Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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The facts of who did what, how much they contributed and so on, are more or less well
known. They are by no means a secret. The (small) degree of anonymity which the name origi-
nally conferred continues to be, however, of historical significance.
As the distribution of the journal and the teaching practice of the editors and others devel-
oped, the conversation expanded and multiplied to include by 1971 (in England) Charles Harrison,
Philip Pilkington, David Rushton, Lynn Lemaster, Sandra Harrison, Graham Howard, Paul
Wood, and (in New York) Michael Corris and later Paula Ramsden, Mayo Thompson, Christine
Koslov, Preston Heller, Andrew Menard and Kathryn Bigelow.
The name Art & Language sat precariously all over this. Its significance (or instrumentality)
varied from person to person, alliance to alliance, (sub)discourse to (sub)discourse—from
those in New York who produced The Fox (1974–76) to those engaged in music projects or to
those who continued the original journal. There was a confusion: Terry Atkinson departed for his
own reasons in 1974 and by 1976 a dialectically fruitful confusion had become a chaos of
competing individualities and concerns.
In a practice which tried to eschew the pomp and power of control, decisive action had
become necessary if any vestige of Art & Language’s original ethos was to remain. There were
those who saw themselves excluded from this who departed for individual occupations in teaching
or as artists. There were others immune to the troubles who simply found different work.
There were yet others whose departure was expedited by those whose practice had continued to
be identified with the journal Art-Language and its artistic commitments. While musical activities
continued with Mayo Thompson, and the literary conversational project continued (and continues)
with Charles Harrison, by late 1976 the genealogical thread of this artistic work had been
taken into the hands of Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, with whom it remains.
This paper was initially delivered by Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison, Mel
Ramsden) to the conference “Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art,”at the Institute of Contemporary
Arts, 19 March 1995. It was subsequently published in Art-Language, new series no. 2 (June
1997), pp. 40–49. The only footnote in this text was initially published as “Summary”in Art &
Language (Paris: Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, 1993), pp. 147–148.