Conceptual Art and other Essays by Art & Language

Art & Language is an artists’ collective that was founded in 1965 by a group of mainly British and American artists. The name Art & Language derives from the journal Art-Language (first published in Coventry in May 1965), which had its origins in the work of Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin (from 1965) in association with Harold Hurrell and David Bainbridge. These were its original editors. Art & Language was used subsequently to identify the several joint artistic works of these four in an effort to reflect the conversational nature of their activity, which, by late 1969, had already included contributions from New York by Joseph Kosuth, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden. Art & Language is not only focused on creating artworks but also on developing its own art theory, and it is of crucial importance in the understanding and theoretical underpinning of Conceptual Art in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1976, this work had been passed on to Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden. Mel Ramsden died in July 2024. It now remains with Michael Baldwin.

A straightforward list of works chosen to be representatives of an Art & Language history. This is possibly the best way to show a collective enterprise under the legendary flag of a theoryoriented artists’ community, masters of endgame arguments, circular styles and self-destructive aesthetics. Between 1965 and 2023 there are plenty of disparate episodes. This is what this book is about and it feels like sending modernism to psychotherapy. The reader must choose whether to cling to icons of Conceptual Art or get lost in translation and wander page after page, leafing through a number of powerful essays combining paintings, writings, songs, unclassified objects and declassified items, or go further to witness the unexpected derivatives of what once was considered a masterful conclusion of modern art history. To echo neoliberal jargon, Art & Language deserves the credit for initiatives that will guarantee the liquidity of an art world that has an ill-fated tendency to stifle any achievement. They live in a permanent crisis. There is no alternative. Be prepared to see how generative and degenerative logics co-mingle in a dialectical dance. This is extensive, extraordinary, adventurous – not fiction or AI – and as real as art gets nowadays. – Carles Guerra