Updating each other on our findings, we've accumulated 2900 words
"[...] how do we approach the present in regards to our past, or, how does the present fulfill the past?" asked Andrew Blackley in regard to the work of Art & Language, an art collaborative comprised of members in the UK and, briefly, New York. Established by Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin and Harold Hurrel in 1968, this conceptual collective was born out of rebellion against Modernism. Originally a reaction against the traditional way of doing things, Modernism by then had become traditional itself. Art and Language published "language as art" in the form of theoretical writing in their magazine Art-Language, determined to make a shift from the conventional "non-Linguistic" forms of art like painting and sculpture to more theoretically based works. Between 1968 and 1982 up to 50 people were associated with the group. (Wikipedia)
In 1972, the group was included in Documenta, presenting a work titled Index. Eight metal filing cabinets, each with six drawers, contained the meticulously ordered issues of Art-Language: alphabetized and then sub-alphabetized with a nearby referencing system for viewers. Index was literally the archive of their movement, an artwork literally made of theory. (Carrie McGrath, Chicago Art Magazine, 2010)