The Rite Stuff – David Frankel on Art-Rite

The Rite Stuff – David Frankel on Art-Rite

Al Hansen, Coco Was a Poco Loco about Cacao and Men (1968)

Al Hansen, Coco Was a Poco Loco about Cacao and Men (1968)

Hershey wrappers on wood

11 1/2 x 8” (29.2 x 20.3 cm).

Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Agnes Gund

362.2006

Liam Gillick

liamgillick:

Liam Gillick, from the artist’s tumblr blog Liam Gillick Presentation

Bruce Nauman, Violins Violence Silence (1981-1982)

“Violins Violence Silence”
1981-1982
Neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension frame, 60 1/2 x 66 1/2 x 6 inches
Oliver-Hoffmann Family Collection, Chicago
Courtesy Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, © Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

via Art21

This post is dedicated to my son, Aubrey, who, when he was 8, told a sales clerk he was planning to go out for Hallowe’en as “Violence” — she heard “Violins” and thought he was so cute. He ended up going as the Periodic Table of Undead Elements.

Learn to Read Art

“Learn to Read Art,” whose title derives from a work by Lawrence Weiner, is an exhibition of Printed Matter’s history looks at their books, prints, photographs, multiples, and other editions from 1976 to the present.

Lawrence Weiner, “How Has Art Changed?”

Lawrence Weiner, in response to the question “How Has Art Changed?”

posed by the editors of Frieze magazine

Paul Butler, Fundraising Edition (2009)

Paul Butler. Fundraising Edition, 2009

As timely a work as ever was…

Merlin Carpenter, The Opening (2007)

Merlin Carpenter is an artist who knows well the importance of artist statements, press releases, etc…

“The last The Opening exhibition was at Simon Lee Gallery in London. After doing my paintings at the opening I left and went home. Apparently right at the end of the event three anarchist graffiti kids turned up and wanted to make an intervention in the exhibition. The gallery director would not let them in, and an argument ensued. They were claiming to have the right to enter as my work was bogus graffiti and this was a posh boss class hellhole. The Police were called and the three guys walked off. That’s what I heard, I do not know what really happened or why, but this was all in the context of anger on the eve of the London G20 demonstrations, and with Bernie Madoff’s London operation located above Simon Lee Gallery. The Opening shows since 2007 seem to produce the impression that they are participatory happenings, and then produce rage when they turn out not to be. The audience seem to feel compelled to add to the paintings with their fingers, trainers etc. This has happened almost every time, even in the secure atmosphere of Mercedes-Benz in Berlin. Arrival of anarchists to tag the show seems like the next step, and though out of my hands I do acknowledge this as primary meaning production. It is starting to make me look like Adorno in ‘68 so it’s a good thing that no one will find out about it as no one reads this far into press releases.” Read more.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maintenance Art Performance Series (1973-74)

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Maintenance Art Performance Series”, 1973-74
Photograph of performance at the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Courtesy of the Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York.

This and many other works arose directly from Ukeles’s “Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969! Proposal for an Exhibition ‘Care’” a pdf of which is available through her gallery here. This text, written as a proposal for an exhibition, marked the naming of Maintenance Art, a word for Ukeles’s soon-to-emerge art practice after a frustrating period of trying to reconcile being both an artist and a mother.

As I wrote, with the artist’s close collaboration and consultation, in the catalogue for “WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution”:

Written in Philadelphia in October 1968 “in a near rage and at the same time with eerie calm, in one sitting” the manifesto calls for the integration of feminism, environmentalism, and labor activism with personal experience.”

- WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art; and Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2004), 311. (Quote from Ukeles, “25 Years Later,” Ukeles/Matrix 137, exhibition brochure published by Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticutt, 2002.)

John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971)

John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971

“In 1971, Baldessari was commissioned by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada to create an original, on-site work. Unable to make the journey himself, he suggested that the students voluntarily write the phrase “I will not make any more boring art” on the gallery walls. Inspired by the work’s completion – the students covered the walls with the phrase – Baldessari committed his own version of the piece to videotape. Like an errant schoolboy, he dutifully writes, “I will not make any more boring art” over and over again in a notebook for the duration of the tape. In an ironic disjunction of form and content, Baldessari’s methodical, repetitive exercise deliberately contradicts the point of the lesson – to refrain from creating “boring” art.” (text courtesy Ubuweb)

John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971. Video (black and white, sound), 13:06 min. Gift of the artist. © 2009 John Baldessari. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York (image courtesy MoMA)

View the video on Ubuweb