His interview with the founder of the Republic of Turkey appeared in Wiener Freie Presse in March 1930, addressing issues of religion and music.

It was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner, who is still the magazine's editor in chief, and music critic Ralph J. Gleason.

Preparation for this process began in 1983, and editorial work started the following year under the administrative direction of Timothy J. Benbow, with John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner as co editors.

With the emergence of an exclusively language based art in the 1960s, however, conceptual artists such as Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and the English Art Language group began a far more radical interrogation of art than was previously possible (see below).