[Various Artists]
Evidence of the Avant Garde Since 1957
Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 1984
[unpaginated], 28 x 21 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown
Sub-titled Selected works from the Collection of Art Metropole Including Audio Tapes, Records, Videotapes, Film, Multiples, Kitsch, Manuscripts, Stamps, Buttons, Flyers, Posters, Correspondence, Catalogues, Porn, T-Shirts, Postcards, Drawings, Poems, Mailers, Books, Photographs, and Ephemera, this slim exhibition catalogue was published in conjunction with Art Metropole's 10th Anniversary exhibition, held November 17th to December 8th, 1984.
According to AA Bronson's excellent afterword, he viewed Art Metropole as "a museum of cultural flotsam, housed in a home-made ark and cast on a sea of the very material it collects". The book and exhibition, then, was a reckoning with what it meant to collect material of this nature. These works included affordable items intended for wide[r] distribution (books, records, videos), works intended to only exist briefly (mailers, postcards, flyers, posters, business cards, questionaires, other ephemera), works intended to a have use-value (buttons, t-shirts) and items not necessarily considered art at all (kitsch, porn).
Art Metropole (somewhat controversially) published one of the first series of affordable artists' VHS tapes, and a video program here features examples from those early cassettes (Lisa Steele, General Idea, Ant Farm, Les Levine, Colin Campbell, etc.). An audio program featured artists' records (Duchamp, Beuys, Kaprow,
Nannucci), sound poetry (
The Four Horsemen, bill bissett), noise rock and free jazz (CCMC, The Nihilist Spasm band) and pop crossovers (Laurie Anderson, The Residents).
Examples of artist-designed magazine covers include Greg Curnoe's graphic for The Business Quarterly magazine and Roy Lichtenstein's portrait of Bobby Kennedy for a 1968 cover of Time magazine.
Gathering items in my own collection that appear in the volume (see image, below), it became apparent how almost arbitrary some of the selections were, or at least beholden to personal taste. For example, there are half a dozen Something Else Press titles in the book: Claes Oldenburg, Dick Higgins, Geoff Hendricks, Robert Filliou, Ray Johnson and Walter Gutman. The latter - a stock market analyst - was included at the expense of SEP titles by John Cage, Gertrude Stein, Merce Cunningham, George Brecht, Al Hansen, Ruth Kraus, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bern Porter, Marshall McLuhan and many others. One has to assume that the novelty of The Gutman Letter appealed to one of the exhibition's curators, and it was included for personal significance over archival importance.
Most collections of ephemeral material have a degree of bias, not just of personal preference, but happenstance. Many of the items in this collection arrived in the mail, initially as part of the burgeoning Correspondence Art scene and as submissions for General Idea's FILE Megazine, and later as stock for the store. The collection had sold by the time I worked for the organization, but I recall Ann Dean buying a copy for the collection of everything that they carried in the shop. Now housed at the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa, these works ultimately became too unwieldy for a small organization like Art Met to steward. Items other outfits would have deemed unworthy of collecting eventually - after twenty odd years - acquired enough value that Art Metropole had difficulty insuring them.
Over a decade before that, their accumulation was just beginning to signify something larger - "evidence of a network of ideas and phenomenon which came to be known collectively as 'Conceptual Art' and the manifestations which continue to give life to many of the principles activated by that network of ideas" as Christina Ritche describes in her Introduction.
Other texts include John Goodwin's Foreward and a substantial personal reflection by Peggy Gale titled What About the Early Days? Designed by AA Bronson, the title is rounded out with a Chronology of Events and List of Publications.
Artists featured in the volume include:
Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Carl Andre, Ant Farm, Eleanor Antin, Ida Applebroog, Shusaka Arakawa, Robert Ashley, David Askevold, Alice Aycock, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Dara Birnbaum, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Christian Boltanski, George Brecht, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, David Buchan, Hank Bull, Daniel Buren, James Lee Byars, Miriam Cahn, John Cage, Ulises Carrion, Sarah Charlesworth, Sandro Chia, Giuseppe Chiari, Francesco Clemente, James Collins, Claudio Costa, Robert Cumming, Greg Curnoe, Hanne Darboven, Constance De Jong, Tom Dean, Mario Diacono, Jan Dibbets, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Mary Beth Edelson, Valie Export, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Robert Filliou, A.M. Fine, Hervé Fischer, Joel Fisher, Copp Fletcher, Robert Fones, Ken Friedman, Hamish Fulton, Phillip Galgiani, Eldon Garnet, Gilbert & George, Jochen Gerz, Dan Graham, John Greer, Hans Haacke, Keith Haring, Stephen Harris, Jan Herman, Geoff Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Susan Hiller, Hans Hollein, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, Douglas Huebler, Sonja Ivekovic, Jasper Johns, Ray Johnson, Joe Jones, On Kawara, Anselm Kiefer, Kijkhuis, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Vera Lemecha, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Tina Lhotsky, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Long, Robert Longo, Nino Longobardi, Urs Luthi, George Maciunas, Arnaud Maggs, Liz Magor, Hansjorg Mayer, Sandra Meigs, Mario Merz, Eric Metcalfe, Phillip Monk, Michael Morris, Muntadas, Ian Murray, Maurizio Nannucci, Opal L. Nations, Bruce Nauman, Linda Neaman, Al Neil, Hermann Nitsch, Barbara Noah, Arlene Golant, Claes Oldenburg, Luigi Ontani, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Giulio Paolini, Andy Patton, Steve Paxton, A.R. Penck, Giuseppe Penone, Bern Porter, Steve Reich, Lothar Reiners, James Riddle, David Rosenberg, Martha Rosler, Dieter Rot[h], Ed Ruscha, Lucas Samaras, Bernd Schmitz, Carolee Schneemann, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Kurt Schwitters, Chieko Shiomi, Seth Siegelaub, Michael Snow, Valerie Solanas, Daniel Spoerri, Klaus Staeck, Paul Thek, Edwin Klein, Vincent Trasov, John Mitchell, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Ulay, Ben Vautier, Bernar Venet, Claudio Verna, Wolf Vostell, Martin Walde, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Andy Warhol, Robert Watts, Lawerence Weiner, Stephan Willats, Emmett Williams, Martha Wilson, Robert Wilson, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Peter Wronski, Donna Wyszomierski, Keigo Yammamoto, La Monte Young, and many others.
Derek Sullivan recently re-drew the entire title by hand as Evidence Of the Avant Garde Ex-Library (see next post).
