Red-Herring

Red-Herring was a periodical published in 1977 & 1978.

Background

• Created by some of the former editors of The Fox
• Segment in the film Struggle in New York: "The Arts Are a Growth Industry, Alright. If You’re Fond of Cancer"

Issues

• 
  Red-Herring
  No. 1
  January 1977
• 
  Red-Herring
  No. 2
  1978

Retrospectives

Michael Corris, 2017

After a rather sordid encounter with [Mel] Ramsden in mid-September 1976 that spelled the end of our relationship with Art & Language, Menard, Heller, Breakstone, and I joined up with Burn, Condé, Beveridge, and Lendon to start a new publication. Our ideological break with Art & Language was a comedy of errors, presumably the result of a text we circulated within AMCC without the “clearance” of Ramsden and Thompson. The issue wasn’t so much the content of our ­flyer, ­but­ the ­manner ­in ­which ­it ­was drafted and distributed. This, of course, was a case where it could be said that we fell victim to our own carelessness. Despite the nature of the “crime”, it was not as though we were in the habit of ignoring the social mores of the group. Nevertheless, it was considered by Ramsden and other to be a fatal mistake and became a convenient pretext that led swiftly to our excommunication. Ramsden, Thompson, Kozlov, and Eck no longer saw a future in New York and simply wanted to clean house, much as they did with Kosuth back in May, 1976, and resettle in the UK. Burn, to his credit, thought this scene to be absurd and said so without reservation. We pretty much immediately decided to establish another publishing platform. We settled on the name Red-Herring, a bit of jargon that we hoped would proclaim art to be a diversion, a feint.