La Monte Young | Composition 1960, #5

"Composition 1960, #5 reads:

Turn a butterfly (or any number of butterflies) loose in the performance area. When the composition is

over, be sure to allow the butterfly to fly away outside. The composition may be any length, but if an unlimited amount of time is available, the doors and windows may be opened before the butterfly is turned loose and the composition may be considered finished when the butterfly flies away.

When I sent copies of Compositions 1960, Numbers 2 Through 5 to some of my friends, I received different comments from all of them concerning which ones they liked or disliked with one exception. Almost all of them wrote back to me saying ‘they liked Number 5 which consists, quite simply of turning a butterfly or any number of butterflies loose in the auditorium. Diane agreed that it was a very lovely piece and said it would seem almost impossible for anyone not to like it. At any rate, I had hoped to perform either Composition 1960 #2 which consists of building a fire in front of the audience, or Composition 1960 #5, the butterfly piece, on whatever program came up next. Thus, when the time arrived to do another noon concert of contemporary music at the University in Berkeley, I told a friend who was communicating with the director of the noon concerts that I would like t o do either Composition 1960 #2 or #5. The next day he phoned and said he had asked the director. The director had said that both pieces were absolutely out of the question. I was shocked. I could easily understand anyone's concern for a fire in the auditorium, but what could be wrong with a butterfly? Well, Compositions 1960 Numbers 2 and 5 were banned from the auditorium and we performed Composition 1960 #4 instead. Sometime afterward Diane received a letter from Susan, who was visiting in New York. At the end of the letter she wrote, "I

saw a boy in the park today running, quite terrified, from a small yellow butterfly.”

- La Monte Young

Richard Tipping | Six by Six by Six

Richard Tipping

Six by Six by Six

New York City, USA: Purgatory Pie Press, 1999

[6] pp., 16 x 16 cm., softcover

Edition of 216 signed and numbered copies

A six by six accordion bound bookwork with wordworks by Richard Tipping, hand typography by Dikko Faust and art direction by Esther K. Smith. The book - printed on all rag museum board - is signed by all three. 

Tauba Auerbach | Marbles for the John J. Harvey

Tauba Auerbach

Marbles for the John J. Harvey

New York City, USA: Diagonal Press, 2018.

104 pp., 9 x 11”, spiral-bound

Edition size unknown

Tauba Auerbach established Diagonal Press in 2013 with a mission to "make art in the form of publications.” The press produces books in open editions, and nothing is signed or numbered. They aim to "devise a business structure in which the publications are affordable and their value determined by what one gets out of owning them, rather than from reselling them.”

This laser-printed, plastic comb-bound book with a die-cut cover sells for $28.00, here. 

"In 2018 I was commissioned by Public Art Fund and 14-18 Now to dazzle the John J. Harvey, an historic fireboat in the New York Harbor. Built in 1931 and retired in 1994, the Harvey was rescued at a scrap auction by a group of maritime enthusiasts. Since then, the boat has been maintained by volunteers, operating as a small museum and offering free rides to the public. The Harvey became an unexpected hero on 9/11, springing back into service and pumping water for 80 hours. The story is memorialized in a Maira Kalman book.

Dazzle Camouflage was a painting strategy invented by the artist Norman Wilkinson during WWI. Usually comprised of sharp, contrasting, stripey designs, dazzle was devised to confuse rather than conceal. For my interpretation of the tradition, I marbled paper to generate high contrast images of fluid behaviours. This book chronicles the project and compiles a selection of the unused designs."

- Tauba Auerbach

bpNichol | birds emerging from alphabet

 

Keith Haring | Luna Luna, A Poetic Extravaganza!

Keith Haring 

Luna Luna, A Poetic Extravaganza!

Langley, UK:  Van der Meer Paper Design Limited, 1986

30.5 x 30.5 cm. [folded],  61 x 30.5 cm. [unfolded]

Edition of 2000 

Almost three decades before Banksy’s Dismaland, Austrian artist André Heller created Luna Luna - an open-air museum and amusement park in Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 1987. The project was an attempt to "create a travelling terrain of modern art, that in the centuries-old principle of the fairground involves people of all ages and educational levels in playful acts”. He commissioned thirty-two of the "most important artists of the period” to design the attractions. 

Participating artists included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dalí, Sonia Delaunay, David Hockney,  Roy Lichtenstein,  Kenny Scharf, Jean Tinguely, Roland Topor, and Keith Haring, who created a merry-go-round [see below]. 

The artists received $10,000 each, with Heller arguing "Listen, you are constantly getting the greatest commissions, everyone wants your paintings or sculptures, but I am inviting you to take a trip back to your own childhood. You can design your very own amusement park, just as you think would be right today.”

The event featured a reflective fun-house pavilion by Salvador Dalí, and "enchanted tree" by David Hockney, a boldly coloured glass labyrinth by Roy Lichtenstein, and a Ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Philip Glass composed the music for Lichtenstein’s labyrinth . Karajan recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic for Hockney's room and Basquiat chose the album Tutu by Miles Davis to accompany the Ferris Wheel ride. 

After decades in storage, the works were restored and new works were commissioned for Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy, which embarked on a global tour in 2023 with funding from Toronto singer Drake. 

This pop-up 3D offset cardstock multiple commemorating Haring’s carousel was produced in an edition of 2000, most of which were said to have been accidentally destroyed immediately after the fair. Estimates are that fewer than 200 copies remain. 

The work can be had for €950, from the Copyright Bookshop, here. 

Rhiannon Alpers | A Thousand Starlings

Rhiannon Alpers

A Thousand Starlings

San Francisco, USA : Gazelle & Goat Press, 2016

20 pp., 5.5 x 7.25”, hardcover

Edition of 30 signed and numbered copies

"The book explores an imagined journey, being carried through the comfort of one’s dreams. A journey guided by a murmuration of a thousand starlings, undulating and wisping through the evening sky, their soft voices calming and cooing as they head into the unknown.

Metaphors abound in this book. The support system of family and friends manifests in the starlings, and the twilight evokes a sense of comfort and stability amidst the unknown. The many threads pulling the dreamer along in this world are the guiding voices that safely and carefully show us our way. When we steer off course they gently nudge us and support us as we explore an unknown route. Murmurations themselves have an astonishing and dreamlike effect. Their immense rhythm and flow symbolizes the thin line between the dream and day.

Much of the symbolism also stems from the author’s rekindled interest in the long tradition of fables, passed on in her new nightly rituals of telling stories to small ears and eager eyes in the low light of the evening. It is in these final hours that our day fades away and our imagination is carried off to many wondrous places.”

- press release

Roula Partheniou

Happy Birthday to Roula Partheniou!!

[materials: acrylic on wood, drill bit, aluminum]

Les Levine | Levine’s Restaurant

Les Levine

Levine’s Restaurant

Filderstadt, Germany: Edition Domberger, 1969

50 x 65 cm.

Edition of 100

The artist as restauranteur has a long and rich history that includes Tina Girouard, Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark's FOOD, Jon Rubin’s Conflict Kitchen, Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy, EYE SCREAM by N.E. Thing Co., and Al’s Cafe by Allen Ruppersberg. Levine’s Restaurant preceded them all, and began as a proposed trade. 

Mickey Ruskin, the owner of Max’s Kansas City, approached the artist about trading an artwork for a tab at the club. Levine replied "Well, I'm a conceptual artist, so what can we do in relationship to that?"

From March to September 1969, Levine operated Ruskin’s 19th Street and Park Avenue South property as "New York's only Canadian restaurant". The venue featured "deplorable food and dismal light.” Some examples of the former include Salmon Steak Halifax, Chopped Chicken Liver Levine, and London Broil.

Levine viewed the restaurant as a kind of space-age Howard Johnson’s for tourists, but Ruskin hoped to corner the "meat-and-potatoes artists’ trade”. The decor revelled in its tackiness, with plastic light fixtures, kelly-green tablecloths, black walls, and white plastic bucket seats. The waitresses wore bowling team T-shirts, and the bartender was chosen because he was bland. 

This Edition Domberger boxed portfolio commemorating the project includes nine screen prints, a plastic sculpture of potato latkes, a bag of lentils, a stack of postcards,  a 26-inch-wide illuminated plastic sign, a T-shirt, and tablecloth, each signed and numbered (excluding the postcards and lentils), 

"Around the same time he presented “The Big Eye,” Levine issued a press release announcing the opening on St. Patrick’s Day 1969 of the Irish-Canadian-Jewish eatery Levine’s Restaurant. Initiated by Mickey Ruskin, proprietor of Max’s Kansas City, and designed by John Brockman, the restaurant could nonetheless be considered another instance of systems aesthetics from Levine’s artistic menu, this time using his name and biography as the conceptual backdrop to a “relaxing, pleasant environment”—albeit one where closed-circuit television had been installed to monitor each table. The place, contemporary with Allen Ruppersberg’s similarly conceptual Al’s Café in Los Angeles, was a total failure and closed after only a few months. Looking on the bright side, Burnham, ever a champion of the artist’s endeavors, found the work successful in terms of its further radicalization of the concept of the environment and in its direct engagement with the art world. He hailed Levine’s “ability to reify art as social context, that is, to create art out of whatever concerns art.”

- Tom Holert, Artforum