Sophie Calle | La Visite Guidee

Sophie Calle

La Visite Guidee

Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1996

[48]pp., 17.7 x 25.2 cm., hardcover 

Edition of 1500

A 1996 exhibition catalogue/artists' book hybrid, consisting of images of the artist's personal possessions, which were placed in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen Rotterdam display cases, alongside the museum's own holdings. Visitors were given a guided tour on a walkman. Calle, accompanied by music by Laurie Anderson, offered autobiographical recollections of the objects. For example: 

"...When I went to her house to find a memento of her, I chose the TV guide that was still on a table by the television: her last issue of Tele Star. For my grandmother and her home, life had stopped the week of the 16th to the 22nd August, 1986." 

The cover image features my favourite work by Calle [below], in which she responded to a display case of historic chamber pots by placing a plastic red bucket among them. The intervention was accompanied by the following story: 

"In my fantasies, I am a man. Greg was quick to notice this. Perhaps that’s why he invited me one day to piss for him. It became a ritual: I would come up behind him, blindly undo his pants, take out his penis, and do my best to aim well. Then, after the customary shake, I would nonchalantly put it back and close his fly. Shortly after our separation, I asked Greg for a photo-souvenir of this ritual. He accepted. So in a Brooklyn studio, I had him pee into a plastic bucket in front of a camera. This photograph was an excuse to put my hand on his sex one last time. That evening, I agreed to the divorce."

In addition to the impact of the anecdote, the work causes the viewer to look differently upon the other historical objects displayed. A museum goer might be well aware of the intimate nature of their purpose, but Calle's candor illuminates and embellishes our relationship with these relics, encouraging a visceral, not academic, response to artifacts that people once pissed and shat into.

"In the Spring of 1994 a walkman offered visitors a guided tour of the museum a part of Sophie Calle's exhibition 'Absent', held from March 27 tot [sic] may 29, 1994. To the accompaniment of music by Laurie Anderson, the listener was lead past Calle's personal possessions, supplemented by autobiographical notes and scattered throughout the museum. We decided to preserve the temporary character of the arrangement by publishing a book of the objects and the accompanying texts. The companion CD re-enacts the tour for everyone.”

- La Visite Guidee, preface

Sophie Calle | True Stories

Sophie Calle

True Stories. Hasselblad Award 2010

Göttingen, Germany: Steidl & The Hassleblad Foundation, 2010.

112 pp., 27.5 x 25.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

In 2010, Sophie Calle was awarded the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, which was celebrated with an exhibition and this publication. 

Sophie Calle | The Tie

Sophie Calle

The Tie

Zurich, Switzerland: Parkett Editions, 1993

79.7 x 21.2 cm.

Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies

Continuing Calle's voyeuristic engagement with strangers, this brown silk ties recounts a one-sided correspondence:

"I saw him for the first time in December 1985, at a lecture he was giving. I found him attractive but something bothered me: he was wearing an ugly tie. The next day I anonymously sent him a thin brown tie. Later I saw him in a restaurant; he was wearing it. Unfortunately, it clashed with his shirt. It was then I decided to take on the task of dressing him from head to toe: I would send him one article of clothing every year at Christmas. In 1986, he received a pair of silk grey socks; in 1987, a black alpaca sweater; in 1988, a white shirt; in 1989, a pair of gold-plated cuff links; in 1990, a pair of boxer shorts with a Christmas tree pattern; nothing in 1991; and in 1992, a pair of grey trousers. Some day, when he is fully dressed by me, I would like to be introduced to him.”

Produced for Parkette Magazine Volume 36 over thirty years ago, the work is still available from the publisher, for €1,200.00, here. 

“Like a sculptor of a past century, Sophie Calle in her art manipulates and reconfigures a commodity central to the economy of her time. This commodity does not happen to be bronze or marble, however, but information, the elusive stuff that circulates constantly between consciousness, document and cyberspace.”

- Lucy Sante, Parkett, 1993

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle turns 70 today. 

Sophie Calle | The Tie

Sophie Calle

The Tie

Zurich, Switzerland: Parkett Editions, 1993

79.7 x 21.2 cm.

Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies

Continuing Calle's voyeuristic engagement with strangers, this brown silk ties recounts a one-sided correspondence:

"I saw him for the first time in December 1985, at a lecture he was giving. I found him attractive but something bothered me: he was wearing an ugly tie. The next day I anonymously sent him a thin brown tie. Later I saw him in a restaurant; he was wearing it. Unfortunately, it clashed with his shirt. It was then I decided to take on the task of dressing him from head to toe: I would send him one article of clothing every year at Christmas. In 1986, he received a pair of silk grey socks; in 1987, a black alpaca sweater; in 1988, a white shirt; in 1989, a pair of gold-plated cuff links; in 1990, a pair of boxer shorts with a Christmas tree pattern; nothing in 1991; and in 1992, a pair of grey trousers. Some day, when he is fully dressed by me, I would like to be introduced to him."

Neckties

 

Yayoi Kusama | Kusama Presents An Orgy: Nudity, Love, Sex & Beauty. Vol. 1 No.2

Yayoi Kusama

Kusama Presents An Orgy: Nudity, Love, Sex & Beauty. Vol. 1 No.2

New York City, USA: Enterprise Modern Services, 2001

24 pp., 42.8 cm x 30 cm., tabloid

Edition size unknown

Between the major retrospectives, public art works and collaborations with huge fashion labels, Yayoi Kusama's work has been pretty comfortably subsumed by the mainstream art and design worlds. But her output was often a lot more complicated and confrontational than the Instagram-friendly polka-dot works and infinity rooms (which are, admittedly, excellent).

In the 1960's, she hosted a variety of naked public interventions, often involving group sex. These were part protest, part publicity stunt, part sixties free-love hippy happening. 

“I made my art to try and change peoples’ minds about the love in the world that can last forever,” she explained in 2018. “I wanted to spread hope to the world through my artwork.” 

She once wrote to president Richard Nixon and invited him to an orgy she was hosting in his honour, offering sex in exchange for ceasefire in Vietnam. She presented the "first homosexual wedding ever to be performed in the United States" and a Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead outside of MoMA in 1969 ("I did body painting while my models fucked a bronze sculpture by Maillol" - see below). 

The combination of controversy and titillation made these works perfect tabloid fodder and Kusama received considerable press coverage. Simultaneous to this, pornographic publishers were attempting to thwart government censorship by linking themselves to the (somewhat less regulated) world of fine art. Artists were invited to produce work for their pages, providing  political coverage to the publications while allowing artists to engage with "every day" audiences. 

Her involvement with a few of these porn papers led Kusama to start her own periodical, Kusama Presents an Orgy, for which she was the "chief editor". Printing costs were primarily paid for by the personal ads that appeared in the publication's pages and, according to Kusama's autobiography, the tabloid was "sold at news stands all across the USA". Her goal with the newspaper was to combat the "medieval mindset that sex is dirty and not to be enjoyed". 

“Publicity is part of my art,” declared Kusama in the pages of the periodical, preceding later publications which were part-artwork and part-promotional vehicle, like General Idea's FILE Megazine. Suck, The First European Sex Paper was founded in Amsterdam by Fluxus artist Willem de Ridder and authors Germaine Greer,  Heathcote Williams and Lynne Tillman, also in 1969. It, too, aimed to merge art, politics, the counter-culture and sexual liberation. 

Other artists mining this territory include Cosey Fanni Tutti of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle, who posed nude for an explicit porn magazine and Sophie Calle who performed at a strip club. Annie Sprinkle continues to blur the line between pornographic performer, activist and visual artist. 

Originally selling for less than a dollar (“$5 gets you the next six orgies”) and intended as a weekly, Kusama Presents An Orgy: Nudity, Love, Sex & Beauty only lasted 8 issues.

The above issue is a reprint of the second issue, released in 2001 and already scarce. The contents include: "A Vote for Kusama," by R. Melvin Brandon; "They Said it Couldn't Be Done: Or a Gay Guy Tries it Straight," by Richard; "Bringing Up the Rear," by Robert Pauls; "Kusama's Garden of Narcissus;" "Do Your Thing;" "Million Dollar Pussy;" "Bringing Up the Rear;" "Premises," by Kusama and more.