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From looking to reading: text-based conceptual art and typographic discourse

This article considers prominent historical and contemporary art practices that have used text-based methods to move from medium-specific art forms, based on the passive spectator ‘looking’, towards those which have actively engaged the spectator through various types of ‘reading’. It draws attention to the key importance of disciplinary cross-articulations in understanding the precise role played by typographic engagement in Conceptual artworks from the 1960s and in subsequent ‘post-Conceptual’ art practices of today, and considers how an informed discussion of typographic configuration and publishing activity can add something important to existing accounts of these text-based artworks which is missing from current art historical and art critical discourse. The research contributes to debates about experimental practice which have featured within typographic discourse since the 1990s, and also to an understanding of typographic practices that continue to straddle the disciplines of art and design today. The research draws upon close readings of works held in the archives at the British Library and the V&A’s National Art Library and was first presented as a public lecture in February 2012 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, to coincide with the exhibition In numbers: Serial publications by artists since 1945.