ART CITIES:London-Towards Infinity 1965-1980
In 1961, Henry Flynt of the Fluxus group described his performance pieces as “Concept art”, but it was not until the late1960’s that Conceptual Art as a definable movement emerged. Joseph Kosuth’s series “Titled (Art as Idea as Idea)” (1966-67), the proposal for the exhibition “Air Show Air/Conditioning” (1966–7) by the founder members of the group Art & Language, Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin and John Baldessari’s word paintings exhibited in LA in 1968; and important group exhibitions, reflected this growing ideas-based approach to art-making. The term conceptual art was first used to reference this distinct movement in an article written by Sol LeWitt in 1967.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Simon Lee Gallery Archive
In Conceptual the concept behind the work is more important than the finished artwork. It emerged as an art movement in the 1960s and the term usually refers to art made from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. In the exhibition “Towards Infinity: 1965-1980” at Simon Lee Gallery in London, are on presentation works conceived by artists from across the international scope of the Conceptual Art Movement, with focus the period1965-1980. The exhibition takes its title from Giovanni Anselmo’s seminal “Verso l’infinito” (1969,) an iron block on which the symbol of infinity is engraved. The exhibition explores the dematerialisation of the art object and the dismantling of concepts that had bolstered the definition and context of traditional art-making well into the 20th Century. All the works that are on presentation are faithful to the fundamental premise put forward by Anselmo’s work, challenging the constructs of time and space to create an art that is at once forward-looking, in flux and without limits. In 1967, Sol LeWitt published “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (considered by many to be the movement’s manifesto), in which he wrote: “What the work of art looks like isn’t too important. It has to look like something if it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the process of conception and realization with which the artist is concerned”. The notion of placing concept before object, and the value of realization over any aesthetic concerns importantly contradicted the theories and writings of formalist art critics like Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. The 1969 exhibition, “When Attitudes Become Form” at the Kunsthalle Bern, curated by Harald Szeemann and the publication of Lucy Lippard’s book, “Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972” in 1973 indicated a sea change in artists’ approaches to the role of their medium in society. Leaving behind the tabula rasa of Minimal art, across Europe and America a diverse stable of artists developed distinct yet related practices that were critical of the very nature of art and that prioritised process over the completed art object. The 1960s saw the advent of the Italian Arte Povera movement. In His works “Verso l’infinito, Infinito” (1971-73) and ”Cielo Accorciato” (1969-70), Anselmo addresses the limits of representation as put forward by established art practices, aiming to demonstrate the ways in which infinity can be conceived by the viewer, although not materially quantified. The reconciliation of opposites is crucial to the work of Luciano Fabro, whose “Foro da 8 mm. Tautologia” (1967) is concerned with the rationale of perception. Alighiero Boetti’s Boetti’s ballpoint pen picture, “Fame di Vento” (1979) was made by a team of art students, while Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Cane allo Specchio” (1971) directly involves the viewer, who becomes part of the work, reflected in its mirrored surface. In 1967, a collective of British artists formed the group Art & Language while teaching art in Coventry, England, theirwork confronted mainstream art practices, while Romanian artist, André Cadere used his “Barres de bois rond” (1970-178), handmade poles from primary-coloured wooden cylindrical components, to liberate himself from the confines of the gallery space. Daniel Buren’s in situ striped artworks interrogate the relationship between art and the spaces in which it is installed. Stanley Brouwn’s work captures movement and time. From the 1970s, Brouwn obsessively recorded his own footsteps on index cards archived in metal filing cabinets, making impersonal the subjective experience of the journey. Central to many Conceptual artists’ practices was the intersection of linguistic and visual representation. John Baldessari’s “Word Chain: Faucet (Ilene’s story)” (1975) builds a narrative from a fragmentary database of words and images. Mel Bochner’s early practice probes the ways in which we receive and interpret information. In “Forgetting Is The Only Continuum” (1970), the artist questions the essential relationship between an idea and the means of its communication; this body of work marked a critical moment in the history of early conceptual art. Marcel Broodthaers’ “Roule Moule” (1967) sets out the title of the work beneath a panel of varnished mussels, leading the viewer to consider the structural connection between language and image. Also photography played a central role in Conceptual art. In Europe, Hans-Peter Feldmann developed his “Time Series”, in which he took a sequence of consecutive images of a single subject. Displayed as a group, the photographs have little or no narrative, drawing on everyday life as a source of inspiration. In the USA, Vito Acconci merged performance and photography with works including “Lay of the Land” (1969), in which a simple directive to take pictures from five different points on the artist’s body while lying down in Central Park results in a collection of photographs that challenge the camera’s point of view.
Info: Simon Lee Gallery, 26 East 64th Street (Second Floor), New York, Duration: 4/7-7/9/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.simonleegallery.com
