Joyce Wieland | Reason over Passion

Joyce Wieland

Reason over Passion

1968

Quilted cotton, 256.5 x 302.3 x 8 cm

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Joyce Wieland reported had high hopes for Pierre Trudeau when he became Canada’s 15th Prime Minister, in 1968. She and her then-husband Michael Snow hosted a reception for the Liberal leader at their Chambers Street loft in New York City, and were impressed by his knowledge of avant-garde cinema, dance, jazz drummers, etc. 

Inspired by Trudeau's notion of “Reason over passion” ("that is the theme of all my writing,” he declared) she promptly stitched the phrase into this celebrated quilt work, which ended up in Trudeau’s home (stories differ as to whether the work was gifted to, or purchased by him.). A decade later it was almost destroyed in a domestic spat [see below].

The following year Wieland released a film of the same name, which was screened in the Directors' Fortnight program at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. The phrase (at least in online searches) is more strongly connected to her now, than to him. 

Later disillusioned by the Liberal leader, Weiland has claimed that both the party and the artwork were jokes at Trudeau’s expense. Certainly conflating reason over passion with a bedspread would seem to support her later assertion. 

“Not long after getting home, on a terrible evening full of misery and rage, I attacked a priceless quilt by Joyce Wieland, a piece of art that hung on the sitting-room wall and one that Pierre particularly loved. Stitched on the front, neatly and smugly (it seemed to me then), were his favourite words: “Reason over Passion.” I seized a pair of scissors and cut the words off. Taking a box of pins, I then switched the words round, so they read “Passion over Reason.” I was in one of my manic phases, and I had concluded that the only way to make Pierre Trudeau listen was to desecrate art.”

- Margaret Trudeau, Changing My Mind, 2010

General Idea | Passion over Reason

 

General Idea

Passion over Reason

Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 1991

24 x 20.5 cm.

Open Edition

One of ten chenille and embroidery on crest-shaped felt patches produced by General Idea between 1988 and 1991. Intended as an unlimited edition, fewer than a hundred copies were made. In 2010, a second iteration of 100 were released as a fundraiser for the  Kunsthalle Basel.

The crest combines the ziggurat form with a phallic take on the fleur de lis.

Felix Partz produced a first series of Ziggurat paintings in the late sixties before the inception of the group, which were later absorbed into the General Idea oeuvre. The motif appears again in the Miss General Idea’s venetian blind dress and the 1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion.

It’s unclear if the title was a response to Joyce Weiland’s Reason over Passion, from 1968 [see next post].

“We were brought up in the post-war period, and we were interested in the idea of progress and images of progress.  We didn’t believe in progress as a concept.  We were interested in how it dominated the post-war imagination.  If you look at business magazines from the ’50s, for example Fortune Magazine, the advertising features a lot of skyscrapers, which are always stepped.  This image of the ziggurat always dominates.  It is an image of power or even male power […] the ziggurat came to represent the future, the strength of progress and technological change and the male power of construction.”

-  AA Bronson, interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Bas Jan Ader

Bas Jan Ader was born on this day in 1942. He disappeared at sea thirty-three years later. 

Dave Dyment | Incomplete Open Cube

Dave Dyment

Incomplete Open Cube

Sackville, Canada: Self-published, 2026

15 x 15 cm.

Edition of 25 signed and numbered copies

Last month Jon Clayton hosted the International Sackville Cube Day event as part of the book launch for his new graphic novel Nowhere. Poet Geordie Miller read, singer Julie Doiron performed and a dozen or so visual artists displayed cube related art works. 

My contribution was a take-away envelope containing an image of the cube that I took on our second visit to the town, when the fully automated refrigerator building was not yet complete.

Takako Saito: Schachspiele + Performance 1989

Takako Saito

Takako Saito: Schachspiele + Performance 1989

Wiesbaden, Germany: Harlekin Art, 1990

24 pp., 14.8 x 12 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Twelve perforated postcards, each with an image of the artist with added cartoon speech bubbles with space for the owner to add their own texts before sending. 

Takako Saito | Schachspiele, Spiele und Bücher

Takako Saito

Schachspiele, Spiele und Bücher

Weissbaden, Germay: Harlekin Art, 1989 

[2] pp., 10 x 16.5 cm., 

Edition size unknown

An announcement card in the shape of a Saito’s signature bowler hat for an exhibition of chess games, games and books that ran from the 23rd of June to the 28th of July, 1989. 

Maddie Lycheck

 

Advice from David Shrigley

Seven signed and numbered prints by David Shrigley. 

Emma Kay | Worldview

Emma Kay

Worldview

London, UK: Bookworks, 1999

224 pp., 21 x 15 cm., softcover

Edition of 1500

In Worldview, Emma Kay recounts a history of the planet told entirely from unaided memory. It begins with the big bang, and ends with apocalyptic visions suggested by the then-imminent end of the millennium in 1999. The piece was first realized as a high-resolution ink-jet print [see below], with a typeface and layout designed by the artist. The spaces between the paragraphs indicate omitted material, their size related to the artist’s perception of her memory lapse. The large digital print (176 x 270.5 cm) was produced in an edition of three.

The content, presumably from half-remembered exam text books, period piece movies, novels and magazine articles, features major omissions and dodgy information, presented in a neutral tone. Two sample paragraphs:

"Apes’ upper limbs were long and strong, and were known as arms. Their brains were much larger in relation to their upper body weight than the dinosaurs’ brains. About a million years ago apes were multiplying rapidly, they appeared all over the Earth in pockets. They lived in social groups, which were hierarchical. They were herbivores. Most lived in trees but some had begun to live on the ground. The apes had the biggest brain in relation to their body of all the creatures so far. Their brain continually evolved, and their social interaction grew more complex.”

[...]

"After all the Ice Ages, and as the Sun continued to get hotter, the Earth became a nicer place to live again. Some of the mammals had begun to try to walk on two of their legs, to reach food that was growing on trees. They were the apes. Dinosaurs gathered food this way too, but their upper limbs were quite weak in comparison to the lower ones. Apes’ upper limbs were long and strong, and were known as arms. Their brains were much larger in relation to their upper body weight than the dinosaurs’ brains. About a million years ago apes were multiplying rapidly, they appeared all over the Earth in pockets. They lived in social groups, which were hierarchical. They were herbivores. Most lived in trees but some had begun to live on the ground. The apes had the biggest brain in relation to their body of all the creatures so far. Their brain continually evolved, and their social interaction grew more complex. They made very rudimentary tools to assist with food-gathering. They protected each other, not just their offspring. They spent a proportion of their time in play, since they were so good at gathering food that they did not need to do it all the time. Their predators were larger mammals such as lions and tigers, wolves and bears. As they became more intelligent, they learned how to avoid being eaten. They were a very successful species, and this fact enabled them to multiply and evolve at a quick rate."

Worldview follows Kay's The Bible from Memory (1997), a 7,500 word single page retelling of the King James Bible and Shakespeare from memory. Similarly, Worldview tells a global history bookended with creation and destruction, and represents an attempt at classification which reveals the flaws inherent in all histories.

The cover map is drawn by the artist, also from memory.

"When I am writing I always imagine myself in some kind of virtual computer environment and think of my memory works as hypertexts. The associative and cognitive links people make are the very ones which computers try to emulate, and even represent. Hypertext is an apparently objective attempt to impose order over chaos and to get to grips with vast resources, though its subjectivity is inescapable. It seemed to me to be interesting to represent this attempt visually."

- Emma Kay

Richard Artschwager: No More Running Man

[Richard Artschwager]

Richard Artschwager: No More Running Man 

Los Angeles, USA: Gagosian, 2014

88 pp., (20.9 × 27 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

"This book was published on the occasion of Richard Artschwager: No More Running Man at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York, which coincided with a major touring retrospective of the artist’s work organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in collaboration with Yale University Art Gallery. The exhibition presented Artschwager’s last series of work, variations on the motif of an isolated figure derived from a photograph—clipped from the Boston Globe—showing a man running through a park during the winter of 1989. Artschwager reimagined the image in several works beginning in 1991 and used it as the basis for this final series depicting one, two, or three monochrome silhouettes repeated or mirrored on plastic or paper. Presented in deep frames, each entry doubles as a sculpture and erases distinctions between synthetic and organic surfaces, the everyday object and the work of art.

The publication includes color productions of the twenty-five works in the exhibition as well as a preface by Bob Monk and an illustrated essay by Robert C. Morgan. The book design features a die-cut silhouette of the running man’s shape on the front and back covers, mimicking the mirrored laminated figures in Running Man (double blue) (2013).”

The book is available from the publisher here for $60 US. 

Approximate Objects [below] is on display until this Friday, April 17.

Richard Artschwager | Hydraulic Door Check

Richard Artschwager

Hydraulic Door Check

Koln, Germany:  Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2002

256 pp., 18.5 × 24 cm., hardcover, boxed

Edition of 500 signed and numbered copies

Housed in an archival cardboard box (21.9 × 26 cm.), the deluxe version of this 2002 exhibition catalogue is covered with the rubberized horsehair that the artist frequently used in his unique sculptures and multiples. The book was published in conjunction with a show held at MAK, Vienna, Austria, from March 27th to June 16th, 2002, curated by Daniela Zyman.

Edited by Peter Noever, the volume includes texts (in both English and German) by Jörg Heiser, Anthony Vidler, and John Yau.  These essays "consider Artschwager's artistic development, the meaning of surface quality in his work, and his place within the context of relevant art movements."

The work is available to purchase for $1000 from Gagosian gallery here. The work is available to purchase for $1000 from Gagosian gallery here. 

The work is part of Approximate Objects, an exhibition of sculptural multiples by Artschwager that is on view at Gagosian’s gallery and shop in the Burlington Arcade, London. The presentation surveys sixteen editioned works created between 1969 and 2012, alongside a selection of the artist’s publications and prints.

Eleanor Antin: The Angel of Mercy

Eleanor Antin

Eleanor Antin: The Angel of Mercy

San Diego, USA: La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, 1977

18 pp., 20.4 x 23 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

The catalog for an exhibition at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, where Antin performed as a 19th century, Clara Barton-esque nurse. The publication ncludes photographs staged in a British Victorian style which seem to depict life in an army camp during the Crimean War. Scenes include a piano performance, surgery in a field hospital, chess, and a deserter’s execution. The title also includes essays by Jonathan Crary and Kim Levin.