Art & Language Uncompleted
The Philippe Méaille Collection
19 September 2014–12 April 2015
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
Plaça dels Àngels, 1
08001 Barcelona
Spain
Hours: Monday–Friday 11am–7:30pm (closed on Tuesdays), Saturday 10am–9pm, Sunday and public holidays 10am–3pm
Daily guided tours(included in the admission fee)
Curated by Carles Guerra
Art & Language’s name is closely associated with the Conceptual Art which emerged toward the end of the 1960s. One of its priorities was to subject the system of modern art to a detailed criticism of its beliefs and premises. This collective’s identity, however, goes well beyond any assigned style. From the very beginning, Art & Language based its practice around an ideological community. The first issue of the magazine Art-Language was published in 1969 and soon became the platform for one of the most intense theoretical productions of the second half of the 20th century. Far from signing up to a particular theory, its programme unfurled a multi-theoretical field. Its conversational, discursive and essayistic character is maintained today with the collaboration of Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden. Art & Language also collaborate occasionally with The Jackson Pollock Bar, with whom it produces theory installations, and with Mayo Thompson, who since the mid-’60s has put the music to the texts with which Art & Language attack the cultural policies of contemporary art.
The Philippe Méaille Collection of Art & Language works has been on long-term loan at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art since 2010. After four years’ investment in the restoration, study, documentation and cataloguing of its materials, the exhibition includes a wide variety of artistic objects. Among them are handwritten and typewritten documents, notes, microfilms, drafts and publications that force one to reconsider the marginal role played by writing in the practice of modern art. The heterogeneity of the materials here, which also include the paintings produced since the end of the ’60s as well as other typologies of artistic production, lays out an extensive chronological path. Despite the fact that any collection is incomplete, and that Art & Language resist conclusive characterisation, The Philippe Méaille Collection provides a thorough description of the intellectual web which these artists wove.
Publications
Art & Language Uncompleted. The Philippe Méaille Collection
Essays by Art & Language, Carles Guerra, Matthew Jesse Jackson, Bartomeu Marí and Philippe Méaille. Barcelona: MACBA, 2014. English/Spanish edition.
Landscape with St George Delivered at Night
A conversation between Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden, Philippe Méaille and Carles Guerra. ‘Quaderns portàtils,’ no. 31. Barcelona: MACBA, 2014. English edition.
Exhibition organised by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and co-produced with the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Sponsored by Fundación AXA.
