No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Eat yourself fitter: John Latham and Clement Greenberg’s Art and Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 June 2016
Abstract
In 1966 John Latham and some friends began chewing Clement Greenberg’s book Art and culture: collected essays. The resulting art work, entitled Art and Culture (1966-1969), is now recognised as a seminal conceptual art work and is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Latham, however, had borrowed the book from St. Martin’s School of Art library and when he was unable to return it in a suitable condition his teaching contract was not renewed. This essay looks at the history of the work, the ideas behind its creation, and the issues it raises for the culture of the book today.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 1981
References
1.
Finch, Christopher. ‘On the absence of an avantgarde’. Art International vol. 10 no. 10 December 1966, p.23.Google Scholar
2.
Greenberg, Clement. Art and culture: collected essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. First published in paperback by Beacon Press in 1965. First published in Britain by Thames and Hudson in 1973.Google Scholar
3.
Hamilton, Richard. ‘John Latham’. In: John Latham: early works, 1954-1912. London: Lisson Gallery, 1987, p.1–2. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Lisson Gallery, 14th January-14th March, 1987.Google Scholar
4.
Harrison, Charles. ‘The late sixties in London and elsewhere’. In: Gresty, Hilary (ed.). 1965 to 1912 – when attitudes became form. Cambridge: Kettle’s Yard Gallery and Fruitmarket Gallery, 1984, p.10.Google Scholar
5.
Brooks, Rosetta and Stezaker, John. State of mind: John Latham. Düsseldorf: Stâdtische Kunsthalle, 1975, p.43. Catalogue of an exhibition, 5th September-12th October 1975. See also: ‘No product of the sixties phenomenon “concept art” produced anywhere survives with the distinction of Latham’s piece on Clement Greenberg’s Art and culture (1965) [sic]. Hamilton, op. cit. 1987, p.1.Google Scholar
6.
Conzen-Meairs, Ina. ‘Art after physics: John Latham’s search for a representation of the encompassing present’. In: John Latham: art after physics: the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford 13th October 1991-5th January 1992. Stuttgart; London: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 1991, p.9.Google Scholar
7. Information from: Latham, John. Least event, one second drawings, blind work, 24 second painting. London: Lisson Publications, 1970, p.8. Catalogue of an exhibition held 11th November-6th December 1970. Latham’s own account of Still and chew was dated August 1967 and reproduced, alongside a photograph oí Art and culture, in this catalogue. The earliest date for its being exhibited is listed in the catalogue (p.24) as at the Finch College of Art as part of the American Destruction in Art Symposium in 1968. It may also have been shown between 18th May and 15th June 1969 at the Number 7 exhibition at the Paula Cooper Gallery organised by Lucy Lippard. The next showing would have been between 5th September and 5th October 1969 at 557,087 at Seattle Art Museum (World’s Fair Pavilion, Seattle Center), again organised by Lippard. The work would thus have entered MoMA’s collection late in 1969. It was unavailable for Latham’s Tate Gallery retrospective of 1976 but was exhibited as part of his Art after physics exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, in 1991-1992. The last time the work was shown in Britain was Live in your head: concept and experiment in Britain 1965-1975 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 4th February-2nd April 2000.Google Scholar
8.
Sohm, Hans (compiler). Happening & Fluxus. Köln: Kölnischen Kunstverein, 1970. Unpaginated.Google Scholar
9. Metzger quoted in: Wolfram, Eddie. ‘In the beginning was the word’. Art & Artists August 1966, p.65.Google Scholar
10. Latham quoted in: Walker, John A. ‘John Latham: books for burning’. Studio International vol. 200 no. 1018 November 1987, p.28. Brooks and Stezaker described the book burning as a ‘Nietzschian attitude to culture and its resurrection, in the idea of cultural overthrow by an acceleration of the innate self-destruction tendencies of culture so that (quite literally) a new culture might emerge phoenix-like from the ashes of the old’. Brooks, op. cit. 1975, p.12.Google Scholar
11.
Watson Taylor, Simon. ‘From Greenberg’s icy mountains’. Art & Artists vol. 2 no. 6 September 1967, p.45. Final ellipsis in original.Google Scholar
13.
Legg, Alicia with Smalley, Mary Beth (eds.). Painting and sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art: catalog of the collection with selected works on paper to fanuary 1988. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1988, p.66.Google Scholar
14.
Lippard, Lucy. Six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972. London: Studio Vista, 1973, p.16.Google Scholar
15. Latham probably saw this work at Duchamp’s retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1966. The first Box in a valise was started in 1941 but editions continued to appear including an edition produced in 1966. See Jones, Amelia. Postmodernism and the engendering of Marcel Duchamp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.262.Google Scholar
16.
Latham, John. ‘Record of an association’. In: Report of a surveyor. London: Hansjorg Mayer and Tate Gallery Publications, 1984, p.48.Google Scholar
19. Another ‘last laugh’ for Latham came with the success of the generation of students that followed him in their rejection of the Greenbergian line at St. Martin’s. These included Gilbert and George, David Dye, Roelof Louw, Gerard Hemsworth, Braco Dimitrijevic, Tim Head, Richard Long, Barry Flanagan, Jan Dibbets, David Bainbridge, John Hilliard, Hamish Fulton, and Bruce McLean.Google Scholar