Panamarenko
Das Flug Zeug
Monchengladbach, Germany: Stadtisches Museum Monchengladbach, 1969
21 x 17 x 3 cm.
Edition of 330 numbered copies
Last week I gave a talk to Amish Morrell’s OCADU Publishing class and spoke about, amongst other things, the brilliant boxed Stadtisches Museum catalogues. Today I came across an earlier Powerpoint presentation from a talk I gave to his class eight years ago. It also included the same works.
I first featured them here eleven years ago, and with any excuse will repost them (such as a new photograph, or scrap of information).
The series began in 1967, when Joseph Beuys was invited to present his first ever museum solo exhibition at the Stadtisches Museum in Mönchengladbach, Germany. There were no funds in the budget for an accompanying catalogue, just a small brochure printed on the cheapest paper stock.
Beuys - who had published a boxed work with Edition Rene Block the year prior - proposed a catalogue/multiple hybrid, and the influential series was born.
Rather than illustrate the exhibitions, the boxed works were typically an independent artistic project, some without any reference to the accompanying show at all. Many did include essays and exhibition check lists, but they might also contain found objects, an artists’ production or other interventions into the format.
The Stadtisches series continued into the mid-eighties when the curator left the museum. In eighteen years the institution produced thirty-five boxed publications, playing an important contribution in the evolution of the artists’ catalogue.
One of the simplest and most effective is Das Flug Zeug by Panamarenko. The work consists of a cardboard box with a photograph of the artist next to a Dakota airplane glued to the cover. A single-page of text about the exhibition is glued to the underside of the box. Inside is a rolled parcel string affixed to both the box and lid, by adhesive tape. The string’s length is identical to the wingspan of the largest of the aircrafts presented in the exhibition.
