Collaborations (1992)

Excerpt fr. John A. Walker’s Glossary of Art, Architecture & Design since 1945, 3rd. ed.

John A. Walker (glossary)
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 15 June 2011
This text is an excerpt from Walker’s 1992 glossary previously published by Library Association Publishing, London.

Collaborations

During the Italian Renaissance paintings were often executed by several artists. It is only since an individualistic mode of artistic production became the norm during the modern era, that artistic collaboration— defined by Dan Cameron as “to work in combination towards a unified action”— came to be viewed as something unusual. However, it should be acknowledged that modem artists have been willing to join together to form groups and movements, to publish manifestos and magazines, to mount exhibitions and to run alternative spaces and self-help organizations. (Witness the New York group— active in the early 1980s— called Collaborative Projects Inc., or simply [Colab].) Many modem painters and printmakers have also worked in tandem to achieve high-quality prints. Furthermore, there have been instances of collaborations between artists and architects despite the tendency in modem times for the various arts to develop separately. In 1981 the [Architectural League of New York] mounted a centennial exhibition about artist-architect collaborations.

Three years later a show of twentieth-century artist collaborations was held at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington. Recent examples of such collaborations have included David Salle / Julian Schnabel, Andy Warhol / Jean-Michel Basquiat. According to Dan Cameron, collaborations must be temporary arrangements between two or more independent artists; he therefore excludes the long-term co-operative projects of groups like Art & Language and such artist duos as Gilbert & George, Komar & Melamid. Stefan Szczelkun is an Anglo-Polish performance artist whose book Collaborations documents over a decade of activities with other artists and groups.

See also Alternative Spaces, Art & Language, Artists’ Unions, Atelier 17, Gilbert & George, Group Material, Komar & Melamid, Kids of Survival (KOS), Public Art, Tyler Graphics.

References and further readings
> Wendy Sheard & John Paoletti (Eds.). Collaboration in Italian Renaissance art. (New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1979).
> Barbaralee Diamonstein (Ed.). Collaboration: Artists and architects. (New York, Architectural League/ Watson-Guptill Publications, 1981).
> Carol Saft. Artist and printer: Printmaking as a collaborative process. (New York, Pratt Graphics Center, 1981).
> Gareth Jones. “Collaboration, a dirty word?” Art Monthly, (53), February 1982, pp. 8-9.
> Susan Block. “The why and how of collaboration”, High Performance, 7(2), 1984, 10-13, +81.
> Dan Cameron. “Against collaboration”, Arts Magazine, 58(7), March 1984, pp. 83-7.
> Charles Jencks. “A modest proposal: On the collaboration between artist and architect”. In Peter Townsend (Ed.), Art within reach. (Art Monthly / Thames & Hudson, 1984), pp. 15-19.
> Cynthia McCabe. Artistic collaborations in the twentieth century. (Washington DC, Hirshhorn/ Smithsonian, 1984).
> Ruth Fine & others. Gemini GEL: Art and collaboration. (Washington DC, National Gallery of Art / New York, Abbeville Press, 1985).
> Stefan Szczelkun. Collaborations. (Routine Art Co/ Working Press, 1988).
> M. Robinette. “Collaboration: impossible dream or achievable reality?” Circa, (45), May-June 1989, pp. 18-22.

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