Yasunao Tone

Yasunao Tone died yesterday, at the age of 90. 

Nicole Eisenman | Maker’s Muck

 

Nicole Eisenman

Maker’s Muck

Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2024

160 pp., 29.25 cm x 23.5 cm., softcover

Edition of 1800

Ulises Carrión | Dear Reader. Don’t Read.

Ulises Carrión

Dear Reader. Don’t Read.

Self-published, 1973

24 × 36.8 cm.

Edition size unknown

Ay-O | Flux Rain Machine

Ay-O

Flux Rain Machine

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1965

12 x 9.5 x 2.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

Produced around the same time as Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube (see below), Flux Rain Machine functions similarly: water sealed inside the plastic box condenses to form droplets. Versions advertised in Fluxus newsletters are more likely to have been made-to-order larger versions, even closer in design to Haacke's, given their price range of between $50 and $200. 

The label - as with all Fluxus editions - is designed by George Maciunas (see above). Both examples are from the MoMA collection in NYC. 

Recent English Experimental Music

[Various Artists]

Recent English Experimental Music

London, UK: Audio Arts, 1976

Audio Cassette

Edition size unknown

Volume 3 Number 2 of the Audio Arts cassette series features British composers, with a very similar line up to Brian Eno’s Obscure Records releases (Gavin Bryars, Christopher Hobbs, Michael Nyman, John White). 

Reissued in 1982. 

Lenka Clayton | How We Thought It Would Be And How It Was

 

Lenka Clayton

How We Thought It Would Be And How It Was

Atlanta, USA: J&L Books, 2025

48 pp., 29.2 x 24.2 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Designed by Jason Fulford (who runs J&L Books with his partner Leanne Shapton), Lenka Clayton’s latest publication collects twenty-three of the more-than five-hundred drawings she has produced using a 1957 portable Smith-Corona Skyriter typewriter. 

This series consists of works made in 2020, during the early days of the Covid pandemic, including her grandmother’s thumb on the camera during a Zoom call, kitchen haircuts, quarantined mail, empty supermarket shelves and tea towels repurposed as face masks.  

The book is available for $30 US, here. 

Barbara Kruger | I shop therefore I am

Barbara Kruger

I shop therefore I am

Cologne, Germany: Kölnischer Kunstverein, 1990

43.9 x 27.3 x 10.7 cm.

Edition of 9000

Barbara Kruger’s reworking of Rene Descartes’ best known dictum ("Cogito, ergo sum") has appeared as a canvas book bag, t-shirt, magnet and postcard. But this simple paper shopping bag had the widest reach. 

Only a handful of artists' multiples can claim edition sizes higher than nine-thousand, but most of the bags adorned with Kruger’s signature text conflating consumerism with identity no longer remain, destroyed by the consumerism they gently mock. They were distributed as a functional and ephemeral shopping bag, and few survived the use value. 

The art market gets the last laugh, though, with unused copies framed copies to sell for upwards of two thousand dollars now, despite the high edition size and disposable nature of the production. 

"Prior to making it, I had read Walter Benjamin, and I’ll paraphrase a quote: “If the soul of the commodity existed, it would want to nestle in the home and hearth of every shopper that passed its way.” I thought that was amazing. When reading Benjamin’s Moscow Diary, I realized that he was a compulsive shopper. He’s always shopping for something, and it was about framing his image of perfection.

I remember when the works of artists in my peer group were first being discussed by critics and first being sold. I thought if my work was developing this commodity status, I had to address it in the work.”

- Barbara Kruger