Douglas Huebler

Douglas Huebler died on this day in 1997. 

Douglas Huebler

Douglas Huebler died on this day in 1997, at the age of 72. 

Douglas Huebler | Durata Duration

Douglas Huebler
Durata Duration
Torino, Italy : Sperone, 1970
[120] pp., 6.5 x 4.5 x 0.5", boards with dustjacket
Edition size unknown

"A fountain located in the Giardino of Sambuy, Italy, was documented by 61 photographs made according to 8 different systems in 'time'."

Available, here, for £ 112.99.

Holiday Recommendations Guest Post #12: Tim Rychaert

SETH SIEGELAUB :
New York, USA, 1941 - Basel, Switzerland, 2013


Seth Siegelaub (ed)
July, August, September 1969 / Juillet, Aout, Septembre 1969 / Juli, August, September 1969
New York City, USA: Seth Siegelaub, 1969
32 pp., 21 × 27.5 cm, stitch-bound
Edition size unknown


Description*

Documentation of conceptual or internationally-located projects curated by Seth Siegelaug with works by Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., Robert Smithson and Lawrence Weiner. Descriptions of the works in pictures and tri-lingual texts. Also contains "Specific information (locations, dates etc.)" in back of book that documents exacting details of projects and installations.

* as found on specificobject.com 

Still available at Copyright Bookshop Antwerp/Ghent, Belgium, for only 70€, here (or as a downloadable PDF, here).

- Tim Rychaert




MOREpublishers is a Brussels based editorial and curatorial platform, founded in November 2009 by Amélie Laplanche and Tim Rychaert. The aim is to produce and distribute artists editions and multiples, combining this practice with a curatorial approach.

This curatorial insight is transaled in both the development of standard production formats where in artists are invited to intervene, as well as into precise (production based) answers to invitations to exhibitions and site specific projects.

MOREpublishers has a close interest in the idea to consider edition-formats as a space with its own architectural qualities and characteristics. This interest is to be found in in the development of different formats. Thus far, MOREpublishers has developed four different series : ‘sunday’, ‘hors série’, ‘INSERTS’ and ‘exhibition copy’.

David Askevold's Projects Class

[David Askevold, ed]
Projects Class
Halifax, Canada: Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design,1969.
[12] pp., 12.5 x 18 cm., loose leaves in a rubber stamped envelope
Edition size unknown

David Askevold began teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design in 1968 and the following year developed the idea for the Projects Class. Originally hired to teach a Foundation year course in Sculpture, Askevold took advantage of the number of conceptually-based artists who had visited the school at that time, including James Lee Byars, Dan Graham, Lawrence Weiner and Joseph Kosuth. When he bumped into Weiner in New York City he pitched the idea of approaching artists to submit proposals for the students to manifest. Together they secured the involvement of many of the world's most innovative conceptual artists at the time: Robert Barry, Mel Bochner, Jan Dibbets, Graham, Sol Lewitt, N.E. Thing Co., Byars, Robert Smithson, Doug Huebler, Lucy Lippard, Kosuth, and Weiner himself.

Askevold said "My idea at the time, as an instructor of art, was to bring students closer to the sensibilities of practicing contemporary artists by engaging them directly with the work." He planned to serve mostly as a moderator, monitor, or "midwife" to the process. The original concept involved the artists visiting the school, but when that became too costly, his compromise was to operate through the mail and via the telephone.

Several of these artists also participated in the Art By Telephone project at the Chicago MOCA that same year. Art By Telephone followed a similar premise, in which the gallery staff realized the works from the artists’ instructions, with a nod to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s 1922 Telephone Paintings, which were made by a sign manufacturer according to specifications that the artist dictated over the phone.

The projects were submitted on typed or handwritten cards, and the students enacted the works in a collaborative manner. This exchange helped initiate a pedagogical shift, where the idea of teaching or engaging with a class could itself be viewed as a work of art.

Jan Dibbets’ asked the students to document the shadows of trees every ten minutes. Mel Bochner had them measure the classroom in height, length, volume, temperature, humidity, illumination, etc. He closed his text with the statement “It doesn’t matter to me what the specific details are, or how they are presented”.

Lucy Lippard, whose curatorial project Groups at the New York School of Visual Art earlier in the year was a precursor of sorts to Projects Class, contributed the following:

"A. A group of people (anywhere from five to fifteen) are photographed in the same place and approximately the same position in relation to each other every day at the same hour for two weeks. (No diversion from the conventional group photograph taken for school yearbooks, Knights of Columbus annual picnics, etc.) The people need not wear the same clothes or pose exactly the same way each day, but the immediate impression should be almost identical.


B. These photographs are developed and dated (a record about what one person is wearing each day, or something similar, should be kept each day so that the dates will be accurate.); each photograph is then described in writing, in detail, either by the person (or persons) who took the pictures or by someone who was not present at the picture taking. (Note which case was chosen.)


C. Put the photographs together with the texts in one of the following manners: 
1. Both pictures and texts in chronological order.
2. Pictures in chronological order, but texts scrambled (they are still dated though).
3. Texts in chronological order but pictures scrambled (and dated).
4. Scramble the whole thing in some totally random manner so that sometimes pictures are with their proper texts and sometimes not (still dated), and so that the time sequence is broken entirely: “illustration” and text diverge. If more than one person is doing the project, each one should take a different last step (and take his own photographs of different groups from the others)."

Robert Smithson’s Mud Flow called for “1000 tons of mud dumped from a dump truck over a rocky or stony cliff”. Robert Barry’s piece is known only to the students who conceived of it.

One of Askevold’s favorite proposals was Douglas Huebler’s Variable Piece #5, which asked that the students create a myth. They responded by creating another art school, the fictitious Haliburton. An ad in Artforum announced the institution, which was accepting students with “limited availability”. A dozen or so artists (who were not forewarned) were listed as teaching there. The only one they heard back from was Frank Stella, via his lawyer, who demanded they “take his name off this thing”.

The class ran from 1969 to 1972, when Askevold took a sabbatical to visit London, England. He arranged to have Graham, Byars, Dennis Oppenheim and Vito Acconci replace him, each for six weeks at a time.  The project helped to initiate a very extensive visiting artists program, which in turn put NSCAD on the map as a centre of innovative teaching practices and conceptual art in general.

Bruce Barber called NSCAD “one of the pre-eminent art schools in the world, arguably as important a centre in its own time as the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College had been for the fostering and dissemination of contemporary avant-garde activity” and Askevold's Projects Class is often identified as “the most innovative and interesting aspect of the NSCAD curriculum of the period,” (Gil McElroy, ARTSatlantic, Spring/Summer 1996).

The Art Metropole collection at the National Gallery of Canada houses both the original handwritten and typed cards and letters (see Robert Barry's, below) and the above multiple, which, increasingly rare, can be purchased for $500 at Printed Matter, here.




Further Reading:

Art Metropole : The Top 100 by Kitty Scott, Jonathan Shaughnessy, Peggy Gale, AA Bronson. Ottawa, Canada: National Gallery of Canada, 2006.

Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 by Lucy Lippard.
London, UK: Studio Vista, 1973.

Materializing Six Years : Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art by Catherine Morris, Vincent Bonin, Julia Bryan-Wilson. Brooklyn / Cambridge, NY / MA : Brooklyn Museum / MIT Press, 2012, pp. 186-187.

Conceptual Art: The NSCAD Connection 1967-1973 edited by Dr. Bruce Barber. Halifax, Canada: Anna Leonowens Gallery, NSCAD University, 2001.

The Last Art College: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1968-1978 by Garry Neill Kennedy.
Cambridge, USA: MIT Press, 2012.

Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts by Robert Filliou. Cologne, Germany: König Books, 1970.

The Once and Future Art School by Gary Michael Dault. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Art Magazine, Winter 2008, pp. 83-86. Online here.

Seth Siegelaub | March 1969

Seth Siegelaub (ed)
March 1969
New York City, USA: Self-published, 1973
31 pp., 21.5 x 18 cm., staplebound, card covers
Edition size unknown

Also known as One Month, this calendar-as-exhibition featured a different artist's work for each day of the month. Siegelaub invited 31 contemporary artists to contribute a "work", and those that replied are featured in the publication.

The calendar opens with the letter sent to the artists:


"Dear Mr. ___________________ ,

I am organizing an International Exhibition of the “work” of 31 artists during each of the 31 days in March 1969. The exhibition is titled “One Month.”....

You have been assigned March ___, 1969. 

Kindly return to me, as soon as possible, any relevant information regarding the nature of the "work" you intend to contribute to the exhibition on your day. 

Your reply should specify one of the following:
1) You want your name listed, with a description of your "work" and/or relevant information. 
2) You want your name listed, with no other information. 
3) You do not want your name listed at all. 

A list of the artists and their "work" will be published, and internationally distributed. (All replies become the property of the publisher.)

Kindly confine your replies to just verbal information. 

All replies must be received by February 15th. If You do not reply by that time, your name will not be listed at all. 

Thank you for your cooperation. 

Sincerely, 

SETH SIEGELAUB. 
21 January 1969


Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Rick Bartheleme, N.E. Thing, James Lee Byars, John Chamberlain, Ron Cooper, Barry Flanagan, Alex Hay, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Allen Ruppersberg, Robert Smithson, Dewain Valentine, Lawrence Weiner and Ian Wilson all contributed text works.

The no-replies (represented by blank pages) include Carl Andre, Michael Asher, Dan Flavin, Sol Lewitt, Bruce Nauman and Ed Ruscha. Andre and Lewitt had previously participated in Siegelaub's important Xerox Book project.

Huebler sub-divided his day into 30 forty-six minute sections, divided amongst the participating artists. Robert Barry released helium into the air. Christine Kozlov (the only woman invited1), 24 years old at the time, condensed a 24 hour recording into a single looped hour. Dennis Oppenheim buried pages of a science fiction novel. Allen Ruppersberg proposed a walk in the desert, in a straight line. Claes Oldenburg's contribution was simply "Things Colored Red".




1. Ingrid Baxter was a part of the N.E.Thing Co. at the time, but only the name of her then-husband Iain appears. 

Douglas Huebler | Crocodile Tears

Douglas Huebler
Crocodile Tears
Buffalo, USA: Albert-Knox Art Gallery, 1985
44 pp., 28 x 22 cm., saddle-stitched
Edition of 2,500

An artist's book published in conjunction with two concurrent 1985 exhibitions of works from Huebler's "Crocodile Tears" series at Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery and CEPA Gallery. The book consists of photographs and texts relating to "brief fictions re-sounding from the proposal in Variable Piece #70: 1971 to photographically document the existence of everyone alive".

The "Xerox" Book

The Xerox Book - one of the most revered artists' publications ever - was published in New York in 1968 by dealers Seth Siegelaub and John W. Wendler. The book was conceived by Siegelaub as an exhibition in print. Seven artists (Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris and Lawrence Weiner) were given 25 pages and asked to respond to the format.

Seigelaub, in discussion with Hans Obrist in 1999:

“This project evolved in the same way as most of my projects, in collaboration with the artists I worked with. We would sit around discussing the different ways and possibilities to show art, different contexts and environments in which art could be shown, indoors, outdoors, books, etc. The “Xerox book” — I now would prefer to call it the “Photocopy book”, so that no one gets the mistaken impression that the project has something to do with Xerox — was perhaps one of the most interesting because it was the first where I proposed a series of “requirements” for the project, concerning the use of a standard size paper and the amount of pages the “container” within which the artist was asked to work. What I was trying to do was standardize the conditions of exhibition with the idea that the resulting differences in each artist’s project or work, would be precisely what the artist’s work was about.

It was an attempt to consciously standardize, in terms of an exhibition, book, or project, the conditions of production underlying the exhibition process. It was the first exhibition in fact where I asked the artists to do something, and it was probably somewhat less collaborative than I am now making it sound. But I do have the impression that the close working relationship with the artist was an important factor of all the projects, even when I was not particularly close to an artist, as for example, Bob Morris.”

Similar the Beatles' White Album, the book is actually untitled or eponymously titled, and has simply come to be known as the Xerox book, which itself is a misnomer. To produce a book in an edition of 1000 copies on the photocopier was far more expensive than the standard offset litho.

I had this confirmed first hand, when at Art Metropole we started a series called Bootleg, that would take existing texts that were long unavailable and reprint them on the photocopier. It turned out that making a book on a photocopier is pretty expensive. I think the series died after three issues (Sonic Youth, Genesis P-Orridge and Dave Allen, all made in cooperation with the artists. I think the last two are still available, but the SY sold out quickly).

Given the disparity between the book’s intention of affordability and it’s current market value, it is not surprising that it too has been subjected to the photocopy treatment several times over the years. However, most of these projects are also high priced and come across as a bit of a cash-grab. Now Primary Information, with permission from Siegelaub, has made the title available (along with several other important works from the time, including "One Month") as a downloadable PDF. If you’re grateful for them having saved you a few thousand dollars, there’s a donate button at the bottom of the screen:

http://primaryinformation.org/index.php?/projects/seth-siegelaub-archive/