Art & Language '1965-2025'
Fondation CAB presents the exhibition 1965-2025 dedicated to Art & Language, organized in collaboration with Mulier Mulier Gallery and featuring the presence of Michael Baldwin, founding member and key figure of the collective. For more than half a century, Art & Language has sustained one of the most rigorous and unpredictable conversations in contemporary art. The exhibition at Fondation CAB brings together works spanning six decades, revealing not a linear evolution but an ongoing exchange of ideas between Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden (1944–2024). The exhibition will be on view until May 6, 2026.
Formed in England in the late 1960s, Art & Language began as a collective of artists and writers who sought to redefine what an artwork could be through language, discussion, and critical exchange. The name Art & Language is derived from the journal Art-Language (first published in Coventry in May 1969), which had its origins in the work of Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin (from 1966) in association with Harold Hurrell and David Bainbridge. These were its original editors. Art & Language was used subsequently to identify the joint and several artistic works of these four in an effort to reflect the conversational basis of their activity, which, by late 1969, had already included contributions from New York by Joseph Kosuth, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden. The facts of who did what, how much they contributed and so on are more or less well known. By 1976 the artistic continuity of Art & Language consolidated around Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden. Mel Ramsden died in 2024. It now remains with Michael Baldwin.
