'The Art Press': an exhibition on the history of art periodicals at the Victoria &
Albert Museum ... an international conference on the art periodical at Sussex
University in April 1976 and another at Bologna the following month ... a surge of
new art magazines in recent years ... a spate of articles on the new magazines in
established art journals ... a display featuringAr tfor um at The Gallery, London .. a
whole issue of Studio International devoted to the subject of art magazines.

A display unit produced by Nicholas Wegner shown at The Gallery, London, in March-April 1976. Wegner, the artist-director of The Gallery, is developing the notion of 'Standard art'. He argues that since art marketed through the gallery

system becomes standardised, this process should be made explicit. The
standardisation and packaging of art is carried to greater extremes in art
magazines, Wegner's display is based on the premise that the package - the art
magazine - has become more impressive as art than most of the art it describes and
illustrates. TheAr tfor u m display unit - an art gallery\u2019s homage to an art magazine -
is also a tribute to the fact that in recent years the power of the art magazine to
define and legitimise new developments in art has become greater than that of the
art gallery and museum.
Photo courtesy of N. Wegner.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no doubt that, at the moment, there is an unprecedented interest in the art magazine.

A harsh critic might argue that the burgeoning of titles is a forced growth caused by the frustrations of too many artists chasing too few galleries and collectors in a period of economic recession. And that the art magazine's current self-obsession indicates that the diseases of narcissism and cannibalism typical of avant-garde art have now spread to the support languages of art. There is some truth in these views But they are not the whole story.

All magazines address themselves to readerships which are delimited in some
way, either by age, sex, race, subject-matter, locality, income, class, or by
combinations of these factors; consequently, all magazines may be described as
specialised. Nevertheless, the charge of over-specialisation so often levelled against
art magazinesis a just one. In size, the audience for an art magazine can extend