Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

my works for magazine pages: “a history of
conceptual art”
dan graham
I became involved with the art system accidentally when friends of mine suggested that we
open a gallery. In 1964, Richard Bellamy’s Green Gallery was the most important avant-garde
gallery and was just beginning to show people such as Judd, Morris and Flavin. Our gallery,
John Daniels, gave Sol LeWitt a one-man show, as well as doing several group-shows which
included all the “proto-Minimalist” artists whether they already showed at Green Gallery or
not. We had also plans to have a one-man exhibition of Robert Smithson—then a young “Pop”
artist. However, the gallery was forced to close due to bankruptcy at the end of the first season.
If we could have continued for another two years, with the aid of more capital, perhaps
we might have succeeded. Nevertheless, the experience of managing a gallery was particularly
valuable for me in the fact that it afforded the many conversations I had with Dan Flavin,
Donald Judd, Jo Baer, Will Insley, Robert Smithson and others who, if they were not able to
give works for thematic exhibitions, supported the gallery by recommending other artists and
by dropping by to chat. In addition to a knowledge of current and historical art theory, some
of these artists had an even greater interest, which I shared, in intellectual currents of that
moment such as serial music, the French “New Novel” (Robbe-Grillet, Butor Pinget, etc.), and
new scientific theories. It was possible to connect the philosophical implications of these ideas