CategoriesStyles and Movements
Collaborations and Collectives
Art made jointly by pairs, partnerships and groups, from artist duos and design offices to activist collectives.
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About
The image of the solitary artist is largely a Romantic one. Medieval cathedrals, Renaissance workshops and Peter Paul Rubens's busy Antwerp studio all depended on many hands. Modern collaboration made shared authorship itself part of the point.
Some partnerships merge two people into one artistic identity: Gilbert & George have presented themselves as living sculptures since the late 1960s, and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov built immersive installations together from the late 1980s. Others combine different strengths, as when Niki de Saint Phalle's colourful figures met Jean Tinguely's machines in the Stravinsky Fountain (1983) in Paris, or when Charles and Ray Eames developed moulded plywood and fibreglass furniture together. Art & Language, formed in 1968, wrote collectively. Groups from the Guerrilla Girls to General Idea used masks or collective names to address sexism, AIDS and institutional power. Look for shared signatures and methods no single maker would choose.