Publisher's Synopsis
A chronological illustrated analysis of fifty-eight years of work by the collective Art & Language
Art & Language is an artists' collective that was founded in 1965 by a group of British and American artists. The name Art & Language is derived from the journal Art-Language (first published in Coventry in May 1969), which originated in the work of Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin (from 1966) in association with Harold Hurrell and David Bainbridge, who were its original editors. Art & Language was used subsequently to identify the joint and several artistic works of these four to reflect the conversational basis of their activity which, by late 1969, included contributions from New York by Joseph Kosuth, Ian Burn, and Mel Ramsden.
Art & Language is not only focused on creating artworks but also develops its art theory and is of crucial importance in the understanding and theoretical underpinning of conceptual art in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1976 the genealogical thread of this artistic work had been taken into the hands of Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, with whom it remains.
