José Luis Castillejo

José Luis Castillejo died on this day, ten years ago, at the age of 84. 

Huang Yong Ping

The John Latham piece below brings to mind two other works in which artists use the destruction or alteration of books as a means to get out from under the weight of art history. 

The first is David Hammon’s brilliant piece in which he rebound the soft-cover edition of Arturo Schwarz’s 1969 book The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp as a leather-bound, gilded edge bible, complete with slip-case (here). 

The second is the above work by Huang Yong Ping The History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes, 1987/1993.

John Latham | Art and Culture, 1966–69

John Latham

Art and Culture, 1966–69

Leather case containing book, letters, photostats, and labeled vials filled with powders and liquids

7.9 x 28.2 x 25.3 cm. 

Unique work

The St Martin’s School of Art was a prestigious art college in London, England that was founded in 1854. Sculptors Anthony Caro, Robert Clatworthy, Elizabeth Frink and Eduardo Paolozzi taught at the school, and it's alumni include Peter Doig, Gilbert & George, Anthony Gormley and Richard Long.

John Latham was teaching there in 1966, when he withdrew a copy of Art and Culture by Clement Greenberg from the school's library. Still and Chew was an event he organized at his home with his friend Barry Flanagan, where party guests were invited to tear out pages of the book, and chew on them. When fully masticated, the pages were spit out into a flask. "Greenberg’s text was thus reconstituted as indigestible matter." 

Latham then transformed the pages into a brew with the addition of chemicals and yeast ("an alien culture"). The artist stored this concoction for almost a year, until receiving an urgent overdue notice from the library. He decanted the distilled mass into a glass jar labelled ‘Art and Culture’ and returned it in place of the book. He was fired the following day and never taught again. 

A copy of the book, the distilled pages in vials, the library notices and a copy of his dismissal letter were housed in a suitcase and sold to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1969. It was subsequently featured in several prominent exhibitions. 

In a post at www.stewarthomesociety.org, the artist/novelist/historian dismantles the above myth with an obsessiveness bordering on vendetta. He argues that Latham was on a temporary contract that was merely not renewed, noting that lecturers "aren't dismissed from their teaching posts for failing to return library books". He goes on to posit several other reasons that the school may have "dismissed" Latham, including theft, drug dealing, and anger at how much time the artist spent working on personal projects, such as The Artist's Placement Group. 

It's a pretty fascinating read, with art detective work worthy of greg.org. Check it out here. 

"The violence Latham inflicted on books was given its most notorious expression in an action titled Still and Chew/Art and Culture in 1966–67. Latham, then a part-time tutor at St. Martin’s School of Art, borrowed a copy of Clement Greenberg’s then-recent Art and Culture from the college library. Greenberg’s modernist theories of art conflicted with Latham’s belief that time had replaced space as the primary issue in painting. With the help of sculptor Barry Flanagan, then a St. Martin’s student, Latham organized an event at his home during which guests chewed a third of the book’s pages and spat them into a small glass flask, where they were submerged in sulphuric acid until the solution turned to sugar. Yeast was introduced and the mixture left to ferment until, nine months later, the college library sent Latham an “urgent” overdue notice. Latham placed the liquid in a glass vial, labeled it “the essence of Greenberg,” and returned it to the library. His dismissal swiftly followed. He reassembled the elements of the action in a suitcase resembling a Duchampian Boîte-en-valise. The piece, retitled Art and Culture, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.”

- Chrissie Iles, Artforum

 

Santiago Sierra | Destroyed Words

Santiago Sierra

Destroyed Words

1 pp., 16 x 90 cm. folded to 16 x 9 cm., accordion fold

Self-published, 2012

Edition size unknown

In 2012, Santiago Sierra commissioned the production and then destruction of three metre high letters in Australia, France, Austria, Papua New Guinea, Germany, New Zealand), Iceland, India, Holland), and Sweden. Each letter was produced from a material primary to the location's economy. Collectively, the individual letters spelled out the word “KAPITALISM.”

Destroyed Word followed other monumental text works such as Submission (2006-7), NO Global Tour (2009-12) and Burned Word (2012). The resulting piece was a 10 channel video installation which can be seen on Youtube, here. 

“My aim is the destruction of capitalism, because it is a criminal system that is bringing humankind to the brink of extinction.” 

- Santiago Sierra

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn | Mémoires

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn

Mémoires 

Copenhagen, Denmark: Permild & Rosengreen, 19

64 pp., 8 ½ x 11", "softcover"

Edition size unknown

An artist book with a legendary sandpaper cover. I first heard of this title when I bought Public Image Ltd's 1979 record Metal Box, which came housed in a metal film canister. John Lydon had reportedly first wanted the LP released with a sandpaper cover, in order to destroy the other records in your collection every time it was removed or returned to the shelf.

A year later the idea was realized by Manchester band The Durutti Column, for their album The Return of The Durutti Column (below). Released by Factory Records, the packaging for the disk was hand-assembled by label-mates A Certain Ratio and Joy Division. Ian Curtis is said to have done most of the labour, while his bandmates watched pornography in the other room.

Aphex Twin took the premise a step further, with the release of a sandpaper work designed to engage with your turntable stylus (see earlier post, here).

Mémoires is the second artist's book produced by the Danish artist Asger Jorn and French artist and theorist Guy Debord, when both were members of the Situationist International. See this earlier post for their debut.

The heavy-grade sandpaper is typically credited to Debord, but the printer V.O. Permild disputes this account. He maintained that he was tasked with finding an "unconventional" material for the cover, such as asphalt or glass wool:

"Kiddingly, he wanted, that by looking at people, you should be able to tell whether or not they had had the book in their hands. He acquiesced to my final suggestion: sandpaper. Can you imagine the result when the book lies on a blank polished mahogany table, or when it's inserted or taken out of the bookshelf. It planes shavings off the neighbour's desert goat."

Greil Marcus describes reading Mémoires and it's collage of cut-up texts, maps, cartoons and newsprint, splattered with coloured ink, as "like waking from a dream, or falling into one." Strangely, though, his brilliant book Lipstick Traces - which charts the history of punk backwards to the Situationists - fails to note the connection to either Public Image Ltd or Durutti Column. This despite the fact that PIL's John Lydon/Rotten appears on the book's cover and that Marcus discusses the Situationist comic by Andre Bertrand where Durutti Column took it's name and title of their sand-paper covered debut, The Return of The Durutti Column. 

Factory Records was essentially founded at a small Sex Pistols concert in Manchester, attended by Tony Wilson and many of the bands he would eventually sign. Wilson had been introduced to the comic (titled Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti in French) in University, and the influence of the Situationists can be found throughout the label's catalogue, perhaps most notably in his notorious nightclub The Haçienda. It was named in honour of a phrase from Ivan Chtcheglov’s essay "Formulaire Pour Un Urbanisme Nouveau", which was reprinted in the anthology Leaving The 20th Century: The Incomplete Work Of The Situationist International.

The first full-length LP on Factory Records wasn't always intended to be issued in the now-legendary sandpaper cover.  The original plan was to release the disc in a metal film canister, which was abandoned when PIL's Metal Box was released. One of Wilson's colleagues at the Granada TV station was dating artist Jamie Reid, who had designed the cover for the Sex Pistol's debut (and swan song) Never Mind the Bollocks. Reid had ties to the Situationists and introduced Wilson to a sandpaper copy of Mémoires.

Destruction

This week and next, I’ll be guest lecturing in a class called Destruction in Art, at Mount Alison University. In the lead up, I’ll be reposting earlier blog entries that cross over into the subject matter, some with new information and/or images. These will include works by Christian Marclay, VsVsVs, Guy Debord, Jon Sasaki, Lil Picard, Daniel Spoerri, Gábor Altorjay, Ben Vautier, Yoko Ono, The K Foundation, Lee Lozano, Michael Landy, Gustav Metzger, Santiago Sierra, and others. 

Christian Marclay | Telephones

Christian Marclay

Telephones

London, UK: Ivorypress, 2024

148 pp., 5 3/4 x 4 1/8 x 3/4”, hardcover

Edition size unknown

Released earlier this summer, this new artists’ book is an adaptation of Marclay’s 1995 film of the same name. Telephone served as a transitionary work for the artist, who had previously produced mostly sound art works, particularly using the format of the vinyl record. 

After Telephones, Marclay produced the excellent Up and Out in 1998, the breakthrough Video Quartet [below] in 2002, and the 2010 masterpiece The Clock. 

The editing approach in those films began here, creating a dialogue (literally, in this case) between random films. Telephones was edited on two VCRs, from VHS tapes from a local video rental store. The seven and a half-minute montage features an assortment of characters using a variety of phones (all pre-dating smart phones) to create a continuous conversation.  

The spiral bound book version allows readers to mix and match images, creating their own juxtapositions.