Image Bank | Colour Bar

Image Bank

Colour Bar

Los Angeles, USA: New Documents, 2020

4.13 × 1.91 × 17.46 cm.

Open edition

Two years after founding Image Bank in 1969, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov began their Colour Bar Research project, one of the duo's most celebrated works. An exercise in endless painting, Colour Bar Research involved sculpture, performance, film, magazine interventions1 and conceptual projects. 

A thousand wooden colour bars were hand-painted at "Babyland" - their newly acquired rural property near Roberts Creek - in 1971, and another thousand the year after, at the New Era Social Club, in Vancouver.

These bars were used as modules in temporary outdoor works of art, an attempt to "make art from a community of collaboration". The two thousand colour bars were filmed, videotaped and photographed in a landscape populated with naked performers, as a kind of infinitely variable, floating conceptual painting. By using the objects as props to be documented, the duo emphasized play and process over finished product.  

In the spirit of the open edition of the original works, Los Angeles-based publisher New Documents - who had previously produced a volume of Trasov's Mr Peanut Drawings - last year released a continuation of the work. While ostensibly an unlimited edition, their website lists fifty copies, with only five remaining. 

Colour Bar is available for $40.00 US from the New Documents site, here. 

"Concurrent with their artistic explorations of the busily social, urban environment, Image Bank also initiated artistic activities in the context of the idyllic, natural environment. These were conducted at a place called Babyland — a piece of property purchased by Morris and Trasov at Roberts Creek on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast, two hours from Vancouver by car ferry. Utilizing the natural environment somewhat in the way they had utilized the urban environment during the Mr. Peanut for Mayor campaign, Babyland became 'a place to act out fantasies, to set up the props and pursue a culture / nature debate'.

With precedents such as the Monte Verita community in Switzerland at the beginning of the 20th century, Babyland became a meeting-place for artistic production and conviviality within a natural setting. Visitors to Babyland during the early 1970s included artists, film writers, poets, art critics, and crafts people from Canada and abroad. 

One fascinating project conducted at Babyland was Colour Bar Research (1972-74), which consisted of the arrangement of an 'endless painting' composed of a thousand wood blocks painted in colour spectrums. These colour bars were arranged and rearranged in a variety of ways — as ziggurat patterns on fields, let loose in streams, and floated on a lake. Accompanied by nude or costumed visitors 'on the set' at Babyland and Lake Yogo, this endless painting was documented on film, slides, and photographs — in images suggestive of a youthful paradise where the physics of light and ever-changing colour combinations merges in a utopian vision of interpersonal playfulness and refracted possibilities for bodies and selves."

- Luis Jacob, Golden Streams

1. A 1973 "Special Double Issue" of FILE Megazine featured one of eight offset "colour bar" cards inserted into each copy of the publication. Mr Peanut also featured on the cover of the inaugural issue of FILE, a year prior. 

VILE Vol.3 No.2.

[Anna Banana, ed.]

VILE Vol.3 No.2.

San Francisco, USA: Banana Productions, 1977

98 pp., 27.4 × 21.4 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

General Idea's FILE Megazine (itself a parody - and anagram of - LIFE Magazine) was influential enough to result in several other publications referencing their format: BILE, SMILE, Defile, and VILE, with the latter being the most well known. 

FILE preceded VILE by a couple of years and became essential to the growing Mail-Art movement in Canada. The inclusion of an Artist Directory helped establish a network of artists across the country, resulting in a proliferation of correspondance art. When Anna Banana sensed a "growing disdain for mail art" from the periodical, she countered with her own large format magazine. 

Even three years after the debut issue, the editorial made clear that the magazine stood in opposition to FILE: 

“Here we are at the 5th issue of VILE, and finally an issue which satisfies my original conception of the magazine — a merging of literary and artistic works into a parody of everybody's favorite alternate art magazine — FILE”. 

The issue features collages, drawings, photographs, artworks, essays, letters and advertisements for non-existent products. Contributors include Alison Knowles, Bill Gaglione, Wolf Vostell, Genesis P-Orridge, Maurizio Nannucci, Monte Cazazza, Ray Johnson, Robin Crozier, and others. 

VILE often featured a nude subject on the cover. Here, the artist and art collector Guglielmo Achille Cavellini is seen writing on nude male.

Banana produced seven issues of VILE over nine years, ending in 1983. 

VILE Vol.3 No.2.is available from Re/Search publications, for $80, here. 

The Territories of Artists' Periodicals

Marie Boivent & Stephen Perkins, editors
The Territories of Artists' Periodicals
Reenes, France/De Pere, USA: Editions Provisories/Plagiarist Press, 2015
166 pp., 21 x 15 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

One of the earliest exhibitions I curated was titled Magazines by Artists, for Art Metropole, well over a decade ago. At the time, very little had been written on the subject, and research was limited to histories of the individual periodicals - no extensive overviews had been published (to my knowledge). Today there are several large volumes in print - most notably Gwen Allen's Artists' Magazines and Phil Aaron's In Numbers: Serial Publications by Artists since 1955. (I reviewed them both for Magenta Magazine, here and here). Several of the leading examples of artists' periodicals have also now been reprinted as anthologies, including Source, FILE, Art & Language Bulletins, Impulse, FOX, Avalanche, and 0-9. Several collections of 'zines and been anthologized (Harmony Korine, Mark Gonzales, etc.).

This new title collects the thirteen papers that were presented at the international symposium of the same name, which took place at the University of Wisonsin-Green Bay, Lawton Gallery over three days in June of last year. Editors Marie Boivent and Stephen Perkins assembled an international group of contributors that include artists, publishers, librarians and historians.

Boivent interviews Charlton Burch, who founded Lightworks magazine in 1976. Lightworks is often omitted from these surveys, perhaps because it occupied a space somewhere in between the traditional art magazine (articles about artists and art works) and artists' magazines (it regularly contained artist pages and projects). Burch often published themed issues (Ray Johnson, Fluxus, the Zero group) and notoriously included a book of matches by Ben Vautier (for burning down museums) affixed to the cover of issue 14/15. The periodical advertised itself as "the most misunderstood magazine in town".

Brad Freeman's JAB also blurs the boundaries between art magazine and artists' magazine. The Journal of Artists' Books was conceived in 1994 as a forum for critical discussion about artists’ books, but also as a creative endeavour: publishing primary material that ranged from small inserts to entire issues conceived of by artists. Freeman's contribution to Territories is an overview of the journal, subtitled "Hybrid Publication Arts".

Kirsten Olds, a professor of Art History at the University of Tulsa, contributes "Queered Territories: Zines of the 1970s and Networked Identity". She discusses projects such as Egozine, General Idea's FILE, and John Jack Baylin's Fanzini, and the way that they "established themselves as potent queer sites".

Simon Anderson is a cultural historian who wrote his Ph.D dissertation on Fluxus, for the Royal College of Art. He has worked at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1993, where he teaches the history of artists' books and crossover activities such as Pataphysics, Mail-art, expanded poetry and the Situationists. He wrote about Fluxus publications for the Walker Centre's In the Spirit of Fluxus (still as good as any an introduction to the group), and was an active member of early Fluxus online activities. His text centres around two Chicago artists' periodicals: Stare and DuDa.

Stephen Perkins speaks with Doro Boehme, a visual artist (http://doroboehme.com) and writer who currently runs the John M Flaxman Library Special Collections at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They discuss her work at the library, in particular the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection, her own artists' books and a recent presentation she gave called "Visionaire vs Point d'Ironie". Visionaire is a lavishly produced collaboration between artists and the fashion world, and prohibitively expensive. Point d'Ironie uses the tabloid format and is free. It is probably the best distributed artist project on the planet (see the tag below for more information).

Other texts include "Assembling Magazines and the Death of the Editor" by Perkins, "Yugoslavian independent artists' periodicals and other relationship with the art centres" by Ana Radovanovic, and "Archives, Archiving and Archivists" by artist John Held Jr.

The book is available for $14.50 US or 13 Euros. In Europe visit editionspvioires.fr and in North American contact Stephin Perkins at perkins100@gmail.com.

CEAC: Radical Experiment or Exercise in Self-Destruction

Tomorrow at 1pm, the Art Gallery of York University hosts a symposium titled CEAC: Radical Experiment or Exercise in Self-Destruction: An Afternoon of Discussion.

The Centre for Experimental Art and Communication was active in Toronto from the fall of 1975 (when it emerged out of the Kensington Arts Association) to mid-1978, when it abruptly ceased operation. The CEAC organized exhibitions, conferences, workshops, screenings and performances. The group presented a wide-range of projects, including works by artists Vera Frenkel, Joseph Kosuth, Dennis Oppenheim, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneeman, Michael Snow, and Lawrence Weiner, and composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

The CEAC publication Art Communication Edition, later re-named Strike, was a vehicle for promoting the centre’s radical political program. In their May 1978 issue, they featured a lengthy article on the The Red Brigades, an Italian militant organization notorious in the 70's for their violent attempts to destabilize the country through acts of sabotage, bank robberies, and kidnappings. Kneecapping - the crippling of your enemy with a gunshot to the knee - was another favourite tactic, reportedly used as a method to punish at least 75 people by 1978.

Robert MacDonald,  a conservative columnist who helped found The Toronto Sun newspaper in 1971, wrote a series of articles attempting to erode support for the arts councils by highlighting what he deemed the the group's advocation of such violent terrorist acts. A scandal ensued that saw funding cuts to the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, both of whom (alongside Wintario) pulled their funding to the CEAC, costing the group their building, the first owned by an artist-run centre in Toronto.

The AGYU symposium brings together the surviving "original protagonists" of the CEAC experiment—Diane Boadway, Peter Dudar, Lily Eng, Bruce Eves, John Faichney, and Ron Giii. They are joined by curator and AGYU director Philip Monk, Dot Tuer, and artist Mike Hoolboom (whose website provided the above images).

The event is held in conjunction with Monk's exhibition Is Toronto Burning? 1977/1978/1979 Three Years in the Making (and Unmaking) of the Toronto Art Community. The extensively researched exhibition examines three pivotal years in the local art community, and its increasing engagement with politics, punk rock, fashion and advertising. Housed in the show's many vitrines are the original CEAC publications, alongside related newspaper clippings from the Toronto Sun and Globe and Mail. Other publications include Image Nation, FILE megazine and Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge's ...It’s Still Privileged Art. 

Alongside the CEAC, the exhibition includes Susan Britton, David Buchan, Colin Campbell, Elizabeth Chitty, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Judith Doyle, General Idea, Isobel Harry, Ross McLaren, Missing Associates (Peter Dudar & Lily Eng), Clive Robertson, Tom Sherman, and Rodney Werden.

The AGYU is located in the Accolade East Building, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto. CEAC: Radical Experiment or Exercise in Self-Destruction: An Afternoon of Discussion takes place at 1pm on Wednesday November 12th. Is Toronto Burning? continues until the 7th of December, 2014.

Ron Terada | Defile: Trading Places

Ron Terada
Defile: Trading Places
Toronto, Canada: YYZ Artist's Outlet/Art Metropole, 2003
52 pp., 28 x 20.5 x cm., staplebound
Edition of 50 signed and numbered copies

Defile began as an idea from Art Metropole’s bookstore manager Jordan Sonenberg, (presumably) to both honour and parody FILE magazine, to which Art Metropole owed it’s origins. The notion was to publish a single issue a year, handing over the content entirely to a single artist or collective. They could serve as editors, or provide all of the content themselves. I approached Terada with the parameters and he quickly responded with the premise that was to become the first (and second last) issue. He wanted the entire magazine to consist of advertising, most of which would be made in trade with other periodicals.

We contacted every major art publication and twenty-one agreed to provide ads in return:Afterall (Issue 7), Artforum (Issue 6), Art Monthly (Issue 264), Art on Paper (Issue 5), Art Papers (Issue 2), Border Crossings (Issue 85), C Magazine (Issue 77), Cabinet (Issue 10), Camera Austria (Issue 81),Canadian Art (Issue 1), CV (Issue 60), Exit (Issue 9), Flash Art (Issue 229), Frieze (Issue 73), Kunst-Bulletin (Issue 1/2), Parachute (Issue 110), Parkett (Issue 67), Prefix Photo (Issue 7), Springerin (Issue 1),Teme Celeste (Issue 96), Zingmagazine (Issue 18).

This makes Defile magazine one of the best advertised art magazines ever (certainly the best advertised pilot issue of an art magazine) but the issue itself contains no content, only the closed circuit loop. The cover graphic, too, was part of an exchange. In order to use the stock photograph, we traded the photographer an ad on the back of the issue.

Titled Trading Places, the glossy periodical serves as both a snapshot of a month in the art world, a parody of a readership that consumes art magazines primarily for the advertising, and a trading of art world discourse real estate (Terada had previously funded a monograph of his work by selling gallery wall space to donors).

The trade edition of 950 were given away or sold for $5.00 (I can’t remember) but the signed edition remains available at Art Metropole, here, for $25.00.

Five years later the artist produced a 2008 poster called Have You Seen This Kitten?, a supplement to the project which served as a call to locate and collect the twenty-one back issues featuring the kitten advertisement. The collector was invited to document a stack of the periodicals and send two copies of the photograph to the artist, who would sign them and return one, as authentication of the collected sculpture.