John Latham: Conceptual Art, Books and Glass

Born in February of 1921, John Latham was a Zambia-born British conceptual artist, educated at Winchester College. After the Second World War, he studied art, first at the Regent Street Polytechnic and then at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. Latham married fellow artist and collaborator Barbara Steveni in Westminster in 1951.

The spray can became Latham’s primary medium for his work. In addition to spray paint, Latham tore, sawed, chewed and burnt books to create collage material for his work, such as the 1960 “Film Star” series. In 1966, he took part in the Destruction in Art Symposium in London led by artist and political activist Gustav Metzger along with Fluxus artists such as Yoko Ono, Wolf Vostell and Al Hansen.

Latham’s “skoob” (books written backwards) works, using books or materials derived from them, had the power to shock. He moved from collages to towers of books which he then burnt, awakening uncomfortable echoes of the Nazi regime’s public burning of banned books.

From 1983 Latham lived and worked at his house, Flat Time House in Peckham. In 1991 he produced “God is Great (no. 2)”, a conceptual artwork featuring copies of the Bible, Quran, and a volume of the Talmud, each cut in two and attached to a sheet of glass. In 2005 Tate Britain held an exhibition of Latham’s work.Latham died a year later at Kings College Hospital, Camberwell, on January 1st 2006.