Martha Rosler | Garage Sale Standard

Martha Rosler

Garage Sale Standard

16 pp., 42 x 28 cm., tabloid newspaper

New York City, USA: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012

Edition size unknown

I had a standing date with a friend every summer Saturday morning for many years. She would pick me up and I would drive her car and we would hit every garage sale listed, from about seven in the morning until noon. She designed store windows so was looking for unusual items that could be used as display props. I was primarily looking for books and records (either for myself, or to quickly flip to pay for this sometimes costly addiction) but also furniture, and objects that I might use in artworks. 

Eventually the idea of the Garage Sale as an artwork occurred. This was before I had access to a gallery, so I think the main appeal was being able to advertise on lampposts and attract a modest audience. The ideal audience, in a way - at least one who would be familiar with the subject matter. 

I wanted to maybe produce a book of photographs I had taken at garage sales (or of items I had found there) and perhaps launch the book that way. I suspect feeling bad about the bait & switch is what prevented this from ever happening. Serious Garage Salers are on a tight schedule and would likely resent their time being wasted. 

Either way, Martha Rosler - it turns out - hosted such a thing many, many years prior. She presented her very first Garage Sale art work at the University of California San Diego Art Gallery, in 1973, when she was a graduate student. 

It was publicized in local media as both a sale and an art installation. The artist solicited donations from friends and colleagues of clothes, books, toys and household items, and displayed these alongside personal effects, such as private letters, her son’s baby shoes, and her used diaphragms. She also projected a slideshow of found images procured at an estate sale. 

Sometimes billed as the Monumental Garage Sale, the project travelled to nearly a dozen galleries, museums and art fairs in Vienna, Berlin, London, Stockholm, Rotterdam, Basel and Dublin, among other cities. 

Like many retail projects instigated by artists (Claes Oldenburg, Keith Haring, George Brecht & Robert Filliou, Tracey Emin & Sarah Lucas, David Hammons, N.E.Thing. Co, Sarah Staton, etc.) the work investigated ideas around value and exchange. 

In its final iteration,  this time entitled Meta-Monumental Garage Sale, it was held in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, in 2012. It was Rosler's first solo exhibition at MoMA, a venue she had been critical of in earlier writings. 

For two weeks visitors could haggle with the artist and gallery staff in the atrium of the gallery, which had been transformed into a large-scale version of the classic American garage sale.

Gallery visitors could also take home copies of the Garage Sale Standard, a free tabloid newspaper published by MoMA. Designed by Kelli Anderson (who kindly sent us copies of both), the newspaper features essays, interviews, an excerpt from Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, even a crossword puzzle (sample answers: Pussy Riot, Lena Dunham, Dr. No). 

It includes a negative newspaper review of the original Dan Diego exhibition from 1973, which argues that the project failed to transcend life and reality. The paper ran Rosler's response the following week, which is also reprinted here (sample line: "If Art seems close to Life, so much the better"). Other texts include "Domestic Work in New York City", "Where Does Electronic Waste End Up?" and Rosler's "On Obsolescence". 

Download both issues as PDFs from the Museum of Modern Art, here. 

"It stemmed from my shock that there was such a thing: that people would sell their stuff and that other people would buy it and not find the transaction strange. Garage sales didn’t exist where I grew up, in Brooklyn. It was only in the late 1960s, when I moved across the country for graduate school, that I came across this phenomenon. Once I understood the garage sale as a social ritual, run primarily by women, my initial horror changed to sympathy. I realized that I needed to take garage sales seriously. “Why do people, why do women, do this?” I asked myself. At the time, the country was in the middle of an oil crisis. When Sabine Breitwieser [chief curator of media and performance art at MoMA] asked me to hold a garage sale during yet another crash, it felt opportune. The work also sets in train the question of value systems, and since I am an artist, the system I was most interested in contrasting it with at that point was the art system, so it had to be held in or in conjunction with an art gallery, a noncommercial one."

- Martha Rosler

Mailbag

 

The above items - save for a few - all arrived in the mail in the time when this blog has been on semi-hiatus. They, and other neglected titles, will appear in the next week or two, now that things have wrapped up at Struts. 

Artists4Bernie

As of today, more than 2500 artists, curators, critics,  musicians, writers, and arts professionals have formally endorsed Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders for president of the United States. Among them: Hito Steyerl, Jeff Koons, Damián Ortega, Kader Attia, Kara Walker, Kim Gordon, Martha Rosler, Nan Goldin, Anicka Y, Nicole Eisenman, Karen Azoulay, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Steve Reinke, Ryan McGinley, Parker Ito and Moyra Davey.

In addition to visual artists, the letter was signed by actress Chloë Sevigny, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and musicians Devendra Banhart, M.I.A, Kim Gordon, and Michael Stipe.

The letter quotes Sanders commitment to the arts: "You have my promise that as president, I will be an arts president. I will continue to advocate strongly for robust funding of the arts in our cities, schools and public spaces. Art is speech. Art is what life is about."Conversely, each of Trump's annual budgets have declared the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities as 'wasteful and unnecessary funding'.

The Artists4Bernie campaign was launched by DIS, Mohammed Salemy, and Jennifer Teets. See the signatures at the website, here:

https://artists4bernie.org

The New York Artists’ Memorial Garden

In late April, the Art Production Fund and White Columns launched a joint venture called “The New York Artists’ Memorial Garden”, featuring benches by Laurie Anderson, Judith Bernstein, Barbara Bloom, Rafael Ferrer, John Giorno, Hans Haacke, Joan Jonas, Alex Katz, Glenn Ligon, Zoe Leonard, Jonas Mekas, Meredith Monk, Yoko Ono, Elizabeth Peyton, Jack Pierson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner and others.

Based on a curatorial initiative of Matthew Higgs, “The New York Artists’ Memorial Garden” is an extension of an existing NYC Parks “Adopt-A-Bench” program, which allows individuals to create a personal memorial for a loved one in a public space. Thirty-four New York- based artists were invited to dedicate a park bench to a person – or an entity – of their choosing.

The subjects of the dedications include author and activist James Baldwin, filmmaker Maya Deren, musician Alice Coltrane and art historian Linda Nochlin. Martha Rosler dedicated hers to David Antin, whom she describes as "Poet, mentor, friend, foe".

The benches are located in Jackson Square Park, open from 6am to 1am daily, and on view for the next ten years.

Open Letter to the New Museum

"We stand in solidarity with the New Museum Union.

We are troubled by New Museum leadership’s decision to hire an anti-union firm to sow fear and hostility and to misinform both management and staff about the role of unions in the workplace. Intimidation and misinformation do not constitute open engagement with the Museum employees. Moreover, such behavior goes against everything that the Museum has historically stood for—that is, equity, diversity, and a commitment to institutional responsibility.

We implore New Museum leadership to do the right thing and allow their employees to form a union without interference. We also urge leadership to bargain with the New Museum Union in good faith for a fair contract. Your coworkers are not simply union supporters but devoted colleagues who deeply love and believe in the institution and are fully committed to its future.

Signed:

Julie Ault, Artist

Andy Bichlbaum, the Yes Men

Claire Bishop, Professor, PhD Program in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center

Hannah Black, Artist

Nayland Blake, Artist, Chair ICP-Bard MFA

Jennifer Bolande, Professor, New Genres, UCLA Dept. of Art

Justin Vivian Bond, Transgenre Artist

Gregg Bordowitz, Artist

A.K. Burns, Artist

Paul Chan, Artist

Howie Chen, Curator

Liz Collins, Artist

Leah DeVun, Associate Professor, Rutgers University (Member, AAUP-AFT Local 06323)

Kimberly Drew, Writer and Independent Curator

Andrea Fraser, Professor and Chair, UCLA Department of Art

Malik Gaines, Artist

Liam Gillick, Artist

The Guerrilla Girls, Artists

Miguel Gutierrez, Artist

House of Ladosha

Sharon Hayes, Artist

Katherine Hubbard, Artist

Juliana Huxtable, Artist

David Joselit, Distinguished Professor, PhD Program in Art History, CUNY Graduate Center

Alhena Katsof, Curator

Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Artist and Writer

Nicole Killian, Artist and Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University

Devin Kenny, Artist

Kate Kraczon, Curator

Molly Larkey, Artist

Simon Leung, Artist and Professor of Art, UC Irvine

Monica Majoli, Artist and Professor, UC Irvine

Yong Soon Min, Professor Emerita, UC Irvine

Fred Moten, Professor, New York University

Carlos Motta, Artist

Gala Porras-Kim, Artist

R.H. Quaytman, Artist

Halsey Rodman, Artist; Co-Chair of Sculpture, Bard MFA; Critic, Yale School of Art, Painting and Printmaking

Martha Rosler, Artist

Alexandro Segade, Artist

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Artist; Visiting Artist Faculty, California Institute for the Arts and

Bard Summer MFA

Gregory Sholette, PhD, Professor, Queens College Art Dept, CUNY

Patrick Staff, Artist

Eric A. Stanley, Assistant Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley

A.L. Steiner, Artist

Eric Golo Stone, Writer, Artist, and Curator

Lincoln Tobier, Artist, Otis College of Art and Design / SEIU Local 721

Mariana Valencia, Artist

Chris E. Vargas, Artist

Anton Vidokle, Artist and Founder of e-flux

Matt Wolf, Filmmaker

Yellow Jackets Collective"

Martha Rosler | Postal Service Series #4

Martha Rosler | A Trilogy on Service Colonization

Martha Rosler
A Trilogy on Service Colonization  
New York City, USA: Printed Matter, 2008
[128 pp.], 20.5 x 13 cm., softcover
Edition of 1050

Reprinted 30 years after the 1978 original, this publication consists of three short postcard novels that address the social uses of food: "A Budding Gourmet", "McTowers Maid" and "Tijuana Maid".

"This is a book of three novels and one translation. In their original form the novels were sent through the mail as postcard series, one card about every five to seven days.

Mail both is and isn't a personal communication. But whether welcome or unwelcome, it thrusts itself upon you, so to speak, and must be dealt with in the context of your own life. Its immediacy may allow its message to penetrate the usual bounds of your attention. A serial communication can hook you, engaging your long-term interest (intermittently, at least). There was a lot of time – and mental space – around each installment of these novels, time in which the communication could unfold and reverberate. So, they are long novels, and slow ones..."

- Martha Rosler, August, 1976

Available for £7.00, from Tenderbooks, here.