Happy Birthday to Art Metropole

"Today Art Metropole turns 50.

Since taking on the position of Executive Director earlier this year, I have been reflecting on the immense history of the organization and the many artists we have worked with over the past 50 years.

Established in 1974 by General Idea in their Yonge St. location, Art Metropole was founded as “a collection agency devoted to the documentation, archiving, and distribution of all of the images . . . taking over and diversifying the functions of reflection and connection” (FILE Editorial, 1973).

Art Met has lived through so many different locations, eras, and activities, but has always found stability in our community.

Today we remain focused on publishing, promoting, exhibiting, archiving, and distributing artists’ books, multiples, and other related media. Our non-profit shop, which has featured over 16,000 unique inventory items, is an essential service to artists – and is the oldest and longest-running artist-run bookstore in the world.  

This summer, we held an exhibition titled 50/50, which highlighted our history through 50 selected editions published by Art Metropole since 1974. This fall, we launched Reactivating the Archive, a lecture series where we're inviting artists and curators to respond to a work from our archive or collection, in a sort of expanded restaging of the 1989-1995 Activating the Archive series. In the coming year, we will be working towards new exhibitions that engage with our shop’s extensive inventory, special presentations at international art and book fairs, a new series of artists’ books with commissioned texts, and many more programs– all to support the work of artists.

I would love to see you at the upcoming 50th Anniversary Party and fundraiser, generously hosted by East Room, on November 8. Your support will allow us to continue to publish and distribute the work of artists for years to come."

–Blair Swann, Executive Director

Sonic Youth, Raymond Pettibon | (Over) Kill Yr Idols

Sonic Youth [Raymond Pettibon]

(Over) Kill Yr Idols

Newtonville, USA: Forced Exposure, 1985

17.8 × 18.4 cm.

Edition of 1246

An early 7" single recorded live in Berlin in 1983 and released alongside the Forced Exposure magazine #7/8, and made available to Forced Exposure subscribers. The A-side features "Making a Nature Scene” and it is backed with "I Killed Christgau with My Big Fuckin' Dick."

The latter song name-checks Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau, who gave the band’s debut record a C rating, and wrote: 

"You may not think Glenn Branca's proteges are a rock and roll band, but after all, why else would they essay a lyric like "Fucking youth/Working youth"? At their worst they sound like Polyrock mainlining metronome, at their best like one of Branca's early drafts. The best never last long enough. Not for nothing is the sonic grown-up so attached to phony grandeur.”

The band responded with Kill Yr Idols, and the lyrics "I don't know why/You want to impress Christgau/Ah, let that shit die/And find a new goal”.

The critic responded in his next review: "Idolization is for rock stars, even rock stars manqué like these impotent bohos–critics just want a little respect. So if it’s not too hypersensitive of me, I wasn’t flattered to hear my name pronounced right, not on this particular title track…"

Sonic Youth replied by renaming the track “I Killed Christgau with My Big Fuckin' Dick” on this seven inch. He came around with his later reviews, giving virtually every album that followed an A: Starpower, Sister, Daydream Nation, Goo, Dirty, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, Screaming Fields of Sonic Love, Washing Machine, A Thousand Leaves, NYC Ghosts and Flowers, Sonic Nurse, Rather Ripped, and The Eternal.

The cover illustration is by Raymond Pettibon, whose work would later grace the cover of the band’s major label debut, Goo. The cover text reads "I was on acid when I drew this."

Between ten and twenty test pressing copies have covers fully hand-coloured by Thurston Moore and a significant proportion of all copies feature some hand colouring.

In the mail

 

Coming Soon: Posts about Jason Rhoades, Rita McKeough, Gustav Metzger, William Anastasi, Rob Kovitz, and Nicole Eisenman. 

Angela Bulloch | The Wired Salutation 3 Of 3

Angela Bulloch

The Wired Salutation 3 Of 3

Berlin, Germany: ABCDLP, 2014

12” vinyl record

Edition of 1000

Released ten years ago today, this single-sided 45 rpm, 12” red vinyl disk documents a live performance by visual artist Angella Bulloch and musician and author David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol, the Red Krayola, Codeine, etc.) at Hebbel am Ufer Theater, August 18, 2013, Berlin. The works are composed and performed by Bulloch, Grubbs, Andrea Belfi, and Stefano Pilia. 

It’s available directly from the artist, for 14.99 €, here. The coloured vinyl disk is accompanied by a download code.

Art By Telephone

[Various]
Art By Telephone
Chicago, USA: Museum Of Contemporary Art, 1969
33 rpm, 12" vinyl record, gatefold sleeve
Edition size unknown


The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago opened it's doors in 1967 and planned an exhibition for the following year which would highlight the then-nascent trend towards conceptualization in art. Artists from around the world were invited to participate, not by shipping art works or traveling to produce them in situ, but rather by providing instructions over the telephone, with the works fabricated locally. The curation eschewed blueprints, sketches and written descriptions, aiming to focus entirely on verbal exchanges over the telephone. 

The show took its inspiration from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's "telephone pictures" from 1922, which were created by the artist dictating instructions over the phone to a manufacturer. The works are often cited in the history of conceptual art as a key moment that emphasized an artist's ideas over personal craftsmanship. 

The exhibition was dedicated to Marcel Duchamp (who died the year prior) and John Cage (who declined to participate). Many, if not most, of the artists who did accept the museum’s invitation, were influenced by one or both in some way, accepting the idea of process and experience over finished object.

Artists exhibited in Art by Telephone included: Siah Armajani, Arman, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Iain Baxter, Mel Bochner, George Brecht, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Robert H. Cumming, Francois Dallegret, Jan Dibbets, John Giorno, Robert Grosvenor, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Dick Higgins, Davi Det Hompson, Robert Huot, Alain Jacquet, Ed Keinholz, Joseph Kosuth, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Guenther Uecker, Stan VanDerBeek, Bernar Venet, Frank Lincoln Viner, Wolf Vostell, William Wegman, and William T. Wiley.

Rodney Graham

The above setlist was hastily scrawled on the back of the photocopied promotional flyers for a 2004 concert that I helped to present. I don’t believe Graham designed it himself, it was likely a colleague of mine at Art Metropole (Jordan Sonenberg?). 

Graham performed music throughout his career, despite stage fright that often led to him vomiting just prior to performance. 

Graham died on this day, two years ago, at the age of 73. 

Jean Dupuy | Anagrammes

Jean Dupuy

Anagrammes

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France: Les Disques En Rotin Réunis, 2016

12” vinyl LP

Edition of 300

Recorded on May 18th, 2015, by Diane Blondeau with Dupuy reading his texts over two sides, both called Anagrammes.

Art Metropole Fall Sale

This weekend, Art Metropole is hosting an In-Store Sale offering deep discounts, including: 

70% off back-issue periodicals

40% off zines

10% off hardcover books

20% off posters

20% off multiples

and up to 50% off select Art Metropole publications

Visit www.artmetropole.com for more information. 

Paige Gratland | Celebrity Lezbian Fist

Paige Gratland

Celebrity Lezbian Fist 

Toronto, Canada: P.G. Thing Co., 2008

24 x 13 x 13 cm.

Edition of 25 numbered copies

Yesterday I visited Adriana Kuiper’s sculpture class and a student was casting her pink rabbit vibrator in silicon, reminding me of this Paige Gratland project from 2008. 

Celebrity Lezbian Fists are a series of  silicone fists cast from the hands of queer cultural icons. 

Working under the name P.G. THING CO. (a nod to Iain and Ingrid Baxter’s N.E.Thing Co.), Gratland takes super-groupie Cynthia Plaster Claster’s notorious casting of rock star cocks (most notably Jimi Hendrix, see below) as her starting point, but replaces the phallus with the raised, clenched fist. The resulting works become both a symbol of solidarity & defiance in the face of oppression, and a fully functioning sex toy. 

The fists are produced in an edition of 25 each, cast in colours chosen by each participant. The artists, activists, athletes, academics, poets, musicians, and filmmakers who took part include: 

JD Samson, is an American musician, producer, songwriter and DJ and member of the bands Le Tigre  and MEN.  Le Tigre’s song "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo" includes a shout-out to C.P. Caster. Additionally, both KISS and Jim Croce have written songs about her practice ("Plaster Caster", and "Five Short Minutes", respectively).

Phranc is a singer and activist who I saw open for Morrissey many years ago. She came onto the stage alone with her guitar and introduced herself as an “all-American Jewish lesbian folksinger”.

Savoy Howe is a boxer and coach who founded Newsgirls, a women's only boxing club that ran almost a quarter of a century before closing during Covid. 

Cathy Opie is a celebrated artist, photographer and educator (see her notorious Dyke Deck playing cards, here). 

Eileen Myles is a poet and author of more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces. Novelist Dennis Cooper described them as "one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature."

Harmony Hammond is an artist, activist, curator, writer and co-founder of the A.I.R. Gallery, the first women's cooperative art gallery in the United States.  

Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress. She was the first out black lesbian to ever direct a feature film (The Watermelon Woman, 1996) and runs the Oakland-basaed production company Jingletown Films. 

Jack Halberstam is an American academic and author whose work focuses on queer and transgender identities in popular culture. Halberstam is a professor at the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University. His best known book is Female Masculinity (1998).  

G. B. Jones is an artist, filmmaker, and musician, who will be best known here as the co-creater (with Bruce LaBruce) of the queer punk fanzine The J.D.s. 

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan are a Canadian performance art duo who often perform as The Lesbian Rangers. Their video for What Does a Lesbian Look Like?, received regular airplay on MuchMusic in 1990’s and was featured on the spoken word poetry compilation album Word Up, alongside John Giorno, Jill Watson, Clifton Joseph and Judy Radul. 

Celebrity Lezbian Fists were launched at Art Metropole in 2008, and are still available there, for $250 each. Proceeds from the sale of “Celebrity Lezbian Fists” will be donated to The Triangle Program; Canada’s only classroom for LGBTTI2QQAP Youth. 

Show (&) Tell: The Films & Videos of Lawrence Weiner.

Bartomeu Mari

Show (&) Tell/ The Films & Videos of Lawrence Weiner. A catalogue raisonné

Gent, Belgium: Imschoot Uitgevers, 1992 

148 pp., 21 x 28,5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

A catalogue raisonné of the films and videos by Lawrence Weiner, edited by Bartomeu Mari and Alice Weiner, with a preface by R.H. Fuchs. The book is designed by Lum Derycke with Lawrence Weiner.

American Narrative Story Art. 1967-1977

Paul Schimmel, editor

American Narrative Story Art. 1967-1977 

Houston, USA: Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 1978

116 pp., 24 × 27 cm., 

Edition size unknown

A catalogue to accompany an exhibition that ran from December of 1977 to February 25th, 1978, at the Contemporary Arts Museum, in Houston, Texas (see below poster).

The exhibition and book examine the then-burgeoning trend of explicit narrative in contemporary art. It features the work of forty-three artists, including Laurie Andersen, Eleanor Antin, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Cumming, Les Levine, Duane Michals, Martha Rosler, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Lisa Steele, and William Wiley. 

The title includes essays by Mark Freidus, Alan Sondheim and editor Paul Schimmel, alongside documentation on the artists’ careers; and a ten inch flexi-disc record featuring audio works by seven of the participating artists. 

The book, when accompanied by the 33 1/3 RPM RECORD, is now valued at around $150 US. 

Side A: 

1. Terry Allen "The Collector/Art Mob" 2:02

2. Terry Allen "Writing On Rocks Across The U.S.A." 2:46

3. Laurie Anderson "Tape Bow Song For Juanita" 3:08

4. Eleanor Antin "Kings Meditations I, VII, IX" 3:12

Side B: 

1. Ed McGowin "Dad Knew About Wine" 3:16

2. Dennis Oppenheim "Theme For A Major Hit" 2:56

3. Jim Roche "Cadillac Piece"

David Byrne | Strange Ritual

David Byrne

Strange Ritual

Faber and Faber, 1995

192 pp., 26 x 19.5 x 1.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Strange Ritual is the Talking Heads singer’s first stand-alone book (True Stories from nine years prior was ultimately a companion to the film of the same name). Subtitled Pictures and Words, the book is collection of photographs of icons, graffiti, consumer displays, advertising and book covers. The latter have titles that read like the works of Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber: “The Truth About Mars”, “I Dare You”, “How to do All Things”, “The Secret Museum of Mankind”, “Ponder on This”.

The book takes its title from  song from Byrne's third studio album (not counting film and theatre soundtracks), released two years prior. 

The leather-bound volume features a promotional wrap-around, and the Japanese edition was issued with a colourful dust jacket [see below]. 

"Internationally renowned musician, filmmaker, performer, David Byrne is an artist of diverse talents. Strange Ritual is Byrne's extraordinary first work of photography and words. Witty, antic and seductive, this book is a barrage of color photographs that reinvent the icon: playful religious images of high-rise madonnas and squadrons of crucifixes; incantorial representations of worldwide consumerism, from altars of food displays to retail signs out-shining the stained glass of cathedrals; culture-scapes of the omnipresent grid that video has imposed on our perception of reality.

Juxtaposed with the photographs are excerpts from Byrne's travel observations, unpublished song lyrics and poems, including a list of the gods and goddesses of the 90's. Byrne has also compiled found writing in the form of computer-generated poetry, odd book titles, poems and unusual messages found on the street. Traveling in Mexico, he writes, "Anything is up for grabs. Anything is available for everyone to use. Language, clothes, religions, facial features, narratives, gestures, foods, colors."

Strange Ritual offers 240 jam-packed pages of exciting, challenging, ironic, and often hilarious art and words that address the universals in an honest and direct voice. More than a book of photography, it is a bizarre, brilliant vision."

- Publisher's press release

Wolf Vostell

Wolf Vostell was born on this day in 1932.