Tag: conceptual art

  • Art&Language

    Art&Language

    Art & Language is a pioneering English conceptual art group founded in 1968, that questioned the critical assumptions of mainstream modern art practice and criticism. The group was founded in Coventry, England by Michael Baldwin, David Bainbridge, Terry Atkinson and Harold Hurrell. The critic and art historian Charles Harrison and the artist Mel Ramsden both became associated with the group, in 1970.

    Their conceptual art privileges the relationship between a work of art and its environment, and a work of art and the observer. Examples are mirrors that have no content and only reflect the environment and/or invite the observer to interact.

    Some works address the issue of art that has no physical object, and resorts to text to describe it.

    Secret Painting 1967-68 is a black square painted within a black square and thus has nothing in it. But with accompanying block of text next to it in a dyptych frame the same size as the painting stating ‘the content of this painting is invisible. The character and dimension of the content are to be kept permanently secret, known only to the artist. ‘ a sort of joke, using text to indicate that the painting is still a work of art.

    https://media.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection_images/3/30.2003.a-b%23%23S.jpg

    In terms of my own work I am not really sure of the relevance – I find the whole discussion somewhat obscure, self-indulgent and pedantic.

    The main points that have some interest for me are that:

    • it is possible to produce a image that is completely opaque as a means of attracting the viewer’s attention to a piece of text.
    • it is possible to produce an image whose main function is to reflect back to the viewer and leave the interpretation completely to them.
  • John Baldessari

    “What motivates me is the elusive quality if trying to get things right....art is the only thing that gets me close to understanding what the universe is all about.”

    John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. Initially a painter, Baldessari began to incorporate texts and photography into his canvases in the mid-1960s. In 1970 he began working in printmaking, film, video, installation, sculpture and photography.

    http://www.baldessari.org

    He often plays with different ways of combining text and image. In his Prima Face series he produced large square diptychs of image and text. In the first ones he just put simple captions that described the colours of the image. The next he put captions that made assumptions about the meaning of peoples’ expressions. The third he put opposing interpretations of expressions for the viewer to choose. The next he put a list of synonyms and so on…

    Some of his best known work is where he puts flat coloured cutout shapes on photographs eg people climbing up buildings. The bits he cuts out are those elements that people are most interested in, thus focusing on things we do not normally notice. One body of work are photographs of civic officials at events where he covers their faces with round coloured shopping stickers to focus on their postures instead of faces.

    He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California.

    Most of his work plays with combinations and collisions between the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language. Found images are often collaged and worked into/over with stickers or flat coloured paper shapes. Much of the work is concerned with the nature of art in a playful manner. Other work is humorously enigmatic, turning things upside-down to make the viewer aware of how they think and show that there are different ways of understanding things.

    He takes things from everywhere, and can’t throw anything away. It can all be used in art. He uses images from movies a lot. He prints a lot of images out, lays them on a big table and groups them. Some of his work is in grids eg on violence. Some is collage.

    Collage takes things from here and there and puts them together. “Collage is when two things don’t go together too easily. If it’s right there’s a kind of tautness there that if you pull them apart any further it’ll snap. If you get them any closer it’ll be just flabby. But if you can get it just right it’s terrific.”

    He is interested in signifiers eg clouds are ephemeral, they change shape and we see things in them.

    The important thing is to hold the audience’s attention eg image of table and shark. Things must be dissimilar enough to be intriguing.

    Some of his recent work uses vibrant colour and takes a more low relief 3D approach to collage.

    A short but detailed overview on Baldessari’s art done by Baldessari himself with Tom Waites.
    Baldessari explains his approach to appropriation – no one can own images any more than they can own words. Images are there to be used.
    In depth discussion of different aspects of his work.
  • Bob & Roberta Smith

    Bob and Roberta Smith is the pseudonym of the artist Patrick Brill. Born in London, he studied at the University of Reading from (1981-1985) and Goldsmiths College (1991).

    He trained as a sign painter in New York and uses text as an art form, creating colourful slogans on banners and placards that challenge elitism and advocate the importance of creativity in politics and education.

    His best known works are Make Art Not War (1997) and Letter to Michael Gove (2011), a letter to the UK Secretary of State for Education reprimanding him for the “destruction of Britain’s ability to draw, design and sing”.

  • Lawrence Weiner

    Lawrence Charles Weiner (February 10, 1942 – December 2, 2021) was an American conceptual artist. He was one of the central figures in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s. His work often took the form of typographic texts, a form of word art.

    https://youtu.be/eCpXvfbStBM

    http://www.artnet.com/artists/lawrence-weiner/

    https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/lawrence-weiner

    https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lawrence-weiner-7743

    https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/lawrence-weiner