ART & LANGUAGE

3rd September- 4th November 2004

Since 3 September CAC Málaga is presenting the exhibition Art & Language, a journey through the work of this artists' collective who have occupied an essential place in contemporary creation since mid-1960s. It brings together a total of 22 pieces which offer a fresh reading of the whole of their work from the origins to the most recent manifestations, the ones we have focused on here. The exhibition has been sponsored by Monarch Scheduled.

The name Art & Language was first used in 1968 to describe the collaborative work of a group of artists: Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin and Harold Hurrell. In May 1969 they started publishing a magazine titled Art-Language and subtitled Journal of Conceptual Art, the first one in naming and analysing the Conceptual Art. They were later joined by Mel Ramsen, Joseph Kosuth and Charles Harrison, among others, and by the mid-1970s the group totalled around 30. From 1976 it consisted solely of the artists Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, in addition to the art historian Charles Harrison.

Art & Language played a fundamental role in the birth of Conceptual Art, a tendency which used different forms to propose a new concept of the work of art: giving pride of place to the idea over its plastic expression, i.e., over the art object. Since its inception the group has represented the more analytical side of Conceptualism, indebted to Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy and Marxist sociology and greatly influenced by the social and political atmosphere of the time. This cooperative project allowed its members to carry out an investigation into social, philosophical and psychological stereotypes about art and the artist and to question, through their collective viewpoint, the mythified, individualistic conception that had reigned until then. Art & Language openly proclaimed the need to find "instruments to rediscover and preserve the dialectical character of modernism".

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