Jeremy Deller | Iggy Pop Life Class

Jeremy Deller

Iggy Pop Life Class

Brooklyn, USA: Brooklyn Museum, 2016

144 pp., 8.5 x 11.5", softcover

Edition size unknown

“The life class is a special place in which to scrutinize the human form. As the bedrock of art education and art history, it is still the best way to understand the body,” says Jeremy Deller. “For me it makes perfect sense for Iggy Pop to be the subject of a life class; his body is central to an understanding of rock music and its place within American culture. His body has witnessed much and should be documented.”

In February of 2016, Deller hosted a life drawing class at the New York Academy of Art. The class was led by drawing professor and visual artist Michael Grimaldi and the nude artist model was 69 year old Iggy Pop. 

Twenty-one artists, from all walks of life and educational backgrounds, participated in the project. They ranged in age from 19 to 80. Some were current undergraduate and graduate students, others were practicing artists, some had retired. 

In total, 107 drawings of Iggy Pop were produced, ranging from five-minute sketches to studies to presentation drawings. All are included in Iggy Pop Life Class, which was published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at Brooklyn Museum. The book also features an introduction by Deller, an interview with Pop, and an essay on the practice of life drawing in art history, documentation of the process, and works from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection. 

The promotional poster for the project (below) inverts the structure of a life drawing class by having the model clothed and those sketching naked. 

Iggy Pop Life Class us available here, for £19.99. 

Alison Knowles

 

Alison Knowles Weisbaden

Eunice Luk, who I’m working with on a project for Ontario Culture Days in the fall, visited Wiesbaden, Germany earlier in the year. She brought me back these four cards from an exhibition celebrating the work of Alison Knowles, who turned 92 a month ago today. 

Francis McKee | How to Know What’s Really Happening

Francis McKee

How to Know What’s Really Happening 

Berlin, Germany: Sternberg Press, 2016

56 pp., 15 x 9.5 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

"In this post-truth era, how does one navigate the endless information available and choose a viable narrative of reality? In How to Know What’s Really Happening, Glasgow-based writer and curator Francis McKee looks at various techniques for determining verity, from those of spy agencies and whistle-blowers to mystics and scientists.

This is the third book in the Kayfa ta series, a publishing initiative of artists Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis. Each book in the series is a monographic essay commissioned in the style of how-to manuals that situate themselves in the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, and the factual and the fictional.”

- Publisher’s blurb 

Bernard Heidsieck | Partition V

Bernard Heidsieck

Partition V

Paris, Le Soleil Noiur, 1973. 

149 pp. 2 fol. 19 x 19 cm. 

Edition of 1125 

A square artist book with a 7” flexi-disc mounted to the cover and another five following the title page.The discs feature spoken word texts written by Ruth Francken and performed by Heidsieck. 

Of the 1125 copies produced, the first 250 are signed and numbered. 

The track listing, from Discogs, is below. 

A Livre-objet De Ruth Francken

C Partition V - Poème-partition

D Partition V - Poème-partition

E1 Poème-partition B2 B3

E2 Le 4ème Plan

F1 La Pénétration

F2 La Convention Collective

G1 La Cage

G2 La Mer Est Grosse

G3 Quel Age Avez-Vous ?

H Bilan Ou Mâcher Ses Mots

I1 La Semaine - Passe-partout N°5

I2 La Semaine - Passe-partout N°5

J1 Ruth Francken A Téléphoné - Passe-partout N°8

J2 Ruth Francken A Téléphoné - Passe-partout N°8

 

Moondog

Louis Thomas Hardin (mostly known as Moondog) was born on this day in 1916. 

Francis Alÿs | Sign Painting Project

Francis Alÿs

Sign Painting Project

Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 1997

220 pp., 14.5 x 27 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

The Belgian-born conceptual painter and artistic interventionist Francis Alys developed The Sign Painting Project over a period of four years. 

Produced between 1993 and 1997, the Sign Paintings were a collaboration between Francis Alÿs and professional local sign painters in Mexico City. 

Alÿs began by painting small canvases in the flat, brightly-coloured style of the billboards he encountered in his neighbourhood in the Centro Histórico. He then commissioned sign-painters Juan Garcia, Enrique Huerta and Emilio Rivera to copy and enlarge them. 

The result of the artists’ combined labour is a collection of 120 paintings that provoke questions about collaboration, authorship and originality. Texts by Juan García, Emilio Rivera, and Enrique Huerta.

Buzz Spector | Memories

Buzz Spector

Memories

Ithaca, USA: Self-published, 1976

21 x 5.2 cm.

Edition size unknown

The pencil as cut-up poetry: a black cardboard box housing a folded sheet of paper and a dozen brightly coloured pencils, embossed with gold text. The work has a current value of approximately $250. 

"The pencils each carry lines from a poem, which you may construct according to my arrangement, or in any way which appeals to your own sensibilities.”

- box label

 

Vanessa Maltese | 86400-00468-86400-00468

Van Maltese

86400-00468-86400-00468

Toronto, Canada: Art With Heart, 2016

10” diameter

Edition of 25

Last fall, Art With Heart celebrated its 30th anniversary. Over the years, the event has featured the work of over a thousand artists and has raised over $15 million for Casey House, a hospice for people living with AIDS. 

Alongside the annual auction, each year Art With Heart commissions an artists’ edition. Featured artists have included Micheal Dumontier & Neil Farber, Dana Claxton, Jon Sasaki, BGL, Jaime Angelopoulos, Paul Butler, Rebecca Belmore and many others. 

Van Maltese produced this stained glass work in 2016. Copies are still available for $950, here. 

Avalanche [1970-1976 Facsimile Edition]

[Willoughby Sharp, Liza Béar, eds]

Avalanche [1970-1976 Facsimile Edition]

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2010

1016 pp., 26.7 x 49.5 x 6.35 cm., boxed

Edition of 1000

Avalanche was a New York City-based arts magazine that published thirteen issues between 1970 and 1976. The periodical was co-founded and co-edited by Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar, with the aim to cover conceptual art, minimal art, land art and performance art, from the perspective of the artist. 

Eschewing art criticism as an editorial principle, the magazine featured interviews with artists - sixty-one in total - all but three of which were conducted by either Béar, Sharp, or both together. 

The editors' attention to detail became legendary. To prepare for their interview with sculptor Barry Le Va, they asked the artist to identify his ten favourite books, and then proceeded to read them all. 

Among the featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, General Idea, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Yvonne Rainer, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Jackie Winsor and many others. 

Revealing its precarious financial situation, the final issue of the magazine featured the company’s own financial ledger on the cover [see below]. It declared bankruptcy shortly afterwards. 

In 2010, New York publisher Primary Information (whose name suggests an affinity with Avalanche’s editorial stance of privileging artists’ writings over arts criticism) produced a boxed reprint of the complete set of 13 issues, housed in a glossy black hardcover archival box. 

"While the stated goal of Avalanche was to empower the artist, its format echoed the cult of celebrity then sweeping American popular culture. Interviews and cover shots were, after all, defining features of Playboy, Rolling Stone, and of course, Andy Warhol's Interview. Looking back, we can also see in the magazine, albeit in nascent form, the contemporary art world's infatuation with the image of the artist as star. Yet Avalanche manifests a different kind of glamour: the unmade-up, unshaven faces, and defiant, brooding expressions and demeanor suggest a collective portrait of the artist as counterculture. Though the figure of the artist was increasingly being cast as a middle-class professional (as witnessed by mainstream representations, such as the fashionable photographs of minimalist artists published in Harper's Bazaar in the mid-196os), Avalanche insisted on an alternative definition of artistic identityan identity that would prove central to the politicization of the art world during this period.3 The magazine emphasized the crossover between the antiestablishment lifestyles and politics of the 196os and 1970S and the radical artistic practices of the period. With its ad hoc feel and relatively modest circulation of around five thousand, Avalanche revealed how the quintessential publicity form of the art magazine might foster a radical counterpublic within the alternative art community centered in SoHo in the early 1970s."

- Gwen Allen

Christina Kubisch | Night Flights

Christina Kubisch

Night Flights

Groveland, USA: Important Records, 2007

12” vinyl LP

Edition size unknown

A twentieth year anniversary reissue from the flautist turned sound artist, recorded during a residency in Milan, using all manner of compositional strategies, experimental recording techniques, and homemade electronics. 

“The compositions for Night Flights were realized in Milano in the period between 1983 and 1986. Milan at that time was a vivid and experimental place, with many international (mostly American) guests performing like Robert Wilson, John Cage, Trisha Brown, The Living, Laurie Anderson, etc.. At that time we were a group of several musicians working loosely together, exchanging knowledge about custom made instruments, the latest electronic devices, rare records, and information about where to go and what to listen to.

“The lack of digital information and internet was one of the reasons for frequent meetings and musical experiments. We were determined to be the avant garde in a classical world of virtuosity. Davide Mosconi, Raffaele Serra, Riccardo Sinigaglia and others included myself had small but, seen from today’s point of view, very artistic and exotic looking studios with many strange, often non-European instruments and all kinds of keyboards, electronic drums and tape recorders. The official studios from the conservatory were not available for us but not interesting as well. We tried to make multichannel recordings and mixes by ourselves, we invented long tape loops going through the whole room, echo effects and reverb. We became specialists in cutting and manipulating tapes.

“The so-called non-European musical tradition was a permanent source of inspiration. The meeting and performances with Roberto Laneri, overtone singer and Indian music specialist, opened up new horizons. For several years I worked as well for the record company Raretone and was responsible for the release of the recordings of Giaconto Scelsi. I spent wonderful long days at his home, full with conversations about art and music. Alvin Curran, who took care of Scelsi’s tapes and archive, often came by.

“There was a special fertile atmosphere in the early eighties in Milano. Somehow all these activities and the search for new sound worlds and techniques were a vital step on the way to what today is called sound art, though the term was not common then. Some characteristics of what is defined as soundscapes or sound environment are included in Night Flights: a special interest in sound colours, musical structure based on may layers of natural recordings and the intent to open up the listener’s space even with the limited means of a vinyl recording.”  

- Christina Kubisch

Meredith Monk awarded Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

Composer, choreographer, and performer Meredith Monk has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the organizers of the Sixty-Ninth Venice Biennale Musica. 

“Meredith Monk has revolutionized music and the performing arts with an approach that has expanded the potential of the human voice, transforming it into a vehicle for unprecedented sonic exploration,” the organizers of the Biennale said in a statement. “Her wordless incantations and ability to build entire sonic worlds from the simplest gestures give rise to a dialogue between matter and spirit, between presence and transcendence. Her work cannot be confined within historical categories, but opens up a living universe of sound, in constant evolution, which appears both ancient and radically innovative at the same time.”

Mahmoud Khaled | Fantasies on a Found Phone, Dedicated to the Man Who Lost It

Mahmoud Khaled

Fantasies on a Found Phone, Dedicated to the Man Who Lost It

London, UK: Bookworks, 2022

144 pp., 10.6 x 17.8 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

Recalling the work of Hans-Peter Feldmann and Sophie Calle, the images and texts in this artist book/catalogue come from an unlocked phone found in a public toilet. The publication accompanies Mahmoud Khaled‘s first UK solo exhibition of the same name, at The Mosaic Rooms. 

"Moving between the erotic, intimate, baroque and everyday, the compulsive sequence of images references the dissonant and voyeuristic experience of scrolling through social media and swiping in dating apps, and the clash of hyper-capitalist forces of productivity and technology with the intimacy of a queer male gaze.”

- publisher’s blurb