Art & Language and the Politics of Art Worlds, 1969
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ART & LANGUAGE AND THE POLITICS OF ART WORLDS, 1969-1977 by Robert Bailey BA, University of Pittsburgh, 2005 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2012 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Robert Bailey It was defended on March 13, 2012 and approved by Kirk Savage, Professor, History of Art & Architecture Josh Ellenbogen, Assistant Professor, History of Art & Architecture Giuseppina Mecchia, Associate Professor, French & Italian Languages and Literatures Douglas Fogle, Independent Curator Dissertation Advisor: Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, History of Art & Architecture ii Copyright © by Robert Bailey 2012 iii ART & LANGUAGE AND THE POLITICS OF ART WORLDS, 1969-1977 Robert Bailey, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2012 My dissertation reassesses the role conceptual art played amidst the transition from modern to contemporary art during the second half of the twentieth century by focusing on the movement’s international scope and structure. My inquiry centers on Art & Language, an art collective comprising dozens of conceptual artists, and I emphasize a rarely discussed but absolutely essential aspect of their work together: the collaborations they undertook between the United States, England, Australia, and Yugoslavia that employed travel, exhibitions, publications, correspondence, and communication technologies to forge an unwieldy but productive alliance between likeminded thinkers and practitioners on three continents. I account for the art and writing that emerged from this interconnected web in terms of the innovative artistic and political strategies that Art & Language developed by prioritizing written and spoken language, and I situate their work relative to the realignment of international relations during the period of their association. In so doing, I show how Art & Language conceptualized opposition to the emerging global art world, which was — as it remains — driven primarily by monolithic institutions and official discourses. I argue that Art & Language’s preference for interpersonal contact and intercultural exchange provides tools for articulating a politics of artistic activity adequate to art’s loss of autonomy and its gain of worldliness during the passage from modern to contemporary art. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .................................................................................................................................... VI INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 1 1.0 “A POSSIBLE ART-WORLD” ........................................................................................ 23 2.0 TRANSATLANTIC INDEXING ..................................................................................... 55 3.0 AGAINST PROVINCIALISM ......................................................................................... 88 4.0 FOXES AND HEDGEHOGS ......................................................................................... 131 5.0 KEEP ALL YOUR FRIENDS ........................................................................................ 177 CONCLUSION — “GOING-ON” .......................................................................................... 226 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 232 v PREFACE I could not have written this dissertation without support from a great many people and institutions, and I want to offer sincere thanks to as many of them as possible. My thesis committee — Terry Smith, Kirk Savage, Josh Ellenbogen, Giuseppina Mecchia, and Douglas Fogle — provided valuable feedback on my writing and guided my development as an art historian with exceptional care and generosity. I will draw on the examples they set as scholars for the rest of my life. I owe Terry a special debt for his untiring commitment during more than a decade as my teacher and for never allowing his status as one of the objects of my research compromise his role as its primary supervisor. Considerable thanks are due to the participants in Art & Language past and present for their vital help with my research. Karl Beveridge, Sarah Charlesworth, Carole Condé, Michael Corris, Joseph Kosuth, Nigel Lendon, Mel Ramsden, Terry Smith, Mayo Thompson, and Paul Wood met or corresponded with me or made private archival materials available. Avril, Daniel, and Rebecca Burn showed me generous hospitality during a crucial research visit to Sydney, as did the Smith family: Terry, Tina, Blake, Kier, and Susan. Zoran Popović provided much needed research materials and information pertaining to his collaborations with Art & Language. Unfortunately, I never met or corresponded with Charles Harrison, though my debt to his example is beyond measure and evident throughout the dissertation, nowhere more than where our approaches diverge. vi A number of esteemed colleagues contributed to my scholarly development either as interlocutors, including Vito Acconci, Alexander Alberro, Tony Bond, Luis Camnitzer, Thomas Crow, Okwui Enwezor, Hal Foster, Leanne Gilbertson, Charles Green, Boris Groys, David Joselit, Sandy Kirby, Liza Kirwin, Lucy Lippard, Ian Milliss, Libby Otto, Petre Petrov, John Smith, Ann Stephen, Rod Stoneman, and Reiko Tomii. Several galleries, museums, libraries, and institutions assisted with research, and I want to thank the staffs of each: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; British Library, London; Frick Fine Arts Library, University of Pittsburgh; Hillman Library, University of Pittsburgh; Barco Law Library, University of Pittsburgh; Schaeffer Library, Power Institute, University of Sydney; Lisson Gallery, London; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; castillo/corrales, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris; Trevor Fuller at Place Gallery, Melbourne; and Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto. In addition to a Mellon Fellowship, I benefited from funding provided by the Luce Foundation, The Friends of Frick Fine Arts, the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Wilkinson Travel Fund. My colleagues in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh made graduate student life easier with their collegiality. I thank faculty members Drew Armstrong, Gretchen Bender, Kathleen Christian, Gao Minglu, and Barbara McCloskey as well as my fellow graduate students Cristina Albu, Brianne Cohen, Heidi Cook, Hilary Culbertson, Amy Cymbala, Julia Finch, Isabel Galeria, Jessica Glaser, Jessica Gogan, Gerald vii Hartnett, Nadav Hochman, Karla Huebner, Josie Landback, Katie Martin, Alexandra Oliver, Nicole Pollentier, Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, Don Simpson, Henry Skerritt, and Aaron Tacinelli. Staff members Linda Hicks, Emily Lilly, Natalie Swabb, Veronica Gazdik, and Matt Nauman are much treasured by many, myself included. Other colleagues and friends created a vibrant artistic community in Pittsburgh, including Dan Byers, Jordan Crosby, Michelle Halabura, Elizabeth Hoover, Joel McKim, Rita Mockus, Heather Pesanti, Melissa Ragona, Marilyn Russell, Anastasia Rygle, Eric Shiner, Lucy Stewart, and Matt Wrbican. Cheers to Amanda Phillips Chapman, Schuyler Chapman, Joanna Collins, Chris “Gomez” Gloria, Andrew Hearin, Robin Hoffman, Katherine Kidd, Jonathan Livingston, Javier O’Neil-Ortiz, and Alicia Williamson. Friends in New York defrayed expenses by opening their homes to me during research visits. I thank Mike Byhoff, Jenna Hymes, Mollie Kornreich, Jen Marshall, and Matt Schatz. When I was young, Ann Bromberg, Lauri Dickinson, Gary Johnson, Jane Mahon, and Larry Smith opened my eyes to art, and I am forever in their debt. My parents Bob and Gwyn showed unwavering generosity without which I could not have completed my research, let alone finished writing, and my brother David made his home in Los Angeles — and his car — available to me on numerous occasions, for which I am grateful. Lastly, Maura McAndrew provides constant encouragement and love, and this dissertation is dedicated to our life together. viii INTRODUCTION Not quite a think tank, not quite an art movement, not quite a rock band, and not quite a political party, Art & Language is an internally contested and outwardly perplexing organization that has reconfigured itself countless times during an ongoing history spanning nearly half a century. The collective has not one but many disparate histories, and these overlap, conflict, diverge, and intersect with one another as well as countless other histories of twentieth century art. However, Art & Language work made in England, where the collective has its origins, has received the most attention and focus. Work that the collective did elsewhere is usually ignored or considered derivative of this work. When this happens, the group’s radical heterogeneity is misrepresented as univocal consistency, and a major casualty of this tendency is the section of Art & Language that operated from New York between 1969 and 1977 and pushed the collective’s