Practice
Introduction
This chapter takes as its theme the national and international reception of conceptual art from 1972 to 1976. By using a number of significant international exhibitions and publications, I explore the various attempts to define conceptual art around this date. In doing so, I argue that these exhibitions and publications circulated a prescriptive aesthetic of conceptual art which prioritised the experimentation of media and the documentation of process rather than more discursive approaches as typified by text-based practice and artists’ publications. Thus, by placing conceptual art’s definition within an
expansive category of medium specificity and experimentalism rather than in its criticality, this exhibition history has largely ignored the social and contextual underpinnings of conceptual art practice, which although had already started in the 1960s, became increasingly important and evident in conceptual art produced in the 1970s.
In order to demonstrate my argument, I use The New Art at the Hayward Gallery in London and its accompanying archives as a case study. I also look to the following exhibitions; The Survey of the Avant-Garde in Britain at Gallery House in London (1972); The British Avant-Garde at the New York Cultural Center (1971) and Documenta 5 at the Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (1972). I then contrast these exhibitions with the display of Art & Language’s first ‘Indexing’ projects, which began in 1972 at Documenta 5 in order to argue that at the same time that conceptual art was being incorporated into the space of the gallery and publications, Art & Language were attempting to make their social, discursive and open-ended, yet largely introspective approach, more publicly accessible. The group’s changing moniker and lack of concrete membership also suggested a fluidity of authorship with their temporary
name ‘The Art & Language Institute’, utilised for Documenta 5. Yet this change of title demonstrated a questioning of the function of a name as well as a form of art production based on collectivity and discussion between members of the group as well as their audience.
Lastly, I will explore two exhibitions from the early to mid-1970s in relation to Art &
Language’s Indexing projects: Women & Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry, 1973–1975 at the South London Gallery in 1976 by Mary Kelly, Kay Fido Hunt and Margaret Harrison’s and Post-Partum Document (1973-1978) by Mary Kelly at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1976. These artworks and exhibitions, like Art & Language’s Indexing projects, approached
conceptual art practice through an intersubjectivity – via collective working and by the use of dialogue with and between participants. Yet, the orientation of these practices were more aligned with the contemporary understanding of socially-engaged practice, as defined by such theorists as Claire Bishop, and used the collection of data and texts from the sites of the work-place and the home rather than the internal dialogue of the group. I argue, however, that it is important to consider these artworks with the same ideological grounding as the art produced in the mid-1970s often enacted a discursive or recursive relationship with earlier forms of conceptual art practice. Both utilised forms of collectivity and collaboration to question the production of an art object, frequently using similar systems-based aesthetics as well as the collection of language and data for analysis by artist and audience. I conclude by stating that the reception which these artworks received at the time was integral to their subsequent impact and legacy and how we define conceptual art practice more generally. Thus, in order to explore the area in question, it is important that we return to the archives relating to their organisation and reception.
The New Art at the Hayward Gallery, London, 1972
The exhibition, The New Art, took place at the Hayward Gallery in London in late 1972. It was the first in what was intended to be a series of exhibitions on the theme of ‘new’ British art over a number of years and is understood to be a significant and defining moment in conceptual art’s exhibition history.
Organised by Anne Seymour, who was also Keeper at the Tate Gallery, along with Art & Language’s editor and the former assistant editor of Studio International, Charles Harrison, these exhibitions would cumulatively present a running survey of new British art. Despite this, only one exhibition out of the intended series was produced in the end.
The New Art opened just a few months after Documenta 5 and featured many of the same artists exhibited at Kassel with its original intention to survey British art every two years, presenting a selection of conceptually-defined artworks by British practitioners under the rubric of showcasing selections from current activity in art, thus mimicking Documenta’s more ambitious four-year international survey. In a letter from the Exhibitions Organiser at the Hayward, Nick Serota, to member of Art & Language and participating artist, Terry Atkinson, he wrote:
A brief note to thank you for helping us mount one of our most successful shows in recent years. It was seen by 17,000 people, but more than that, we were able to make a real contribution to a more widespread understanding of the art of today, thanks to Anne’s conviction and your active co-operation.59
The letter demonstrated the exhibition’s success as well as its positive reception, defining its important role in contributing to an understanding of the ‘art of today’. Other letters from the Hayward Gallery archive, however, demonstrate a less favourable and more complex history of its organisation and reception, revealing instead the difficult position which the exhibition occupied in 1972: between the supposedly anti-aesthetic conceptual art being practiced by artists and that of the institutional space of
59The New Art, 1972, the Hayward Gallery Archive, Blythe House, Victoria & Albert Museum.
ACGB/121/764 (1642): letters of organisation between Anne Seymour and Norbert Lynton; reviews of the exhibition; installation photographs, accessed November 2015
the museum or gallery with its history and bias towards painting and sculpture. Thus it demonstrated the tension inherent in exhibiting conceptual art in major institutions in Britain, where outdated modes of viewing and display still dominated, even as conceptually-oriented art was concurrently being accepted and positively reviewed elsewhere.
The exhibition brought together fourteen exhibitors under the rubric that the ‘ideas and attitudes are equally if not more important than the media’.60 Exhibited in The New Art were artists including Keith Arnatt, John Stezaker, Victor Burgin and Art-Language (noticeably they chose to be known under the name of the magazine rather than the group’s name, Art & Language, in the catalogue), amongst others.61 The work of these artists was described by Seymour as ‘often physically ephemeral or vestigial and thus presents special organisational difficulties and uncertainties.’62 She continued that the purpose of the exhibition was to ‘inform and give pleasure to the public while providing a forum for as many artists as possible.’63 The works on display were conceived and created specifically for the exhibition and Seymour stressed with recourse to the show’s selection process that there had been very few exhibitions with ‘mixed’ artists rather than ‘a particular type’ of artist in London over the past decade. 64 The subtext of this statement implied that the old guard still
dominated the institutions of art and that the ‘new’ British art, which had been developing over the last decade, had not as yet been represented or accepted in public exhibitions and, in particular,
institutions in the UK. The use of the term ‘mixed’ also relates to definitions of media. For although the intention of the exhibition was to provide a survey of art whereby the ideas were as important as the media, I argue that media, as it was defined, still played an important aspect of the work’s selection.
60 Anne Seymour, ‘Introduction’, The New Art, 5
61 The full list of exhibitors were: Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Victor Burgin, Michael Craig-Martin, David Dye, Barry Flanagan, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert and George, John Hilliard, Richard Long, Keith Milow, John Stezaker, David Tremlett
62 Seymour, ‘Introduction’ in The New Art, 4
63 Ibid, 5
64 Ibid.
The art historian William Wood has described how the tension between ‘Britishness’ and international conditions proved crucial to The New Art, writing that ‘no matter what identified or animated this global vision and these national characteristics, the implication was that the British audience had lost out on something.’65 Despite Britain’s apparent lagging behind, Seymour faced difficulty convincing the Director of the Hayward Gallery, Norbert Lynton, to focus the show around work by new British artists. Archives of correspondence between Seymour and Lynton demonstrate that frequent compromises were made from each side in order to meet differing visions of what constituted ‘new British art’ or at least an idea of a British aesthetic toward which the exhibition aimed. An example of this is evident in another letter from Anne Seymour to Lynton in which Seymour makes clear her plans to execute an exhibition on a smaller scale than the original proposal of twenty-five to thirty artists. Seymour wrote that she was interested in showcasing a ‘generation’ of artists rather than conducting a wider survey of art in the period as she ‘felt that on balance greater punch could be packed and more publicity gained from emphasising the theme of new movements and possibilities than from making visually an academic point about the relationship between the new and the already established’.66 She argued that if they decided to go with the originally conceived model of integrating new and more established artists in the exhibition ‘it would be extremely difficult to know where to draw the line – so many artists being relevant.’67 She continues, ‘I felt this was probably a point which could be more usefully made in catalogue form.’68 Seymour suggests that a mixture of artists of widely varying generations, as suggested by Lynton, would also ‘imply assumptions about their various merits in the context of art as a whole, whereas a narrow focus might prevent the unnecessary stigmatisation of that approach,’ writing that, ‘nothing could be more indigestible than a hurried rehash of the art history of the past few decades, but this would be extremely difficult to avoid
65 William Wood, ‘Still you ask for More: Demand, Display and “The New Art”’ in Newman M., and Bird J.
(eds.), Rewriting Conceptual Art, 66
66 The New Art, 1972, ACGB/121/764 (1642): letters of organization between Anne Seymour and Norbert Lynton; reviews of the exhibition; installation photographs, accessed November 2015
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
in any show which tried to be representative.’69 Finally, she argues that the alternative might mean
‘enlarging the range of the exhibition by including a special section of token examples of work by elderly heroes would be clumsy and not particularly helpful.’70 She continues that conceptual art has become the ‘international cause celebre[…] of the period’, and that British conceptual artists have so far been mainly, ‘active underground or abroad’.71 The reasons for which, she states, are a failure to see that their ‘roots are in the right place’ and because, ‘their work has been hedged around the political attitudes’.72 In either case, she concludes, there is still much confusion surrounding this subject and as such she would like to use the show as an opportunity to clear such confusions.
Interestingly, despite Seymour’s insistence on presenting conceptual art to a British audience, she emphasised her reticence in defining it as a ‘conceptual’ art show as she suggests that the artists practicing ‘conceptual’ art would not define their practice as such. Rather, she was keen to stage a show which ‘examines the concepts which have led critics to dub the work of the artists who hold them
“Conceptual’’’, writing that the exhibition also intended to explore ‘other current ideas which seem to have been important during this period and potentially fruitful.’73 Her requests were greeted with scepticism from Lynton who wrote back that the art exhibited in The New Art might have the problem of leaving the viewer with ‘not much to look at.’74 Seymour rebuts Lynton’s doubt by listing the varieties of mediums and formats which the artists might work in:
Sculpture in various materials, permanent and transitory, wall and floor, (Long, Burgin, Tremlett, Craig-Martin, Brener, Stevens… live performance pieces (Gilbert & George, McLean, Breakwell); texts (Gilbert & George, Arnatt, Burgin, the Art & Language Group)…
photographs by almost all artists and films and video tapes by a number of them.75
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
She writes that she intends to include a special section on artists’ films since they are hardly known at all in Britain and probably include ‘some of the best abstract-figurative and surrealist work being done in this country.’76 Lastly, and most significantly, Seymour responded to Lynton’s fears that the
exhibition will be ‘shot down’ by those ‘invested in more traditional art forms,’77 writing that this will no doubt happen and that there are ‘plenty of established artists who will see this work as rubbish but their lack of comprehension seems to be to do with lack of familiarity with the subject’, rather than its quality, arguing that critics and the public are in the ‘same boat.’78 She concludes however that, ‘how can they really decide if the work stands or falls, if not by seeing it? At least such an exhibition should bring in qualified visitors from abroad, in that it seems generally to be held internationally that British artists are doing some of the best new work anywhere.’79 Lynton’s fear encapsulates a generational divide between artists who were practicing in formalist techniques and methodologies and those who had embraced the anti-art aesthetic of conceptual practice. In addition to this, Seymour’s reply demonstrates an attempt to placate this fear by grounding conceptual art firmly in its visual and material elements thus defining it within the same paradigm as more traditional art practices.
Installation photographs of The New Art demonstrate that Norbert Lynton’s fear of the lack of visual material in the show was unfounded: there was an abundance of sculpture, photography and large-scale installation with work by artists including works by artists Richard Long, Barry Flanagan and Keith Arnatt. Long’s contribution, for example, Three Circles of Stones (1972) consisted of large concentric rings of monolithic stones of varying sizes, positioned one within another on the gallery floor. (Fig. 1) Having previously worked predominantly through the documentation of his walks in the English landscape, these works represent a transition of space for Long’s practice – from external to internal – as the objects from these walks (stones, wood) were brought into the gallery space. Thus the viewer was forced to interact directly with these found objects rather than view them, mediated,
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
through photographic documentation. Their displacement from landscape to gallery also represented a larger shift in the incorporation of conceptual art into the institution.
In Flanagan’s installation he revisited an earlier work, Hayward I (1969), which consisted of scattered ropes installed in a room, while his Hayward II consisted of ‘a smaller room installation made up of lengths of wood (the same lengths as the ropes in the earlier installation), scaffolding, stuffed-cloth columns and a wall covered in a reflective and distorting mirror foil.’80 (Fig. 2) Alongside this
installation he also showed three films for three hours each Tuesday and Thursday of the exhibition:
Line on Holywell Beach, Atlantic Flight and Sand Girl. Displayed around the walls of the gallery was Arnatt’s artwork, An Institutional Fact (1972), which consisted of photographs which depicted the museum guards at the Hayward, thus providing reflection on the structure of the institution and the labour within them. (Fig. 3) The mundanity of these photographs questioned the purpose of art to entertain, to transform, or even to document. The potency or individuality of the subject is also diffused by staging each one in the same stance, same uniform and each of these works utilised the space of the gallery rather than producing objects which might be intended for a gallery. Furthermore, as the works on display were not simply presented but commissioned from the artists following studio visits their installation reflected Seymour’s transformed role from Tate Keeper to Curator.
The accompanying catalogue acted as extension to the exhibition for while some of the installed works were reproduced in the catalogue, other artists wrote texts either specifically for this format or ones which had previously been published or exhibited elsewhere. For example, in Arnatt’s catalogue essay he begins with the question, ‘Is it reasonable to ask every speaker’s utterance, “Is it serious?’’’ The essay is taken from a text written by Arnatt entitled ‘ART AND EGOCENTRICITY – a perlocutionary act?’, which was first exhibited by the Tate in 1972. It takes as its premise the field of linguistics and the deconstruction of language, as was a common tool in conceptual art in this period,
80 Clarrie Wallis, and Andrew Wilson, (eds.) Barry Flanagan: Early Works 1965-1982 (London: Tate Publishing, 2012), 143
and the assertion that meaning in language comes through the speaker’s intention. The text
demonstrates this in the following quote: ‘how someone is identified as an artist, through their assertion that “they are an artist” or, producing ‘artworks’ in a currently acceptable style, providing they are
‘successful’ (within their own terms of reference)’.81 Arnatt continues with self-reflection and irony, ‘I may even be asked, and agree, to exhibit these ‘works’ in a gallery’, thus like Art & Language’s and Bruce McLean’s ‘retrospectives’, the institution is utilised but undermined.
The artwork Arnatt selects for the catalogue is the photograph of the words ‘Keith Arnatt is an Artist’ pasted directly across the wall of a gallery. Of this work he writes:
The intended effect of my telling you that I am an artist would be then, on Grice’s modified definition, to get you to believe that I believe that I am an artist – still a perlocutionary effect.82 While Arnatt’s work explored the nature of art and its production through language which questions the primacy of the object and prioritises concept instead, Flanagan and Long created installations by juxtaposing a variety of media: found objects, film, photography and light, thus demonstrating the variety of media considered conceptual art in the early seventies and equally, its divergent pathways and lack of definition by this point. This is demonstrated further in the catalogue by Seymour writing that after six or seven years there was still a sort of ‘mystification surrounding the kind of work which has recently extended the historical continuum of art a little further.’83 She writes that the main characteristics of this kind of work is that it does not presuppose the traditional categories of painting and sculpture and instead, it might follow the format of such media as written material, philosophical ideas, photographs, film, sound, light, the earth itself, the artists themselves and actual objects.
However, the main aspect of this work was that the ideas and attitudes are equally if not more important than the media concluding: ‘I felt that if I could explore and collect together some of the
However, the main aspect of this work was that the ideas and attitudes are equally if not more important than the media concluding: ‘I felt that if I could explore and collect together some of the