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Abstract
In the late 1960s, artists utilized documents such as floor plans, maps, instructions, correspondence, and photographs to record ideas or to take the place of artworks that need not be built. These documents were reproduced through the pages of inexpensive publications, intended to be accessible to wider, globalized audiences beyond the scope of physical exhibitions. This article argues that the page offers transformative qualities and functions as a medium for taking original, unique, and personal documents into the public domain; the page is repeatable, mass-produced, and puts art in the hands of the reader. Through using the pages that artists contributed to exhibition catalogs including Prospect 69, Konzeption/Conception, and July August September (all 1969), this article investigates the various ways in which artists adopted the medium of the page to extend the reach of their ideas and facilitate insights into their thinking and making processes. Working from the premise that artists were in the best position to explain their own work, the investigation conducts close readings of selected pages to discover the different functions of catalog contributions alongside, instead of, and after artworks were exhibited.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Artworks that could be described as impermanent include: Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking, 1967; and Robert Barry, Inert Gas Series, 1969. See also Lawrence Weiner, “Statement of Intent,” in January 5–31 1969, exhibition catalog (New York: Seth Siegelaub, 1969), n.p.
2 “Equivalent VIII was a reconstruction, not an original … The original has been destroyed. At the time I made these pieces I did not have the money or the space to store the bricks so I had to return them to the brick supplier.” Carl Andre, “Art and Value” (1978), in Carl Andre: Cuts, ed. James Meyer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 47; Barbara Reise, “‘Untitled 1969’: A Footnote on Art and Minimal Stylehood,” Studio International 177, no. 910 (April 1969): 169.
3 Harald Szeemann, “About the Exhibition,” in When Attitudes Become Form, ed. Harald Szeemann, exhibition catalog (Bern: Kunsthalle Bern, 1969); Lucy R. Lippard and John Chandler, “The Dematerialization of Art,” Art International XII, no. 2 (February 1968): 31–6; Robert Pincus-Witten, “Anglo-American Standard Reference Works: Acute Conceptualism,” Artforum 10, no. 2 (October 1971): 84; Ursula Meyer, Conceptual Art (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1972), xi–xiii.
4 Lisa Gitelman, Paper Knowledge: Towards a Media History of Documents (London and Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 1–2.
5 Mel Bochner and James Meyer, “Mel Bochner in Conversation with James Meyer,” in Mel Bochner: Language 1966–2006, ed. Johanna Burton, exhibition catalog (Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 135.
6 Ibid., 135.
7 Germano Celant and Lynda Morris, The Book as Artwork 1960–1972 (London: Nigel Greenwood, 1972); Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962–1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions,” October 55 (Winter 1990): 109; Alexander Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 130–151 (chapter: “The Xerox Degree of Art”); Charles Green, The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 43–5 (chapter: “Conceptual Bureaucracy”); Hillel Schwartz, Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles (New York: Zone Books, 1996); Xerography, curated by Michelle Cotton, Colchester: Firstsite, September 8–November 10, 2013.
8 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 1994), 160.
9 “We are confronted here once more with that basic function of media – to store and expedite information. Plainly, to store is to expedite, since what is stored is more accessible than what has to be gathered.” McLuhan, Understanding Media, 158.
10 “Reproduction is one clear way that documents are affirmed as such: one of the things people do with documents is copy them, whether they get published variously in editions, duplicated for reference, sort of or semi-published for internal circulation or proliferated online.” Gitelman, Paper Knowledge, 1.
11 In the end, the “Xerox Book” was produced using off-set lithograph due to the expense and time it would had taken to print 1000 copies using Xerox technology. See Patricia Norvell, “Seth Siegelaub, April 17, 1969,” in Recording Conceptual Art: Early Interviews with Barry, Huebler, Kaltenbach, LeWitt, Morris Oppenheim, Siegelaub, Smithson and Weiner by Patricia Norvell, ed. Alexander Alberro and Patricia Norvell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 35–9; “Seth Siegelaub,” in A Brief History of Curating, ed. Hans Ulrich Obrist (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2011) 121–2.
12 Seth Siegelaub and Charles Harrison, “On Exhibitions and the World at Large,” Studio International 178, no. 917 (December 1969): 202.
13 Ibid., 203.
14 Sara Martinetti, “Chronology,” in The Stuff that Matters: Textiles Collected by Seth Siegelaub for the Centre for Social Research on Old Textiles, exhibition catalog (London: Raven Row, 2012), 54.
15 Art and Language was a group founded in Coventry, England by Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, David Bainbridge and Harold Hurrell. In 1970, art historian Charles Harrison and the artist Mel Ramsden became associated with the group and Joseph Kosuth joined as the American editor. Their collective work dates from 1967.
16 . Art-Language: The Journal of Conceptual Art 1, no. 1 (May 1969) included Sol LeWitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art”; Dan Graham, “Poem–schema”; and Lawrence Weiner, “Statements.”
17 557,087, organized by Lucy R. Lippard, Seattle: Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, September 5–October 5, 1969 was followed by 995,000, Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, January 13–February 8, 1970; 2,972,453, Buenos Aires: Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC), December 4–23, 1970 and the touring exhibition c. 7,500, beginning at California Institute of the Arts, May 14–18, 1973 and traveling to nine further venues across the USA and UK in 1973 and 1974. The catalog for each venue consisted of a series of index cards presenting information, proposals, drawings, plans submitted by artists and a list of artists, general bibliography, and selected quotations.
18 More Konzeption Conception Now, ed. Stefanie Kreuzer, exhibition catalog (Leverkusen: Museum Morsbroich, 2015).
19 Some catalogs were given away for free, while others were distributed worldwide through the mail. Seth Siegelaub distributed independently produced catalogs and artists’ books through his company International General; a price list from 1971 shows the majority of titles to be priced between $2 and $5, for example: January 5–31, 1969 (1969), $2.50; 557,087/995,000 (1969/70), $4.50; Robin Redbreast’s Territory/Sculpture 1969 (1970), £2. The “Xerox Book” is priced higher at $20.00. International General, 1971 Booklist (New York, 1971), copy from Hugh Pilkington.
20 Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” Artforum 5, no. 10 (Summer 1967): 79.
21 “Conceptual artists take over the role of the critic in terms of framing their own propositions, ideas, and concepts. Because of the implied duality of perception and conception in earlier art, a middleman (critic) appeared useful. This [Conceptual] art both annexes the functions of the critic and makes the middleman unnecessary.” Ursula Meyer, “Introduction,” in Conceptual Art, viii.
22 “So it is not surprising that some critics seem to be perplexed by the installation on site and think they ‘have not been in an exhibition at all’, that they equate the catalog with the exhibition or even advise against a visit, since everything can be seen.” Kreuzer, More Konzeption Conception Now, n.p.
23 Lynne Cooke, “Open Work: Lynne Cooke on Hanne Darboven,” Artforum International 47, no. 10 (Summer 2009): 57–8.
24 Hanne Darboven, in Szeemann, When Attitudes Become Form, n.p.
25 “The calendar is merely a vehicle, with no other meaning for the work, but by permutating its sequences of order through endless cross-sums and progressions, Darboven creates her own time … .” Lucy R. Lippard, “Hanne Darboven: Deep in Numbers,” Artforum 8, no. 7 (October 1973): 35; catalog text by Johannes Cladders for Hanne Darboven, exhibition catalog (Mönchengladbach: Städtisches Museum, February 25–April 1, 1969), reproduced in Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (Oakland: University of California Press, 1997), 77.
26 See also Jan Dibbets, “The Shadows in My Studio” (1969), discussed in Rudi Fuchs, “The Eye Framed and Filled with Color,” in Jan Dibbets: Interior Light, ed. Rudi Fuchs (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 10–12.
27 Around this period, Dibbets created similar works using photographs taken at 10-minute intervals in various spaces, including Shortest Day at My House in Amsterdam (1970) and The Shortest Day of 1970 Photographed from Sunrise to Sunset, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York (1970).
28 Dibbets continued to work with windows in the 1980s and 1990s: see Ten Windows (1988–97); Wayzata (1989–90).
29 Siegelaub and Harrison, “On Exhibitions and the World at Large,” 202–3.
30 July August September, ed. Seth Siegelaub, exhibition catalog (New York: Seth Siegelaub, 1969), 25.
31 Dibbets had worked with the sea tide previously when filming 12 Hours Tide Object, Correction of Perspective, Dutch Coast with Gerry Schum as part of the television exhibition LAND ART (1969). See Ulrike Groos, Ready to Shoot: Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum videogalerie schum, exhibition catalog (Düsseldorf: Kunsthalle, 2004), 96–9.
32 Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art, curated by Leontine Coelewij and Sara Martinetti in collaboration with the Stichting Egress Foundation/Marja Bloem, Amsterdam. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, December 12, 2015–April 17, 2016.
33 Jan Dibbets, Robin Redbreast's Territory: Sculpture 1969 (Cologne and New York: König/Seth Siegelaub, 1970).
34 Norvell, “Seth Siegelaub, April 17, 1969,” 41.
35 Richard Long, Announcement Card (Düsseldorf: Galerie Konrad Fischer, 1968). Discussed in Andrew Wilson, “From Page to Page,” in Heaven and Earth, ed. Clarrie Wallis (London: Tate Publishing, 2009), 195 and Lynda Morris, “Idea + Idea,” in Time Extended/1964–1978. Works and Documents from the Herbert Foundation (Ghent: Herbert Foundation, 2016), 24–25.
36 With the exception of photographs depicting the artist in Prospect 69, ed. Konrad Fischer and Hans Strelow, exhibition catalog (Düsseldorf: Kunsthalle, 1969); VI. Guggenheim International Exhibition, ed. Diane Waldman, exhibition catalog (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1971); Richard Long, “Richard Long Standing Near His Walk,” Studio International 181, no. 933 (May 1971): 224.
37 Siegelaub, July August September, 25.
38 Robert Barry, untitled interview in Fischer and Strelow, Prospect 69, 26.
39 Daniel Buren, “Artwork: Papiers collés blanc et bleu,” Daniel Buren Catalog Raisonné 1967–1972, http://catalogue.danielburen.com/artworks/view/2067.
40 Cited in Information, ed. Kynaston McShine, exhibition catalog (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970), 30.
41 Koen Brams, “Two Exhibition-Related Films by Jef Cornelis,” Tate Papers 12 (Autumn 2009), http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/12/two-exhibition-related-films-by-jef-cornelis.
42 Patricia Norvell, “Douglas Huebler, July 25, 1969,” in Alberro and Norvell, Recording Conceptual Art, 136.
43 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 7.
44 Sol LeWitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” 0–9 5 (January 1969): 3–5.
45 Bonnie Mak, How the Page Matters (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 32.
46 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 158.
47 Ibid., 174.
48 Gitelman, Paper Knowledge, 1.
49 Edgar Morin, “RE: From Prefix to Paradigm,” World Futures 61, no. 4 (June 2005): 254–67
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Samantha Ismail-Epps
SAMANTHA ISMAIL-EPPS is a PhD candidate working at Norwich University of the Arts under the supervision of Prof. Lynda Morris. Her research examines how artists' pages contributed to exhibition catalogs and periodicals between 1966 and 1973 enable audiences to access ideas, attitudes, and artworks produced by conceptual artists working across Europe and the USA. Previous projects include participation in “Print and Production,” a retreat hosted by Wysing Arts Centre, and a research Master Class at the Herbert Foundation, Ghent based around the exhibition “Accelerazione.” Samantha has recently contributed a text to the catalog that accompanies the exhibition “Time Extended / 1964–1978: Works and Documents from the Herbert Foundation” (2016). She received both her BA (Hons) in Contemporary Textile Practice (2007) and MA in Textile Culture (2008) at Norwich University of the Arts. She teaches Art History and Contextual Studies at University of Suffolk and Great Yarmouth College.