Les Levine | Levine’s Restaurant

Les Levine

Levine’s Restaurant

Filderstadt, Germany: Edition Domberger, 1969

50 x 65 cm.

Edition of 100

The artist as restauranteur has a long and rich history that includes Tina Girouard, Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark's FOOD, Jon Rubin’s Conflict Kitchen, Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy, EYE SCREAM by N.E. Thing Co., and Al’s Cafe by Allen Ruppersberg. Levine’s Restaurant preceded them all, and began as a proposed trade. 

Mickey Ruskin, the owner of Max’s Kansas City, approached the artist about trading an artwork for a tab at the club. Levine replied "Well, I'm a conceptual artist, so what can we do in relationship to that?"

From March to September 1969, Levine operated Ruskin’s 19th Street and Park Avenue South property as "New York's only Canadian restaurant". The venue featured "deplorable food and dismal light.” Some examples of the former include Salmon Steak Halifax, Chopped Chicken Liver Levine, and London Broil.

Levine viewed the restaurant as a kind of space-age Howard Johnson’s for tourists, but Ruskin hoped to corner the "meat-and-potatoes artists’ trade”. The decor revelled in its tackiness, with plastic light fixtures, kelly-green tablecloths, black walls, and white plastic bucket seats. The waitresses wore bowling team T-shirts, and the bartender was chosen because he was bland. 

This Edition Domberger boxed portfolio commemorating the project includes nine screen prints, a plastic sculpture of potato latkes, a bag of lentils, a stack of postcards,  a 26-inch-wide illuminated plastic sign, a T-shirt, and tablecloth, each signed and numbered (excluding the postcards and lentils), 

"Around the same time he presented “The Big Eye,” Levine issued a press release announcing the opening on St. Patrick’s Day 1969 of the Irish-Canadian-Jewish eatery Levine’s Restaurant. Initiated by Mickey Ruskin, proprietor of Max’s Kansas City, and designed by John Brockman, the restaurant could nonetheless be considered another instance of systems aesthetics from Levine’s artistic menu, this time using his name and biography as the conceptual backdrop to a “relaxing, pleasant environment”—albeit one where closed-circuit television had been installed to monitor each table. The place, contemporary with Allen Ruppersberg’s similarly conceptual Al’s Café in Los Angeles, was a total failure and closed after only a few months. Looking on the bright side, Burnham, ever a champion of the artist’s endeavors, found the work successful in terms of its further radicalization of the concept of the environment and in its direct engagement with the art world. He hailed Levine’s “ability to reify art as social context, that is, to create art out of whatever concerns art.”

- Tom Holert, Artforum

A RING THAT OCCASIONALLY BORDERS THE SUN

Rachel Domínguez/Jon Rubin/Dawn Weleski

A RING THAT OCCASIONALLY BORDERS THE SUN 

Pittsburgh, USA: Conflict Kitchen, 2015

56 pp., 18 x 13 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Conflict Kitchen (see earlier post, here) was a restaurant in Pittsburgh started by Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski, in 2010. For the seven years that it was operational (at various locations) it served only food from countries that the United States was in conflict with. 

A RING THAT OCCASIONALLY BORDERS THE SUN is designed by Brett Yasko, who also created the facades for each iteration (in collaboration with locals from each featured country) and the printed materials that serve as food wrappers (see below). The Cuban wrapper features interviews with Cubans both living in the US and in Cuba. They touch upon subjects such as Revolution, Media, Health Care, Arts and Economy. 

This title continues the approach but with children living in Cuba. Interviewer Rachel Domínguez poses the same question to boys and girls aged between the years of five and fourteen. 

Q: If you could make a law that everyone had to obey, what would it be?

A: To plant plants.

Q :If you were to move to another country, which would it be?

A: Paris.

Q: Why?

A: Because it is very cute and has the Eiffel Tower. I like it.

Q: Have you seen it?

A: On television.

14 year old Ariel was asked "What is the strangest thing that you have seen in your life?” and replied 

"The ring that occasionally borders the sun, like a halo. I have shot many photos of it,” providing the volume with its title. Asked what she would do if she were president, she answers "Improve this shit. I would raise wages.”

The interviews are accompanied by portraits of each participant, photographed by Carlos Ernesto Escalona Martí. 

Q: What do you think is the best invention in the world?

Armando, 9 years old: Someone should invent a city with banks that give away free money.

Q: Are you sure?

A: Well, it would be a better invention than the soccer ball.

Q: If you could send a message to anyone right now, who would it be?

A: To an adult.

Q: What would you say?

A: That they should not party and not drink too much alcohol.

Q: Why?

A: Because that could be a catastrophe for the human body.

Q: Why do some people have more money than others?

A: Because some are unable to work and others live in places where there is big money. And here most people are not so rich.

Q: How do you know that?

A: Because my mom says she pretends to work and they pretend to pay.

SKIES AND SEAS WERE PASTED TOGETHER

Mahsa Biglow/Jon Rubin/Dawn Weleski

SKIES AND SEAS WERE PASTED TOGETHER

Pittsburgh, USA: Conflict Kitchen, 2015

82 pp., 18 x 13 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Conflict Kitchen was an internationally renowned take-out restaurant in Pittsburgh that ran from 2010 to 2017. It served cuisine exclusively from countries with which the United States was in conflict.

NPR described the venture as “an experimental public art project—and the medium is the sandwich wrap.” It was founded by artists Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski, funded in part with proceeds from the neighbouring Waffle Shop, which Rubin had opened a few years prior (see below). The Waffle Shop was a functioning storefront restaurant that produced and broadcast a live-streaming talk show with its customers during all operating hours. Pittsburgh feels like the kind of city where one DIY art project begets another, rather than bankruptcy. 

“[Conflict Kitchen] is a place on the street level where we can unpack politics together, using food as a storytelling device,” Rubin told the Smithsonian Magazine in 2013. Each iteration was augmented by performances, publications and events. 

The first of these was a free meal held simultaneously in Pittsburgh and Tehran, where diners in both cities sat around long tables that were connected via Skype. The menu included freshly baked Barbari Bread, Tah Dig, Khoresht Fesenjan, lamb kebabs, Khoresht Ghormeh Sabzi, and Doogh, a yogurt and mint drink.

The food wrappers at the restaurant were printed with interviews with people from the country being highlighted. The wrappers for the first iteration, which focused on Iranian food, featured sections about bread, women’s rights, poetry, fashion, nuclear power, tea, and the perception of Americans. 

"We're using food as an entry point to help people explore cultures that aren't talked about in the mainstream media,” Rubin told Salon in 2010, clarifying "We don't support the Iranian government or anything”. 

SKIES AND SEAS WERE PASTED TOGETHER is the first of four publications produced during the seven year run of Conflict Kitchen. Each featured interviews with residents from the countries in question. These were conducted in Iran by artist Mahsa Biglow, accompanied by her photographs of the subjects. 

On the left side of the book, children are interviewed, and on the right, the same questions are posed to their grandparents. 

In keeping with the foregrounding of voices of residents, the titles of each book is taken from the interviews. Seven year old Amirali was asked "Where did our planet come from?” and he replied "Skies and seas were pasted together and made a big circle that scientists named Earth.” 

Other questions include: 

Q: What would you do if you were president?

A: I would remove financial inflation.

Q: What are you afraid of?

A: I’m scared of death and souls.

Q: What would you ask an American kid your age?

A: Is your country beautiful like mine?

Q: How would the world be different if animals could talk?

A: If wild animals could talk, it would be really scary.

Q: What is the hardest thing about being a kid? The best?

A: The hardest thing is having to study. I don’t know. Yes, studying. The best thing is that we can come outside and play with our friends. Kids can play because we have spare time, but when you grow up, you have to study all the time.

Q: If you could make one rule that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

A:I would make a rule that no one can start a fight or a war.

Q: What is something that confuses you about grownups?

A: They fight again and again.

A’zam, his fifty-three year old grandmother was asked the same: 

Q: What is the hardest thing about being a grandma?

A: The hardest part is that I’m always worried about my grandchildren’s futures because of the unique situation that we’re dealing with here in Iran. Grownups generally have no hope for a bright future here.

Q: If you could make one rule that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

A: Only one rule? Well you cannot change the world with only one rule!

Q: It’s not a matter of changing the world. I’d like to know your priorities. So, if you had only one rule to make, what would it be?

A: I would try to strengthen rules that bring justice.

Q: What is something that challenges you about children?

A: When they insist on being stubborn.

"Conflict Kitchen reformats the preexisting social relations of food and economic exchange to engage the general public in discussions about countries, cultures and people that they might know little about outside of the polarizing rhetoric of U.S. politics and the narrow lens of media headlines.”

- Jon Rubin

Pittsburgh

We just got back from a week or so in Pittsburgh, where Roula installed a small exhibition at Gallery Closed. The window gallery, in the Troy Hill neighbourhood, is operated by artists Phillip Andrew Lewis and Lenka Clayton, from their studio. The enormous former bank building (complete with functional vault) has two street-facing windows, allowing the gallery to be permanently closed and also continuously open. 

For a fourteen month-long series called Exhibition Copy, works by artists in the window space spill out into neighbouring businesses, residences and nearby school. The series includes projects by Martin Creed, Louise Bourgeois, Roman Ondak, Ryan Gander and others. Roula created a party room scenario reminiscent of fish-bowl party spaces and play areas where children celebrate in full view of passersby (like the one in the Rainbow Cinema in Toronto, which we keep threatening to host a party in for our friend Jon Sasaki). Balloons from the party appear to have drifted off and become lodged in the other windows. The painted cast resin balloons can be seen in the window for Ron’s Pizza Palace, a Public Notary Office, a former Beauty Salon and several other adjacent spaces. 

Troy Hill is also home to several “Art Houses”, the brainchild of collector Evan Mirapaul, who buys up dilapidated homes and invites artists to transform them into installation spaces. German artist Thorsten Brinkmann produced the first one, complete with Being John Malkovich style half-floors and passages to crawl through. Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski’s Kunzhaus followed in 2016. 

The most extraordinary of the three is Lenka and Phillip’s Darkhouse Lighthouse, which gutted the original home and built an elaborate lighthouse inside it. Mark Dion is currently working on the fourth home. A fifth possible space is currently covered in vines, with bricks from the crumbling chimney threatening to fall from the roof. All are located within a block or two of each other, with Gallery Closed close by. 

Affordable space in Pittsburgh means that artists can often rent out spaces and create DIY museums, billboards and restaurants. Jon Rubin (a co-curator of the Exhibition Copy series and one of our excellent hosts) has done all three. His work often explores the authority of text in the public realm, and his projects include Waffle Shop (Talk Show), The National Museum and the renowned Conflict Kitchen. More on these in future posts. 

Rich Pell has operated the Centre for Post-Natural History for about a decade. I was expecting a thrifty studio space with some objects on makeshift tables, but the presentation was top-notch, with a full library of books, museum-quality glass cases, audio descriptions, projected films and taxidermied animals. 

The week was pretty packed, and we only managed to visit three bookstores: Fungus Books and Bottom Feeder (both excellent and around the corner from each other) and Caliban, which - we later learned - was involved in an eight million dollar heist, regarding prints and plates cut from books from the Carnegie Library (read the story, here, at the Smithsonian site). 

Over the next week or so I’ll try to get to the above titles, which tell the larger story of some of the great places we visited.