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Cover:

Keith Arnatt

Sef'Burial (leln s on

Intnfrenre Pmjr)

r969

(detail of fig.29)

Frontispiere:

Vctor Burgin

Possession 1976

(detail of fig.54)

rsrx r 85437 385 4

A catalogue record

for this book is

available from the

British Library

Published by order

of Tlte tustees

byTate Publishing,

a division of Tate

Enterprises Ltd

Millbank, London

swlP 4RG

tL/ I ete 2002

All righ* reserved.

PaulWood has

asserted his motal

right to be

identified as the

author of this work

Cover designed by

Slatter-Anderson,

London.

Book designed by

IsambardThomas.

Printed in Hong

Kong by South Sea

International

Press Ltd.

Measurements

afe glven ln

centimetres,

height before width,

followed by inches

in brackets.

For Peter and Knin

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AppnoncH rNG Gorcrpruru AnrAs befits an art of the mind,'Conceptual art'poses problems right from thestart.What was it?When was it? (Is it still around or is it'history'?)Where wasir ? Who made it ? (Are we to consider

'X' a Conceptual artist or not?) And of

course, the umbrella-question: whyl Why produce a form of visual artpremised on undercutting the two principal characteristics of art as it has comedown to us inWestern culture, namely the production of objects to look at,and the act of contemplative looking itself (fig.r)?

This is not just a rhetorical device with which to open a book on the subject.These are real questions. It is not at all clear where the boundaries of'Conceptual

art' are to be drawn, which artists and which works to include.Looked at in one way, Conceptual art gets to be like Lewis Carroll's Cheshirecat, dissolvin g away until nothing is left but a grin: a handful of works madeover a few short years by a small number of artists, the most important ofwhom soon went on to do other things. Then again, regarded under a differentaspect, Conceptual art can seem like nothing less than the hinge around whichthe past turned into the present: the modernist past of painting as the fine art,the canon from C6zanne to Rothko, versus the postmodernist present wherecontemporary exhibition spaces are full of anything and everlthing, fromsharks to photographs, piles of rubbish to multi-screen videos - full, it seems,of everything except modernist painting.

Moreover, Conceptual artt legacy is exceptionally argumentative. Most ofthe major players are still living, and matters of status and priority are jealously

guarded. In the mid-r99os, members and ex-members of the English group Art& Language conducted a war of words in print about the history of their

6

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Henry Flynt as e:irly as 196r in the conrext of activit ies associated wjth theFluxus grorrp in NewYork.In an essay subsequer.rtlv published ir.r the FluxtrsAnthologl1961'), Flynt wrote that "'Concept Art" is first of all an art of whichthe material is "colrcepts"', going on to mrke the point that, 'since "conce;rts"

are closely bound up with lalrguage, concept art is a kind of l l t of rolrich ther.naterial is lar.rguage'. Yet, as central a figrrre as Lucy Lippard has commentedflatly that Flynts Fluxus-inspired sense of'Concept Art'had l jtr lc ro clo wirhwhat she understood as the key activities of tlre Conceptrral art r':rngrrar.l inNewYork in the mid- to late-r96os:

'few of the artists with whorn I ir',rs

involved knew about it, and in any case it was a different kird of "cr,trcc1-. .The point here is rol that a discussion of antecedents should be exclu.{,:.1 tion.ra study of Concel'tual art, brrt that, in wriring histories of :rrt, ne h;u.' r,r L'cwary of making plausible-soun.ling art historical connections rhar mar harchad less impact on the actual makino of art ac rhc trmc rh-rLr rctr.. 'L.ccrrvcgenealogists would l ike.

It is with srrch issues in mincl that we have to be aware of a thircl rerm rharhas cone into increasing currency. The term is

'conceptu:i l isn'. and ir has rnore

than one inllection. On the or.re hand, rhere is a use of this word f:rvour.t'.1 L'r'

1Jos€ph Kosuth

ldea ) [Meaning] 196T

119.4 x 119.4t,47 x 47)The lveni Col ection,

2

PnrconomoNs nno PrnsPEcnvEsThe relationship between Conceptual art and modernism is a fraught issue.

What we can say with some certainty is that modernism in the dominant formit had come to take in the Anglo-American world at least, that is to say astheorised by the critic Clement Greenberg and frequently dignified with acapital

'IVl, went into deep, arguably terminal, crisis in the late r96os. This was a

spectacular fall. But it was not the first. The modern movement underwent anearlier crisis, from which it recovered, and from which modernism in the so-called

'Greenberqian sense emerged to become dominant. We need to establish

a view of this M/modernism, tf,. b.m.. to comprehend Conceptual arttchallenge to it. In doing so, we also need to encounter early modernismt'other':the historical avant-garde (a distinction I owe to the German historian PeterBrlrger).

FonnEarly modernism was transcultural and transhistorical in its sweep.TheBloomsbury critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry famously isolated the essentialfeature of art as'form':'significant form'for Bell,'expressive form'for Fry. ForBell and Fry and others, modern art as it had been established by Ctzanneheldout the promise of escaping from the weight of academic tradition through thisemphasis on pictorial form.This, it was clairned, could affect the emotions ofthe sensitive spectator in away comparable to the effects of sound in music; thatis, independently of what the forms may happen to depict. It is easy to see howthis kind of thinking coincided with practical moves towards a fully abstract

2fhzimir Malevich

Black Square 1915

Oil on canvas80 x 80 (31% x 31%)Tretyakov Gallery,Moscow

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:uose irbout its identitl'.There was no precedent for such a thing being regardedas a r.vork of :rrt. With benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see here how a crucialslippage can occur betweer.r t 'stablishrng the i,, lenriq: of ron,ethrng a' a work of

, r r t . , ccord ing to 11 . Po. :c rs rur t . r i - , rnessential formal guality', and the vellopposite of that: treating it as artnot because of its ineluctably rightformal 'essence'

to which we allassent, but bcc:ruse of contingcntcontextual factors, such as beir-rgdisplayed in an art exhil, i t ion orproduct'd bv someone uIon w'homthe idcntit l '

'artisr' hrs :r]rc;r.{r, been

confcrrc.l. I)rrcharnl'-s 6rst'Unassiste

d Rc;r.i ma.lc rr as a urct:rlbottlerack (l ig.3,'. Dcspit. ' his clairnthat the sclectiorr rvls arbitrarr,, onccannot bllt; lssulnc hc choscsomcthing lust.los.' cntrugh to th.'krn.l ' of rhinqs th.rr *.rt bc!' innrn,'to !'1Ilcrgc .ls sctr11.tt113l

aonstrLlatrons. to lcl l l l force tht-

issrre of l hat * ls 1n,.1 lvasn't art, of

rr ' l rcrc thc rcalrn of the:resthetic

cn.lc. l an.l * here Lrt i l io began.

Thc rcal rausr r l l l t ceme a few

\'.itrs l:rtcr n ith L)uchamp'-s Io,,ta,r

.f ic.+1. Th" .to.), i. well knou,n.Drrcharnp, with his identity as a\';urgLr:uLl artist well established, wason rhe st-le ction comnittee for anol-.cn sculptrire exhibitior.r in New\brk. He bought a urinal from a

l l u r , l ' . r s . l r " p a n d . t ' h n r i t t c d i t r . rscrrlpture, crudely signed with the

1 ' . , ' r J o n l r n ' R . M u t t . I I r " w , ' r k u a '

rejected bv the jLrrv despite thesrr;'posecl oper.ness of the exhil,itionto ar.r1,one who had paid their lrcarid was not exhibired. Duchanpproceeded to run rings round thcjtrdgcs' published reasons fbr

excluding the udnal: that it was somehow 'immoral', that it u,as'merel)/

plunbing, and so or.r.Thc point was m:rde even more seriouslv funny bl tht-actually very close formal resemblance between the urinal:rnd ConstantrnBranctsi'.s organicallv shapecl abstract sculptures, some of whicb hacl alrcadvbeen exhibitecl in rhe United States.

3MafcelDuchamp

Batuerack 1914,repl ica 1964

MetalEditon of e ght rep caseach 64.2 (2sr)h ghMarceiDuchamp

Schwarz Edillons, M lan

4Marcel Duchamp

rep ica 1964

38 x 48 x61( 1 5 x 1 9 x 2 4 )Tate

5Jean-L6on G66me

0 Pti Cien 7902

0i on canvas8 7 x 6 6 ( 3 4 % x 2 6 )

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t0v00Nrl

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Avnrur-enRDrsM ResumeoThe epochal political crisis of the r93os loomed over the modern movement 1nart and the possibilities available remained circumscribed by it. Not until thereconfiguring of the world after the late rg4os, with the defeat of Fascism, theinception of the nuclear age, and the beginning of the ColdWar, did theground rules alter. After the initial period of post-war reconsrrucrion, by themid-r95os pictorial realism had become identified with artistic conservatismand repressive politics, while modernism spectacularly drew breath and issuedin the NewYork school. Jackson Pollock, Clftrord Still, Barnett Newman,Mark Rothko and others produced abstract art on a scale and with aconfidence that seemed to per-it something new, something unavailable toPiet Mondrian, Joan Mir6 and other European abstract artists. Modernisttheory moreover became highly develop.d, -ort notably in the writings ofClement Greenberg and, later, Michael Fried. Another {actor to take intoaccount is that, behind this intensified achievernent at the levels of bothpractice and theory, the institutional ground of modernism was burrressed inan expanding range of galleries, museums and publications. The relationshipbetween modernist art and its institutional support is not straightforward,however. In the r94os and early r95os, the stance of Pollock, Rothko and otherswas determinedly oppositional. Their art can hardly be said to have been made

Jor the world that consumed it; if anything it was made despite ir, or as part ofan attempt to survive it. Yet later historians have often blurred the distinction,reacting against the claims for artt independence by associating modernist arrwith American power. By the r96os, in the changed circumstances of opposirion

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But mole particularly, the narks of art itself are doubled in the repeated daubsof Abstract Expressionrst painting. These :rre tolers of spontaneity; authenticrtyis placed ir.r qrrotatior.r lnalks. The works'subject n.ratter is the institutionalisationof spor-rtaneitr'.

Fdttwn I and Fdctum lI need each other.The meaning of rhe work elnergcs inthc'sp:rce betwecn the two pictur-es, or between that space ancl a thir.l element:

the description, or type,'gestural abstract painting'. B)i the later r95os, with so-

called'second generation'Absffact Expressionism, the struggle fol authentrcrtyh:rd becone a style. Four years earlier, Rauschenberg had taken a dilferent kind

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of .listance fron gestural abstraction in the iconoclastic -Cra sed de KooningDrawirg (fig.ro). Rauschenberg obtained a drawing from de Kooning (with thelatter's support be later said he chose a good one to make its erastrre dilicult)and then set to work laboriouslv rubbing it out. As a kind of critical symbol,the erased de Kooning could hardlv be more economical: rrsing gesture to eiTaccgesture, using the same device of meaning making to un-make one set ofr-r-rear-rings ar-rd institute xnorheri returning the achieved aesthetic unity of thefinishc.-l work of art to the primordial unity whence it came - the blank canvasor sheet of paper (albeit visibly r.r,orlr{.In their dillerent ways, both these

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Elsewhere, the Grrtai grorrp in Japan embarked on a series of performance-tlpt' :rctivities in r955/56, inclrrding a walk along a white line and the collectionof water ir.r the depressions of plastic strips Ioosely slung betrveen trees (fig.u).The journal that had printecl the Gutai mar.rifesto in r956, CeijutstrShincho, alsodeveloped links with the ltalian avant-garde, put lishing Piero Manzoni's essav'Free

Dimelrsiori, in which he commented:'Expression, imagination,abstraction, are they not in thenselves emptv ir.rl'entions)'. L.r ltaly, Malrzoniessayed the transfbrnation of l iving people into'works of art 'bl signing ther.n

(painting) and standing ther.n on portablc plinths (sculpture). ln r959, heproduced :r series of u'orks further challenging thc 'r'isuality'

of visual art.The'Lines'were

produced on rolls of paper turning on:r machine, e:rch :rctionhavilrg a particular duration, and the completed drawing consistir.rg of rhelength of p:iper covered bi' the line in tl.rat tine. The rwist is that the linedscroll is then encased in a cardboarcl cylir.rder, with a srnall section stuck to theoutside and hence acting as a label, amplif ied by a written clescription includingthe length of the line, tht' clate, t-tc. The drawing itself remains invisible. Tl.re

10Roben Rauschen be€

Drawing 1953

Tncesof inkandcrayon on paperwiihhand lettercd ink label,n go d]eafframe64.1x 55.3l25 tx,2I7)San Francsco Museumoffulodern Art,Purchased lhrough agft of Phy is Wattis

1 1Sadamasa l otonoga

Water 1956

As reconstructed lorthe1987Venice B ennale(Akira Kamayama's

the foreground befeathWatel

12Pierc Manzoni

1961

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FluxusOne of the most immediately obvious features of the range of avant-gardepractices broadly opposed to modernism was their abrogation of medrum-specificiry. Allan Kaprow wrote:'The young artist of today need no longer say"I am a painter" or "a poet" or "a dancer". He is simply an "artist". A11 of lifewill be open to himlThis kind of affitude tended to create a very opensituation, quite distinct from the exclusivity of modernist art. That opennesswas exemplified by Fluxus. As we have already noted, the first use of the term'Concept

Art'occurs in the writings of Henry Flynt in r95r. Flynt's article aroseout of Fluxus activity in NewYork, but the group had a wider catchment,embracing artists from Asia and Europe, as well as the United States.YokoOno had taken up residence in NewYork and was involved in many Fluxusactivities both there and in her native Japan. These ranged from 'instrucrion

- \

::

paintings', to vocalisations at (concrete

music' events, to performances. Some ofthese, in her use of her own bodp a,nd the evocation of extremely edgymale/female power relations, prefigure later more overtly feminist work. Oneresonant example was the Cut Piece in which Ono knelt on srage while malemembers of the audience one by one cut away pieces of her clothing wirh alarge pair of scissors (fig.t;).

The prevailing ethos of Fluxus was a mixture of sharp criticism and whimsy,captured by Dick Higgins'remark that many arrisrs in the late r95os and earlyr96os began to believe thatl'coffee cups can be more beautiful than fancysculptures'.This sense of the potential beauty of the overlooked and theordinary chimes with a long tradition of avant-gardist activity, keeping irsdistance from the pomp and protocols of

'high cuhure', which it roundly

identified with the bourgeoisie. A photograph of 1963 shows Henry Flynt and a

Yoko ono

Cut Piece 7964

Photograph ofperformance in Kyoto

74George Maciunas

Fluxus Manifesto 7963

Offset on paper20.3 x 15.2 (8 x 6)Gi lbert Lei la Si lvermanFluxus Collection

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description of Beuys'-Errasiaperforrnance from 1966, reprinted in Lippard's Srx

hars antholoey, is worth quoting at length:

Kneeling, Beuys slowly pushed two small crosses which were lying on the floortowards a blackboard; on each cross was a watch with an adjusted alarm. On the

board he drew a cross which he then half erased; underneath he wrote'Eurasia'.The

remainder of the piece consisted of Beuys manoeuvring along a marked line, a dead

rabbit whose legs and ears were extended by long thin black wooden poles. When the

rabbit was on his shoulders, the poles touched the floor. Beuys moved from the wall

to the boatd where he deposited the tabbit. On the way back, three things happcned:

he sprilrHei white powder betweerr the rabbit's legs, put a thermometer in its mouth,

and blew into a tube. Afterwards he turned to the board with the erased cross and

allowed the rabbit to twitch his ears while he himself allowed one foot, which was

tied to an iron plate, to float over a similar plate, on the 11oor. This was the main

content of the action.The symbols are completely cleat and they are all translatable.

The division of the cross is the split between East andWest, Rome and Byzantlum.

The half cross is the United Europe and Asia, to which the rabbit is on its way.The

iron plate on the floor is a metaphor - it is hard to walk and the ground is frozen.

Through activities like this, Beuys rapidly became one of the most

prominent artists in the international avant-garde. His incorporation of

animals into his performances, and activities such as the planting of ffees,

combined with extensive free-forrn'teaching'sessions, also led to his being seen

as a significant figure in the politics of culture, particularly in respect of the

emergence of the'Green'movement in Germany. But it is worth recognising

that however suggestive and uncanny they rnay have been, Beuys'activities

remain somewhat ambivalent.Thus, while the Eurasia performance may well

function allegorically, it is quite wrong to say that its symbols are'completely

clear'.They are nol Part of what has happened in moderniq' has been the

fracturing of public symbolism, or its etioladon into the terms and themes of

the mass media. Allegories such as the one performed here require assent to

stipulative definition if they are to work ('The erased cross means ...';'The

dead rabbit means ...';'Fat signifies X';'Felt signifiesY'; and so on). And that

requires assent to authority, namely the authority of the artist conceived as

shaman. Beuys may offer a critique of the materialism of the consumer society,

and of power relations in the world.Yet while speaking a language of enabling

and opportunity on the one hand (as in his argument that'Not just a few are

called, but everyone'), he relied on the exercise of charismatic authority to

establish his platform. One thing we can perhaps say with'complete .iarity'i.

that Beuys can be positioned within an irrationalist tendency in German

thought and art with its roots in the late eighteenth century, in the Rornanticcritique of Enlightenment rationalism.

As with many other kinds of performance-based art, this raises questions of

the kind we posed at the start: about the nature of Conceptual art, and its

re lat ionship to cr i t ic ism. analys is and the demyst i f icat ion of ar t 's susra in ingideologies. How one conceives Fluxus activities in general, or Beuys in

particular, in relation to Conceptual art is largely a matter of definition. If we

restrict our sense of Conceptual art to a language-based investigation of the

15Joseph Beuys

Eurasia 1966

Photograph ofperformance at the TateGallery

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included the modular elements he later developed into his Minimalistsculpture, during the early r96os Morris was also making a range of enigmatic'Duchampian'

objects. Some of these involved quotidian items (such as a bunchof keys or a ruler) cast in lead; one employed a photograph of the artistt body;there were casts of body parts and traces (a fist, footprints); and marry involvedwords. Some were highly self referential, seeming to parody the modernisrobsession with the autonomy of the art object.With one foot in the camp ofthe read),tnade, Card Fib tecorded the process of its own production throughthe written entries in an alphabetically listed series of forty-four file cards: ftomAccidents toWorking, from the moment of conception ('whilst drinkrng

coffee in the NewYork Public Library') to goilrg out to buy the file itsellA key area of contention between modernism and the more diversified

avant-garde concerned the status of the aesthetic. For modernists, it is not toomuch to say that the aestbetic was the be-all and end-all of arr, irs unigue andproper area of competence, In the case of Fluxus, it was less a question ofrejecting the notion of the aesthetic as of broadening its range of reference,outwards from the medium-specific, formally achieved harmony of amodernist painting to, potentially, anything, an object, a sound or an action. Inlater Conceptual art, the question of the aesthetic was strategically put rn

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Anrns lorlConceptual art grew in a space created by the avant-garde, and used it to mounta far-reaching critique of the assumptions of artistic modernism, in particularits exclusive focus on the aesthetic and claims for the autonomy of art. Themodernist critic Clement Greenberg, discussing the origins of modernism inthe late nineteenth century, had spoken of a process of'dialectical inversion'.He was referring to the paradoxical development wherein modern artists hadset out to try to find adequately new ways of representing their unprecedentedmodern world of boulevards, caf6-concerts and railway stations, and had endedby producing an art of autonomous visual effects. It can be argued that thereverse happened with Conceptual art. Claims that painting'appealed toeyesight alone', that visual art's'primordial condition was that it is made to belooked at, themselves becarne the subjects of a new kind of reflection. And theparadox this time was that raising questions about autonomous art opened up aregister of far wider issues; the modern world began to return to the agenda ofa modern art. This is, of course, to overstate its absence. No less a figure than

Jackson Pollock had said of his abstract art that it was a response to thedemands of a new age. But low abstract art did that, and what the nature of itsresponse was, had become less and less clear as modernism had turned into'post-painterly

abstractiori. In the rapidly changing conditions of the r96os,many artists grew sceptical of what was beginning to look like a modernincarnation of art for art's sake. As Claes Oldenburg put it:'I am for an art thatdoes something other than sit on its ass in a museum'. The title of a laterretrospective exhibition of ry95 encapsulated the new agenda: Conceptual art

t7Frank Stella

Six Mile Bottom 7960

l\4etallic paint oncanvas300x782.2(778 x 77 %)Tate

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Stella's emphasis on the literfiess of the painting's support through his deepsffetchers and shaped canvases pointed to something else: to getting the work

offthe wall and into three-dimensional soace,The result was an art of what

Jr,rdd calJed Specific Objecrs, and what the world has come ro krow as

Minimalism.For Fried, this was tartamount to a dedaration of war on modernism - the

invasion of art by what he called 'theatricality': a kind of staged performance

encountered in literal space ard in real time by an embodied spectator, tot the

elevation out of that condition into an instant of aesthetic 'presentness'.

ForFried, modernist art defeated time, the realrn of contingency, and to reduce art

to the condition of eveq/thing else was something like treason. For many in the

generation of the mid-r96os, however, it was not; it was a sudden andfundamental opening up of art. It was another of those charged moments ofthe kind we have already noted c.r9ro-r5, when abstract art, all form arld

trarshistorical essence, issued in the readyrnade, all contingency and context,

The Minimal object, literal thing in real space, shorn of composition andhandicraft, the endgame for the modernist preoccupation with form, wentthrough the looking glass and in no time at a1l gave rise to Antiform: the workof art as anything, bits of waste, felt, rurdifferentiated stuff, and even no

'things'

at all but actions and'ideas'. Once again, as at tle beginning of abstraction, it isas if the pararneters of the field were rnapped in a mornenlThat extended'moment', from the beginning of the decade to the mid-r96os, whenmodernism gave onto Minimalism, whidr in nrrn gave onto Antiform, may beregarded as the gestation period of a full-blown Conceptual art.

PArNfl cA kind of test case was provided by the painting of Kenneth Noland and JulesOlitski (fig.r8). For Michael Fried, this work was exemplary of that to whichmodernist art could aspire. As with Stella, it'cornpelled conviction'. What it

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the scalc of modernist abstractioo (fig.zo). Not all Gernan :rrt rl:rs I.rostage romysticism eithcr: in r969 Siglnar Polkc parodiccl thc gcnre rvith Ilr lJglrr-l'or"rr:Connnad: Paint tlx Right tlanl Corntr Bluk (frg.zr).

IDEAsOne gesture sums up the changecl clir.natc. In Augrrst r966, the English artisr

John Latharr, employed :rs a part-t iDre lecturer at St M:irt ins School of Art rn

COMPOSING ON A CANVAS.

STUDY THE COMPOSITION OF PAINTINGS. ASKYOURSELF QUESTIONS WHEN STANDING IN FRONTOF A WELL COMPOSED PICTURE. WHAT FORMATIS USED 2 WHAT IS THE PROPORTION OF HEIGHT TOWIDTH ? WHAT IS THE CENTRAL OBJECT ? WHERE ISIT SITUATED ? HOW IS IT RELATED TO THE FORMAT ?WHATARE THE MAIN DIRECTIONAL FORCES ?T}|EMINOR ONES ? HOW ARE THE SHADES OF DARKAND LIGHT DISTRIBUTED ? WHERE ARETHE DARKSPOTS CONCENTRATED ? THE LIGHT SPOTS ? HOWARE THE EDGES OF THE PICTURE DRAWN INIO THEPICTURE ITSELF ? ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS FORYOURSETF I'VHILE TOOKINGATA FAIRLY UNCOM -PLICATED PICTURE.

London, where rno.lernisln rv:rs a powertirl ir-r{1rrer-rce on thc tcaching, u,ithcJrer.r,a cop1 o1' Crecnberg's Art anrl Culturc {ror.n the college librarl'. Ht- then inlrtcdlike-mindcd Artists lu.r(1 stu(lcnrs to a

'chew-in' (mimicking the

'teach-ins' rnd

'sir-ins'of t l.rc t ime), which involvcd sclccting a page, rc:rring it out, rna.rrcrting

ir, and spitt ir-rg the results into a recepr:rclc providcd. Larh:rrr srrbsequentlvbrokt'clorvn thc;'ulf into l iclLrid with a concotion ol'cht-micals ir.rto whiclryeast r,vas intro.1ucc.l. \Vhcr.r the l ibrerl rcqucsred irs book brck, it rcceive.l :r

20lohn Baldessad

Canpasingon Canvas1966 8

289.6 x 243.8(114 x 96)fuluseum ofContemporary Art, SanDlego Gjft ofthe arris!

2 7SigmarPolke

Btack!1969

150 x 125.5( 5 9 i 4 9 I )

Co ection, Stufr€art

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gambits meant questions had to be asked about'the object'of art; arrd crucially,not by academics, critics, historiam, philosophers and other interpreters, but bvartists themselves. Theory, so to speak, became a practical matter.

Questions of representation and perception became key issues.The Dutchartist Jan Dibbetts produced a series of'perspective corrections' by plottinglines on a receding wall, or landscape plane, such that when photographed theyappeared to be a square parallel to the picture plane (fig.21).\n Photopath,YtctorBurgin photographed a section of the floor of a room, blew the resultingmonochrome pictures up to life size, and laid them down over the original floor

(fig.;+). Jo""ph K"tuth's 'Proto-

investigations', including sheets ofglass, neon lights, and compoundworks involving objects,photographs and words, are said tohave been realised conceptually - as'ideas'- as early as 1965, though theywere not exhibited until later. Bethat as it may, the works arerepresentative of early conceptualinquiry into the object of att.In Oneand Five Clocks, One andThru Chairsand kindred works, Kosuth drewattention to the relationshipbetween a physical object anddiflerenr kinds of representation olic visual, in the case of thephotographs, verbal in terms of thedictionary definitions (fig.24).

Kosuth's early work was pan of awider rendency that had emerged inNew York. Ar exhibirion organiseoby Mel Bochrrer in late r966 stakedout some of the ground. A hundreddrawings of various kinds werecollected for an end-of-year show atthe School of Vsual Arts.Bureaucratic obstruction meant tharthe drawings could not be

conventionally frained for display. Bochner's solution was to use the then newXerox technology to photocopy them, standard size ar.rd four times over, and'display'them

in four large, looseJeaf notebooks placed in the gallery on thekinds of plinth normally used for sculpture (fig.25). Out of a mixture ofaccident and design, Bodrrer had ordrestrared an event that occupied the veryterritory towards whidr vanguard activity seemed to be heading, the hinterlandwhere art met various forms of non-art, and it became hard to tell thedifference.The problematic sratus of the installation was sustained by theinteraction of its constituent elements: the variety of the 'drawings'

themselves,

22John Infiam

Art and Cultarc 1966

Assemblager leathercase containingbook,letters,photostats, etc,,and labelled vlals filled

l lquids.1.9 x28.2 x25.3(3%x 11% x 10)The Museum of lvoden

Blanchette RockefellerFund

23Jan Dibbetts

Pegpective Conection1969

Photograph ofinstalation

24loseph l$sufr

English/Latin version1965 (bdibitionveBion 1997)

Clock, photographs andpinted texts on paperTate

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exhibition was, and what it was that an artist d;1. Siegelaub challengedconventional expectations by staging exhibitions that reversed the normalrelationship between the work on display and the catalogue. In the Januarlexhibition of ry59, while some physical examples of work were shown rn

temporarily rented premises, the real site of the exhibition was the catalogue,which in Siegelaub's terms now became'primary' rather than'secondary'information. In a notable shift, artwork was now being conceived as'informatiori,

which could be circulated more e{ficiendy through the mediumof texts and photographs than through the transportation of physical objects.

It was the work of such artists that stimulated the claim that the tendency

uniting the Conceptual avant-garde was the 'dematerialisation'of

the object ofartr a thesis advanced by Lucy Lippard and John Chandler in Arx Magazine inFebruary 1968. The most literal example of this strategy of

'dematerialisatron is

afforded by the rvork of RobertBarry. Barry began with smallmonochrome canvases hung atdisparate points on the gallery wall,which in exhibition thereforeappeared to bring into play the spacebetween them. From here he movedto wires. (lntttled of 1968 is a nylonthread weighted down with a steeldisc, hanging vertically, and almostinvisibly, from the ceiling. The wireswere about as far as solid mattercould be taken into the realm oftransparency. The next step, logical1yenough, was gas.The lnert Gas Seriesof 1969 took in gases such as neon,xenon, and helium. The text forHelium reads:'Sometime during themorning of March !, ry69, z cubicfeet of helium was returned to theatmosphere'. Tellingly, the event is

recorded in a photograph (fig.27). Other, yet more'dematerialised'works byBarry include Telepathir Plrrr,'something close in space and time but not yetknown to me', and the assertion that'for the duration of the exhibition, thegallery will remain closed', a work that was simultaneously'shown at severaldifrerent venues in the USA and Europe.

Lawrence Weiner made the point ,borrt th. obsolescence of physical objectswith tather more aplomb. He had originally been a painter, producinggeometrically striped or monochrome, shaped canvases in the early to midr96os, but he had also performed some more'exploratory'sculptural workinvolving the removal rather than the installation of material by blowing holesin the desert with dynamite. From 1968 Weiner began presenting a series ofenigmatic propositions relating to similar kinds of actions.These included,'One

hole in the ground approximately r'x r'x r'. One gallon water based paint

25Mel Bochner

Wotking Dnwings andother Visible Things onPaper not NecessarilyMeant to be Viewed asAtt7966

Four identical looseleafnotebooks with thesame 100 Xerox copiesof studio notes, workingdrawings, and diagramscollected and Xeroxedby the artist, displayedon four sculpturesIan0sBinders: 30 x 28 x 10(LL%x 7 I x 4 \Sculpture stands 30.5 x63.5 x 91.4( 1 2 x 2 5 x 3 6 )courtesy 0f theSonnabend Gal lery,New York

20

Christine Koslov

lnformation No Theory1970

Tape recorder andstatementCourtesy ofthe artist

Robert Barry

lnert Gas Series(Helium)i From aMeasured Volume tolndefinite Expansion1969

0n l\4arch 4 1969, inthe lvlojave Desert inCalifornia, 2 cubic feetof helium was returnedt0 the atmospnerePhotograph courtesythe artist

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constructions and drawings alike are fabricated by assistants working withinthe parameters of LeWittt instructions.The opening of LeWittt'Paragraphs'has come to constitute the canonical statement of a general conceptualistapproach:'In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspectof the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form in art, it means that all ofthe planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is aperfunctory affairl As he declared,'the idea becomes a machine that makes theart', Lewitt was, however, careful to steer his notion of Conceptual arr awayfrom any suggestion of intellectual aridrty,by offering qualification. ,r.r.h

",'Conceptual art is not necessarily logical', and'The ideas need not be complex.

Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple'. In fact for LeWitt, as heemphasised in the slightly later'sentences on Conceptual Art' of ry69,'Conceptual

artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap toconclusions that logic cannot reach. Rational judgements repeat rational

judgements. Illogical judgements lead to new experiencejThis suspicion of therational should not be surprising. After all, rationalism in the guise ofplanning, systems theory and scientific analysis, was being enlisted ro prosecutethe war inVetnam. LeWittt exhaustively repeated variations of lines, cubesand geometry in general seem at one level to do nothing so much as point tothe insanity inherent in the obsessive pursuit of the rational. As RosalindKrauss has argued, his strategies owe more ro the maddeningly obsessiverepetitions of Samuel Beckettt characrers than to scientific rationalism (letalone to Pentagon planners).

This interest in repetitive, mantra-like strategies, pursued through andbeyond obsession to a strangely srill kind of meditation on rime, consrirures anotable trend within the overall range of Conceptual art, a rrend which,moreover, seems to have spanned the continents. LeWitt was working inAmerica. Roman Opatka, an artisr of Polish descent residenr in Fran-ce, began

28Lawrence Weiner

AJO XJb removatnthe lathing or suppottwall of plaster olwallboad tom a wall1968

Installation photographalthe January 5-31J969 exhibition.The SiegelaubCollection and Archivesat the Stichting EgressFoundation,Amsterdam

29Keith Amatt

S e lf-B u ri a I (Te I ev i si o nlnterference Project)1969

Nine photographs onboardEach panel 46.7 x46.7(18%x78%)Tate

to paint a canvas in 1965.The canvas was painted blact, r95 cm high and r35 cmwide. In the top left hand corner, with a brush laden with white paint, heinscribed tlre 6gure'r'. Next to it he inscribed 'z'.

The sertes One to injnitlcontinues. By the time of the exhibitioo Clobal Conceptualsrrr in r999, Opalkatwork featnred there bore the title ft96r76-t9t66t j.The artist speaks thenumbers in Polish as he paints them, and the audio tape is a component of thework.The German artist Hanne Darboven, whose early career received supportfrom LeWitt, began working with number sequences in the mid-r96os. Herinstallations characteristically took the form of shelves containing largevolumes, the pages of which were sorrtetimes covered in hand-written number

sequences, oI sometimes containedonly one; as in the work consistingof all the days of a century: 365volumes of roo leaves each (fig.3r).The pages of the first volumeconta in a l l t hc f i rs t -o f -Januar ies , rhcsecond, a1l the second-of-Januaries,and so on up to all the thirty-first-of Decernbers. In an exhibition atthe Konrad Fischer gallery inDtisseldorf during r97r, one volumewas displayed, open, in sequence,each day between r ]anuary and theend of December.

Best known of this'genre',perhaps, are the dare paintings ofthe Japanese artist On Kawara,begun on 4 January r966.These toohave continued, all slightly different,all hand painted, ever since, eachbeing accompanied by a page from anewspaper of the day in quesrion(fig.32). Related series by Kawarainclude postcards mailed toindividuals in the art worldrecording the time at which he gotup ('I got up . . .'), or whom he met

on a particular day ('I met . . .'); and perhaps most poignantly,'I am still alive -

On Kawara'.This is the kind of rhing rhar ffies the patience of the sceptrc.Ironically, in the face of such manifestarions of Conceptual art, one can dolitde other than echo Michael Friedt claim made in respect of modernisrpainting: if someone doesn't feel they are'superb paintings', then'no criticalarguments can take the place of feeling it', What it means to feel convinced ofthe significance of ar endless series of numbers, or a wall fuIl of closed booksthat you know contain nothing but dates, or a minutely diferentiated series ofcanvases, is a fair question, Insofar as there is an arswer, it perhaps lies in therealm of our responses to the sublime, a sense of our hmitation in the face of

30SolLewitt

Cubes/Haff off 7912

Enamel led a uminium160x305.4x233(63x 130%x91%)Tate

Hanne Daboven

Boals. A Century t97I

Installation photogf aphof books and booi,shelfMuseum of lvodem Art,

320n f€wara

3 Date Paintings: lan.15, 1966 (Ihis paintingitself is January 15,1966);ian. 18, 1966

Jan. 19, 1966 (Fton123 Chanbes SL to405 E 13k St)t966

Liquitexon canvase a c h 2 0 . 5 x 2 5 . 5 x 4(8x 10x 1%)staatsgalerie Stuttgan

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,l ,, ,''', It,,.t,.:i,

33

vol .1, n0.1, lv lay 1969

Published in Coventry

England,"to i,hich address all mss and let'ters snoiU be sent.Price 7s.6d U K, ff'l .50 USA All rights reserved

Printed in Great BritainPrinted in Great Britain

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long series devoted to investigating the implications of postulating ever morecomplex objects as possible candidates for the status

'work of art'. The

important phrase in that last sentence is'investigating the implications'. For theclassically Duchampian strategy of 'nomination

had become, if not exactlydiscredited, then redundant, otiose. After a certain point, there is no'point'inclaiming another snow shovel, another pile of twigs on rop of Ben Nevis,

IfiOUSEN -WOqD flrcE

'li is $!.ltlhought,5.d lda.e $y 6!.lry,ilitly $ougnttat wb.ne njghr cr{ 6e .ttmdtug use ot a €.o ts bsic - 6d. ro &de$d'x;

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Fi 6mbi9unt a .um&r ol

Joh As!S.'Snse and tusibilb-

34

When AftitudesBecome Fom

Installation photographof exhibition at theInstitute ofContemporary Arts,London, 1969 (withVictor Burgin'sPhotopath in lhe cenlrcforeground)

35Keith Amatt

Trouser Word Piecets72

Photograph and textEach panel100.5 x 100.5(39%x39%)Tate

36John Hilliard

Camera Recording itsown Condition(7 aperturcs, 10speeds,2 mirrorc)197I

Photographs on card onPerspex276,2 x 183.2(85%x72%\Tate

another brainwave, as a work of art. Atkinson and Baldwin (the name Art &Language'not yet being assigned as'author'of these early works) postulatedsuch'objects'in rather more systematic fashion, in ascending orders ofcomplexity, to raise questions about the ontology of art. The items in questionincluded: a column of air (r.e. matter, in gas-state); Oxfordshire (i.e. anirregular, spatially bounded area; but what of the third dimension? How deepl);the French Army (i.e. a complex entity made up of various men and machines,

44

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photography. ForWall, the important precursor here was Ed Ruscha, who hadbegun his series of photobooks as early as 1961 with Twentl-Six Casoline Stations(fig.lZ), continuing wrth Some Los Angebs Apartmentq and Euery Building on SunsetStrip.Photography increasingly became used to document the varieqz ofactivities and performances that formed an ever more influential complementto more narrowly'analytical' Concepfual art. Activities as diverse as those byGilbert and George and Richard Long in Britain (fig.;S), and Robert Smithsonand Bruce Nauman in the United States all relied on the photograph toestablish their presence in the field, either in exhibitions or in the pages ofbooks and magazines. The status of all these activities was markedly unstable atthe time of their first appearance. Nauman has commented on how he spent alot of time reassessing what it was that artists were supposed to do, and that hisearly work was made out of just that activityl spilled coffee, pacing around thestudio, and the like (fig.39). As he said, the only way to find out whether it wasart was to do it. Nauman admitted that there was a great deal of confusion as itbecame apparent that art'doesnt require being able to draw, or being able to

paint well or know colours, it doesnt require any of those specific things thatare in the discipline, to be interesting'. And yet without skill andaccomplishment of somekind, there would be nothing to communicate. AsNauman put it, what was interesting was'the edge between'the two conditions.

In the mid-r96os, Dan Graham was producing works thar at the time had anextremely unstable identiqt, were hardly'art' at all, but which have subsequentlybeen accorded exemplary status in the Conceptual canon. Graham was engagedin the usual round of writing and reviewing, the hinterland of poerry and artthat constituted life in the NewYork avant-garde, forever struggling to get hispieces published. March jtst t966 consisted of eleven'lines'recounting thedistance from the edge of the known universe to Graham's own retina, via thedistances toWashingron DC, toTimes Square in NewYork, ro Grahamt ownfront door, and the sheet of paper on the typewriter. The mixture of flatliteralism and quirkily imaginative meditation on the process of looking, or rheprocess of writing, is characteristic the economy of Graham's means belyingthe sweep of the idea. In two nicely judged inversions of consumer culrure

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rhetoric of self-expression, the valorisatjon of individual feeling, above all ofautonomy itself, simply do not accord with the forn of contemporary life,wherein subjectivity itself is mass produced.In ellect, that is to say, modernismis ideological with respect to modernity. It conceals the absence of its ownvalues fron lived social life. Rather than ofering a genuine transcendence ofcontingencl, institutionalised modernism functions as part of the ideologicalmask of a manipulative and disabling social order.

It goes without saying that no art can escape the framing .onditions of rtstime. But the feeling was widespread among younger artists that the price ofmedium-spe cificitv. and indeed of the related division of labour [tetwe".,modernisfartist and rnodernist critic (painters pnfuta1), contributed to an artthat had become afirmative of - rather than critical of - its social matrix.Robert Smithson, best known for his large-scale earthworks of the early r97os,also produced text/photograph pieces around this time. Smithson's influencewas powerful and fundamental to agood deal of early Conceptual art,though he himself came to dislike itar.rd to regard the restriction tolanguage as a medium as a form ofidealism. In The Monurnents oJ Passait(r967), Smithson combinednarrative, quotation andphotogtaphy in a rranyJayered butdisarmingly limpid account of aday's activity. He tells the story ofpurchasing a film and heading outby bus from NewYork with hisInstarratic camera to his birthplace,the industrial town of Passaic inNew Jersey,There he proceeds tophotograph industrial sites as ifthey were anti-heroic monuments toa dying industrial modernity (fig.4r).The banal photographs and the flatdescriptive text, encompassing the specification from the box of fllm as well asa smuggled in critique of modernist painting in the guise of a commentary ona newspaper review of an Olitski exhibition that he reads on rhe bus, allcombine to produce a multiply transgressive work: transgressive of the u..yprotocols Smithsont generation had come to find limiting in modernisn.Smithson concisely articulated the perspective informing a wide range ofloosely

'conceptual' art practices in a slightly later text of r972, written on the

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indeed beyond.The effects were registered in histories of art, of science and ofliterature, in the emergent field of cultural studies and in the social sciences, aswell as in the practice of art itsellTwo aspects in particular are noteworthy. Byno means logical bedfellows, they were nonetheless historically powerfullyconnected. On the one hand the period witnessed the beginnings of the impactof French theory on English-language cultural studies. It is not overstating thecase to say that forms of analysis indebted to Ferdinand de Saussuret theory oflanguage via the work of Roland Barthes became dominant across the atts. Theterminology of 'signifiers'and'signifieds', 'signs', 'semiotics'(and later a host ofothers from'deconstructiori to 'difference') sin-rply became the linguaJrnnm ofcultural debate. Accompanying this there was a leaning towards sociologism,which involved a shift in the focus of interest from'text'to'context'.Thus thesocial history of art mounted a critique of modernism's exclusive focus on thevtsual efects of the work of art itself, emphasising instead the constellation ofsocial muses out of which it was made. At this time there also aooeared a scr-

cal led 'socio logy oI knowledge' . And

particularly significant was a developrnentin the philosophy of science associatedwi th T.S. Kuhn's not ion of

'paradignr

revolutions'.Kuhn argued that scientific knowledge

did not progress cumulatively, brick bybrick, truth by truth, but through a seriesof leaps. Certa:in crucial breakthroughswould scr an agenda rhar subseguentscientists then continued to explore.Eventually however, anomalousexperimental results would appear, whichover time began to threaten the system'soverall coherence. After a period ofunce r ta in t y du r i ng wh i ch rhc sys l c rn

underwent fundamental questioning, a'paradigm shift'would occur. A newagenda would emerge, and scientific practice would be rcconfigured to provideexperimental answers to a new set of questions. Kuhnt theory thus introduceda measure of relativism into the field of scientific knowledge. As such, it wasimmediately subject to question and qualification in the philosophy of screnceitself because of the powerful connection between scientific knowledge and theconcept of

'truth'. However, in the cultural field Kuhnt theoretical revision had

a pronounced impact, seeming as it did to lend support to an emerging, andpervasive, relativism of values.

Art & Language tended to be sceptical of the fashion for French theory,instead drawing heavily on the analytical tradition in philosophy. But Kuhnttheory of paradigm shifts seemed to be instantly applicable to art, a liberatingdevice to tl-rink through the change that Conceptual art was making to thefoundational assumptions of previously existing modern art. An essay byAtkinson and Baldwin, published rn Studio Internatlonal in t97o, explored theconsequences of Conceptual art's shift away from what was defined as the

4lRobert Smithson

The FountainMonument - Bitd'sEye Viewfrom Monuments ofPassaic 1967

PhotographThe National lvluseumof Contemporary Art,0slo

42

Art & Language

lndex 01 1972

Photograph oflnsta l lat ion at theGal ler ie Nat ionale duJeu de Paume, Par is,1994

'tre ur Sul1laporu ueqt rJour sarlnbrt {.torrq

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'lef,rtrrr Jo pupl e dltrruorod st tr€ Jo rarrruor ot sr lI tng 'lrrlrgrssod e st uado

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rql'trr go ,ru8rpt;rd rralgolerrsdqd 'ro]re.reqr-lerrorelu, aqr :,dOd)IAI,

5

Polmcs nno RepnEsENTATroNThere have been several examples in the history of modern art of projects that

have attempted to imagine a transformed world. The most obvious are those

associated with the Soviet Constructivists of the rgzos, though there have been

others. But international capitalism was not consigned to history after the

Bolshevik October. Neither did the radicalism of the late r96os and r97os lssue

in any fundamental political transformation. Writing as earh as 1973, Lucy

Lippard lamented the absorption of the radical impulses of Conceptual art:

the way that even sheets of typewritten paper were being exchanged as

commodities on the art market, and that leading conceptualists had built

successful careers within the existing market structure. Ian Burn wrote in r98r

that'perhaps the most significant thing that can be said to the credit of

Conceptual art is that rtJailrd '. In that sense, how could it not, given the

generalised failure of the'counter-culture'of which it was a part? And yetdespite the bedrock of capitalism remaining in place, history does move; social

and cultural change occurs. In a more limited sense, Conceptual art was part of

a significant change. One of the key features of the development of Conceptual

art in the r97os was its increasing politicisation. For some, including Burn, this

meant that Conceptual art was transitional: transitional out of art as such, into a

wider field of engaged cultural practice beyond the structures of the art world,

in publishing, television, community or trade union-related activity. But for

others, the developing sense of a politics of representation issued in a change to

the conception of art itself, a change summed up in Hal Fostert remark that

the postmodernist artist was less a producer of objects than a manipulator of

ourur€J8oJd IrlrPEr r Pre.&troj PTIJJtJ oq,&t stsrtrE ara^{ aJrql'ssoloqlauoN'tno lr.{,\ p]p^ E rrrllt JJrltEr 'uortdurnsuor ot II€l{l uI sass€ur aip rdal reg.u

jo rrcd uorssa.rdxa-;1rs pu€ rusrl€npr^rpur Jo srpftu slr ',ayretrads aql 3o llanos,

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ur.696r Jo uumtnv toH papuatxa aroru aqt pue 'su€d ur 996r go sltg 1t141 agrur prxeurrll ?saql'suorslnluor Itrros paruarradxa l1er1 pur arurrg 'ado.rng u1

ld0unl

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'pssow'ueJng

:I 0N U0nelsaluew

lu0r0IelalN pueJaluouued

lel.lcly{ 1ossoli!Jor^rl0'uerng I0ruec

w

ffouu3'rlss0n'

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Iarrery sen urn?snur rqt Jo uoltsanb arp dn loor ttqt lre Jo IJo.t{ l1rca uy.urnJsnru aql

pue la>lr€ur aqr fgtdnur.rd'suorlntrtsur Suruoddns stl Pue J]rsrl rlt Jo uorllun;

aql or stq8rsul rsrqt lldde or ueSoq lprder slsllrv 'llanos ut la,ttod put

a8pa1,u.ou1 go drqsuortelal aqt qtl^t PauJ)fuo) aur€frg 'rtlnlrl.red uI 'llnelnoC

Iaqrlhtr Jo l.ro^{ aql'uolnnpo;d;o suolwlrr Surlsrxa Jo uollrnPordo.r arp or

prlnqrrtuo) llt*J aqr Put uort€fnPa s€ rllns 'suolfnlllsul Fruro3ur PUe Fruro;

qtoq qtrH.&r ur trezv. aqt puetsraPun ot tdtuatte ue;o l.red se ,snlercddt alels

prrSoloapr, aqt Jo uoltou aqt ParnPorlul rassnqllv srnol ;aqdosoltgd rstxre141

qruarC llt 'so9or arEI rqr u1 lpnrs lerltlrr ;o rralgns € aruolaq ot SuruurSag

st,{t suoltntltsul Jo tloJ aql teqt sr turod ogl 'Surpurlsqll^{lou rq8rspurg'partrode,ra a^eq ot tla; aq tng toutrer 896r: alllerd sua.rng ol PJqrEllE ltt{l

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'tr€ Jo >lro.{ eql put aleds uolllglqxe uE ura^qag drqsuorltlar Furrou aql

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aqt ot lnq 'sa^lasuraqt s8urtured aql ol lou uollurllB .4{EJP o1 se.tr turod ag1'.urEulaln ul rE.{t 3tl1 PUE

srslyeueorplsd ''' luaruuo.rr,ua lpep rqt 'rusllltof,a, Sulpnpur srolrtJ;o a8ue.r

E uo anIE^ lltrtltsrt parrguol Surrurtd qrII^{ ul le,tr arp pue 'uorlesuedtuol

pnturds 's1ra(go Jo uoltetuasrtda; arp 'uottrsodruol lnoge suorldurnsse

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Surpea.r rauueg € rltl^{ tl Suneyda.r '>lro.tt rlf,Llt Pa^ourar stsltr€ *ll 'lep rxau

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Fnsr^ aqr Jo play aqr uI trIuralod pmrpr rsluolttntls Jo stradse Surlpogura

nlls u/ )jroM ]ol.led euo Jo qdejFolor.ld

896tr lljov(Bu! preoq-|t l g uropueU)

a?etnes aFetlcrlgy

uaJnS le!uecw

range of objects, photographs, books and films. Begun in r968 and shown ur rtsfinal form at DorrnnntdV rn ry72, the device of the fictional 'Museum

of Eagles'was in essence simple. Beginning with postcards of nineteenrh-cenruryacademic p:rintings, Broodthaers painstakingly amassed a repertoire of imagcsdrawn from popular culture and advertising. Selecting the eagle allowed for amyriad of representations connoting the rich culrural mythology srrrrounding

:,;,, ':., .

the feathered predator: national slmbol, martial symbol, symbol of fortitude,of perceptior.r, metaphor for genius, etc. By collecting togerher these variousrepresentations, Broodthaers produced, in efl]ect, a second-order represenracion- not of a lot of birds, but of a clas.if icrrory sysrcm ar t4ork. Of course, eaglesconnote various characteristics, as we have seen: valoug power, etc. They also

45I\4amel Broodthaels

Mus'e d AttModene,D6panenent desAigles, SectionPublicit6 7912

nstallatof atDocunenta V, Kassel,Germany

46Janisfounellis

Holses/ 1969

Instalat ion at GaleiafAttico, Rome

47lvlado I\,leE

b e d o n e ? ) 1 9 6 9

l',4eta iubes, gass,plaster, bunches oftwigs1 5 0 x 2 5 0 x 3 2 0(59 x 987. x 136)

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'uE) lI

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Ileraô arp p:prt8a.r rutla3 'srlu?u.ro;rad laa.rls 3o lrarle.t t ur ltrprultarll

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nV'(st'8g) l.ralp8 rqt ur sasroq o^lr^\t Prlq€ts slllsuno)

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ul Jl sv

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that underlay much of the new art. The point, perhaps, is rol ro insist onseparating the fwo aspects: that Arte Poverat enduring inrerest lies precisely inrhe i r comb ina t i on .

Lmn AurnrclArtists active in places where there actually was a guerrilla war going on foundthe situation tended to demand rarher more directly political responses thanthose that sufficed for the radical avant-gardes in North America andWesternEurope. Lucy Lippard dated her own politicisation from a trip to SouthAmerica in November 1968 where she encountered a group of artists in Rosarioworking in conjunction with the Argentinian labour union, the CGT(ConJederad6n Ceneral delTrabajo, or General Confederation of Labour). Forhistorical reasons to do with the extremely constricted space for properpolitical debate, vanguard art in Latin America became a forum for cultural-political interventions. These ranged from the Media-An Manlfesto, published inBuenos Aires in July ry66, which promised to distribute misinformation aboutart in the mass media in order to underline the implication of arr in publicityand news, to increasingly politicaldemonstrations at maior exhibitions such asthe C6rdoba Biennale. Thoush the term'Conceptual

arr was nor . -p loy.d ro descr ibeit until the rg7os, nonetheless this art has cometo be positioned retrospectively as a key partof a'global conceptualism'. In the words ofMari Carmen Ramirez, Latin Americanconceptualism was not a'reflection, derivationor replica of centre-based conceptual art', butrepresented, rather, a series of'local responsesto the contradictions posed by the failure ofpost-WoddWar II modernisation projects andthe artistic models they fostered in the region'. Indeed, for Ramirez, thrs art wasoriented from the start upon issues in the wider public sphere, rather than onthe institution of (modernist) art itself, and as such may be said to have

'clearly

anticipated'the political turn in merropolitan vanguard art during the r97os.The work that Lippard encounrered in Rosario is a case in point. Since the

mid-r95os, artists had been faced by an apparent failure of art institurlons toaddress a situation of increasing political repression and censorship. This cameto a head around events in the province of Tircamin, where governmenteconornic policies had resulted in mass unemployment and hardship.Conditions were exacerbated by the censorship of informarion in rhe massmedia about conditions in the province. By 1968, about thirty arrisrs wereengaged on a joint project with the union ro research and publicise conditionsthere. This work culm inated in the exhibitio n Tummdn Arde (Tircaman Burns),installed in the CGT premises in Rosario. It has been described by AlexAlberro as'an all-encompassing interior environment', in which visitors wereconf,ronted by a multi-media installation of text-based information in the formof slogans, leaflets and posters, as well as large-scale photographs and film

lrf;r$ril Tilr

60

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Sovrsr UruronUnolicial artists in the Soviet Union had a dilferent, but equally cor.rtradictoryrelationship to the Western avant-garde. Whereas in Larin America artrsrstended to be resistar-rt to styles of art that were deemed to be representative ofWestern imperialism, unoficial artists in the Soviet bloc tended to embraceWestern

'expressionist' individualism as part of their rejection of Socialist

Realism.This did not change r-rntil the emergence of the'MoscowConceptualisrs' in the r97os. Once again, the name was a retrospective labelapplied by the critic Boris Groys in 1979. Eric Bulatov and the Komar andMelamid duo developed a hybrid form of painting, based in equal parts onSoviet Socialist Realism and American Pop, to probe the representationalconventions of ofilcial Soviet ideology. Ilya Kabakov adopted a differentstrategy owing more to developments in Western Conceptual art, mixed in with

50ll!€ Kabakov

Carying aut the SlopPail7980

Enamelor p l f rood150x210\59%x82X)EmanuelHoffmannFoundation, onPermanent l0ant0 thel\4useum ofContem porary Art,Basel

Miede lademanUkeles

Washing Trccks/

7973

Photograph ofperformance atWadsworth Atheneurn,Hartford, ConnectcutCounesy Ronald

52Addan Piper

catalysis ]v 1970 I

StIeet performance,NewYorkCity

the experience of his oficial career as a children's book illustrator. In the early

'n7r, l ' " proJ,,."J , ' ."r '" , of A]Lu,nr ' , "r.L of *hl. l ' *". Lui l ' .rounJ ,

ficdonal character, an artist. The device conferred an ability ro reDresenrdifferent avant-gardist schools, as well as cticical commencary upon rhern,w i th in r l re scope o f rhc work : . rn in \ t rncc o f a k ind o f sec .nd-order p r rc r ice ,encompassing and going beyond first-order vanguardist gaml:its, not leastthrough the disruption broughr to the conception of the

'aurhenric' authorial

voice.The mix of image and text employed by Kabakov in the narratiye albumswas further developed in a series of larger paintings made in dre later r97os.These bore a resemblance to ofilcial notice boards, or bureaucratic fornrsblown up to a large scale. Carrying out the Skp Pdll(fig.5o) parodies the command

Pacnucouuet mca n1Jr-,IHot| tetpt * totv-zt Bo0bpsr-6

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ot uonngrrtuor pasodo;d Jrq ,&tJrplitru .rodr6 'ol,6t uI 'tunrd gtlm ro,r'r srlllolr uI

s l:ey41 or Surddogs lua.u rlis 1/1 sp[1uu3 ur :(zl'8y) q]norlr rrLI urog Surpn:rord

tpop rllr{.&t :3w1 t rpr.u tng 'sng rrit uo rPol or,[s111 stsQuluS uI 'suoll]t

Itnsnun Jo srrrrs e Sunuro;rad rllgar t.rodsutrr trlgnd uo Surpr.r .lo lrrJls

€ u.&\oP 8uq1t.,lt se qfns suoltrlnlts prlos lrturplo ul Sulltdrlrlrtd .ro 'aturl

l:lnlrred ts rE 'te Suqooy srl.& lls leq.tr 'oldurtxa ;o3 'Surtuarunrop lpog raq

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paqsrlod'sdols pue roog rLIl prqqnrls aqs'runrurrlty

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uorts:nb uado ur sureurar l1't66r Jo rl€uuolg allua1

rql te erssn1 patuosa;da.r dpuegdrunut '6tonto;nq

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s arntlnl Jo auo u1 ',rusrltnldaruor pgo13, 3o uoarpued aqt otul Par€rgura u?rg

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This was intended as a response to the worsening political situation in thecountry, as exemplified by the shooting of students at Kent State Universitywho had been protesting at the escalation of the war in South-East Asia. Piper'sletter of withdrawal was then incorporated into the notebooks constitutingContext #8 and Context #9, respectively subtitled'Written InformationVoluntarily Supplied to Me During the Period April 3o to May 3o t97o' and'Written

Information Elicited From Me During the Period of May r5 to Juner5i rgTo'. Piper later referred to the development taking place in her work atthat time as being'from my body as a conceptually and spatio-temporallyimmediate art object to my person as a gendered and ethnically stereotyped artcommodity'.

Create a little sensationFeel the ditreience that errrrone cin see

Somethingpu cm touchPrDperty

Thereb nothing btmch it

You'vegotit'fouvantto keepitNaturaily Thatt consenation

Itconserr€s those who carftharreitTheydon t ${nt tobeconserwd

L,ogicalt thatb contradicfion

Ererphing you buy m1s smething about youSome things )Du bW say more thm you rEalise

One thing 'ou buy sys erarythingProperty

Eitler you harrc itoryou don't

UKOn the other side of the Atlantic, the analytical tenor of much BritishConceptual art was being leavened by the influx of French theory in the earlyr97os. 1967 had witnessed the English translation of Roland Barthes's Elements oJSemiologt as well as his influential essay on

'The Death of the Author'. His book

of essays Mlthologtes belatedly appeared in English in ry72, containing hisfamous analysis of the different levels of meaning contained in a photograph,in particular the way in which a constructed image may set offunconsciouschains of connotation in the viewer, the more so if the image appears enrirelynatural. For some time,'critical'conceptualists had been moving rowards anawareness of,, not jl-rst art, but the broader register of'the visuaf in general as amajor site of the social production, and reproduction, of meaning.

No one took ideology-critique and semiotics on board more comprehensivelythanVctor Burgin. In a series of works, he moved from general meditatrons on

Logic

3

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rtlt [€ ]souF su,4{o uonepdod :rp 3o llrrouru.r lun e lrql tre; :rp pue 'raarod

trruouotra put uoneunlop Jenxas Jo uorrsaSSns alqnop srr qlrd{ lorss.ssod,

;o uorrou agr 'aydnor Sune;grua p;nneaq purgo-10,u lltuarrdde oqr

3o a3r:un aqt u:a,ntaq 'tsrluor aldrtlnu ego sleyd a:nrrrd aq1'(a:ardsuuo.r;

pue tt8g) aula-uodn-apsrc.,te51 ;o ,{ro aqr punore satrs uo patsedpue s.ralsod st palur:d a:a.tr sa8yrur aql '91,6r ruog eldurexa ruo q'.lrJ.rlt pue

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t ;o aSeutr snoulnlS fprpru.red e snql €ursn.re,rpe 3o sarraap a,usens.radarp 1t Sursn 'e8aur put txat Jo uonrun(uor palrad'raun :qr qBnorlt tltdul

slr paure8 yot sq: ;o rpn11 'spelotd Sulsre;-ssausnorcsuoo 'lsruolual.r.lur

llpryoads o: (t5'3g) l.r:3aur pnsu;o 3uruorrury prrSolo?pr aql

(3u^l-uodn€llsecMaN'rls

ur troi lo qdPr8oloqd)pl0u0e! clqnd

(.lt€xtt)t8x60t)€tsod

9161 UOISSaSSO.I

ulAng rcph

u0pu0l'u0ncoll0c oleûd

FnLsx/,9r) zzzxgrru0] poB

sluud crqder?otoqdg16I u049SUaS

uFng rolr!

'the fox', who knew'many smal1 things'. Despite the fact that Berlin was

addressing the contrasting merits of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, the

conceit might be seen to allegorise a difference between modernism

(Greenberg:'aesthetic value is one not many') and a Marxist approach attentlve

to the contingencies of a social practice in history. In terms of its publishedcontents The Foxhad a broader remit than Art-Language, as well as a more

emphatically political tone.The following year,Tercy Atkinson left the English

group, initially working as a video artist, then turning to the production of

drawings and paintings of explicitly politicalcontent on themes ranging from the FirstWorld

War to the confict in the north of Ireland. Those

who remained functioned as a kind of grit in the

a r r mach ine , ma in ta in ing an un rem i t t i ng

scepticism, both for the political enthusiasms of

the NewYork group around The Fox, and to

English artists and intellectuals whose politicised

practice bore the stamp of French theory. English

Art & Language viewed political conceptualism,indeed the wave of radicalised intellectual activity

across the field of cultural studies, with suspicion,

as representing social control by a new layer of

cultural management rather than a genuinelytransformational practice (fi g.le).

TRnrusmonru PRAcrrcEOut of this contested history emerged activities

that were more akin to Ian Burnt sense of

Conceptual art as'transitional' (see p.54). Many

were moving beyond the practice of art as such

with its galleries, dealers and avowedly bourgeoissocial locale, into a more diffuse, harder-to-

categorise realm of radical cultural practice, often

working in conjunction with community groups,trade unions and so on. In the US, exiles from the

disintegrated group arollnd Tbe Fox, including

Michael Corris, Carole Cond6, Karl Beveridge and

others, set up Rcd Herring, another journal with anavowedly radical agenda, and working, in Corris's

ohrase.'in the milieu of left and ultra-left "mass"

organisations and Maoist :(pre-partf" formations'. In Edinburgh, Dave Rushtonand myself, among others, continued with the Srlool project by initiating the

School Press.This worked to design and produce posters, leaflets and brochures

for rank-and-file trade union groups, campaign orgarisations such as RockAgainst Racism, and political bodies including the SocialistWorkers Party. As

NewYork Art & Language broke up, Ian Burn himself left the US and returnedto Australia, pardy encouraged by the potential opened up by the election of the

socialistWhitlam government. Burn was active in Union Media Services, and

The Fox, uol.I, no.1-,r975

Published in New York

Art & Language

frcmTen Posterc7977

Silkscreen on paper108 x 80(42%x31%l

57Combined UnionsAgainst Racism /Gregor Cullen andRedback Graflx

The Workplace ls NoPlace for Racism 1985

FOLLOWING DOUBLE PAGE:55Hans Haacke

Shapolsky et al.Manhattan Real EstateHoldings: A Real-TimeSocial System, as ofMay 1, 1971(dehnl1577

Photographs andtypewritten data sheetsEach photograph50 .8 x 19 .1 ( 20 x7%lCourtesy of the artist

PosterSydney

loN srsaratur puE slueun(rnuol ,!\au Jo aBuEJ t ot dn pauedo lleu:rrur r:t

;r sr se,u :r 'sarSoyouql.t €rpau Jo af,uasa:d pagrsuatur aqr pue lusrwrua; Jo asr.r

aqt sE sJ)JoJ asJa^rP ,,|llual?ooE qlns Jo aruanEul Jtll .]lPun 'ssell qlr,{1 ur'uo:)

3ura,r-Ua1 puqnlps.r: aq: uo prlredur rapua8 pw art.r;o suons:nb se potnd

srqt Suunp uoueuro;surr: 8uro8:apun se,u ;1as1t ,srr1qod,3o Sutputtsrapun

Jqt 'rl^.,4roH tusrurpt5;o anbDt;r :qt Jo JI€,4{ Jqt ul tututtuoP auoJag

ptrl rErlt r;el ,\.N aqr;o s:rrqod sstp t :,1trrrqod, aqr;o :su:s 3ur,n-13o1

p:epurrr l1a,t:e1a; e ot p.ur.roJuor pa,{auar rsnl a,rtq a,u :tgl rw pnrd:ruo3

;o uontsrrrr4od aq1 d:ors a1or.1,,u:qr Sulrq ulog .r€J '.raâ,\{oq lsr terll

!nouuc tvNo|Inrlsitl

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JO anF^ IrA.l srll:PaPn]Juor aFJ'r!lJrs.1s ]Erf,os aqt ur aloJ slr€ Jo ss.uf,reÎe

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trDerlour.p Jrour asn olbuapual e lualsls Surta1leur eg: :sureBe uon:ea;e :tre pn:daruo3 1o s:rnle ;: aarssarSord a.rg pa:e1osr u:ng 'r86r

Jo ,tsluEpntdaruor-xa ur 3o sJroura1Atr, altrnJ€ srq uI's?Duantusuotr ]Enos rapl,& qlr,{

tuaup^loûr Jo srurog prnrr;d a.rour;o aurcu a!11 ur 'qtrns se ut Jo arrlre.rd aql

qrr.lr uolo:q lla.urrugep Sur.req se saal;suagr p:pw8a: po,rloûr rsoql rlrqa 'l.re

pnrdaruoS pasorrqod go sur:og 3o rno {1na:rp aso:t saanenrw asarll Jo IIy'stq8u

Fufuoqv Jo; u8rrdurcr aqr se qlns sanssr u€r1e$sny dlergn:ds gtr,uaSe8ue o1 SuruurS:q se lear w '(25 39) sdno;3 llrunururor pu€ uorun rpel Jo

a8ue.r e ;o; sa.rnqrorq pw srarsod parnpo.rd osp srql :raford a;r-1 3ur1.roL1pw

rrv.rJt uo srarlto pue lqrry lpueg 'qrrurg l'llel'uopuel 1a8r51ql,u pa1.ro.,r

everyone felt they had to evacuate the territory of art to sustain a defensiblecritical practice.

A case in point is the work of Harrs Haacke. In his earlier work, Haacke hadrnoved ftom setting up kinetic systems for the circulation of liquids throughtubes, or the continually repeated process of production and subsequentevaporation of condensation within a closed glass cube, to more open systemsinvolving birds feeding and grass growing. By r97o he had turned to socialsystems, As we have seen with Piper, the art world's response to the war inSouth-East Asia had been increasing, and on zz May tie NewYork Art Strike

organised by the ArtWorkers Coalidon - involved picketing the

Metropolitan Museum. As his contribution to the Museum of Modern ArttlnJormation show that summer, Haacke installed a kind of votirg boothconsisting of two

'Yes' and

'No' boxes underneath a wall-mounted question:

'Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced PresidenrNixon's Indochina policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November?'

Rockefeller was, of course, aluminary of the Museum as well as

governor of NewYork. Two-thirdsof those who took part in Haacke'spoll voted'Yes'.

Haacket next planned showwas to have been .l1s tefit, at theGuggenheim Museum, NewYork,in April r97r.The major new piecewas to have been a photo-textdocumentation of what Haackecalled A Ie al-Tine Sotial Slstem.Thiswas to have consisted of the realestate holdings on Manhattan of'Shapolsky

et ali, slum landlordsengaged in the exploitation ofpredominantly African-American

and Puerto Rican communities (fig,5&). The proposal elicited frorn theGuggenheim authorities a statement of what was considered to be theboundary of acceptability for a political dimension of art, a boundary thatHaacket work clearly overstepped.The museum director's statementacknowledged that'art may have social and political consequences', but arguedthat these should be produced'by indirection and by the generalised, exemplaryforce that works of art may exert upon the environment', and not, as Haackeproposed,'by using political means to achieve political ends'. Haacke'sdeliberate blurring of the boundary between politics and art was simply toomuch for a culture whose oficial ideology of art centred around itsindependence, however much that supposed independence might becompromised by the status quo itsellThe upshot was that the exhibition wasforeclosed, its prospective curator dismissed, and Haa&e became thefigurehead of politicised Conceptual art.

Haacke got his own back in 1974 by producing a piece detailing the business

59Hans Haacke

one of sevenindividually1larnedpanelstrcm

A Brced Apaft7918

Photographs on paperaid on boafdEach pane 91x 91(35%x 35%)Tate

60Maftha Rosler

Kitchen 7975

Stillfrom black andwhite video (6 rninutes)Coudesy of the artist

v

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intoning their names and miming their use. By the end, however, she isbrandishing the knife, acting out the frustrations of an identiq, confined byt radi r ional gender-def in i t ion.

Among those who drove home the implications of a non-medium-specificConceptual art for reflections on wider questions of representation andidentity-construction was Mary Kelly. As well as building on both the socialinterventions of Haacke and the identity-related work of Piper, Kelly hascommented on how she picked up on some of the potential of the Art &Language lndex installations, or more particularly on what she saw as therrabsences:

'The significance of the relation between the psychic and the social was

made obvious to me by its absence in Art & Language work . . . I saw that spaceas being openJ Her Post-Partum Document (TSZTS) remains a definitive statementon the interleaving of the psychic and the social. While she was working on it,however, Kelly was also involved in a more conventionally'political'project

J

61Margaret Harrison, KayFido Hunt, Mary Kelly

Women atWorklgTS

lnstallation atSouth London Gal lery

o2Mary Kelly

0ne of eight individuallyframed panels from

Post-Partum Docunent(Documentation lV):Trcnsitional objects,diary and diagram7976

Collage, plaster of Parisand cotton with typedtextPanel s ize 27.9 x 35,6( 1 1 x 1 4 )Kunsthaus Zlirich

Mary Kelly

0ne of thirteenindividually framedpanels from

Post Paftum Document(Documentation lll):Analysed markings anddiary-perspectiveschema 7975

Collage, pencil, crayon,chalk and printed0ragrams 0n paperPanel s ize 28.5 x 36( l l%x741")Tate

documenting the historical situation of women in the workforce. Women atWork(fig.er) by Margaret Harrison, Kay Fido Hunt and Kelly was an installation ofphotographs, documents and sound tapes comparable to the Tucamin Burnsinstallation and the Australian Art &Working Life project. It occupied theborder area between historical-political documentation (with its roots in theMass Observation work of the r93"s) and a contemporary Conceptual artinstallation. This undecideablitv is part of its character.

Kelly's Post-Partum Dorummt iik.*ir. built on the presentational devices ofconceptualism to produce a work that challenged conventional senses of theappearance and unity of the work of art (figs.5z-3). Its subject was ostensiblyvery different from the world of industrial work, except that for Kelly the piecewas very much about the sexual division of labour in sociequ. The work is in sixparts, consisting of over a hundred individual'plaques'tracing her son'sevolution from birth through to the acquisition of language and the ability to

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6

Tns LecncYVarious techniques and strategies associated with Conceptual art have becomepervasive in contemporary art. Jenny Holzert employment of language is one.Sherrie Levinet photographic critique of originality is another. CindySherman's play with identiq' is yer anorher. The use of text and photographmade by Barbara Kruger is inconceivable without Conceptual art. And so on.The work of many artists is underwritten by a politics of difference. That ofmany others is focused on the social and institutional production of meanrng.These two strands have jointly rendered historical both the essentialism and theautonomy-claims of modernist theory, no less comprehensively thanmodernism itself once consigned the ethos of the academy to history(although just as the ghost of classicism continued to haunt the modernmovement, the spectre of aesthetic value is present at the feast ofpostmodernism). It would, however, be unfortunare ro close a book onConceptual art with the implication that its principal legacy was one of anethically over-secure and humoudess political correcrness. on the other hand itwould be equally inappropriate to celebrate at face value the kind of claim wehave already encountered that'Conceptualism has become all-pervasive if notdominant in the art world'. In one sense perhaps it has. In response touncomprehending press criticism of his work, Damien Hirsr remarked in zooothat,'I dont think the hand of the artist is important on any level because youare trying to communicate an idea'. The 'idea'

rather than the hand-craftedobject has become the common currency of international contemp orary at:t.But that artt relationship to its institutional conrext is 6r more secure than was

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At any given time, most of the art that gets produced is not very interesring.This was as true of conceptual art as it is of contemporary postmodernism, oras it was of academic art. In the past, natural wastage has taken care of that. Butas the institution of art has become in{lated in -oJernWesrern socieg/, and asinvestment in it - both cultural and directly financial - has multiplied, itbecomes less and less easy to tell when the Emperor is wearing his new clothes.Conceptual art's greatest strength is that it was, perhaps brie{ly, an episodeagainst the grain of all this. Certain arrists, as artists, took on the responsibilityof checking over the kind of thing art was, rhe kind of insritution i, *"r,

".rjthe kind of role it fulfilled in modern society. It is, I feel, quite misaken toconflate this kind of critical pracrice with the eclecticism that is the mostnoticeable feature of art at the turn of the twenty-first century. In somerespects' conceptual art may be responsible for ihis, for having broken d.ownthe barriers of the media out of which art is thought capable of being made.But in other senses ir is nol I have menrioned the impact thatT,S. Kuhn'stheory of paradigm revolutions made on the development of Conceptual art.Kuhn atgued that most of the time science progressed cumulatively, untilanomalies built up and the whole structure was shaken up and a new period ofnormality commenced.The salient feature of most of the art to which the term'conceptualism'is

applied, whether positively or negatively, is that it is, so tospeak,'normal science'. It is the way things are now, just as academic art was inthe middle of the nineteenrh cenrury and just as modernism was in the middleof rhe twentieth.

Hyperbole and utopianism aside, there is a sense in which Conceprual artwas afotrn of guerrilla action against rhe powers that be, in the shape ofinstitutionalised modernism in both the marketplace and the colleges where arrwas taught and reproduced. Mel Ramsden once remarked that Conceptual artwas less about putting writing on the wall than ir was abour a spirir ofscepticism and irony. If 'conceptualism'has

indeed become th. .tat,r, quo of abloated contemporary art world, then arguably it shares less with the spirit ofhistorical conceptual art rhan it does with the modern academy from whichthose artists took their distance. Nowadays, in a period of pervasive'globalisation

we seem always to be hearing rhat'we are all capitalists now'-liberal capitahsts, of course. By the same token, culturally we are all supposed tobe postmodernists. At the close of George orwell's parable of fru.trat"drevolution, Animal Farm (tg+s), the animals look through the windows of thehouse where their leaders, the pigs, are dining at rhe same rable as the humanfarmers:

As the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that something strangewas happening. what was ir rhar had altcrcd in rhe laces, what was ir th"r r""-.d iobe melting and changing? No question now, what had happened. The crearuresoutside looked from pig to man, and from man ro pig, and from pig to man again;but it was already impossible to say which was which.

No doubt, critical arr continues to be made. But only in an orwellian sense canit be maintained that'we are all conceptualists now'.

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PHoroe nAPHrcGnrors

Orazio Bacci, Milm zr

(bottom);RobertBarry 1;The Anthony d'Offay Gallery

47; Kunstsmmlung

Nordrhe in-Westfale n,

Dii'sseldorf / photo Walter

K1ein, DiiLsseldorf 47, 58(top); Charles Harrison 44(top);The Menil Collection,

Houston / photo Hickey

Robertson,Houston 8;The

Metropolitan Museum of

Art, NewYork O 1987 /photo LyntonGardiner 3o;The Museum of

Contemporary Art, Los

Angeles / photo Squids and

Nunns r8 (left); Museum of

Conteinporary Art, San

Diego, @ r966-8 JohnBaldessari / photo Philip

Scholz Ritterman 3z; O zoot

The Museum of Modern Art,

NewYork 16, r8 (right), 1,1(top);The Museum of

Modern Art, San Francisco,

photo Ben Blackwell zo;

Oellentl che Kunstsammlung,

Basel / photo Martin Brihler

6z; OYoko Ono / Lennono

Photo Archive zz; O Edward

Ruscha 1961 46; Seth

S iege laub/@1969Seth

Siegelaub 38; photo @ Fred

Scruton 681

GopvnreurGneors

The publishers have made

every elfort to trace all the

relevant coplright holders.

We apologise for any

omissions that might have

been made.

Beuys, llroodthaers,

Duchamp, Haacke, Kabakov,

Manzoni: O DACS zooz

Buren, Magritte: O ADAGP

l::: *o DACS' London

Dibbets, Kosuth, LeWitt,Morris, Naumann, Weiner:O ARS, NY and DACS,London zooz

Olitski: O DACS, LondonandVAGA, NewYork zooz

Rauscht'nberg: @ RobertRauschenberg / DACS,London andVAGA, NewYork zooz

Smithson: O E.t"t" ofI{obert Smithson / VAGA,NewYork and DACS,London zooz

80

paul wood, conceptual art, 2002 tate

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