Art and Language

Art & Language is a conceptual artists collaboration that has undergone many changes since its creation at the end of the 1960s. The group was founded by artists on the common desire to combine intellectual focuses and concerns with the creation of art. The first issue of the group's journal Art-Language was published in November 1969 in England, and was an important influence on conceptual art in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Art & Language group was founded in either 1967 or 1968 in the United Kingdom by Terry Atkinson (b. 1939), David Bainbridge (b. 1941), Michael Baldwin (b. 1945) and Harold Hurrell (b. 1940). These four artists began to collaborate around 1966 while they were art teachers in Coventry. The name of the group was derived from their journal Art-Language, which was originally created as a work conversation in 1966. The group was critical of what was considered mainstream modern art practices at the time and they even created conceptual art in addition to their discussions.

Between 1968 and 1982, the number grew from the original four people to nearly fifty people associated with the collaborative group. Among the first to join in 1970 were critic and art historian Charles Harrison and artist Mel Ramsden. Then, starting at the beginning of the 1970s, individuals such as Ian Burn, Michael Corris, Preston Heller, Graham Howard, Joseph Kosuth, Andrew Menard, and Terry Smith also joined the group. Two collaborators from Coventry, Philip Pilkington and David Rushton, then joined Art & Lanuage. The relative degree of anonymity the group held since the beginning continues to have a historical significance on the art community. Due to uncertainty of the exact member lists, it is hard to know with certainty not only who all of the contributors were but what their exact contributions were as well.

The first issue of Art-Language (Volume 1 Number 1, May 1969) is named 'The Journal of Conceptual Art'. By the second issue (Volume 1 Number 2, February 1970) it became clear that there were Conceptual Art pieces and Conceptual artists for whom and to whom the journal did not speak. In order to better encompass the purpose of the journal, the title was then abandoned. Art-Language had, however, brought to light the beginning of a new art movement. It was the first imprint to identify a public entity called 'Conceptual Art'. The journal was the first of its kind to serve the theoretical and conversational interests of a community of artists and critics, who were also its producers and users. While that community was far from unanimous on the nature of Conceptual Art, the editors and most of its historic contributors shared similar opinions about other art movements. Conceptual Art was critical of Modernism for its bureaucracy and its historicism, and of Minimalism for its philosophical conservatism. The practice of Conceptual Art, especially in its early years of origin, was primarily based on theory and its form was predominately textual text.

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