James Lee Byars | I’m collecting questions

James Lee Byars

I’m collecting questions

Croton, USA: Hudson Institute, 1969

43.2 x 28 cm.

Edition size unknown

A questionnaire from the artist's brilliant World Question Centre (see earlier post, here) that states "I’m collecting questions. Please list yours and send to Byars (Temp. Art. in Res.) Hud. Inst. Croton, N.Y. 10520".

"So running the World Question Center I tried many things. I tried as I said street-tests, I went to schools. My biggest amazement was Columbia where I managed to hand out probably 1000 of the questionnaires which said, were regular size paper simply saying at the top “I’m collecting Questions. List yours.” And the return address of the Hudson Institute and so forth and then the numbers one to one-hundred down the side. On the reverse side there was a small ‘?’ in the middle of the page. It is interesting that I got only one return from Columbia. One questionnaire. But people dislike paper, I expect a lot of prejudice for that. So I don’t know if that’s a reasonable statistic or not."

- James Lee Byars, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, April 21, 1970

Lee Scratch Perry, RIP

 

Richard Artschwager | Untitled [Box With Drawers]

Richard Artschwager

Untitled [Box With Drawers]

New York City, USA: Multiples, Inc., 1971

34.6 x 37.5 x 29.5 cm

Edition of 50 signed, dated and numbered copies

Produced by Marian Goodman's Multiples Inc. in an edition of fifty copies, this work consists of a white oak box with a white formica top and five drawers of equal size and shape. Each drawer has a brass handle similar to the kind found on library card catalogue drawers. The drawers contain formica (mimicking the top of the cabinet), a bottomless drawer, glass, mirror, and rubberized horsehair - one of the artist's signature materials. 

"In the fall of 1970, I showed up at Richard Artschwager’s shop on Canal Street in New York City for my first day of work. I was joining a team of artists, including John Torreano, who had been hired to complete a limited-edition object. Upon my arrival Richard gave me a broom and asked me to sweep up. I was glad to do it and glad to have the job. I swept sawdust and shavings into a pile, got a dustpan, and put the bulk of the refuse into a trash barrel. I had started to gather the small amount left on the floor when Richard said, “No, leave it. That will tell us where to put the next batch.”

In the late 1960s Richard was making art alongside furniture in the shop on Canal Street. He had fully equipped his workshop with a crosscut saw, table saw, router, drill press, power sander, planer, and worktables. My job, in addition to sweeping the floor, was to use the router to cut dovetails for the assembly of dressers, end tables, and chests of drawers.

The last art project Richard completed before moving his studio upstate was “Untitled” (1971), a box with five drawers designed and manufactured by the artist and published in an edition of 50 by Castelli Graphics and MultiplesInc. By the time I joined the shop, “Untitled”had been designed, a prototype had been made, and the cutting and assembly process had begun. One of my tasks was to cut dovetail pieces for these drawers. While doing so, I considered some aesthetic questions surrounding Artschwager’s work and recorded my reflections in journal entries. This essay is based upon my notes.

Artschwager’s art is genre bending and paradoxical. Throughout his career he has created enigmatic objects, objects questioning the very genres they inhabit; he has navigated drawing, painting, and sculpture, crossing over and stretching the customary boundaries defining art. His years as a furniture designer/maker informed his sculpture. He used the materials and methods from furniture production and assembly, as well as all the iterations (perceptual, real, and faux) these materials and methods suggested to his imagination. He cut and assembled rational, angular, minimal objects; covered three-dimensional objects with Formica in elegant camouflage; manufactured non-utilitarian objects that looked utilitarian; and created illusionistic and literal mirror images, visual riddles that played with the viewer’s expectations.

[...]

Human beings are inhabiting creatures and we want to know what’s inside. But first encounters with unfamiliar chests of drawers are usually cautious. We never know what we will find. This is one of the suspense principles, the balanced relationship between expectation and the unforeseen. The first encounter with“Untitled”can be unsettling. Is it a storage unit for materials; or is it minimal sculpture, or furniture, or a model of some sort? How does one experience this work? If we open its drawers, are we moving away from or towards the center?

To answer these questions the box locates the viewer, much like the painter locates the viewer by using perspective. In order to truly “see” the piecethe viewer must be in proximity to the piece, closer than arm’s length, and able to open and examine the insides of the drawers. 

Upon doing so, viewers discover that “Untitled”encompasses a series of polarities: open and closed, inside and outside, top and bottom, full and empty, light and dark. These polarities are built into the geometry of the box, conferring coherence. Examining them, followingcontingent steps from one place to the next, the viewer proceeds logically, like Ariadne’s thread, and gains insight into the ordering system at the heart of “Untitled”and at the core of Richard Artschwager’s artistic project.

[...]

The abrupt physical sensation upon seeing the overflowing container of the bottom drawer can be traced to the physiology of visual perception. The drawers preceding the fifth have created an illusionistic experience. The eye has adjusted to distance, to illusions of space and reflection, and to focusing alternately on the field around and through the drawers. The final drawer abruptly pushes the viewer back to the physical, measurable, non-illusionistic, tactile space within arm’s reach. The narcissism of the mirrored surface’s visual expansion is thus thwarted with two strokes of a hand. Closing drawer four and opening drawer five erases distance and illusion, reclaiming the physical presence of material and surface.

“Untitled”provides an insight into Artschwager’s materials and methods, and his exploration of perception, illusion, and tactile and sculptural space—and it does so using an oak box with five drawers. The five drawers are like a five-step visual scale. Each step moves the observer from one polarity to another, from light to dark, open and closed, outside and inside. Composed of ordinary materials—oak, brass handles, Formica, glass, mirror, and rubberized horsehair—“Untitled” invites viewers to construct meaning using their own temporal experience.

Once the viewer examines “Untitled,” the content is carried around in his or her memory. Just as with all remembered experience, memory is never wholly apart from, never wholly inclusive of, always someplace in between. “Untitled”exists someplace in between the container and the contained, someplace in between furniture and sculpture, someplace in between the utilitarian and the esthetic, someplace in between the static and the interactive.

“Untitled”is a hermetic system of thought, deciphered by following a series of steps, much like Ariadne’s thread. As simple and straightforward as were Richard’s floor sweeping instructions to me on my first day at his shop, they gave me an insight into his mind and his complex art. When he asked me to leave a small pile of sawdust on the floor of his shop to indicate where the next pile of sawdust should go, he was telling me that, for him, actions always pose questions about further actions. It can be said that all of Artschwager’s work—in any of its formats—serves as a set of instructions for the viewer, a tool for seeing.

At the Whitney Museum’s recent opening of the retrospective RichardArtschwager!, I spoke with the artist about “Untitled.” I suggested that the multiple could be considered a pivotal work in Artschwager’s career because it contained the material and conceptual seeds of that which interested him. He added, “And what mystified me.”"

- Michael Torlen, Brooklyn Rail

Mike Kelley | Paddle for Artist's Space

Mike Kelley

Untitled [Paddle for Artist's Space]

New York City, USA: Artist's Space, 1992

59 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm.

Edition of 50 numbered copies

A Beech wood paddle with leather strap screen printed on the front with the opening line of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) on the verso. 

The artist's initials are incised on the handle, as is the edition number. 

Produced as a benefit for Artist's Space in New York. 

Jenny Holzer | Fingers slide where the brain is close

Jenny Holzer

Selection from the SURVIVAL SERIES (Fingers slide where the brain is close...), 1983-1985

New York City, USA: Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 1985

15.2 x 21.8 cm.

Edition of 10 signed and numbered copies

"Fingers slide where the brain is close to the surface and pursue the intentions lying there" is a lesser-known Truism from the Survival series produced as a painted aluminium work, mounted on board. The plaque is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Tracey Emin | Temporary Tattoo

Tracey Emin

Temporary Tattoo

Venice, Italy: The British Council, 2007

8 x 6 cm.

Edition of 1500

A temporary tattoo with an image of a bird riding a penis, distributed at the artist’s exhibition as the British official entrant for the 2007 Venice Biennale. 

https://artistsbooksandmultiples.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-rolling-stones-sticky-fingers-by.html

 

General Idea | Bondage

General Idea

Bondage

Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 1987

1.5 cm wide; 2286 cm per roll

Prototype for an edition 

According to AA Bronson’s comprehensive list of Editions & Publications 1967 - 1995, only two prototypes of this planned edition were ever produced. The work consists of black satin ribbon with the word Bondage hot-stamped in silver. 

Christian Marclay | Tape Fall

Christian Marclay

Tape Fall

New York City, USA: The New Museum, 1990

32 × 11 cm.

Edition of 150 

The installation Tape Fall debuted as part of the 1989 New Museum exhibition “Strange Attractors: Signs of Chaos,” alongside works by Glenn Branca, John Cage, Zoe Leonard, Ann Hamilton, David Hammons, Cary Noland, and many others. The work features a reel-to-reel tape deck continuously playing a track of dripping water sounds. Suspended nine feet above the gallery floor, the deck is not fitted with a take-up reel, so the tape unspools onto the floor. The resulting pile of audio tape becomes a sculptural form that mirrors the aural experience. A total of 187 reels of tape were used.

Much the way that Footsteps began as an installation of vinyl LPs that were then torn up and sold as editions, here the magnetic tape is collected and bottled. The temptation for Marclay - a fan of puns and wordplay - to call it Bottled Water must've been strong, but was wisely avoided. 

The work is valued at approximately $1500 US. 

"Christian Marclay's installation Tape Fall (1989) is a grower. Not just in the sense that it takes a while for the work's impact to sink in - although it's certainly true that, unlike many apparent one-liners, Tape Fall keeps suggesting interpretations with repeated interaction. No, the installation quite literally grows, slowly but surely, and each visit presents a new version of the art work. Startlingly simple, the piece consists of a reel-to-reel tape player perched high atop an industrial stepladder; magnetic tape plays back a recording of dripping water and, in the absence of a take-up reel, falls the 20 or so feet to the gallery floor, where it accumulates in a messy pile. When the tape runs out a new one is loaded into the machine, and the debris beneath is left in place. Despite the tangle around the base of the ladder, a subtle order prevails: positioned to fall directly on top of a horizontal metal bar, the slowly spilling tape gradually flips and flops over the rod, creating a symmetrical mound as it amasses, ever so slowly. Returning to the gallery is a bit like making repeat visits to Pride Superette, a convenience store only a mile or so from San Francisco MOMA, where the owner, Nabil Kishek, is in the slow process of assembling a ball of rubber bands worthy of the Guinness Book of Records. Despite the gentle pace of both projects, experiencing the mutation at first hand never fails to delight, resulting in an odd collision of simple surprise and Sisyphean sublimity."

- Philip Sherburne, Frieze, 2002

The Nova Convention

[Various Artists]

The Nova Convention

New York City, USA: Giorno Poetry Systems, 1979

Gatefold 2LP set/double cassette

Edition size unknown

In 1978, Semiotext(e) founder Sylvere Lotringer approached John Giorno about organizing a tribute to William S Burroughs, bringing together European and American academics for a series of seminars, celebrating the writer as a "philosopher of the future", someone who best understood postindustrial society.

Giorno was more interested in a counterculture event that would feature musicians, poets, novelists and artists alongside academics, maybe a star attraction. Keith Richards was added to the bill at the last minute to meet the final requirement, ensuring that the event quickly sold out. 

Titled The Nova Convention, the event took place between November 30th and December 2nd, 1978, in the East Village at the Entermedia (the former fabled Phoenix Theater, now the Village East Cinema). The "convention" featured music performances, readings, screenings and panel discussions, that sought to grapple with some of the implications of Burroughs' writings and influence. 

The audience was made up of academics, students, publishers, writers, artists, punks and people wanting to see the Rolling Stones guitarist. However, complications from his Toronto heroin arrest prevented Richards from attending. 

Philip Glass performed a minimalist solo work on the synthesizer, and was booed. Burroughs friend and associate Brion Gysin took the stage next, with the audience shouting "Where's Keith?"

Frank Zappa was recruited at the last minute to appear in place of Richards. Too late to arrange his band, he agreed to read from talking asshole scene from the Burroughs classic Naked Lunch. 

Patti Smith appeared next - nervous to follow Zappa - in a fur coat and iguana-skin cowboy boots. During her introduction a heckler shouted, "Tell it to the iguana." Smith is reported to have surreptitiously masturbated onstage through a slit in her coat pocket, to maintain her command over the audience. 

"I know you guys came in to see Keith," she told them, breaking the news for the first time. "Well, Keith ain't here. He's on a plane right now between L.A. and Toronto. He asked me to tell you all that if anybody wants their money back they can come and get it right now." She then proceeded to pull some crumpled bills out of her pocket, but no one approached to claim them. 

Sick with bronchitis, Smith was unable to sing but instead played clarinet and electric guitar, despite not being proficient on either. The New York Times review described her playing as "with virtually no technique in the conventional sense but with a certain understanding of the kind of effects that were within her grasp."

John Giorno - an always excellent performance poet - read two emotional and moving works and a young Laurie Anderson gave a presentation about the future, her voice electronically pitch-shifted. Anderson, Burroughs and Giorno would later team up for a spoken word tour together, and Burroughs appeared in Anderson's breakthrough film Home of the Brave. 

Burroughs received a warm welcome for his readings. Even when his subject matter is challenging, Burroughs' arresting voice, midwestern accent and haunting persona could be counted on to captivate an audience. He also provided the keynote lecture, and appeared on a panel discussion with Gysin, Timothy Leary, and Robert Wilson, moderated by artist Les Levine. 

The series was originally produced by Giorno Poetry Systems for WBAI radio, and released the following year as a double LP. 

Side One

1. Terry Southern – Vignette of Idealistic Life in South Texas

2. William S. Burroughs – Keynote commentary & Roosevelt After Inauguration

3. John Giorno – Eating The Sky

4. Patti Smith – Poem For Jim Morrison & Bumblebee

Side Two

1. William S. Burroughs – Benway

2. Philip Glass – Building, excerpt from Einstein On The Beach by Robert Wilson & Philip Glass

3. Brion Gysin – Kick That Habit, Junk Is No Good Baby, Somebody Special & Blue Baboon

4. Frank Zappa – The Talking Asshole

5. William S. Burroughs – From The Gay Gun: "This Is Kim Carson," "Just Like The Collapse Of Any Currency," & "The Whole Tamale"

Side Three

1. William S. Burroughs – What The Nova Convention Is About

2. Ed Sanders – Hymn To Aphrodite from Sappho

3. John Cage – Writing For The Second Time Through Finnegans Wake

4. Anne Waldman – Plutonium Ode & Skin Meat Bones

Side Four

1. Laurie Anderson & Julia Heyward – Song from America On The Move

2. Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky – Punk Rock, Old Pond; Feeding Them Raspberries To Grow, & Nurses Song

3. William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Les Levine & Robert Anton Wilson – Conversations

Johanna Drucker | As No Storm or The Any Port Party

Johanna Drucker

As No Storm or The Any Port Party

Oakland, USA: Rebis Press, 1975

[unpaginated], Square 8vo., hand-sewn

Edition of 300 [+ 26 AP]

As No Storm (or A Snow Storm) is the first editioned bookwork by artist (and Artist Book historian) Johanna Drucker. The book is hand-sewn with heavy limp canvas covers, with white cord through brass grommets. 

"The nautical motif in images and binding combine with the stippled ink drawings to produce an effect that suggests a children's book, at first glance. The text is dense, rhymed, complex, almost unreadable in any straightforward sense. Thick with double entendres, allusions, puns, it is the story of a failed New Year's party I attended with my parents in what must have been the winter 1974-75. Betsy Davids had applied for and received funds from the NEA for a series of book projects, and she had invited me to be one of the artists. That invitation literally changed my life, since I moved back to the Bay Area from Santa Cruz, where I'd been living since 1973, in order to print the book with her in summer 1975. The result was that I got to know the emerging, vital book arts community, found my way to the West Coast Print Center, became part of a literary publishing and poetry scene, and in a very formative period of my life, was able to be in contact with a group of peers whose work and ideas pushed my own. As for this book, it remains one of the best produced of my works, particularly in that early period, thanks to Betsy's expertise, patience, and experience. The is somewhat baffling, impenetrable, an opaque textual object. The writing is shifted into a more fantastic register by the images than it might have been on its own, but unrelieved, the text would have been unreadable. Still, it was quite typical of the writing I did at the time, heavily knotted and turned inward on itself, but tightly structured, highly rhythmical, intricate. Likewise, the drawings have that obsessive naivete that was characteristic of my ink drawings in the early 1970s."

- Johanna Drucker

dé-coll/age, no. 2

Dick Higgins, Wolf Vostell

dé-coll/age, no. 2

Cologne, Germany: Self-published, 1962

29.3 × 20.8 × 0.4 cm.

Edition of 500

N.E. Thing Co.: Companies Act (Volume 1), Part 2

N.E. Thing Company

N.E. Thing Co.: Companies Act (Volume 1)

Vancouver, Canada: Brick Press, 2020

362 pp, 21.3 x 27.5 cm., softcover

Edition of 500

Between the proliferation of Artist Book Fairs (pre-pandemic) and the ease of online distribution, the market for artists' publications continues to grow, and once unsaleable books that languished in storage for years are now only available on the secondary market, often prohibitively priced. 

To counter the scarcity of the originals, many publishers have undertaken the difficult work of producing reprints of these rare titles, in order to make them available again at affordable prices. 

Five years ago four Marcel Broodthaers titles were reprinted in the span of a few months, by Siglio Press, Granary Books and the Museum of Modern Art. Siglio has also produced reprints of long-unavailable titles by Sophie Calle, Ray Johnson, John Cage, Bernadette Mayer and others, alongside their schedule of new publications. Similarly, Primary Information produces both new artists’ books and facsimile reprints (Michael Snow, Yvonne Rainer, Dan Graham, Constance DeJong, Tony Conrad, etc.). Other publishers who take this approach include The Everyday Press (Yves Klein), Zédélé Editions (Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Lawrence Weiner, Richard Long, Herman de Vries), Dancing Foxes Press (Fred Sandback), JRP Ringer (Dorothy Ianonne, FILE Megazine) and Boabooks (a series of great Ulises Carrión titles).  

I have no compunction about this practice. If there is renewed interest in a band, their recordings are re-issued, without concern for the collector who owned the "first editions". The authors of novels and non-fiction often see their books returned to print when the market suggests there may be a demand. These titles might feature a new cover design, an added preface or other extras that would be complicated with an artist’s book. Unlike an author’s book1, an artists’ book is typically designed as a cohesive work. Short of re-engaging the artist to reimagine the original title, a facsimile seems the most practical route. Most are pretty faithful to the original, with occasional concessions to available paper stocks, and sometimes scale. 

The Brick Press version of N.E. Thing Co.: Companies Act (Volume 1) is perhaps the first instance I am aware of that constitutes a reinterpreted facsimile. 

Inspired by the ambiguous copyright of the original (“The Material in the N.E. Thing Co. Ltd. Book Can Be Used By Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please Let Us Know When You Do This.”), Ryan Smith  set out to produce a version of the book that is both loyal to the original and also acknowledges the time that has passed in the forty-plus years since publication.  

This includes the physical properties of the book, but also the shifting political and social mores. 

Rather than work from the original files, or clean up the scans in Photoshop, Smith maintains the scuffs, cracks and creases of the copy he found in a second hand store a few years prior. Most surviving copies of the book are pretty beat up (see previous post).2

This choice helps distinguish the reprint from the original but also serves as a reminder that cultural artifacts accrue meaning over the years, particularly if they are in circulation.3 

The original book looked like a series of photocopies, a stylistic choice that was revisited in the exhibition catalogue for Art Metropole's 1992 retrospective Media Works, on the works of Iain Baxter and NETCO. This lends itself well to the Brick Press approach of not tidying up the scans. The price Smith paid for the original book, seventy-five dollars, is also included as if written in pencil on the upper right hand corner of the title page. This is bound to cause some confusion, as the reprint retails for around fifty dollars.

The reinterpreted facsimile also seeks to correct offensive language used in the press at the time. Several of the clippings have a distinct tone of misogyny when discussing Ingrid. She is referred to as "Iain's pretty blonde wife", for example. Rather than let these instances go unchecked, Smith runs a thumbtack scratch through these lines. There's a bit of a righteous FTFY4 feel to the intervention, but it does serve to highlight the passage of time and draw further attention to Ingrid Baxter's erasure. 

The history of Canadian collectives is littered with founding members reduced to footnotes after parting ways, particularly if they no longer pursue a career in the arts. But it's especially egregious in the case of the N.E. Thing Company. Both Baxters were listed as Co-Presidents of the Corporation - and it's only employees - yet the duo's works are often misattributed to Iain Baxter as solo creations, even in the Vancouver Art Gallery, the city in which they worked. 

Baxter is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and he has been awarded the Order of Ontario, the the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada. His solo career has far-outlasted his time in the N.E.Thing. Co., but it is also clear that the international success of the couple's collaborative work are the primary impetus for these awards. 

After their divorce - the year of the original publication - Ingrid Baxter stopped producing art.  

"I went back to school for my master’s degree," she told Art in America in 2014, "I bought the canoe and boat rental business in 1981, and it has since grown way beyond whatever I imagined it could be." This business - the Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak Centre, in North Vancouver - now employs more than sixty people.

Approaching an art practice as a corporation was a wildly influential venture (see the work of Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc., Xavier Veilhan, Fabrice Hyber la, Dana Wyse, etc., etc.), as was opening a restaurant or store as an artwork (Michael Rakowitz' Enemy Kitchen, Damian Hirst's Pharmacy, Jonathan Berger's The Store, Keith Haring's Pop Shop, Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin's The Shop, and so on).5 Ingrid Baxter's role in the legacy of posing prescient questions about the relationship between art and commerce deserves more than being referred to as "Iain Baxters then-wife". 

And this is gradually happening, as the art world continues its reckoning with the marginalization of women that it has perpetuated for years. Ingrid Baxter's contributions are slowly being reinstated into the canon, including at the VAG, who recently adjusted the attributions in their collection. 

For me, this Brick Press publication is still first and foremost a facsimile reprint of an important book that I wasn't able to own previously, but these discreet gestures introduce compelling ideas about what future collaborative publishing might begin to look like. 

The title is available from the publisher, here, for $50.00 CDN. 

1. The very fact that we do not call them "author's books" makes the term "artists' book" suspicious, but until a good alternative is agreed upon...

2. There is only one copy listed on ABE, by Gordon Simpson's ANARTIST store. It is being offered for $750 US and the condition is listed as "very good, except covers are good with lots of creases": https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=n.e.thing&tn=companies+act&kn=

3. See Derek Sullivan's recent artist book, here: https://artistsbooksandmultiples.blogspot.com/2021/08/derek-sullivan-evidence-of-avant-garde.html

4. FTFY is urban slang for "Fixed that for you", which originated in Reddit memes. The acronym encompasses both copy-editing (corrected spelling or grammar in a post) and also sarcasm (a Democrat editing a Trump tweet to subvert it’s meaning, for example). 

5. Restaurants by artists that predate Eye Scream include FOOD by Tina Girouard, Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark in 1971, Allen Ruppersberg's Al's Cafe in 1969, projects by Les Levine and others.