Jean Toche | I Piss on the Arts

Jean Toche

I Piss on the Arts

Cologne, Germany: Edition Hundertmark, 2001

16 pp., 15 x 21 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

Jean Toche was a Belgium-born artist who relocated to New York City in the mid-sixities, where he lived until his death in 2018. He was arrested several times for his artworks and activism, including once by the FBI, for sending letters threatening kidnapping to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

I ended up on his mailing list for a couple of years (possibly through our shared friend Jon Hendricks, who Toche founded the Guerrilla Art Action Group with - see earlier post, here). 

This meant getting at least one postcard in the mail every single day. I have boxes of them. It also meant receiving a series of self-published publications in the mail almost weekly (see Stephen Perkins’ Artists Periodicals site for examples).

I remember being curious as to how he could possibly afford the postage and printing costs. He would have been in his late seventies at the time, possibly early eighties. I sometimes wondered if Yoko Ono offered her support to his practice (Hendricks is her longtime curator and she has been known to funnel cash to some radical politics in the past).

One of the items I received - more than once, I recall - is I Piss On the Arts. The thin, grey artist book is the penultimate title in the Edition Hundertmark booklet series. Toche also produced the 45th and final issue, Waiter There's A Terrorist In My Soup, a year later. 

The cover features a petition it asks the reader to sign and distribute, declaring that you, too, “Piss on the Arts”. Inside are examples of the types of postcards Toche was distributing at the time. Statements like: 

"It is mean and despicable to support the death penalty. The majority of Americans supports the Death Penalty."

and 

"Increasingly, Global Business replaces Democracy. Burn that Proxy and Speak out!". 

or calling for war tribunals to “issue an arrest warrant for former President George Bush, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair”, etc. etc. 

It all seems reasonable enough, sometimes quaint even, and anticipates the current reckoning happening in the art world in regards to its seemingly indifferent stance in the face of political upheaval (which of course just calls back a few decades ago to groups like the Art Workers Coalition, for example). 

But when these were arriving daily in the mail, I do recall worrying if I was featured on some governmental lists of potential agitators (previous to this I was cc'd on death threats a distant acquaintance would send to arms manufacturers, so it didn't feel like an overly paranoid fear). 

I piss on the arts is available from the publisher, here, for 16 Euro.