Artwork
Untitled
Untitled is an ink print by Keith Arnatt. It dates from 1970 and is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
About this work
Overview
It features two black-and-white photographs of digital timers displaying long numerical sequences, accompanied by explanatory writing.
Created in 1970 by British artist Keith Arnatt, this work combines typewritten text, ink, and collage on paper. It features two black-and-white photographs of digital timers displaying long numerical sequences, accompanied by explanatory writing. The piece functions as a conceptual document, recording an ephemeral art action in which time was quantified and exchanged as a tangible asset within an exhibition context.
Subject & Meaning
The work addresses the commodification of time in institutional art spaces. By presenting timers showing elapsed seconds, 1050320 and 1050243, it references a real event in which viewers could purchase individual seconds of an exhibition’s duration. The text clarifies this transactional framework, transforming abstract duration into a measurable, buyable good, and questioning the economic logic underlying art display.
Technique & Style
Arnatt employed a restrained, documentary aesthetic: typewritten text, photographic reproduction, and minimal collage. The images of digital timers are unadorned, their numerical displays rendered with clinical precision. The layout is orderly, mimicking administrative or archival formats, reinforcing the work’s satirical engagement with bureaucracy and the quantification of experience through institutional systems.
History & Provenance
The piece originated from a 1970 performance in which Arnatt invited the public to buy seconds of an exhibition’s running time. The resulting documentation was later assembled into this composite work. It entered The Museum of Modern Art’s collection as part of its broader acquisition of conceptual art from the late 1960s and early 1970s, reflecting institutional interest in art that challenged traditional object-based formats.
Context
Emerging during a period when conceptual artists questioned the marketability of art, Arnatt’s work aligned with practices that prioritized idea over object. Similar efforts by artists like Vito Acconci and Lawrence Weiner explored language, time, and institutional critique. This piece reflects broader anxieties about capitalism’s encroachment on cultural experience, using the language of commerce to expose its logic within the art world.
Legacy
Untitled remains a key example of conceptual art’s engagement with time and economy. It influenced later artists who examined institutional power through procedural documentation and transactional metaphors. Its quiet, bureaucratic tone contrasts with more overtly political works, offering a subtle, enduring critique of how value is assigned, and sold, in cultural spaces.
Artist & collection
Artist
Keith Arnatt (1930–2008) was a British conceptual artist. As well as conceptual art his work is sometimes discussed in relation to land art, minimalism, and photography. He lived and worked in London, Liverpool, Yorkshire and Monmouthshire.
