While some of it is slightly baffling, this collection underlines the featured artists’ fierce originality and influence on contemporary design.
In this regard, the Tate delivers an exhibition truly outstanding in its scope and detail.
When it comes to conceptual art, the layman’s reaction can often be bemusement; when confronted with a blank square with a couple of coloured squares in the corners, he thinks: “I could do that”.
There’s a fair bit of that on show here.
But while the technical aspects may fail to inspire, this exhibition excels in charting the way a group of artists tried to forge an entirely new aesthetic, through to the long shadows they cast on architecture and typography we now accept as the norm.
Words: Tom Sturrock
» Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG. Until May 16. £10
