When Attitudes Become Form and the Contest over Conceptual Art's History

Abstract

This essay was the first extended study of one of the most significant exhibitions of the late 1960s, 'Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form' (Bern Kunsthalle, 1969). Based on archival research and interviews, and a forensic study of the show’s reception history, the essay argues that there was an important dimension to the subjective experience of Conceptual Art that is obscured by the poststructuralist approach of its main commentators. Whilst their critical position emphasises the “linguistic turn” exemplified in Conceptual Art’s use of language, the exhibition had a wider focus on process, material, and in curator Harald Szeemann’s interest in closing the gap between the production and reception of art. The innovative approach was to critique the current literature on Conceptual Art via theories of exhibitions, a relatively new field of research in the late 1990s. The essay thus proposed a different kind of historical practice, one that gives attention to the complexity of a real-time event rather than its role as a marker of historical progress.