From visual to textual: typography in/as

conceptual art
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Ruth Blacksell

From Looking to Reading:

Text-Based Conceptual Art and Typographic Discourse

I begin this discussion with a quote from Peter Osborne’s book

on Conceptual Art, where he notes how:
At its best, “Conceptual Art was never quite sure where
the work was:” because it was never just in one place,
or even one kind of place… Making this apparent, in
opposition to the monistic materialism of Greenberg’s
late modernist criticism, was the most critically
productive use of written language in the art of the
1960s…However, this does not mean that the visual
dimension of linguistic inscription is irrelevant, even
when it is the function of such inscription to negate the
intrinsic significance of visual form. On the contrary,
it is precisely its “unmarked” or neutral visual quality
that performs the negation. In… many [artworks] of the
period, this was achieved via design decisions associa-
ted with “publishing,” rather than with “art.”1
This quote is useful, not only because it introduces the emergence of text-based art
works within this art historical period and situates them against the shifting criti-
cal discourse surrounding art at that time, but also because of the way in which it
draws particular attention to typographic language and the activity of publishing
as key factors in the ability of these works to, as Osborne puts it, “negate the intrin-
sic significance of visual form.”
Retrospective critical accounts of Conceptual Art are numerous and include
comprehensive discussion of the motivations behind the adoption of published
typographic formats as a means of producing and disseminating art. However,
what has surprised me in my own consideration of the works is how these accounts
are often supported by poor quality or misleading reproductions, or a failure to
cross-reference examples to each other. What this becomes then is a general failure
to adequately demonstrate the precise nature and evolution of these works, either
by failing to provide a full picture of their operation within this activity of publish-
ing or through not giving a clear impression of the various different typographic

1 Osborne refers here to Terry Atkinson’s 1968 Conceptual Art, London: Phaidon Press Ltd.,
article, “Concerning the Article: ‘The 2002, 31–32.
Dematerialisation of Art.’” Peter Osborne,

Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis 113

 1 Front cover details of two identical booklets included in Aspen, 5+6, Fall & Winter (1967–68).
(left) Dan Graham, “Poem, March 1966.”
(right) Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author.”

configurations they employed, which would allow them to be understood collec-

tively. Indeed, without these things, it can be hard to fathom exactly how these
works can be understood as pieces of Conceptual Art and to appreciate the impor-
tance of their published typographic form to the achievement of this status.
As such, this discussion aims to present some key text-based artworks from this
period and to describe more precisely how they operated typographically within
the activity of publishing. This will not only add something to the art historical
account of the works but will also serve to demonstrate their relevance to specific
areas within typographic discourse, which are difficult to resolve within strict dis-
ciplinary boundaries.

The Shift to Text in/as Art

As noted by Osborne, these text-based works are situated against the backdrop of a
very particular art historical period, which began in the mid-1960s and ended in
the mid-1970s. Indeed, what is important in considering the works is that this
period is generally characterized by a shift from the notion of art as an object to-
ward the notion of art as an idea and, in particular, how this manifested itself in
experiments with the ways in which the idea could be implemented conceptually
through language rather than perceptually through vision.
2 Robert Smithson, “Language to be Looked At small separate volumes between 1759 and 1767;
and/or Things to be Read,” press release written Un Coup de Dés Jamais n’Abolira le Hazard [A Roll
for the first of four “Language” shows at of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance], was first
Dwan Gallery in New York between 1967 and published as a 20-page poem in 1897.
1970 (1967); Atkinson, “Concerning the 5 See Barthes’s essay, “The Death of the Author”
Article: ‘The Dematerialisation of Art’” (1968). (1967) and his distinction in S/Z between the
3 Peter Osborne, “Conceptual Art and/as “Readerly text,” which is transitive, acting purely
Philosophy,” in Rewriting Conceptual Art, ed. as a conveyor of meaning, and the “Writerly
John Bird and Michael Newman (London: text,” which is intransitive, aiming not to take
Reaktion Books Ltd., 1999). the reader beyond but to draw attention to the
4 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, activity of writing itself (1973).
Gentleman was originally published in nine

114 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

 The shift from object to idea is of course, as Osborne also states, connected to the
collapse of Clement Greenberg’s notion of medium-specific modernism and the
emergence of a new art critical position, which moved away from the idea of the
passive spectator looking at a pre-existing artwork toward the idea of an active spec-
tator engaged somehow in the physical and/or conceptual creation of the work. So,
in the case of these text works, what was presented – via typography and the publi-
cation of printed matter – was a context in which the spectator could conceivably
encounter the artwork through the active process of reading rather than through
any particular form of visual contemplation. In fact, this shift was specifically arti-
culated by the artist Robert Smithson in his 1967 press release, “Language to be
Looked At and/or Things to be Read” and by Terry Atkinson in his 1968 essay,
“Concerning the Article: ‘The Dematerialization of Art.’”2
It is also relevant that what is described as “the turn to language” in the art of
this period connects these text works to the philosophical shift through structural-
ism and semiotics, as described in Osborne’s essay, “Conceptual Art and/as
Philosophy.”3 And it is interesting that accounts of this shift refer to much earlier
text-based experiments in literature and poetry including, for instance, Laurence
Sterne’s novel “Tristram Shandy”, which was published in the mid-18th century
and Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem “A Roll of the Dice”, which was published in the
late 19th century, as well as French experimental writings of the 1950s from those
like Michel Butor and Alain Robbe-Grillet, and the work of post-War American
poets like Jackson MacLow and John Ashbery.4
Indeed, what these earlier experiments demonstrate, alongside the style of
their writing, is the use of specific textual arrangements and page layout to disrupt
what has subsequently been described as a “readerly” immersion in the text. This is
an idea that, by the late 1960s, had been articulated through the theoretical writ-
ings of Roland Barthes through, for example, his depictions of “the death of the
author” and the “writerly text.”5
So, in relation to the turn to language and text in the art of this period, it is
worth noting that “The Death of the Author” was first published in 1967 in a
printed booklet within the art magazine “Aspen” alongside another identical book-
let that contained an important typographic work by the artist Dan Graham:
“Poem, March 1966” (Fig. 1). As with Barthes’s essay, this work by Graham is dis-
cussed in relation to a conceptual shift away from the idea of artistic authorship
and the autonomous work through the way in which it is typographically con-
structed, not by the artist but via an editor’s response to questions about a docu-
ment’s editorial and design specification (Fig. 2).
What is therefore essential with regard to these text-based Conceptual art-
works is to see how they, in fact, emerged out of the intersecting of a number of
historical and theoretical factors. These include the aforementioned philosophical

Ruth Blacksell 115

 2 Dan Graham, “Poem, March 1966” as reproduced on consecutive pages
of a booklet in Aspen, 5+6, Fall & Winter (1967–68).
(left) The piece begins with a set of questions (entitled “Schema”) about
the editorial and design specification of the poem’s host publication
and an instruction from Graham that the list of questions is to be “set
in its final form by the editor of the publication where it is to appear.”
Graham also states that this activity should happen in various magazines
to create a series, or “set,” of “individual poems.”
(right) The final “Poem” (the answers to the questions posed by the
Schema) thus appears as a unique text-piece each time it is reproduced,
being specifically derived from the individual editorial and design
specification of its host publication.

territory and the obvious art historical lineage back to the nomination and staging
of Duchamp’s Readymades, but also incorporate other contextual features surroun-
ding the visual arts at that time, such as the breakdown of the critical discourse of
medium-specific modernism and links to experimental poetry and literature. What

6 Dan Graham and Nicolás Guagnini, “A Conver- exposes like David Riesman’s ‘The Lonely Crowd.’
sation Between Dan Graham and Nicolás They used photographers in the school of
Guagnini: New York, New York, 14 May 2006,” Walker Evans … [and] were showing vernacular
in Dan Graham: Beyond, ed. Bennett Simpson workers’ housing, suburban housing … I wanted
and Chrissie Iles (Los Angeles and Massachusetts: to show that Minimal was related to a real
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los social situation that could be documented.” (Dan
Angeles and The MIT Press, 2009), 278. Graham Graham interviewed by Mike Metz in Two Way
had earlier described how he wanted to Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham
connect the serial logic of Minimalism with on his Art, ed., Alexander Alberro (Massachusetts
this new type of sociological journalism: and London: The MIT Press, 1999 [1994]), 185.
“Esquire magazine was publishing sociological

116 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

 3 Dan Graham, “Homes for America,” original paste
up for Arts Magazine (1966).

is more, this also extends to the particular social and economic climate at that time
in the 1960s, which had provided new possibilities for the positioning of art within
published contexts, ranging from short-run office-printed documents to mass-
circulation illustrated magazines.
Indeed, what these new publishing contexts specifically helped to create was a
different kind of location for art, as well as a different kind of audience – one that
would be receptive (whether knowingly or not) to the positioning of works within
these kinds of printed matter. As Dan Graham put it:
I didn’t go to art school or college, but I read a lot of
magazines like “Esquire”… Not to be academic about it
but I think the mid-60s was magazine culture. I really
liked “Esquire”, which had writing and also photographs
by famous photographers, often about the suburbs.6

The Published Text as Conceptual Artwork

Within their own niche, examples of text-based Conceptual Art appropriate a di-
verse array of typographic and publishing genres. However, rather than attempting

Ruth Blacksell 117

 4 Dan Graham, “Homes for America,”
text and image details

to present a survey of “types,” my intention is to consider how it was the act of posi-
tioning these works within this context of publishing that specifically allowed
them to undermine traditional ideas of form, authorship, and the “Institution,”
which had dominated pre-1960s art.
The works I present here are therefore not those involving one-off painted or
stenciled texts, as for example produced by artists like On Kawara or Ed Ruscha,
which are in some ways easier to describe and exhibit through conventional author/
object-based criteria. Instead, I specifically focus on those works that were typeset
and distributed through the channel of mainstream, print-based, publishing and,
as such, can be identified as much with the activity of publishing as with their par-
ticular material form as printed matter.
Take, for example, the work “Homes for America” by Dan Graham (Fig. 3),
which is held up as one of the seminal pieces of text-based Conceptual Art: The

118 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

 5 Dan Graham, “Homes for America” as reproduced in Arts Magazine, vol. 41, no. 3,
(December 1966 – January 1967)

Ruth Blacksell 119

6 Dan Graham, “Homes for America,” revised
version of article layout as reproduced in
Dan Graham, a booklet produced by Lisson
Publications: London and Koenig Publishing:
Cologne & New York (1972)

7 Dan Graham, “Homes for America,” revised version of

article layout as reproduced in For Publication, Otis
Art Institute of Los Angeles County (1975). Reprinted
in 1991, by Marian Goodman Gallery: New York

120 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

usual account of this work is that it began as a proposal for an illustrated magazine
article, with the content and arrangement of the text and images referring back to
the serial logic of Minimalist Art via a descriptive, reportage-style account of subur-
ban tract housing in a New Jersey suburb (Fig. 4). In fact, from its outset, Graham
had in mind an intention to place this work within a mainstream published con-
text through his production of a pasted-up page layout intended for submission to
a magazine editor.
As the story goes, Graham was initially thinking of a mass-circulation maga-
zine like “Esquire” but, possibly because his friend Robert Smithson was a contri-
buting editor at “Arts Magazine”, he prepared and presented it instead to that publi-
cation.7 And it was at this point – the point at which it was accepted by “Arts
Magazine” – that the work made its shift from a static (conventionally object-like)
paste-up (Fig. 3) into the active context of publishing, whereby the editors changed
the layout to follow the magazine’s house style and replaced some of Graham’s
photographs with alternative imagery (Fig. 5).
So the operation of this work as a piece of Conceptual Art lies in this shift
away from the autonomous art object; away from the hand of the author; away
from the Institution; and into the work existing within the activity of mainstream
publishing via its editorial alteration and reproduction – and, importantly,
through its subsequent re-formulation in later published versions (Fig. 6, 7).
As I have said though, it can be hard to get your head around this properly
when faced with the available reproductions of “Homes for America,” which fail to
give the full picture of this evolution since they usually depict just one of these
versions of the work. What is more, whichever the version depicted, the individual
reproductions all appear captioned with the same overall title – “Homes for
America” – without sufficient visual explanation of their individual position as
one of the various stages in this potentially on-going progression.
So despite the undisputed quality of the critical accounts of the piece – by
Graham himself, but also by Jeff Wall, David Campany, Thomas Crow, Benjamin
Buchloh, and others – the importance of actually seeing this progression proved to
be key to my full understanding of the operation of this work.8 And, for me, this
seeing could only be accomplished through a process of gathering and then com-
paring every different reproduction I came across (Fig. 8).
7 Various sources record the involvement of Art’” (1985); Jeff Wall’s essay “Dan Graham’s
artists at that time with the editorship and design Kammerspiel” (1985); Thomas Crow’s Modern
of both arts and mainstream magazines: Art in the Common Culture (1996); David
See for example James Meyer, “The Mirror Campany’s “Conceptual Art History or a Home
of Fashion: Dale McConathy and the Neo- for ‘Homes for America’“ (1999); and Benjamin
Avant Garde,” in Artforum, vol. XXXIX , no. 9 Buchloh’s “Moments of History in the Work of
(2001): 134–38. Dan Graham” (1978).
8 See, for example, Graham’s essay “My Works
for Magazine Pages: ‘A History of Conceptual

Ruth Blacksell 121

 (a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

122 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

 (e)

(f)
8
(a) 1966 “Homes for America” began with Graham’s Kodak Instamatic photographs of New Jersey
suburban houses and diners, which he started in the early 1960s and, in 1966, projected as slides
in the exhibition “Projected Art” at the Finch College Museum of Art in New York.
(b) 1966 However, in 1966, Graham also wrote and produced his pasted-up page layout for the piece
as an illustrated magazine article, which included some of the original photographs alongside a
written account of the particular style of the suburban tract housing in this suburb. He submitted
this to Arts Magazine.
(c) 1966–1967 Arts Magazine ran the piece in the “Critique” section of their December 1966–January
1967 issue, although they altered the page layout so that the article would run on from the previous
article and into the next. The editor also dropped most of Graham’s photographs and substituted
instead a photograph by the established photographer Walker Evans whose images were popular in
sociological journalism at that time.
(d) 1970 And then, in 1970, Graham produced another paste-up of “Homes for America”, which,
although re-presented as a double page spread, differs again in format from both his original paste-
up and the Arts Magazine version and returns to the inclusion of Graham’s original photographs.
This version also often appears alongside critical accounts of “Homes for America” and, like the
Arts Magazine version, is accepted and referred to as the work.
(e) 1972 In 1972, a booklet was produced by Lisson Gallery in London (who represent Graham) and
Koenig publishing – and here again a new layout for the piece was published, again returning
to Graham’s original photographs rather than the ones used by Arts Magazine.
(f) 1975 And, in 1975, a booklet entitled For Publication, was produced by the Otis Art Institute in
Los Angeles – with yet another published layout and set of images for the piece.

Ruth Blacksell 123

9 Vito Acconci, “Act 3, Scene 4”, in 0 to 9, no. 5 (1969)
For this work, Acconci broke his text into 350 single lines, which are then separated
across each of the 350 individual copies of this issue of the magazine. As a result,
the work exists only as a fragment in each copy and, without looking at each, the
reader/spectator can only imagine the whole piece.

Indeed, when placed together, what these different reproductions demonstrate is a

much clearer account of the precise evolution of “Homes for America”: from its
initial conception as a set of photographic images; to the integration of these
images and an associated text in a page-layout; to the insertion of this layout into
the context of mainstream publishing (which introduced the first editorial altera-
tion of the piece); and on to a series of further revised layouts, either though revisi-
ons to the paste-up by the artist himself, or through subsequently reformatted ver-
sions in further publications of the piece. And, importantly, what a clear
understanding of this evolution demonstrates is how the work “Homes for Ame-
rica” can in fact be understood equally as any single one of these instances, or as all
of them collectively as a number of constituent parts of an open-ended work.

124 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

 10 Vito Acconci, “ON ”, word cloning in 0 to 9, no. 3, (1968).
Acconci’s texts in 0 to 9 are often non-linear in their arrangement on the page
and intentionally disruptive to the linear reading of other surrounding texts: In this
work, for example, his text appears across a number of pages, inserted between the
texts of other contributors, and is created by cloning individual words from the pieces
that immediately precede and follow it and arranging them in a scattered single-
column. This establishes a relationship (or transaction) between the texts on either
side which is described by Liz Kotz as a “word-transfer” or a “writing-through-project”
(2007) or by Acconci himself as a “transference installation” (1969).

The Typographic Layout as Conceptual Artwork

I have noted how accounts of “Homes or America” often refer to the ways in which
the content and layout of the article’s text and imagery connect back to the serial
logic of Minimalist Art. These highlight Graham’s focus on the pre-fabricated mo-
dular units of tract housing developments and his echoing of this arranged modu-
larity through the typographic groupings and picture placements within the ar-
ticle (Fig. 4). In this sense, “Homes for America” can be considered alongside the
text works of other artists like Carl Andre and Vito Acconci, who were engaged
with similar interrogations of typographic layout during this period of the 1960s.
In fact, in much the same vein, these artists applied classic Minimalist strategies,
such as interruption, accumulation, fragmentation, and repetition to reduce and
isolate texts into independent units.

Ruth Blacksell 125

 11 Lawrence Weiner,
“Statements,” as
published in his book
Statements (1968),
front cover and inside
page
12 Joseph Kosuth,
“Proto-Investigation:
‘One and Three
Saws’” (1965)

The typographic arrangements of Andre demonstrate, for example, the potential for
words to operate as a form of sculptural unit in the manner of the units (e. g., bricks,
blocks, bales, and tiles) that he employed for his more conventional Minimalist
sculptural works: 9
greengreengreengreengreengreengreengreengreengreen
greengreengreengreengreengreengreengreengreengreen
greengreengreengreengreengreengreen

arc
bath
bench
chrome
brine
bulb
cog

9 The first example here is an excerpt from 11 Carl Andre, transcribed interview from 1975,
Andre’s poem “Green” (1960) and the second cited in Meyer, Cuts, 214.
is an excerpt from Andre’s poem “Essay on 12 Robert Smithson, “A Museum of Language in
Photography for Hollis Frampton” (1963/4). the Vicinity of Art,” in Robert Smithson:
10 James Meyer, “Carl Andre: Writer” in Cuts: The Collected Writings, ed., Jack Flam (Berkley:
Texts 1959–2004, Carl Andre, ed. James University of California Press, 1996 [1968])
Meyer (Massachusetts and London: The MIT 80, 84.
Press, 2005), 12. Meyer also cites Craig 13 Ibid.
Owens’s discussion of this in his 1979 essay
“Earthwords.”

126 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

Indeed, for Andre, these arrangements of basic word-units act as an extension to
his particular interrogation of the relationship between “the part (the ‘cut’)” and
the overall sculptural unit.10 He acknowledged the link between his sculpture and
these text works as follows:
My interest in elements or particles in sculpture is paral-
leled by my interest in words as particles of language…
[I] write poetry in which the sentence is not the dominant
form but the word is the dominant form.11
Robert Smithson describes this feature of Andre’s text works in his 1968 article, “A
Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art,” stating how “Each poem is a ‘grave,’
so to speak, for his metaphors. Semantics are driven out of his language in order to
avoid meaning…. [H]is ‘poems’ and ‘sculpture’ have no mental or secondary qua-
lities; they are to him solidly ‘material.’”12 However, in a further elaboration, Smith-
son articulates his own interest beyond what he calls “the physical properties of
both language and material,” and he states “they are both physical entities, but
they have different properties, and within these properties you have these men-
tal experiences, and it’s not simply empirical facts.”13
So, whereas Minimalist Art had by this time come to be seen as outdated and
confined by its focus on the object, for Smithson, the important point about these
text works was that, while initially focusing on the word as a material unit, they
also demonstrated a shift into a more specifically language-centered interrogation.
Thus, as constructions of text, they had the subsequent potential to expand away en-
tirely from the confines of the object. In other words, although at first glance text-
works like Andre’s might appear to connect to concrete poetry (where text would
be arranged semi-pictorially to evoke the poem’s subject), what differentiates them

Ruth Blacksell 127

 13 Joseph Kosuth, “The Tenth
Investigation (Art as Idea as
Idea): ‘The Information
Room’” (1970). Installation
realised in various loca-
tions, including galleries and
libraries: Installed here at
Sprüth Magers Munich in
2005

is precisely the ways in which they echoed the shifting theoretical paradigms of
visual art at that time by moving the object into a solely language-based context.
This shift is demonstrated well by the text-works of Acconci.14 Indeed, these
specifically illustrate this evolution of the text from something material and static
(which could still, to some extent, be passively looked at like an object) toward so-
mething much more shifting and dynamic, demanding a more conceptually orien-
tated activity of reading from the spectator. As Acconci himself put it:
A poem was already too much like a painting (most poems
could be seen at a glance, on a single page). We wanted to
move, from number to number, from word to word, from
line to line, from page to page.15
What Acconci’s works particularly engaged with then was the interplay between
reading and navigating around the self-enclosed pages of a document. As such, his
text works were often situated across different copies or across several pages of the
magazine (Fig. 9, 10) and/or were dependent upon their relationship to the adjacent
texts of other contributors (Fig. 10). Accounts of the operations of Acconci’s text
works, including his own 1972 essay “Early Work: Movement Over a Page,” often
therefore center around notions of temporality because of their disconnection
from the perceived traditional or linear temporal mode and their move toward
something more contingent and shifting.

14 Many of which were published in the magazine 16 Vito Acconci, “Early Work: Movement Over
0 to 9, which Acconci produced with the a Page,” in Avalanche, 6 (1972), 4–5.
poet Bernadette Meyer between 1967 and 1969. 17 Osborne, Conceptual Art, 31.
See Gwen Allen, Artists’ Magazines: An Alter- 18 Lawrence Weiner and Benjamin Buchloh in
native Space for Art (Massachusetts and London: conversation, in Lawrence Weiner, ed.,
The MIT Press, 2011). Alexander Alberro, Alice Zimmerman,
15 Vito Acconci, “10 (A Late Introduction to 0 to 9”, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh and David Batchelor
in 0 to 9 The Complete Magazine: 1967–1969, (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1998), 20.
ed., Vito Acconci and Bernadette Meyer (New 19 Liz Kotz, Words to be Looked At: Language
York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006), 8. in 1960s Art (Massachusetts and London:
The MIT Press, 2007), 51.

128 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

And what these texts also introduced was a much more conceptually focused rela-
tionship between the work and the reader, which was increasingly achieved
through a connection between the words on the page and the space in which the
document was read. As Acconci himself described, he used the page as the begin-
ning, or boundary, of an event that eventually left the page and occurred in some
outside space.16

Text as Readymade

In many ways, the “Statement” texts of the artist, Lawrence Weiner (Fig. 11) estab-
lish a similar kind of conceptual text/reader relationship to the works by Acconci.
Indeed, although Weiner, like Andre, was interested in the idea of language as a
kind of sculptural material, his texts operate much more in the manner of Acconci’s,
gaining their sculptural qualities through the translation of material content into
the mind of the “spectator” via the act of reading, rather than from looking at any
particular form on a page. As Osborne puts it:
The “pieces” that Weiner states… are linguistically
determinate. There is no question of their having existence
as “idea” until they are formulated as statements; and no
question of them being “pieces” until these formulations
are actualized in some system of communication, in this
case writing.17
In fact, although many of Weiner’s Statements appear as handpainted or stenciled
lettering on walls, when considering the operation of these works against the no-
tion of texts to be read rather than looked at, one should primarily consider the ex-
amples he positioned as typeset texts in published documents and, in particular,
examples that were presented in a purposefully utilitarian style:
Take [the book] STATEMENTS: There is a design factor
to make it look like a $1.95 book that you would buy.
The type-face and the decision to use a typewriter and
everything else was a design choice.18
Thus, as with Graham’s “Homes for America,” it is the specifically neutral appea-
rance of these published Statements that helps these examples to shift away from
notions of authorship and objecthood. And their particularly utilitarian typogra-
phic style also serves to connect them back to earlier examples of typewritten text
works, such as John Cage’s score for the work “4'33"”, which as Liz Kotz discusses,
had similarly rejected the fetishization of the handdrawn mark and moved toward
“vernacular signs so repeat-able and translatable that no original appears to exist.”19
These examples by Weiner become useful then, alongside those of Graham, in de-
monstrating the retrospective art historical connection that has been drawn be-

Ruth Blacksell 129

 14 Art & Language,
Art-Language
journal (1969–85).
Selection of front
covers from vols
1 and 2 (1969–72)
15 Typical page
spread from the
Art-Language
journal (1969–85)

130 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

 16 Art & Language, excerpt from the introduction to
the first issue of the Art-Language journal (1969)

tween text-based Conceptual Art and Duchamp’s concept of the Readymade,

which in 1913 had already used language to propose a shift in the assignment of
meaning from non-art to art.20
Moreover, what works like these serve to illustrate is Graham’s proposed exten-
sion to the Readymade idea, as articulated in his 1985 essay, “My Works for Maga-
zine Pages: ‘A History of Conceptual Art.’” Here, he claims that, through its parti-
cularly neutral appearance and ubiquitous nature, the published text work has the
potential to possess a dual (or oscillating) status as both non-art and art, existing
simultaneously both within and outside the Institution. In fact, Anne Rorimer
makes this same point in her discussion of the artist Joseph Kosuth’s investigations
of “art as an analytical proposition,” describing, for instance, the way in which his
appropriated dictionary definitions (Fig. 12) operate “by virtue of the capacity of
[typographic] language to be what it is and what it is about simultaneously.” 21

20 As articulated for example, in Joseph Kosuth’s 21 Anne Rorimer, “Siting the Page: Exhibiting
essay “Art after Philosophy” (1969) where he Works in Publications: Some Examples of
depicts Duchamp’s work as key to a revision of Conceptual Art in the USA ,” in Rewriting
art history whereby the Readymade, rather Conceptual Art, eds., John Bird and Michael
than the evolution to and beyond formalist ab- Newman (Reaktion Books Ltd., London,
stract painting, is posited as central to the 1999), 17.
critical collapse of medium-specific modernism.

Ruth Blacksell 131

 17 Art & Language “Index 01” (1972). Eight
file cabinets, texts and photostats. In
“Index 01”, the unbound printed journal
pages from Art-Language and other texts
by the group were contained within the
drawers of eight metal filing cabinets, and
a cross-referencing reading strategy was
then suggested by assigning each text an
index number and displaying a proposed
“system of connections” (along with its
results) in the form of printed index lists
on the walls of the exhibition space.

The Undifferentiated Continuous Text

as Conceptual Artwork

The further interesting shift in Kosuth’s use of text came, however, when his inves-
tigations dispensed with photocopied dictionary definitions, and moved instead
toward the publishing of definitions of possible art information directly into non-
art channels of communication.22 Indeed, for Kosuth, this not only got around the
potential for the works to fall into any kind of pictorial illusionism, but more im-
portantly, it also allowed him to shift his focus entirely toward the staging of art as
pure information. His final investigations therefore moved toward the idea of art
existing more as a kind of dynamic theoretical and critical commentary that might
involve the navigation through (or the origination of) a series of extended and typo-
graphically undifferentiated continuous texts.
In “The Information Room,” for example, various forms of printed continuous
text were exhibited on reading tables in an exhibition space that was described
as “a venue for knowledge rather than … a container for objects.” Here the work,
although “physically contained” in the room, was – through its very textual form –
able to take the reader conceptually beyond the physical confines of the space
(Fig. 13).23

22 Here, for example, Kosuth published thesaurus 24 Which included Kosuth for a time amongst
texts directly into the advertisement sections its membership.
of newspapers or onto billboard-sized street 25 Terry Atkinson, et al., introduction to: Art-
advertisements. Language: The Journal of Conceptual Art,
23 Anne Rorimer, New Art in the 60s and 70s: (Coventry: Art & Language Press, 1969), 10.
Redefining Reality (London: Thames & Hudson 26 These “overlapping contexts” included
Ltd., 2001), 100. conversations within the group and active
involvements within art education.

132 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

 18 Robert Smithson, “Quasi-Infinites and the Waning of Space,”
published in Arts Magazine, vol. 41, no.1, (November 1966)

This use of text to position art within the intellectual space of theoretical and criti-
cal commentary was most fully elaborated, however, by the group, Art & Language.24
This group used its practice in the late 1960s and early 1970s to consider whether
theoretical analysis itself could constitute a “method for… making art.”25 And, al-
though they used a number of overlapping contexts for their inquiry, their use of
typographic language was a key aspect of this process.26
Of particular importance was the group’s exploration of the editorial/essay as
artwork, which they undertook through their production of typeset continuous
texts, situated within the bound format of a published journal (Fig. 14, 15). Here,
the neutral typographic design of the journal with its white cover and pages of
un-illustrated text, echoes again the attempts by others to divest their works of any
authorial/artistic voice, so that the reader engages with these texts through a pro-
cess of reading, without any question that they should perhaps be looking at the
journal as a visual object. However, in the introduction to the first issue, the group
advanced a new hypothesis that elaborated more specifically on the particular need
for this completely neutral textual appearance: That the content of the editorial “is

Ruth Blacksell 133

134 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis
 19 Page layouts by Katherine McCoy
and a team of Cranbrook students
for Visible Language. Special issue
French Currents of the Letter, vol.
12, no. 3, (Summer 1979). These
pages (308–9 and 372–3) show
progressive interruptions to the
text setting, which were applied
throughout this issue of the
journal to disrupt any standard
linear reading of the text.
20 Katherine McCoy’s poster design
“Cranbrook Graduate Design”
(1989) from Cranbrook Academy
of Art. As McCoy put it in her
1988 essay “Typography as Dis-
course”: “No longer are there
one-way statements from designer
… both the texts and the images
are to be read in detail, their
meanings decoded. Clearly this
intellectualized communication
asks a lot of its audience; this
is harder work that the formal
pleasures of New Wave.”
(see note 36)

[itself] held out as a ‘conceptual art’ work” through its critical or theoretical cont-
ent alone. An excerpt from the introduction thus reads as follows (Fig. 16):
Suppose an artist exhibits an essay in an art exhibition
(like a print might be exhibited). The pages are simply laid
out flat in reading order behind glass within a frame. The
spectator is intended to read the essay “straight,” like a
notice might be read, but because the essay is mounted in
an art ambience it is implied that the object (paper with
print upon it) carries conventional visual art content. The
spectator, being puzzled at not really being able to grasp
any direct visual-art-read-out-meaning, starts to read it
(as a notice might be read). It goes as follows:

“On why this is an essay”

The appearance of this essay is unimportant in any strong
sense of visual-art appearance criteria. The prime require-
ment in regard of this essay’s appearance is that it is
reasonably legible. Any decisions apart from this have

Ruth Blacksell 135

 21 Anne Burdick’s page layouts for Émigré 21 (1992). As Steve Baker
observes, this approach to layout “heralded the use of graphic
‘interpretation’ to deflect and enrich the trajectory of the critical
text.” (see note 37)

been taken with a view to what it should not look like

as a point of emphasis over what it should look like.
These secondary decisions are aimed at eliminating as
many appearance similarities to established art-objects
as possible.27

27 Atkinson, et al., introduction to Art-Language, 3. 2004), 218–56. This is also discussed by Jack
28 Ibid., 6–7. Flam in his introduction to Smithson’s
29 Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, “Modernity collected writings: Jack Flam, “Introduction:
and Modernism Reconsidered” in Moder- Reading Robert Smithson,” in Robert Smithson:
nism in Dispute: Art Since the Forties, eds., Paul The Collected Writings (Berkley: University of
Wood, Francis Frascina, Jonathan Harris and California Press, 1996), xv–xvii.
Charles Harrison (New Haven and London: 31 See Norbert Weiner’s, The Human Use of Human
Yale University Press, 1993), 208. Beings (1950) and George Kubler’s, The Shape
30 Pamela M. Lee, “Ultramoderne: Or How of Time: Remarks on the History of Things (1962).
George Kubler Stole the Time in Sixties Art,”
in Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s
(Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press,

136 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

Art & Language used their introduction to further describe the absence of any de-
fined exhibition instruction and to articulate how “the art-gallery component had
to be specified… [by the editorial] as a theoretical rather than a concrete compo-
nent.” 28 However, what is interesting here is how the group subsequently moved on
from this idea by repositioning the printed pages of the journal back into a more
conventional exhibition environment as part of their work “Index 01” (Fig. 17), a
process through which they were able to undertake further more controlled inter-
rogations of the reading of these texts.
Indeed, by using this context to force a particular kind of cross-referencing
reading strategy, what this exhibit conveyed was how the content of the individual
journal texts could be extended in any number of ways through their endless
potential for reference to other similar texts. This cross-referencing was used to
demonstrate how “the kinds of decisions we make about the relations between one
text and another can have implications for our picture of [how one might conceive
of] an entire conversational, or ideological world.” 29

The Integrated Text as Conceptual Artwork

I turn now to the layout of a published article by Robert Smithson, which not only
seems to fit in here, around the point I have reached with the journal pages of
Art-Language, but also – because of its existence as a magazine article, and the year
in which it was published – connects back to my earlier consideration of Graham’s
“Homes for America.”
Smithson’s article, “Quasi-Infinities and the Waning of Space,” was published
in the November 1966 issue of Arts Magazine just prior to the magazine’s publica-
tion of Graham’s “Homes for America” (Fig. 18). And since Smithson, unlike Gra-
ham, had clearly had the opportunity to specify his own page layout, he used this
as a key component of the work. His method was thus to break the text into sepa-
rate blocks so that the main commentary could be surrounded by textual and vi-
sual marginalia, which would integrate with the main body of the document to
facilitate a cross-referencing style of reading.
In her book Chronophobia, Pamela Lee describes this use of page layout in rela-
tion to Smithson’s interest in a constellation of meaning.30 She points to the inclu-
sion, in Smithson’s marginalia, of references to the writings of the anthropologist
and architectural historian George Kubler and the cyberneticist Norbert Weiner,
whose preoccupations included non-linear and metaphorical representations of
past historical time and future communication systems.31
So, despite there being no obvious connection between the integrated arrange-
ment of Smithson’s article and the single-column, un-illustrated, essay-like texts
of the Art-Language journal (Fig. 15), Smithson’s use of both subject matter and

Ruth Blacksell 137

 layout seems rooted in a similar territory to that of the infinite possibilities for
cross referencing content, as presented by Art & Language in their later work
“Index 01” (Fig. 17).
And it seems apt then to refer to a 1970 text by Art & Language’s Ian Burn and
Mel Ramsden. This text seems to present not only an end point for this discussion
but also perhaps a starting point for thinking about subsequent post-Conceptual
engagements, which have seen a shift from the distribution of text-based artworks
through print toward practices that are situated entirely within the interactive and
networked channels of digital publishing: 32
Since an art object by now “might conceivably be anything
on the face of this planet,” then “it would be dumb to insist
on nominating an analytic art construct (i. e., this paper) as
an ‘artwork.’” 33
Indeed, as Osborne observes with reference to this text:
Conceptual artists [had] turned their concern not to “the
proliferation of designated signifieds” but to the “semiotic
mosaic” from which meaning was derived… [This was
the new question:] How was the “continuum,” the system,
the structure-as-a-whole itself to be made the content of
the work? 34

What Relevance to Typographic Discourse?

One can look in a number of directions to see connections between these examples
of text-based Conceptual Art and the more general discourse of typographic de-
sign: These art engagements of the 1960s and 1970s can, for example, be considered
against experimental typographic practices, which emerged in the United States
between the 1970s and the 1990s where, as Richard Hollis notes, designers were
becoming “more aware of the need for theory and history to back up their own
practice.” If one looks, for instance, at the design journal, Visible Language, and its
development of what Hollis calls a “critical [rather than purely technical and histo-
rical] view of graphic design” (Fig. 19); 35 or at the related practices and discourses at
Cooper Union and Cranbrook Academy, where students were encouraged to

32 The artist Seth Price explores this shift in his 34 Osborne, Conceptual Art, (2002).
essay “Dispersion,” free pdf at www.distributed 35 Richard Hollis, Graphic Design: A Concise History
history.com (2002–ongoing). (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001), 214.
33 Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, “Notes on Ana-
lysis”, excerpt reproduced in Six Years: The
Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to
1972, ed., Lucy Lippard (Berkley: University
of California Press, Ltd., 1973 [1970]), 137.

138 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

22 Stuart Bailey, Angie Keefer and David Reinfurt (eds).
Text excerpt from “Article of Incorporation” (2012),
reproduced at the back of each issue of Bulletins of
The Serving Library

Ruth Blacksell 139

“think about art and design in terms of culture and language” (Fig. 20); 36 or at the
new layout and content relationships explored by a magazine like Émigré (Fig. 21), 37
one can see how these works demonstrated a similar desire to move beyond the
critical framework of modernist formalism, toward more active engagements with
the reader. Indeed, the discourse surrounding these examples locates itself equally
against the evolution of structuralism into post-structuralism and references the
same theoretical ideas and precedents in literature and poetry as cited in accounts
of text-based Conceptual Art.
As such, whereas these experimental typographic practices were attacked in
the 1990s by critics like Robin Kinross for being poor interpretations of a set of ra-
refied theoretical ideas, which led to counter accusations of a kind of “zombie mo-
dernism” in typographic discourse, what these connections demonstrate is how the
example of text-based Conceptual Art could contribute a much more stringent
point of reference to such critical debate. 38 Indeed, if one considers how, despite
these cross-disciplinary references to a shared historical and theoretical lineage, the
critical collapse of modernism in art had not been to the same degree replicated in
the field of typographic design, it seems obvious to propose that one has to look at
such examples of 1960s art to gain an understanding of the full significance, both
historically and theoretically, of this shift towards active typographic engagement.
What then seems also relevant is that examples of 1970s – 1990s experimental
typography are in fact similar in their scope to the kinds of interrogation underta-
ken by an artist like Vito Acconci. As such, it can be further proposed that the
progression of textbased Conceptual Art into more extensive interrogations of the
active contexts of publishing (as with the practices of those like Graham, Art &
Language, and Smithson) provides a more expansive set of engagements that are

36 J. Abbott Miller and Ellen Lupton, Design 39 The work of Dexter Sinister began, for example,
Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design through the publication of a graphic design
(New York: Kiosk, 1996), vi; and referred journal (Dot Dot Dot) and has evolved into a
to within Figure 20, Katherine McCoy with series of extended engagements with the
David Frej, “Typography as Discourse,” in activity of publishing, staged increasingly within
ID magazine (New York: March/April, 1988), art contexts such as the Whitney Biennial
34–37. (New York, 2008) and the Museum of Modern
37 Steve Baker, “A Poetics of Graphic Design,” in Art’s exhibition “Ecstatic Alphabets /Heaps
Visible Language, special issue New Perspectives: of Language” (New York, 2012). However, since
Critical Histories of Graphic Design, Part 1, their practice remains very much focused on
vol. 28, no. 3 (1994). typographic processes and acts of publishing,
38 See Robin Kinross’s, Fellow Readers: Notes on the work of Dexter Sinister (Bailey and
Multiplied Language (London: Hyphen Press, Reinfurt) and The Serving Library (Bailey,
1994); followed by subsequent heated exchanges Reinfurt and Keefer) remains popular with
between Kinross and those such as Gérard graphic design students and practitioners
Mermoz, Kenneth FitzGerald and Jeffery Keedy and they are often invited to participate in
on the pages of Émigré and Eye magazines schools and events more conventionally
(1995–1997), which are encapsulated by Keedy’s associated with design than art.
essay “Zombie Modernism,” in Émigré, no. 34,
(1995).

140 Typografie als künstlerisches Ereignis

useful as a point of reference for contemporary publishing practices like those of
Dexter Sinister and The Serving Library or the artist Seth Price, which have even
more overtly straddled the disciplines of art and typographic design (Fig. 22).
Indeed, the desire to engage with such contemporary practices in both art and de-
sign contexts seems to point again to the need for this lineage to be understood
and incorporated more rigorously within mainstream typographic discourse. 39
In short, rather than focusing on “for” or “against” arguments in response to
self-initiated typographic practices where designers might be seen equally as
artists, or sidelining these trajectories as “experimental,” typographic discourse
should perhaps be willing to understand the role of this art lineage in defining a
particular type of post-Conceptual inter-disciplinary engagement that continues to
interrogate how an active engagement with structure can indeed become the content
of the work.

Ruth Blacksell 141