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Art & Language and the Institutional Form 79debates it ceased to exhibit a paradigmatically institutional character, whileshrinking in numbers and acquiring a more directed, extrinsic purpose.In a culture that primarily values acts of individual creation, it isunderstandable that histories of collectives would be tumultuous. Lookingat the Wrst eight years of Art & Language’s institutional life, what is perhapsmost remarkable are the levels of strife that existed inside the groupover demands for internal reform, arguments about orthodoxy, or (not infrequently)seemingly trivial matters. Mayo Thompson, a musician associatedwith the group from the early 1970s through the 1980s, remarked thatwhereas in most groups internal conXict is the exception, in Art & Language“conXict was a norm of conversation.” 5 Others inside the group, likeThompson, were bafXed by its members’ tendency to take issue with anythingand everything, speculating that Art & Language’s internal discordwas a positive form of working out contradictions that were latent withinthe larger culture. 6One could speculate that Art & Language’s internal strife was aneffect of two givens: (1) the group’s producing work under the aegis of corporateauthorship and (2) its not having a presiding individual (a GeorgeMaciunus, Andy Warhol, or Mark Boyle) empowered to resolve conXict.Yet it follows from the group’s institutional character, as outlined above—inparticular Art & Language’s uniquely self-reXexive instantiation of the artists’group idea—that concerns with internal issues of organization cannot havebeen anything but integral to the group’s functioning. By the same token,the tendency to decry or dismiss such internal struggles for legitimacy involvesa signiWcant misunderstanding: if Art & Language’s central purpose was toestablish and maintain its own orthodoxy as an institution, then the strifethat “plagued” it almost from the beginning in fact instantiates the iterativeact by which it attempted to constitute itself as a group apart from administeredculture. In a similar manner, the need for Art & Language to establishits correctness over the work of other conceptual artists, and in relation tocritics and historians who take it as an object—which has led to a vast bodyof critical responses to almost every attempt to locate Art & Language withinhistory—is not mere prickliness. Instead, it must be related to the group’ssearch for an autonomous legitimacy, a legitimacy that is not to be conferredfrom without. Was Art & Language then an institution without a causeother than the ongoing, if limited aim of setting its house in order? Perhapsa more accurate way of wording this is to say that the group’s key purpose,however “solipsistic,” was to assert its own institutional character as an ongoingresistance to a larger sociality within which it would otherwise be,and was to a large extent, inscribed.
80 Chris GilbertBEGINNINGS IN BRITAINWhat does the history of an artist collective look like in a postwar perioddominated by vexed issues of organization? The volatility of a given artists’group depended on its ability to resolve organizational problems that emerge,if for no other reason, because of the group’s oppositional self-organization.In this regard, we may suppose that George Maciunas may have arbitrateddisputes in Fluxus, while the members of Art Workers Coalition, for whomparticipation in the group was distinct from their work as artists, had at leasta degree of separation from their collective decisions. For Art & Language,however, too much was at stake for easy mediation, since their collectivitywas so integral to their artistic identities that the group’s production was virtuallyequivalent at moments to the maintenance and reproduction of theorganization. Even in Art & Language’s beginnings in the late 1960s, issuesof organization, concerning both the group’s informal sociality and its moreformal constitution, colored most of its activities.These activities emerged from a common rejection of the formsof sociality and learning extant in the educational and market institutionsaround them. The initial Art & Language core group included Terry Atkinsonand Michael Baldwin, teacher and student respectively at Coventry Collegeof Art, as well as David Bainbridge, who taught at Birmingham College ofArt, and Harold Hurrell, then teaching at Kingston-upon-Hull College ofArt. 7 Their embattled trajectory through an antiquated British art school systemin the period 1969 to 1971 is well documented in their own writing andalso fed later, more formal research by David Rushton and Paul Wood. 8 Ina large measure what these young students and teachers opposed was a hegemonicmodernist discourse that placed American artistic production at thecenter and that of Great Britain (and especially provincial Great Britain) atthe periphery. A second placement they were resisting was the reframing ofBritish art instruction as part of a liberal curriculum that followed from thereforms of the Coldstream Committee in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Thelatter reforms, in line with the principles of American modernism, attemptedto sever the teaching of Wne art from craft vocations (with emphasis goingto art’s pure or “high” character) while in the same gesture further deepeningthe system’s long-standing and unreformed division between studio practiceand theory. 9Tellingly, though some participants in Art & Language producedmore traditional objects in this period, the group’s principal work, and certainlyits principal collective work at the time, took the form of a sustainedattempt to resist and reshape an institutional context. Their two most signiWcantareas of activity were Atkinson and Baldwin’s teaching of a course
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Art & Language and the Institutional Form 79
debates it ceased to exhibit a paradigmatically institutional character, while
shrinking in numbers and acquiring a more directed, extrinsic purpose.
In a culture that primarily values acts of individual creation, it is
understandable that histories of collectives would be tumultuous. Looking
at the Wrst eight years of Art & Language’s institutional life, what is perhaps
most remarkable are the levels of strife that existed inside the group
over demands for internal reform, arguments about orthodoxy, or (not infrequently)
seemingly trivial matters. Mayo Thompson, a musician associated
with the group from the early 1970s through the 1980s, remarked that
whereas in most groups internal conXict is the exception, in Art & Language
“conXict was a norm of conversation.” 5 Others inside the group, like
Thompson, were bafXed by its members’ tendency to take issue with anything
and everything, speculating that Art & Language’s internal discord
was a positive form of working out contradictions that were latent within
the larger culture. 6
One could speculate that Art & Language’s internal strife was an
effect of two givens: (1) the group’s producing work under the aegis of corporate
authorship and (2) its not having a presiding individual (a George
Maciunus, Andy Warhol, or Mark Boyle) empowered to resolve conXict.
Yet it follows from the group’s institutional character, as outlined above—in
particular Art & Language’s uniquely self-reXexive instantiation of the artists’
group idea—that concerns with internal issues of organization cannot have
been anything but integral to the group’s functioning. By the same token,
the tendency to decry or dismiss such internal struggles for legitimacy involves
a signiWcant misunderstanding: if Art & Language’s central purpose was to
establish and maintain its own orthodoxy as an institution, then the strife
that “plagued” it almost from the beginning in fact instantiates the iterative
act by which it attempted to constitute itself as a group apart from administered
culture. In a similar manner, the need for Art & Language to establish
its correctness over the work of other conceptual artists, and in relation to
critics and historians who take it as an object—which has led to a vast body
of critical responses to almost every attempt to locate Art & Language within
history—is not mere prickliness. Instead, it must be related to the group’s
search for an autonomous legitimacy, a legitimacy that is not to be conferred
from without. Was Art & Language then an institution without a cause
other than the ongoing, if limited aim of setting its house in order? Perhaps
a more accurate way of wording this is to say that the group’s key purpose,
however “solipsistic,” was to assert its own institutional character as an ongoing
resistance to a larger sociality within which it would otherwise be,
and was to a large extent, inscribed.
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