Ben Vautier | Flux Missing Card Deck

Ben Vautier

Flux Missing Card Deck

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1966–69

9.2 × 7.5 × 2.1 cm.

Edition size unknown

A plastic box with a George Maciunas-designed label, containing 51 playing cards (a full deck, minus the ace of spades). 

Kim Kardashian sued by Judd Foundation

Kim Kardashian is facing a lawsuit from the estate of Donald Judd, after falsely claiming in a video that knock-off furniture works were authentic pieces by the late minimalist. 

The video, from a year and a half ago, features Kardashian giving a tour of the Los Angeles office of her skincare brand, SKKN By Kim. It was viewed almost four million times before being removed. In it she gestures to the table(s!) and comments “These Donald Judd tables are really amazing and totally blend in with the seats." 

Judd’s daughter Rainer filed the lawsuit three days ago, naming Kardashian and the firm Clements Design, which fabricates and sells what the foundation called “inauthentic” Judd furniture. 

“Ms. Kardashian’s furniture is irrefutably fake,” Rainer Judd said in a statement. “The existence of inauthentic furniture undermines the integrity of [Donald Judd’s] original work which includes specifications of design, craftsmanship, and materials. If creators’ works can simply be usurped with no repercussions and exploited by other people, what will be the protection for artists and designers to further create in the future?” 

Rainer and her brother Flavin were the inspiration for the first furniture works designed by Judd, out of necessity. He designed them a daybed - two twin mattresses separated by a half-height wall in the middle for privacy - and then desk and chair. The chair, first designed in 1982, would become known as Chair 84. The table in question is named La Mansana Table. 

The design film argue that the “claims absolutely have no merit” and state that the foundation has demanded that the video be deleted, the furniture destroyed, and for Kardashian to issue a public apology. Negotiations reportedly broke down, leading to the filing of the lawsuit. 

Michael Rhodes, counsel for Kim Kardashian, stated "We deny that Ms. Kardashian has any liability in this matter, as we have previously explained to the Judd Foundation and its counsel.”

“This case is about protecting the intellectual property rights of Judd Foundation, including its trademarks and copyrights,” counters Judd Foundation lawyer Megan K. Bannigan. “The existence and promotion of fake Donald Judd furniture harms both consumers and Judd Foundation.”

Richard Serra

Richard Serra died Tuesday at the age of 85. 

Daniel Spoerri

Daniel Spoerri celebrates his 94th birthday today. 

Daniel Buren | 1000 Placements

Daniel Buren

1000 Placements from the Rubber Stamp Portfolio

New York City, USA: Parasol Press, Ltd, 1977

20.3 x 20.3 cm.

Edition of 1000 (250 in each of 4 colours)

Offset print on cardboard. From the MoMA Rubber Stamp Portfolio, which also included works by Joe Zucker, Tom Wesselmann, Don Nice, Agnes Martin, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Robert Mangold, Sol LeWitt, Chuck Close, Richard Artschwager, Myron Stout, Barry Le Va, and Carl Andre. 

Produced in an edition of 1000 - 250 red, blue, green and yellow copies. 

Yoko Ono | 3 Rooms

Yoko Ono

3 Rooms

Milan, Italy: Skira Editore, 1995

130 pp., 27 x 23 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

A catalog for the exhibition of the same name, held in Trento, Italy in 1995. 3 Rooms contains critical essays on Ono’s work, and is illustrated with photographs of drawings, paintings, readymades, and sculptural works. Text in English and Italian

The catalog is available from Printed Matter, here, for $40.00US. 

Hans-Peter Feldmann | Bilder / Pictures

Hans-Peter Feldmann

Bilder / Pictures

München, Germany: Kunstraum München, 1975

344 pp., 15 x 21 cm., softcover

Edition of 500

Hans-Peter Feldmann studied painting at the University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria, but 

abandoned the medium and gravitated towards artists’ books, following the realization that photographs were “entirely sufficient” to convey his ideas. From the age of five he had kept scrapbooks of carefully cut out images from books and magazines, and this act of accumulating, cataloguing and arranging became central to his practice. He was a photographer best known for found photographs, and didn’t begin working with his own photographs until he was in his fifties. 

Between 1968 and 1971 he produced about thirty little handmade booklets, all titled Bild or Bilder (Picture or Pictures). These typically focused on a single subject, ranging from women’s knees to airplanes off in the distance, from a hotel maid making a bed to images of ships and chairs. In 1972 he was invited to exhibit these bookworks at Documenta 5 in Kassel.

This 1975 volume collects all of these Bilder booklets, plus two postcard series. The book features an introduction by Hermann Kern, and a text by Josef Kirschbichler. 

A reissue followed, over a quarter century later, in 2002, which has itself become scarce and costly. 

“[Bilder] constitutes one of the most important bodies of artist’s bookworks in the twentieth century, along with those of [Ed] Ruscha and [Christian] Boltanski. The key lies in the books’ deadpan nature. Next to Feldmann, Ruscha is a galloping expressionst. Of all collections in this vein – and it is a popular genre of artists’ books – Feldmann’s are the most deadpan, the least expressive.”

Piero Manzoni | UOVO

Piero Manzoni

UOVO

Self-published, 1960

6.7 x 8.2 x 5.70 cm.

Edition of 54 signed, dated and numbered copies

Uova sculptura (Egg Sculpture) are works consisting of hard-boiled eggs on which Manzoni left his fingerprint as a signature. The addition of the fingerprint ‘consecrates’ them, he wrote. 

They were first presented at Galerie Arthur Køpcke in Copenhagen, in June of 1960 (see below). Køpcke - an interesting artist in his own right - was born in Hamburg but had settled in Copenhagen at the end of 1957 with his Danish wife, Aase. Their gallery became a contact point for the international avant-garde movements in Denmark, particularly Nouveau Realisme and Fluxus. 

The exhibition featured a basket of hard boiled eggs with Manzoni’s fingerprint that could be eaten, and the boxed version above, for purchase. 

The works were exhibited again a month later at Azimut gallery, which Manzoni had founded with Enrico Castellani in 1957.  The July 1960 exhibition, Consumption of Art by the Art-Devouring Public, 

was the final show by Manzoni at Azimuth, after which the gallery was forced to close when the lease expired. 

While numbered, the works did not state an edition size. To date, 54 examples have been catalogued.