Kynaston McShine | Information

Kynaston McShine [editor]

Information

New York City, USA: : The Museum of Modern Art, 1970

208 pp., 21 x 28 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Debuting in the summer of 1970, the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Information was far from the first to document the burgeoning Conceptual Art scene, but distinguished itself through it’s international scope, curatorial approach, and this accompanying publication. 

The MoMA press release stated that "the exhibition and catalog contain work by more than 150 men and women from 15 countries including artists from Argentina, Brazil, Canada1, and Yugoslavia, being shown in this country for the first time [...] The only common denominator is that all are trying to extend the idea of art beyond traditional categories.”

These artists (and artist collectives) included Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Mel Bochner, George Brecht, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, James Lee Byers, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert and George, Hans Haacke, Douglas Huebler, On Kawara, Sol Lewitt, Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, N.E. Thing Co., Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Edward Ruscha, Robert Smithson, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, and dozens others. 

Arriving mere months after college campuses erupted in violence protesting Nixon’s incursion into Cambodia (and the death of four students shot by National Guardsmen), the exhibition inevitably featured works that responded to the political unrest. 

As the below schedule will attest, John Giorno programmed his Dial-A-Poem project so that callers might hear celebrated poets (Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs) alongside members of the Black Panther Party (Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver), The Weather Underground (Bernadine Dohrn) and the 

Chicago Seven (Abbie Hoffman). 

“At this point, with the war and the repression and everything, we thought this was a good way for the Movement to reach people,” Giorno wrote. This did not go unnoticed. The FBI caught wind of the work and several agents reportedly spent a day in the museum, listening on the phones to Dial-A-Poem.

Hans Haacke had proposed a piece entitled MoMA Poll, in which visitors would respond to a particular question by depositing their answers in one of two transparent Plexiglas ballot boxes. The artist neglected to provide the specific question to be asked until right before the opening. His query directly implicated a major donor and board member of MoMA: "Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon's Indochina Policy be a reason for your not voting for him in November?” By the exhibition’s conclusion in September, the Yes ballots outweighed the No, two to one [see below]. 

The publication continued this co-mingling conceptualism with political activism. Curator Kynaston McShine wrote, “If you are an artist in Brazil, you know of at least one friend who is being tortured; if you are one in Argentina, you probably have had a neighbour who has been in jail for having long hair, or for not being “dressed” properly; and if you are living in the United States, you may fear that you will be shot at, either in the universities, in your bed, or more formally in Indochina.”

The general image section of the volume included photographs of the Black Panthers, Che Guevera, the Great Wall of China, newspaper headlines about the Vietnam War, Bernie Boston’s Flower Power2 photograph, and the notorious And Babies poster that the MoMA had refused to distribute the year prior. 

“[The publication] was very much of its time,” recalled McShine, later. "One of the things I did in the catalogue was give each artist a page to do whatever they wanted to do.” This allowed the book to function autonomously, rather than merely document exhibition. 

The artist pages featured contributions in the form of photographic documentation, drawings, diagrams and descriptive texts. Many related to projects presented in the exhibition, but often artists included other work, sometimes pieces that had not yet been realized. 

The title also included a six-page recommended reading list, a chance-based index by Lucy Lippard, and a partial "but representative list of films that reflect many of the concerns and attitudes of the artists represented in the exhibition.”4

The original title now sells for upwards of five hundred dollars. In 2019, MoMA released a fiftieth anniversary facsimile reprint, which can be bought for $17.50 US, here. 

1. Canadians represented includ David Askevold, Iain & Ingrid Baxter, Gerald Ferguson, Les Levine, Michael Snow, Jeff Wall, Joyce Weiland, Ian Wilson and Marshall McLuhan, who is also cited countless times throughout the volume. The Information archive contains over twenty issues of his DEW-LINE newsletter and the includes his DISTANT EARLY WARNING cards from 1969.  

2. Taken on October 21, 1967, during the March on the Pentagon by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Boston's photograph depicts protester George Harris placing a carnation into the barrel of an M14 rifle held by a soldier of the 503rd Military Police Battalion. 

3.The “Recommended Reading” list includes Books, Periodicals & Articles, and Exhibition catalogues (even a vinyl record: Art by Telephone). Authors include John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, Lucy Lippard, Adrian Piper, Seth Siegelaub, Mao Tse-Tun and others. 

4. The film list includes works by Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, K.P. Brehmer, Stanley Brouwn, Christo, Bruce Conner, Hanne Darboven, Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham, Les Levine, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Luca Patella, Michael Snow, Andy Warhol, Joyce Weiland, and many others. 

"The INFORMATION catalogue, an adjunct to the show, is being sold in the Museum bookstore. Specifically for the catalogue, Kynaston McShine has selected a variety of photographs that document his essay. The photographs, strong in visual imagery, depict 1970 life styles that greatly influence INFORMATION artists. Referring to these 150 artists from 15 countries abroad, Mr. McShine says, "Those represented are part of a culture that has been considerably altered by communications systems such as television and film, and by increased mobility. Therefore, photographs, documents, films and ideas, which are rapidly transmitted, have become an important part of this new work.”

- MoMA press release, 1970

"On the esthetic front, the events of spring 1970 drastically affected curator Kynaston McShine’s “Information” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. The show was intended to introduce to the establishment the products of some four years of relatively underground Conceptual art, to document the new art within a “culture that has been considerably altered by communications systems.” When it opened in July, however, many of the artists had revised their contributions to express their outrage at the war. The exhibition catalogue was particularly radical: the AWC’s And Babies poster was reproduced; the endpapers were serial photographs of a vast unidentified demonstration in Washington; and there were fifty pages of uncaptioned photographs making up the body of the catalogue and transforming it into a hybrid artist’s book. They mixed art and politics in a McLuhanesque jumble to an extent the show did not, including the Great Wall of China, a plane crash, our men on the moon, Che Guevara, Marcel Duchamp, flowers in guns, the Black Panthers, rock and roll groups, Native American earth drawings, and computer data.”

- Lucy Lippard, A Different War: Vietnam in Art