Saturday, November 11, 2023

Les Levine | Art In America Chess/Checkers Game





Les Levine
Art In America Chess/Checkers Game 
New York City, USA: Art in America, 1969
24.25 x 24.25"
Edition size unknown


Designed by Les Levine and produced by Georg Jensen in 1969, for the "Art for Everyday Living" series of artist's games, published by Art in America magazine. The periodical also commissioned coins, toys, ceramics, lithographs, and needlepoint projects. 

This Chess/Checkers game includes a 16 black and 16 white custom square cut board pieces. Each square reads Checkers on one side and the chess piece name on the opposite. 

The work is featured in Art in America Vol. 57, No. 6, November / December 1969, on pages 74-75. 



"Les Levine (Irish, b. 1935) Les Levine, a conceptual artist and one of the originators of media art, was born in Dublin in 1935 and now lives in New York City. Levine studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, before moving to Toronto in 1958, where he continued his studies at the New School of Art. His artistic practice has been explored through various means including painting, sculpture, installation, performance work, mail art and artists’ books. Moving to New York in the 1960s, he became a leading conceptual art figure, intersecting art and life in a variety of projects such as Levine’s Restaurant, 1969 and the conceptual museum he invented in 1970 called the Museum of Mott Art, Inc. He regards himself as a media sculptor, “mould(ing) media the way others would mould matter.” In the 1960s, Levine was one of the first artists to work with video and television. His work was to become a precursor to the new generation of experimental artists who were exploring the possibilities of the moving image including Dan Graham, Gary Hill and Bruce Nauman. Since the 1980s Levine has become particularly recognized for his billboard works in which he subverts the language of mass advertising to interrogate social and political problems."


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