| Mirror Piece | |
|---|---|
 Art & Language, Mirror Piece, 1965 | |
| Artist | Art & Language Michael Baldwin |
| Year | 1965 |
| Type | Installation Painting |
| Medium | Mirror, Glass and wood panels |
| Movement | Conceptual Art |
| Location | Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art |
| Owner | Philippe Méaille |
Mirror Piece is a 1965 contemporary art installation by Michael Baldwin, a member of the British conceptual art collective Art & Language.
Mirror Piece is an installation of variable dimensions. It is composed of multiple mirrors of different sizes covered with regular or deforming glass plates, presented on wooden panels. [1] This installation is accompanied by 13 pages of text and diagrams. [2] [3]
This installation, one of the first ones of the Art & Language collective, replaces the surface of a painting with mirrors. It allows us to discuss, among other things, the theme of representation as well as the place and role of the spectator in the work of art. The mirror, being a surface that reflects light without its own image, the artists will say of this gesture:
The interest in mirrors resided in the fact that the mirror produced the "perfectly transparent" image... but this does not mean that you cannot be aware of the surface of the mirror itself, however difficult that is (as Ian Burn pointed out).
The mirror being in the place of what should be a painting, the spectator sees himself looking at a work of art [13] and the recent practice of selfies has greatly contributed to the popularity of Mirror Piece. [14]
Maine-et-Loire is a department in the Loire Valley in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France. It is named after the two rivers, Maine and the Loire. It borders Mayenne and Sarthe to the north, Loire-Atlantique to the west, Indre-et-Loire to the east, Vienne and Deux-Sèvres to the south, Vendée to the south-west, and Ille-et-Vilaine to the north-west. It also borders Ille-et-Vilaine in the north for just 20 yards (19 m), France's shortest department boundary. Its prefecture is Angers; its subprefectures are Cholet, Saumur and Segré-en-Anjou Bleu. Maine-et-Loire had a population of 818,273 in 2019.
The Château de Montsoreau is a Flamboyant Gothic castle in the Loire Valley, directly built in the Loire riverbed. It is located in the market town of Montsoreau, in the Maine-et-Loire département of France, close to Saumur, Chinon, Fontevraud-l'Abbaye and Candes-Saint-Martin. The Château de Montsoreau is situated at the confluence of two rivers, the Loire and the Vienne, and the meeting point of three historical regions: Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine. It is the only château of the Loire Valley built directly in the Loire riverbed.
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work are prioritized equally to or more than traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to American artist Sol LeWitt's definition of conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.
Pays de la Loire is one of the eighteen regions of France, located on the country's Atlantic coast. It was created in the 1950s to serve as a zone of influence for its capital and most populated city, Nantes, one of a handful of French "balancing metropolises". In 2020, Pays de la Loire had a population of 3,832,120.
Art & Language is an English conceptual artists' collaboration that has undergone many changes since it was created around 1967. The group was founded by artists who shared a common desire to combine intellectual ideas and concerns with the creation of art, and included many Americans.
Marcel Broodthaers was a Belgian poet, filmmaker, and visual artist with a highly literate and often witty approach to creating art works. In 1943-1951 he was a member of a Communist party.
Montsoreau is a commune of the Loire Valley in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France on the Loire, 160 km (99 mi) from the Atlantic coast and 250 km (160 mi) from Paris. The village is listed among The Most Beautiful Villages of France and is part of the Loire Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Jean-Marc Bustamante is a French artist, painter, sculptor and photographer. He is a noted conceptual and installation artist and has incorporated ornamental design and architectural space in his works.
François Morellet was a French contemporary abstract painter, sculptor, and light artist. His early work prefigured minimal art and conceptual art and he played a prominent role in the development of geometrical abstract art and post-conceptual art.
The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art is a contemporary art museum situated in the Plaça dels Àngels, in El Raval, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The museum opened to the public on November 28, 1995. Previous directors include Daniel Giralt-Miracle (1988–1994), Miquel Molins Nubiola (1995–1998), Manuel J. Borja-Villel (1998–2007), Bartomeu Marí (2008-2015), and Ferran Barenblit (2015-2021), while the current director is Elvira Dyangani Ose.
The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex.
Tania Mouraud is a contemporary French video artist and photographer.
The Château de Montsoreau-Museum Contemporary Art is a private museum open to the public in Montsoreau, France. It opened 8 April 2016. The permanent collection exhibited at Château de Montsoreau consists of Philippe Méaille's collection of works by the conceptual art collective Art & Language.
Philippe Méaille is a French author and art collector, and the founder and president of the Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art. Currently, Méaille owns the world's largest collection of Art & Language works.
Michael Baldwin is a British conceptual artist, author and founding member of the Art & Language artist group.
Victorine is a four-act detective opera by the british conceptual artists Art & Language. It was created in English in the summer of 1983 and published in the collective's journal, Art-Language, volume 5, n°2 of March 1984. The French translation of the opera was first published in 1993 by the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume on the occasion of the Art & Language exhibition.
Secret Painting is a series of artworks created by British conceptual artist Mel Ramsden for the collective Art & Language between 1967 and 1968. The series consists of monochrome paintings juxtaposed with text panels explaining the absence of a conventional subject; for example, one states that the painting in question is invisible.
Index: Incident in a Museum is an extensive series of paintings produced between 1985 and 1988 by Michel Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, members of the British conceptual artists' collective Art & Language.
Stéphane Kreienbühl, known as Stéphane Belzère, is a Franco-Swiss painter. He lives and works between Paris and Basel.
Jean Le Gac is a French conceptual artist, painter, pastelist, photographer using mixed media, frequently video or photography and text to document his investigations and sketched scenes. His poetic photographic interventions in which he is most often the main subject are accompanied either by typed text describing the underlying story in the artwork or handwritten notes in the art piece itself. Member of the Narrative art movement since the seventies, Le Gac ofttimes tells a story about an imaginary character that viewers can easily identify with the artist himself. He calls it a “metaphor for painting." Le Gac also uses the artist's book as a central part of his art practice. Le Gac is a Professor and lecturer at Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques.
