Art-Rite

[Walter Robinson, Edit DeAk, and Joshua Cohn, eds]

Art-Rite

New York City, USA: Primary Information/Printed Matter, 2019

678 pp., 8.5 x 10.75", softcover

Edition of 2000

Edit DeAk, Walter Robinson, and Joshua Cohn  met while in their early twenties, in an art criticism class taught by Brian O'Doherty at Barnard College in New York, in 1972. O'Doherty - the influential critic, artist and academic who died last November - had been hired the year prior to edit Art in America magazine. He was suitably impressed by DeAk, Robinson, and Cohn, and approached them about contributing to the publication. 

"I thought, aestheticism must be in trouble if they want baby blood," Edit told Artforum in 2003. "What’s wrong with the system that they want us?"

The trio offered a counter-proposal: a newsprint insert to accompany Art in America, which would "piggyback on the establishment, having the establishment distribute the enemy, our voice. This was the period when people talked about things like that.” 

When it was turned down, the trio began their own publishing venture, called Art-Rite, a forerunner to the punk/art ‘zine of the latter half of that decade. The publication was printed on newsprint and espoused a decidedly insider (though often anonymous) point of view. Each issue was given over entirely to an artist, a collective or a theme. The themes included video, painting, performance, and artists' books.

The latter, issue #14, included unedited statements on artists' publications from fifty artists and art professionals, including Kathy Acker, Lucy Lippard, Ulises Carrión, Adrian Piper, Sol LeWitt, and others. Lewitt's text ("They are works themselves, not reproductions of works", etc. - see below) became an influential statement on the subject, and was reproduced many years later on the verso of his catalogue raisonne of bookworks. 

"The artists’ book issue [came out because] - if you can believe it, in the 70s it felt like all of a sudden everybody was making artists’ books because they wanted to make something that was democratic, because the political impulses of the 60s had been anti-commodity," said Robinson, in 1979. 

What made Art-Rite so unique, deAk noted, was its “whole new tone and attitude. It was unheard of to have a sense of humor at the time, or not to be talking about ‘the problem’ of art—the problem of this, the problem of that.” It's perhaps reassuring to know that these things are cyclical, and the art world's current inability to move forward for fear of being on the wrong side of something politically, will give way to something perhaps less earnest. 

Most issues of Art-Rite had covers designed by artists, including William Wegman, Richard Tuttle, Yuri, Christo, Dorothea Rockburne, Vito Acconci, Pat Steir, Robert Ryman, Joseph Beuys, Edward Ruscha, Alan Vega (Suicide), Carl Andre, Rosemary Mayer, Kim MacConnel, Image Bank, Chris Burden, Demi, and Judy Rifka.

The incredible list of contributors includes Chris Burden, Allen Ruppersberg, Kathy Acker, John Baldessari, Daniel Buren, Judith Hoffberg, Allan Kaprow, Richard Kostalanetz, Sol Le Witt, Lucy Lippard, Maurizio Nannucci, Richard Nonas, Adrian Piper, Lucio Pozzi, Marcia Resnick, Carolee Schneeman, Pat Steir, Lawrence Weiner, Robin Winters, Douglas Huebler, David Salle, Rosalee Goldberg, A.A. Bronson, Naomi Spector, Eve Sonneman, Peter Frank, Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Eleanor Antin, David Antin, Diego Cortez, Joan La Barbara, Joan Jonas, Philip Glass, Hannah Wilke, Rebecca Horn, Nancy Holt, Lucio Pozzi, Trisha Brown, Michael Kirby, Scott Burton, Robert Wilson, Yvonne Rainer, Christopher Knowles, Lucinda Childs, Lil Picard, Linda Benglis, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris, Hans Haacke, Julian Schnabel, Nancy Spero, Judy Chicago, Nancy Graves, Joan Jonas, Lee Krasner, Agnes Martin, Les Levine, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, Shigeko Kubota, Richard Landry, Nam June Paik, Ulrike Rosenbach, Willoughby Sharp and numerous others.

Individual issues are scarce and sell now for upwards of a hundred dollars, making this complete facsimile from Primary Information and Printed Matter essential. Sadly, in less than four years, the publication has sold out, despite two-thousand copies printed. 

To mark the 50th anniversary of the original periodical, co-publisher Printed Matter has mounted an exhibition called From the Margins: The Making of Art-Rite. The show traces the history of the publication through photographs, production paste-ups and a complete set of the periodical (below). The exhibition opened last month and continues until June 23rd, 2023.