism, and what Art & Lanuae’s New York section said to

itsel durin its meetins literally ormed the basis or what it sent out intothe world as art. Te artworks, writins, journals, films, videos, and musical

projects ored in this crucible o talk had a ew important champions inNew York. John Coplans, editor in chie o Artforum, published writinsby Burn, Smith, Menard, and Preston Heller. Jaap Reitman, owner o animportant art bookshop in SoHo, distributed Art- Language andTe Fox ,

journals that were the most widely available vehicles or Art & Lanuae’s work. And John Weber, a dealer sympathetic to the collective’s artistic and

political radicalisms, showed its work at his allery, which occupied part o


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Introduction 3

a buildin at 420 Broadway in SoHo that also housed the alleries o othermajor dealers includin Leo Castelli, André Emmerich, and Ileana Sonna-bend. Such opportunities were, however, the exception rather than the ruleor the New York section o Art & Lanuae, and much o its work first ap-

peared overseas, usually in exhibitions and publications partially or totallyacilitated by its Enlish counterparts or in the places where it conductedits international seminars. As a consequence o this scattered reception, theresponse to its work has been patchy and correspondinly lackluster.

Despite declarin an interest in Art & Lanuae’s various maniesta-

tions, the art historian Charles Harrison, who is the collective’s most subtle,

enaed, and sustained commentator, openly states that he is “avowedly

partial and Anlocentric” in his approach to writin its history due to hisclose personal and proessional association with the section o the roupbased in Enland. Harrison’s ocus on certain parts o Art & Lanuae’stotal body o work yields an incomplete view o its overall contribution,

even as his accounts o the collective remain the best available. Tis bias

also characterizes Art & Lanuae scholarship more enerally, and with somuch attention directed at work that it did in Enland, what happened inNew York—to say nothin o the urther international links ored by the

section o the roup based there—has slipped by nearly unnoticed, leavinuntallied the vital role that Art & Lanuae’s international collaborations played in the history o conceptual art. Omittin this uller scope o the

collective’s work has urther distorted its overall reception by preventin

reconition o the collective’s multiaceted response to art’s rowin en-

tanlements with the cultural, economic, and eoraphical aspects o lob-alization. Te small amount o scholarship on work that Art & Lanuaedid outside Enland has not sufficiently rectified these distortions, as those

who have written on the collective’s New York section, however well, havedone so in summary or piecemeal ashion, and no comprehensive art his-torical attention has been paid to the work it did outside o both Enlandand New York.

Te eoraphical confines o his account notwithstandin, Harrison isentirely correct throuhout his work on Art & Lanuae that the collective’s

achievements (and, it is worth addin, its shortcomins too) have much todo with its relationship to its main historical predecessor and major antao-

nist: modernism. Indeed, “the practice o Art and Lanuae,” as . J. Clark


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4 Introduction

also reconized, is “directed to the problems o modernism.” Te leacyo modernism, specifically as it was ormulated in the United States afer

World War II, provided Art & Lanuae with a crucial point o departureor thinkin about what art miht become when it becomes conceptual.

Gradually recoilin at art’s corruption by the very orces o modernity thatit helped to visualize and so to usher into bein, the modernism to whichArt & Lanuae responded souht reue in an autonomy that proved un-able to sever at least one o its tethers to the world. Clement Greenber, one

o its reat critical advocates, called this insistent connection “an umbilicalcord o old” that linked avant-arde artists to boureois patronae. While

this tie may have compromised art’s ability to contest the reoranization o

world power ollowin the war, it also meant that artists could know art asirreutably one worldly thin amon others, no more capable o bein dis-entanled rom them than o reachin a dialectical synthesis with them, asthose avant-arde artists who were more committed to reconcilin art andlie souht. Art & Lanuae, like many other artists, reconized that art’sinsistent worldliness needed a substantially more elaborated politics i theradical impulse in modernist and avant-arde art was to persist. It waeredthat conceptual art could provide this politics i it was made to conront

the concepts that art worlds impose on art—includin the very concepto art itsel—and counteract their mediatin power by mediatin them inturn. What Ramsden at one point called “a community practice (lanuae. . . sociality . . .) which does not just embody a commodity mode o exis-tence” was, in these circumstances, both a transnational atherin o dispa-rate roups linked internationally by mutual interest in talkin to one an-other and a means or conceptual artists to position themselves relative tomodernism’s complicated bequest by oranizin opposition to art worlds

in New York and elsewhere. Reconstructin the history o this commu-nity practice not only restores a lost trajectory in the historical evolution oconceptual art, it also opens new lines or thinkin about what conceptualart did amid the transition rom modern art to what is now called contem-

porary art.Conceptual art’s earliest critics and its first historians tended, in the ace

o art that so demonstratively reused to behave accordin to the conven-tions overnin modern art or decades or even centuries prior, to empha-

size its capacity to neate. Tey placed priority upon what conceptual art,


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Introduction 5

when compared to seeminly all previous art, modern art included, was

decidedly not. Lucy R. Lippard, the first art critic to champion conceptualart, located its importance in a dematerialization o the art object and hy-

pothesized the possibility that, in the near uture, art miht no loner have

a use or objects at all and could, thereby, jettison the commodity orm de-finitively. wo decades later, when art historians and curators first devotedsubstantial eneries to reassessin conceptual art and locatin it within art’s

broader histories, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh identified its “elimination o

visuality,” and Harrison invoked its “suppression o the beholder” in stak-in claims or the movement’s sinificance as a deep challene to the sup-

posedly essential visuality o the visual arts, theretoore always assumed to

be perceived by a beholder. Conceptual art was as likely as not to be tex-tual and to assume a readership. For Buchloh in particular, conceptual art’sneativity had political consequences by usherin into artistic practice aninstitutional critique that has since been widely adopted by artists and ex-tensively commented upon by art historians.

Antecedent to these initial efforts, scholarship on conceptual art pro-

lierated beinnin in the late 1990s, with several waves o scholars devel-opin previous accounts o the movement in a variety o directions. One

o the first waves provided a revised understandin o conceptual art as artthat, in addition to neatin much that has conventionally been associated

with art, also possesses its own distinctive properties. Tese thinkers beanto assert the qualities in conceptual art that are properly conceptual. “Inthe broadest possible definition,” writes Alexander Alberro, “the concep-

tual in art means an expanded critique o the cohesiveness and materialityo the art object, a rowin wariness toward definitions o artistic practiceas purely visual, a usion o the work with its site and context o display, and

an increased emphasis on the possibilities o publicness and distribution.”Tis definition bears traces o earlier thinkin but is beinnin to articulatea more comprehensive profile o what conceptual art, in its own riht, is.Similar to Alberro’s interest in “the conceptual in art,” Peter Osborne con-siders “the eneric Conceptuality or post-Conceptual status o art since the

mid-1970s” as a broad eature o recent art first broached by the concep-tual artists o the 1960s and 1970s. Tis “Conceptuality,” which lies at thecenter o Osborne’s account o conceptual art and contemporary art more

enerally, resulted, he proposes, rom the ormer’s effort (and especially


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6 Introduction

rom Art & Lanuae’s effort) to displace traditional aesthetic concerns

with conceptual ones. He urther sugests that this replacement attempt

ails—or, rather, hal ails by not displacin aesthetics but all the same as-sertin conceptuality alonside it as an equally crucial actor or contem-

porary art.More recent accounts o conceptual art tend either to speciy the multi-

plicity o ways that concepts or conceptual thinkin come to actor in con-ceptual art or to call attention to those aspects o conceptual art that arenot conceptual at all but may buttress, build upon, qualiy, or even under-mine its conceptuality. Some scholars examine specific disciplines or intel-

lectual movements, such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, structuralism, and

post-structuralism, which either parallel or intersect with conceptual art.Others consider the materiality, mediums, and media o conceptual art assites where concepts come to reside alonside much else besides. Labor, work, technique, and technoloy have also been recurrin concerns or

their roles in shapin conceptual artists’ works and the relations o those works to a chanin world economy. Te aims o scholars workin on

these topics, however diverse they may be, convere in a shared effort to

speciy better than beore the intelliible and tanible maniestations o the

conceptual and the nonconceptual alike in works o conceptual art. Eachanswers questions about what conceptual art is and is not, and this helps todefine the movement with reater clarity. However, the enormously widerane o conceptual art’s impact, which Peter Wollen identifies as “the

sinle reatest shif in art since the Renaissance,” can et lost in the very

specificities o such speciyin endeavors.Broader in scope, then, is the work o those scholars interested in recent

art’s eoraphies. Tey have become increasinly aware o a conceptual-

ist “attitudinal expression” that transcends the Euro-American context in which the conceptual art movement larely occurred. Conceptualism is,

indeed, evident lobally, expressin itsel as a tendency that pervades theart o the world afer the collapse o modernism, socialist realism, and other

modes o modern art. While conceptual art has continued to undero re-evaluation, other scholarly efforts have been made to comprehend better

the conceptualisms that arose, sometimes beore conceptual art and some-times afer it, in places ranin rom the Soviet Union to Arica and rom


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Introduction 7

Latin America to East Asia, usually in response to local artistic traditionsand historical conditions distinct rom those prevailin in the West.

At the same time, the role that internationality played within the Euro-

American conceptual art movement has become a topic o nascent atten-

tion. Additionally, the complexities o identity politics in conceptual art, particularly where the politics o race and ender are concerned, have been

examined with reater acility than ever beore. While scholars workinin these areas should be celebrated or introducin reater attentiveness todifference and diversity in conceptual art and conceptualism, “today’s ol-size umbrella o Conceptual art,” to use Desa Philippi’s memorable phrase,is perhaps rowin so lare as to provide a sort o vaue and eneric shel-ter to nearly all art made afer modern art the world over. Te concep-

tual specificities o conceptual art and conceptualism are, in turn, at risk

o bein lost.Turnin to Art & Lanuae, especially to its international collaborations,

shows that these two scholarly projects—one that has located conceptualart prominently within narratives o art afer modernism and another thathas made a compellin case or the worldwide emerence o contemporaryart ollowin rom a lobal conceptualist episode—need one another. In

other words, both specificity and scope inhere toether in these collabora-tions in ways that exceed their particularities to illuminate much that liesoutside o whatever intrinsic interest they may have. Nevertheless, Art &Lanuae does not supply the key to unlockin conceptual art’s essence anymore than it is the crux o a conceptualist transition rom modern to con-temporary art. All the same, thouh, when conceptuality travels, as it doesto a unique extent in Art & Lanuae’s work, it reveals sinificant thinsabout itsel: its ubiquity, even or art that is not, properly speakin, concep-

tual; its differences rom itsel, which exist at individual, collective, local, re-ional, national, and lobal levels; its capacity to mediate those differences;and, perhaps most importantly, its transormability, which is where Art &Lanuae raised aresh questions about art’s worldly role. How the collec-tive’s international collaborations staed the mental and material aspects o

art’s conceptuality between the various art worlds throuh which it moveddurin the 1960s and 1970s is, moreover, a matter o more than historicalinterest because the way it drew on eoraphy to relate theory and practice


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8 Introduction

articulates a politics o art’s worldliness adequate to societal and cultural

transormations that are still bein brouht about by the historical orce olobalization and look set to continue unabated into the uture.

Conceptual art—whether the kind o conceptual art particular to Art

& Lanuae or the many other kinds o conceptual art and conceptual-ism particular to its peers—is worldly in several senses o the term: it is

insistently o its world and not cauht up with lonin or past or uture worlds; it thouhtully evidences judicious understandin o how its world works and how it cannot be made to work; and it is made around the world

and travels well rom place to place. For Art & Lanuae, a politics o this worldliness could encompass in its ull potentiality the entire rane o

whatever art and its concept are and do in the world. Its reat challene,

one that the collective endeavored to meet in different ways at different

times, is how to act in the knowlede that none o its actual iterations canencompass this rane in its entirety because each must strugle with the

specificities o its situation and other limitations on its breadth o rele-

vance. Worldliness, however vast it may seem, is always partial and contin-ent. At the same time, the reat strenth that Art & Lanuae ound ina worldly politics is, paradoxically, its wide extent, which can involve, or

instance, eatures o institutional critique or identity politics without everbecomin reducible to them. Tis is somethin that Art & Lanuae dem-onstrated, ofen throuh recourse to its internationality, by thinkin andactin beyond the limitations and particularities that any specific situationor approach miht impose on its work. Te worldly, however restricted bycircumstance, is also always capable o reachin out beyond its partiality

and continency. By drawin upon this enerative and volatile mix o nar-row constraint and reat capacity, Art & Lanuae transormed the intel-

lectual circumstances in which its participants worked in ways that enabledthem to ore alliances across considerable eoraphical and cultural dis-tances that ed back into its work by heihtenin or broadenin the insihtinto art and the world that it ained rom workin in this way. Tis is notthe only way that artists can be worldly, o course, but it is an especially

sophisticated, effective, and resonant way. What this book sets out to do, then, is to better understand what this

intellectual and social dynamic was in Art & Lanuae’s case, what sorts

o art, education, and politics were enerated out o it, and what ramifi-


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Introduction 9

cations these results have beyond their own particularity. It sets out to dothese thins at least in part to redeem conceptual art rom accounts thattreat its inability to realize the revolutionary ambitions o the New Lef asan unmitiated ailure. Conceptual art proffers, I hope to show, an endur-

inly relevant politics that acknowledes the unlikelihood o art’s chaninthe world in the ways that many, Art & Lanuae amon them, wanted inthe 1960s and 1970s but also reconizes that the pursuit is worth it all thesame because in the very search itsel can be ound a crucial mitiation:

what was learned and can still be learned, especially where questions about what art is and does in the world are concerned. Tis then raises the ques-

tion o method or o how best to build an arument or the worldly politics

o conceptual art to which Art & Lanuae contributed between 1969 and1977 with international collaborations that examined and contested art worlds. Te first part o an answer concerns the book’s overarchin struc-

ture, which is historical. History writin contrasts with the dominant trend

in the literature on Art & Lanuae, much o it by the collective’s currentand ormer participants and associates, which is to reproduce its manner—that is, to do the type o work that Art & Lanuae does and to do it aboutArt & Lanuae. While this approach is valid, even valuable, more his-

toricizin o the collective is necessary, not least because o the distance itcreates rom Art & Lanuae’s own modes o thinkin and discoursin,

distance that provides a vantae rom which to speciy in other ways the

artistic, pedaoical, and political dimensions o its work. From an anleexternal to Art & Lanuae, then, this book aims to show why the collec-tive’s project remains so pressin to those who desire and pursue its con-

tinuation in one or another orm. Moreover, the story o Art & Lanuae’scohort in New York and the international collaborations it undertook has

been told only in raments oriinally published on multiple continents,sometimes in considerable obscurity, and never beore collected in a sinle place. o be comprehended at all, it needs to be situated within a more

comprehensive historical ramework, somethin that this study provides

or the first time.In accordance with this plan, what ollows is not a survey o Art & Lan-

uae’s body o work but rather a selective account that privilees the col-lective’s efforts to think art communally, especially durin the extreme,

hihly conflicted, yet very productive period when international collabora-


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10 Introduction

tion was a priority or the roup. o tell that story is to ace the challeneo thinkin about works o art that insist upon bein taken seriously notonly as produced imaes, objects, texts, or perormances but also as residueo a theoretical practice. Art history finds itsel on unamiliar round here.

Its disciplinary reliance on describin and evaluatin works o art throuh visual analysis is not always so helpul or talkin about art that aspires to

do thins with ideas, concepts, and theories other than illustrate, picture,or otherwise visualize them. Art & Lanuae is thouhtul in ways that

are comparable to, coincide with, or even compete with art history itsel.Moreover, when one o the thouhts that this art thinks is that all art canand indeed should be considered as thouhtul in ways that are not essen-

tially different rom the thouhtulness that attends to art, the unamiliarround on which art history finds itsel turns out, in an uncanny twist, tohave been its own home. And when artistic thinkin o this sort also yieldssubstantive reflections on some o art history’s most central and heavily

contested concepts—modernism, or instance—that are sinificantly di-erent rom those that art historians had previously articulated, the sourceo the discipline’s disorientation becomes even clearer: Its purported object

o study has come down off the walls, so to speak, and rearraned the con-

tents o its house to bewilderin effect.Here, it is well worth recallin and reiteratin Tomas Crow’s proposal

that “the inheritance o Conceptualism, inored i not derided by the ma- jority o art historians, provides the field o art history with its best current

resources o theoretical understandin.” In this instance, such a suges-tion miht entail that conceptual art, the very art that can be so inassimi-lable or art history because it emphasizes art’s intellectual properties thatexceed its visuality, supplies what the discipline needs to resolve certain o

its difficulties treatin thouhtul art—and all art is thouhtul—on theterms that it demands. In line with this proposition, the work o Art &Lanuae, a roup o artists who prioritize the conceptual in art to an ex-treme deree, can be studied to better understand how art discloses (andconceals) ways o thinkin. Approachin its work with care provides re-

minders that like imaes, thouhts are materialized in art; that, like objects,ideas and theories et ormed artistically; that, like motis or iconoraphy,concepts become subject matter or works o art; and that, like art’s visu-

ality, its intellectuality needs to be squared with its own historical devel-


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Introduction 11

opment as well as with the historical contexts that inorm it and that it

inorms. When art, conceptual or otherwise, is treated with these thins

in mind, much knowlede stands to be ained, particularly concernin the possibilities or thouhtul action that art makes possible.

In this reard, Art & Lanuae’s efforts to rethink throuh internationalcollaborations what the concept o art is and entails are an especially ood

place to turn, since, like the discipline o art history when aced with con-ceptual art, the collective ound itsel to be not at home in those places

that ouht to have been proper to it. Its work rom this especially mobileand unruly period can be understood as an instance o what Burn dubbed“ Homeless criticism” in one o the many notebooks he filled with thouhts, plans, and reflections durin his tenure in the roup. Burn’s phrase is mod-

eled afer one Greenber coined to name the “homeless representation” heound in artists such as Willem de Koonin, who incorporated noticeablyinconruent fiurative elements into the otherwise nonobjective style o

abstract expressionism. However, the relevance o Burn’s phrase, which

appears alone on a notebook pae without any immediate context and is,thereore, itsel a homeless remark, implies much more than its reconfiu-ration o a modernist critic’s concept into a statement about the ate o his

critical enterprise would sugest. Indeed, somethin very much like home-less criticism characterizes Art & Lanuae’s international collaborationsrom their beinnins to their end.

Te word “homeless” implies dispossession, and Art & Lanuae’s turnto the critical and art historical medium o lanuae necessitated a con-

cession o visual appeal that stripped its work both o the aesthetics de-

manded by those who expect art to ive itsel over ully to the eye and othe possibility that such people would serve as its audience. Tis ofen lef

Art & Lanuae adrif, alone toether, and, rather surprisinly, the task itrepeatedly pursued in this state was to dispossess itsel urther by jettison-in its belies, ideas, and concepts as part o an onoin criticism o its ownintellectual preroatives. Even within itsel it was not at home, preerrininstead a state o perpetual rancor amon its constituency or the intellec-tual and social possibilities to which this could ive rise. “Homeless” alsoimplies displacement. Burn, an Australian livin in New York, experiencedthis condition himsel, and a similar uprooted mobility marks a lare por-

tion o Art & Lanuae’s sociality and work, particularly work made in or


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12 Introduction

in relation to New York, a city amously inhabited by immirants and tran-sients. Many in the roup there were expatriates, and many were students

who came to the city rom elsewhere to learn about art. Finally, “homeless”simply means bein without a home. For art, a home miht best be charac-

terized as an art world that can reconize, leitimate, and celebrate it. Te work that emered rom Art & Lanuae’s international collaborations re-

ceived little close or sustained attention rom any art world at the time o its

makin, and it moved around too much to settle down in any one o themanyway. It was also too critical o the art worlds throuh which it passedto receive their ull embrace. Because Art & Lanuae had no place to callits home, because it was always between art worlds, it had to use its wits to

become worldly.


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N o t e s

Introduction

1. Charles Harrison, Essays on Art & Language (Cambridge, MA: Press,2001), 127. Harrison’s first book on Art & Language, which he coauthored with Fred

Orton, A Provisional History o Art & Language (Paris: Galerie Eric Fabre, 1982), has

been supplemented by two more comprehensive volumes: the aorementioned Har-

rison, Essays on Art & Language, and a companion volume, Charles Harrison, Con-

ceptual Art and Painting: Further Essays on Art & Language (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2001). In addition to texts too numerous to list scattered throughout other

books, exhibition catalogs, magazines, and journals, a volume o interviews Harrison

gave late in his lie includes yet another comprehensive account. See Charles Har-

rison, Looking Back (London: Ridinghouse, 2011).2. On Art & Language’s New York section, see Michael Corris, “Inside a New

York Art Gang: Selected Documents o Art & Language, New York,” in Concep-

tual Art: A Critical Anthology, eds. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (Cam-

bridge, MA: Press, 1999), 60–71; Michael Corris, “Te Dialogical Imagina-

tion: Te Conversational Aesthetic o Conceptual Art,” in Neo- Avant-Garde, ed.

David Hopkins (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 301–310; Alexander Alberro, “One

Year under the Mast: Alexander Alberro on Te Fox ,” Artorum, Summer 2003, 162–

164, 206; Christopher Gilbert, “Art & Language, New York, Discusses Its Social Re-lations in ‘Te Lumpen-Headache,’” in Conceptual Art: Teory, Myth, and Practice,

ed. Michael Corris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 326–341; Chris

Gilbert, “Art & Language and the Institutional Form in Anglo-American Collectiv-

ism,” in Collectivism aer Modernism: Te Art o Social Imagination aer 1945, eds.

Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette (Minneapolis: University o Minnesota Press,

2007), 77–93; and Alan W. Moore, Art Gangs: Protest and Counterculture in New

York City (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2011), 65–79. Favoring Art & Language’s Eng-

lish section, Harrison treats the collective’s transatlantic relations most extensively

in Harrison, Essays on Art & Language, 82–128. Troughout this small body o lit-


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184 Notes to Introduction

erature, reerences to the New York section’s contact with artists in Australia, Yugo-

slavia, and other countries are scant when present at all.3. . J. Clark, quoted in Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Serge Guilbaut, and David

Solkin, eds., Modernism and Modernity: Te Vancouver Conerence Papers (Haliax:

Press o the Nova Scotia College o Art & Design, 2004), 276–277.4. Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” in Te Collected Essays and

Criticism, Vol. 1: Perceptions and Judgments, 1939–1944, ed. John O’Brian (Chicago:

University o Chicago Press, 1986), 11.

5. Mel Ramsden, “On Practice,” in Institutional Critique: An Anthology o Artist’s

Writings, ed. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (Cambridge, MA: Press,

2009), 176.

6. On the afermath o conceptual art and its consequences or contemporary

art generally, see Alexander Alberro and Sabeth Buchmann, eds., Art aer Concep-

tual Art (Cambridge, MA, and Vienna: Press and Generali Foundation, 2006);erry Smith, “One and Tree Ideas: Conceptualism beore, during, and afer Con-

ceptual Art,” in Moscow Symposium: Conceptualism Revisited , ed. Boris Groys (Ber-

lin: Sternberg Press, 2012), 42–72; and Camiel van Winkel, During the Exhibition

the Gallery Will Be Closed: Contemporary Art and the Paradoxes o Conceptualism

(Amsterdam: Valiz, 2012).7. On dematerialization, see Lucy R. Lippard and John Chandler, “Te Demateri-

alization o Art,” Art International , February 1968, 31–36; Lucy R . Lippard, ed., Six

Years: Te Dematerialization o the Art Object fom 1966 to 1972 (New York: Praeger,1973); as well as erry Atkinson, “Concerning the Article ‘Te Dematerialization oArt,’” in Alberro and Stimson, Conceptual Art , 52–58, which includes Art & Lan-

guage’s skeptical response to Lippard’s thinking.

8. Harrison speaks o conceptual art vis-à- vis a “suppression o the beholder” inthe second chapter o Harrison, Essays on Art & Language. Buchloh reers to an

“elimination o visuality” in Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962–1969:

From the Aesthetic o Administration to the Critique o Institutions,” October 55

(winter 1990): 107.

9. Ramsden made the first use o the term “institutional critique” in print, and hedismisses it as insufficient or establishing the sort o communal practice in which

Art & Language saw itsel engaged. See Ramsden, “On Practice,” 176. Alexander

Alberro recognized this important first in “Institutions, Critique, and Institutional

Critique,” in Alberro and Stimson, Institutional Critique, 8. For the urther devel-

opment o institutional critique as an art historical concern, see Douglas Crimp, On

the Museum’s Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Press, 1993); John C. Welchmann, ed.,

Institutional Critique and Aer (Zurich: |Ringier, 2006); Alberro and Stimson,

Institutional Critique; and Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray, eds., Art and Contempo-

rary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique (London: MayFly, 2009).


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Notes to Introduction 185

Also relevant are books on artists practicing a version o institutional critique, such

as Kirsi Peltomäki, Situation Aesthetics: Te Work o Michael Asher (Cambridge, MA:

Press, 2010); and Rachel Haidu, Te Absence o Work: Marcel Broodthaers, 1964–

1976 (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2010).

10. Te name “conceptual art” itsel was by no means given, as the first three books published on the subject in its epicenter o New York attest by invoking a range o

possible names or the new art. See Ursula Meyer, ed., Conceptual Art (New York:

Dutton, 1972); Gregory Battcock, ed., Idea Art (New York: Dutton, 1973); and Lip-

pard, Six Years. Te last’s ull title, which includes several subtitles, plays with the

issue o naming: Six Years: Te dematerialization o the art object fom 1966 to 1972: A

cross-reerence book o inormation on some esthetic boundaries: Consisting o a bibliog-

raphy into which are inserted a fagmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and

symposia, arranged chronologically and ocused on so-called conceptual or inormation

or idea art with mentions o such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti- orm, sys-tems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia,

and Asia (with occasional political overtones), edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lip-

pard .

11. Alexander Alberro, “Reconsidering Conceptual Art, 1966–1977,” in Alberro

and Stimson, Conceptual Art , xvii.

12. Peter Osborne, “Conceptual Art and/as Philosophy,” in Rewriting Conceptual

Art , ed. Michael Newman and Jon Bird (London: Reaktion, 1999), 65. Osborne’s

most sustained discussion o conceptual art can be ound in Peter Osborne, Concep-tual Art (London: Phaidon, 2002).13. See Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy o Contemporary Art

(London: Verso, 2013), or a urther elaboration o the postconceptual status o con-

temporary art.

14. For a sampling o these approaches, see Newman and Bird, Rewriting Concep-

tual Art ; and Corris, Conceptual Art .

15. In addition to Osborne, “Conceptual Art and/as Philosophy,” see especially

John Roberts’s Hegelian approach to conceptual art in “Conceptual Art and Image-

less ruth,” in Corris, Conceptual Art , 305–325. For more on conceptual art and phi-losophy, see Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens, eds., Philosophy and Concep-

tual Art (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 2007), which includes a text by Art &

Language; and Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens, Who’s Afaid o Conceptual

Art? (London: Routledge, 2010). Beyond philosophy’s predilection or reason and

rationalism, there is also a strand o thinking about conceptual art and affect that

has shown the extent to which conceptual art is never an entirely rational activity.

See, or examples, Eve Meltzer, Systems We Have Loved: Conceptual Art, Affect, and

the Antihumanist urn (Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 2013); and Alexan-

der Dumbadze, Bas Jan Ader: Death Is Elsewhere (Chicago: University o Chicago


27/30


Press, 2013). Similarly, on romantic conceptualism, see Ellen Seiermann and Jörg

Heiser, Romantischer Konzeptualismus/Romantic Conceptualism (Bieleeld: Kerber

Verlag, 2007); and Peter Eleey, Te Quick and the Dead (Minneapolis: Walker Art

Center, 2009). Boris Groys was the first to pair conceptualism and romanticism in

“Moscow Romantic Conceptualism,” in History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptu- alism (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2010), 35–56. Osborne also pairs these terms

in Peter Osborne, “An Image o Romanticism: Fragment and Project in Friedrich

Schlegel’s Athenaeum Fragments and Sol LeWitt’sSentences on Conceptual Art ,” in

Sol LeWitt’s Sentences on Conceptual Art: Manuscript and Dra Materials 1968–69

(Oslo: Office or Contemporary Art Norway, 2009), 5–27. On comedy in concep-

tual art, with considerable reerence to Kosuth’s writings and work, see John C.

Welchmann, “‘Don’t Play It or Laughs’: John Baldessari and Conceptual Com-

edy,” in Black Sphinx: Te Comedic in Modern Art , ed. John C. Welchmann (Zurich:

|Ringier, 2010), 245–268.16. On language as material in conceptual art, see Liz Kotz, Words to Be Looked

At: Language in 1960s Art (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2007). For more recent

publications that return to the theme o dematerialization, see Catherine Morris

and Vincent Bonin, eds., Materializing Six Years: Lucy Lippard and the Emergence

o Conceptual Art (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2012); and Lucy Lippard, Lucy Lip-

pard: 4,492,040 (Vancouver: New Documents, 2012). Rosalind Krauss argues that

conceptual art (and especially Kosuth’s work) brings about a radical transorma-

tion in art’s relationship to the artistic medium in Rosalind Krauss, A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age o the Post- Medium Condition (London: Tames and Hud-

son, 2000). Craig Dworkin, No Medium (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2013), con-

siders the more recent status o artistic mediums and makes extensive reerence to

conceptual art. Te single medium to receive by ar the most attention in relation to

conceptual art is photography. Te initial effort here is ound in Jeff Wall, “‘Marks

o Indifference’: Aspects o Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art,” in Reconsidering

the Object o Art: 1965–1975, ed. Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer (Cambridge, MA,

and Los Angeles: Press and the Museum o Contemporary Art Los Angeles,

1995), 247–258. See also John Roberts, ed., Te Impossible Document: Photography and Conceptual Art in Britain 1966–1976 (London: Cameraworks, 1997); Douglas

Fogle, Te Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960–1982 (Minneapolis:

Walker Art Center, 2003); Diarmuid Costello and Margaret Iversen, eds., Photog-

raphy aer Conceptual Art (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); and Matthew S.

Witkovsky, Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph 1964–1977 (Chicago and

New Haven, C: Art Institute o Chicago and Yale University Press, 2011). On therelationship between conceptual art and visual culture more broadly, see Tomas

Crow, “Unwritten Histories o Conceptual Art,” in Alberro and Buchmann, Art

aer Conceptual Art , 53–64. On conceptual art and media, see Alexander Alberro,


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Notes to Introduction 187

Conceptual Art and the Politics o Publicity (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2004); and

Gwen Allen, Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space or Art (Cambridge, MA:

Press, 2011).17. On conceptual art, labor, and work, see Julia Bryan- Wilson, Art Workers:

Art and Radical Politics in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley: University o Calior-nia Press, 2009). On the deskilling o artistic working and technique, see especially

John Roberts, Te Intangibilities o Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art aer the Ready-

made (London: Verso, 2007). Early links between conceptual art and deskilling

can be traced to Ian Burn, “Te ’Sixties: Crisis and Afermath (Or the Memoirs

o an Ex-Conceptual Artist),” in Alberro and Stimson, Conceptual Art , 392–408.

Benjamin H. D. Buchloh also touches upon this theme in “Hans Haacke: Memory

and Instrumental Reason,” Art in America 76, no. 2 (February 1988): 97–108, 157–

159. On conceptual art and technology, see Edward A. Shanken, “Art in the Inor-

mation Age: echnology and Conceptual Art,” Leonardo 35, no. 4 (August 2002):433–438; Luke Skrebowski, “All Systems Go: Recovering Hans Haacke’s Systems

Aesthetics,” Grey Room 30 (August 2008): 54–83; and Charissa N. erranova, Auto-

motive Prosthetic: echnological Mediation and the Car in Conceptual Art (Austin:

University o exas Press, 2014).

18. Peter Wollen, “Global Conceptualism and North American Conceptual Art,”in Global Conceptualism: Points o Origin, 1950s–1980s, ed. Luis Camnitzer, Jane

Farver, and Rachel Weiss (New York: Queens Museum o Art, 1999), 81.

19. Luis Camnitzer, Jane Farver, and Rachel Weiss, “Foreword,” in Camnitzer,Farver, and Weiss, Global Conceptualism, viii.

20. Te essays in Camnitzer, Farver, and Weiss, Global Conceptualism, cover much

o the world. Tere are also a number o more geographically specific literatures on

different conceptualisms. On Arican conceptualism, see Salah M. Hassan and OluOguibe, eds., Authentic/Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary Afican Art

(Venice: La Biennale di Venezia, 2001). On Latin America, see Luis Camnitzer,

Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics o Liberation (Austin: University o

exas Press, 2007). Tere is a large literature on conceptualism in the Soviet Union.

See in particular Groys, History Becomes Form; Matthew Jesse Jackson, Te Experi-mental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes (Chicago:

University o Chicago Press, 2010); and Alla Roseneld, Moscow Conceptualism

in Context (Munich: Prestel, 2011). On conceptualism in China, see Gao Minglu,

“From Elite to Small Man: Te Many Faces o a ransitional Avant-Garde in Main-

land China,” in Inside Out: New Chinese Art , ed. Gao Minglu (New York and Berke-

ley: San Francisco Museum o Modern Art, Asia Society Galleries, and University o

Caliornia Press, 1998), 158–164; and Gao Minglu, otal Modernity and the Avant-

Garde in wentieth-Century Chinese Art (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2011).

21. See, or examples, erry Smith, “Peripheries in Motion: Conceptualism and


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Conceptual Art in Australia and New Zealand,” in Camnitzer, Farver, and Weiss,

Global Conceptualism, 87–98; Suzanna Héman, Jurrie Poot, and Hripsimé Visser,

eds., Conceptual Art in the Netherlands and Belgium 1965–1975: Artists, Collectors,

Galleries, Documents, Exhibitions, Events (Amsterdam and Rotterdam: Stedelijk

Museum and NAi, 2002); Christophe Cherix, In and Out o Amsterdam: ravels inConceptual Art, 1960–1976 (New York: Museum o Modern Art, 2009); and SophieRichard, Unconcealed: Te International Network o Conceptual Artists 1967–77.

Dealers, Exhibitions and Public Collections (London: Ridinghouse, 2009).

22. On conceptual art and conceptualism in relation to race in the United States

and England, see Valerie Cassel Oliver, ed., Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual

Art since 1970 (Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 2006); Kobena

Mercer, “Adrian Piper, 1970–1975: Exiled on Main Street,” in Exiles, Diasporas, and

Strangers, ed. Kobena Mercer (Cambridge, MA, and London: Press and Iniva,

2008), 146–165; Amna Malik, “Conceptualising ‘Black’ British Art through the Lenso Exile,” in Mercer, Exiles, Diasporas, and Strangers, 166–189; and John P. Bowles,

Adrian Piper: Race, Gender, and Embodiment (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,

2011). Many o these texts also deal with gender and feminism. On these latter topics,

see also Jayne Wark, “Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper,

Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson,” Women’s Art Journal 22, no. 1 (spring–summer

2001): 44–50; and Cornelia Butler and other authors, From Conceptualism to Femi-

nism: Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows 1969–74 (London: Aferall, 2012).

23. Desa Philippi, “Matter o Words: ranslations in East European Conceptu-alism,” in Newman and Bird, Rewriting Conceptual Art , 153. For examples o the ex-

tent to which this umbrella has even grown beyond visual art, see “Architecture as

Conceptual Art?,” Harvard Design Magazine 19 (all 2003/winter 2004); andCon-

ceptual Architecture (Hong Kong: Sandu, 2010), on architecture. On poetry and con-

ceptualism, see Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman, Notes on Conceptualisms (NewYork: Ugly Duckling Press, 2009); Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith, eds.,

Against Expression: An Anthology o Conceptual Writing (Evanston, IL: Northwest-

ern University Press, 2011); Caroline Bergvall, Laynie Browne, eresa Carmody, and

Vanessa Place, eds., I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Los Ange-les: Les Figues, 2012); and riple Canopy, Corrected Slogans: Reading and Writing

Conceptualism (New York and Denver: riple Canopy and Museum o Contempo-

rary Art Denver, 2012), which also contains an interview with Michael Corris that

touches upon his involvement with Art & Language.

24. Tomas Crow rightly notes that “any persuasive using between art and 1960sactivism was unlikely rom the start. Te conceptual demands o advanced prac-

tice had become so elevated that anything less than ull-time application o one’s

resources was unlikely to make a mark,” in Tomas Crow, Te Rise o the Sixties:


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Notes to Chapter One 189

American and European Art in the Era o Dissent (New York: Abrams, 1996), 179.

However, Crow does allow that, in addition to being a staging ground or eminism,conceptual art’s engagement with the degraded conditions o urban life in the 1970s,

particularly when artists organized artist-run spaces, sustained art’s political thrust

afer the passing o the New Lef, and he also speaks, in a way that is instructive orthinking about Art & Language’s politics, about how “the worldly experience that

came with the first building o communities gave artists a vital cognitive grip on the

larger environment” (Crow, Te Rise o the Sixties, 181, emphasis mine). It should

also be noted that Art & Language itsel made a great many claims about conceptual

art’s ailures and that these and other similar claims, particularly claims about politi-

cal ailures, are well treated in Blake Stimson, “Te Promise o Conceptual Art” in

Alberro and Stimson, Conceptual Art , xxxviii–lii.

25. For a characteristic sampling o this kind o writing, see the essays collected in

Charles Harrison, ed., Art & Language in Practice, Vol. 2: Simposi crític/Critical Sym- posium (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni àpies, 1999).

26. For one prominent instance o this, see Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison,and Mel Ramsden, “Art History, Art Criticism and Explanation,” Art History 4,

no. 4 (December 1981): 432–456.

27. Tomas Crow, Modern Art in the Common Culture (New Haven: Yale Uni-

versity Press, 1996), viii.

28. Crow explores this methodological point, which occurs when “the object in-

vites and prefigures its analysis,” in more detail in Tomas Crow, Te Intelligence o Art (Chapel Hill: University o North Carolina Press, 1999), 5.

29. From a notebook dated 1974–1975 in Ian Burn private papers, Sydney, Aus-

tralia, n.p.

30. Clement Greenberg, “Afer Abstract Expressionism,” in Te Collected Essays and Criticism, Vol. 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957–1969, edited by John O’Brian

(Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 1993), 124.

One A Model o a Possible Art World

1. [Art & Language,] “Introduction,” Art- Language 1, no. 1 (May 1969): 10.

2. Te back cover o the first issue o Art- Language also lists as “contributors”

to the journal Adrian Piper and Hanne Darboven, both riends o LeWitt, though whatever efforts Art & Language anticipated rom them did not come to pass, as

neither published anything there. For Piper’s later contributions to Art & Lan-

guage’s journal Te Fox , see Adrian Piper, “o Art (Reg. intrans. V.),” Te Fox 1, no. 1

(1975): 60–65; and Adrian Piper, “A Proposal or Pricing Works o Art,” Te Fox 2

(1975): 48–49.