“THE ARTIST, THE IDEOLOGIST…..” .  FROM TEN POSTERS: ILLUSTRATIONS FOR ART-LANGUAGE. 1977. CHARLES HARRISON’S COPY.

Coventry: Art & Language, 1977

108 x 83.7cm, black on newsprint paper. A large format poster to promote the later Art-Language journal which shows cover art from the later volumes and numbers of the magazine – Here “THE ARTIST, THE IDEOLOGIST…..” – an drawing of a man protesting holding up a sign with a text: “The artist, the ideologist without virtue is just line anyone else without virtue, his terror is gratuitous-suicidal” (which reads like Robespierre at his most irascible).  Interestingly it is these later  cover images from the later issues of the journal (once the group had effectively broken up and only two of the original participants continued to use the name because of its brand value in the artworld) that have made people think Art & Language were a hugely politicised group – something which many of the surviving original members would dispute.

This is a fragile item and there is  some very minor wear along the sides else VG+. The paper is cheap and liable to discolour (there is some here along the right hand side) although this one has mostly escaped that issue. There were 10 different posters originally produced – this is just one of them but all are very scarce and were low edition sizes. This example was purchased as part of Charles Harrison’s archive. Very very scarce.