Portfolios, Posters and Publications

Issue three marks the appointment of Lamont Young as the Musical Editor of SMS. There’s a lot of names that we don’t know but we’re excited to checkout Terry Riley, and Man Ray. There are two themes (probably imaginary) in this box Children, and Codes,

Cover by John Battan. The son of the painter Matta

Six panels of abstract landscape

by John Battan (less than 20 x 14 inches / 50 x 35 cms)

John Battan(John Sebastian Matta) (1943-1976)   Apart from being the SON of Painter, Roberto Matta, one of Chile’s best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art. He was also the brother of Gordon Matta Clark. John Sebastian Matta, sadly, committed suicide in 1976.

Russian Concrete and Sound Poems by "Aftograph"

Aftograf

Two bound albums of concrete and sound poetry by a Russian underground poet living in Moscow using the pseudonym Aftograf. George Reavey, an internationally acclaimed poet and Russian language translator, was able to clandestinely carry these out of Russia.

GLOVE 
by Enrico Baj (less than 12 x 8 inches / 27 x 20 cms)

Glove by Enrico Baj

Enrico Baj (1924-)

Avant-garde Italian painter and collagist and founder of the Nuclear Art Movement. Many of his works show an obsession with nuclear war. He created prints, sculptures but especially collage. He was close to the surrealist and dada movements, and was later associatied with CoBrA. As an author he has been described as a leading promoter of the avant-garde. He worked with Umberto Eco among other collaborators. He had a long interest in the pseudo-philosophy ‘pataphysics.

Clouds by William Bryant

Clouds
by William Bryant (less than 13 x 20 inches / 32 x 49 cms)
William Bryant (American, 1946)
William Bryant was the son of William Copley and  has had a distinguished career as Billy Copley.

His paintings are imaginative striking and precise in style and methodology.

The piece ‘Clouds’ re-emerges in the work of Terry Riley later in this box.

Ode to London
by Dick Higginst (less than 9 x 11 inches / 23 x 28 cms)

Dick Higgins, 1938 – 1998

Dick Higgins was a great human being. He was great in

Ode to London, silkscreened on Mylar

talent and achievements; great in the rigor and depth of his experimental art; great in the influence he exerted on the world. Born in 1938 in Jesus Pieces, England, Dick Higgins died in 1998 at the age of 60. In the last four decades of those sixty years, he became a major figure in twentieth century culture.
One of the inventors of happenings, a co-founder of Fluxus, the founder of Something Else Press, a critical theorist who named and clarified the concept of intermedia. His work ranged across painting, performance, and poetry; happenings, intermedia, and film; typography, book art, and publishing.  Higgins coined the term “intermedia” in the mid-sixties to describe the tendency of the most interesting and best in the new art to cross the boundaries of recognized media or even to fuse the boundaries of art with media that had not previously been considered art forms.

One of his famous one-sentence manifestos read, “If you haven’t done it twice, you haven’t done it.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945 – )

The influential American artist Joseph Kosuth is widely regarded as a leading proponent, and one of the founders,
of conceptual art, a movement which emerged in New York in the 1960s.

His work considers art to be the
production of meaning and thus the idea, or concept, becomes the defining component of a work of art, often  eliminating the materiality of the art object altogether.
Since the mid-1960’s, Kosuth’s work has focused on the connections between words and things, between language and representation. As his work is conceptually based
and not media defined, he employs various strategies for his work, from photos with common objects to texts sandblasted in stone . His public works, as well as
works in most public and private collections, can be found in most countries in Europe.

Two Drawings by Ronnie Landfield (less than 20 x 15 inches / 50 x 38cms)

Ronnie Landfield (January 9, 1947  – ) is an American abstract painter

Two Drawings by Ronnie Landfield

During his early career from the mid 1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction (related to Postminimalism, Color Field painting, and Abstract expressionism), and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the Andre Emmerich Gallery. A veteran of more than sixty-five solo exhibitions and nearly two hundred group exhibitions, he is best known for his abstract landscape paintings.

Bush in the Hand by Roland Penrose (less than 12 x 15 inches / 30 x 40 cms)

Bush In Hand by Roland Penrose

Roland Penrose (1900-1984). A British Surrealist painter who planed the First International Surrealist Exhibition which was held in the summer of 1936 at the New Burlington Galleries. This exhibition, opened by Andre Breton was attended by Salvador Dali, Paul and Nusch Eluard and the British Surrealists S.W. Hayter and Eileen Agar among others, and marked the beginning of Surrealism in Britain. It was an outstanding success, attracting massive attendance and the scorn of the critics and the establishment such as the Tate Gallery.

The only major exhibition of Rolands work in his lifetime was organised by the Arts Council in 1980. It contained 74 works and toured six venues, ending in Barcelona.

The Father of Mona Lisa by Man Ray (less than 7 x 11 inches / 18 x 30 cms)

Father of Mona Liza by Man Ray

Man Ray (1890-1976) born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal.Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer.

While appreciation for Man Ray’s work was slow in coming during his lifetime, especially in his native United States, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since.

ARTnews magazine named him one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century.

“I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor.”

Correspondence by H C Westermann (less than 8 x 6 inches / 20 x 15 cms)

H.C. Westermann, American, 1922-1981.

Correspondence by H.C,Westermann

Westermann is best known for his deftly crafted sculptural works that candidly address a range of heady themes – the likes of death, love, and the American Dream (or, in his words, “a country gone nuts”). Westermann was an American printmaker and sculptor whose art constituted a scathing commentary on militarism and materialism. His sculptures frequently incorporated traditional carpentry and marquetry techniques.

During World War II he served as a gunner in the U.S. Marine Corps on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, witnessing numerous kamikaze attacks and the sinking of several ships. He toured the Far East as an acrobat with the United Service Organization, and enrolled in The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947. In 1950, Westermann re-enlisted in the Marines for service in the Korean War. After his discharge, he returned to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and completed his studies in fine art. The psychological effects of his wartime experiences were an underlying theme in his work.

In 1967, he was one of the celebrities featured on the cover of the Beatles’ album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (largely obscured behind George’s green plume).

He was given a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978.

Signal Flag Poems 
by Hannah Wiener (less than 27 x 12 inches / 70 x 29 cms)

Hannah Weiner (4 November 1928 — 11 September 1997)

Weiner was born in Providence, Rhode Island and attended Classical High School, until 1946, and then Radcliffe College.[1] She graduated with a B.A. in 1950, with a dissertation on Henry James. Working in publishing and then in Bloomingdale’s department store, she was married and then divorced after four years. Weiner started writing poetry in 1963 though her first

Hannah Wiener : Signal Flag Poems

book, The Magritte Poems after Rene Magritte, was published in 1970. It is not indicative of her latter work, being “basically a New York School attempt to write verse in response to the paintings of Rene Magritte”. During the sixties she also organised and participated in a number of happenings with other members of the New York art scene, where she had been living for some time. These included ‘Fashion Show Poetry Event’ with Eduardo Costa, John Perreault, Andy Warhol and others in a “collaborative and innovative enterprise that incorporated conceptual art, design, poetry and performance.”                    In the early 1970s, Weiner began writing a series of journals that were partly the result of her experiments with automatic writing and partly a result of her schizophrenia. She influenced a number of the language poets and was included in the In the American Tree anthology of Language poetry (edited by Ron Silliman). Beginning with Little Books/Indians (1980) and Spoke (1984) Weiner’s work engaged with Native American politics, particularly the American Indian Movement and the case of imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier. Interest in Weiner continues into the 21st century

Poppy Nogoods All Night Flight 
by Terry Riley (less than 7 x 7 inches / 18 x18 cms)

Poppy No-goods All Night Flight (The First Ascent) Terry Riey

Terry Riley (1935-)

It is impossible to overstate the impact that American composer and avant-garde musician Terry Riley has had on contemporary music.  During the 1960s he performed at “All-Night Concerts”, during which Riley performed mostly improvised music from evening until sunrise, using an old organ harmonium (“with a vacuum cleaner motor blower blowing into the ballasts”) and tape-delayed saxophone. When he finally wanted a break, after hours of playing, he played back looped saxophone fragments recorded throughout the evening. For several years he continued to put on these concerts, to which people came with sleeping bags, hammocks, and their whole families.

Riley has a long-lasting association with the Kronos Quartet and composed 13 string quartets for the ensemble, in addition to other works. He wrote his first orchestral piece, Jade Palace, in 1991, and has continued to pursue that avenue, with several commissioned orchestral compositions following. He has been chosen by Animal Collective to perform at the All Tomorrows Parties festival that they will curate in May 2011.

The cover to the Tape is courtesy of Terry’s daughter Colleen (aged 9 at the time) Later Terry’s first LP the groundbreaking ‘In C’ had Billy Copley’s Clouds as the cover.

Terry Riley In C album cover by Billy Copley

OK, Halfway there, #4 is soon

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A parcel from The Letter Edged in Black Press

Opened with care after over 40 years, the custom box with its custom forms and its publishers labels are mementos of a time and attitude. Inside, there is a strong French Presence and a bias towards words, both poetic and surreal. As you go through the works you begin and end with quite ‘vulgar’ puns, and in many of the visual pieces the titles are as important as the images.

Marcel Duchamps Surreal Word Game Single.

ESQUIVONS LES ECCHYMOSES DES ESQUIMAUX AUX MOTS EXQUIS
(Let us evade the bruises of Eskimos with exquisite words)
by Marcel Duchamp (less than 20 x 14 inches / 50 x 35 cms)

Marcel Duchamp (born 28 July 1887,  near Rouen, France, died 1968)
Duchamp was a member of the circle known as the “Golden Section”, together with Léger, Metzinger, Picabia, and others. Influenced by cubism he painted the picture “The Chess Players” and the first studies for his “Nudes descending a Staircase”, shown for the first time in October of that year at the exhibition of the “Golden Section”. In 1913 it was the hit of the New York “Armory Show”. In 1915 he went to the United States for the first time and soon became the center of the circle of painters round the “Stieglitz” gallery.

"...scrawlled on the back of an envelope"

That group had adopted an “anti-art” attitude and was thus a movement parallel to Zurich dadaism.
In 1917 Duchamp sent a “work” called “Fountain” to the New York “Independent Show”, signed with the name “R. Mutt”, it was nothing but a common urinal. The “Ready-Mades” demonstrated his profound contempt for the bourgeois conception of art.
His work over the ensuing years would define conceptual art, and be a major influence in Pop Art.

In the folder there is a ripped open envelope with a ‘Lolly Stick” inside with the word ESKIMO printed on it. on the back of the envelope, in an unknown hand, there is a list of the works enclosed.

Poem on Foil

Cynocephalus & Co
by Nicolas Calas (less than 12 x 12 inches / 31 x 31 cms)

Nicolas Calas (born Switzerland, May 27, 1907, died in 1987)
Calas (born Nikos Kalamaris) was an art critic and poet who directed his writings to young artists and new art movements.

Calas’ poetry, published under the pseudonym Nikitas Randos, went through several stylistic changes which reflected his artistic curiosity and interest in the modernist trends of the early 20th century, such as futurism, expressionism and surrealism.

LEGAL TENDER 
by Bruce Connor (less than 12 x 12 inches / 31 x 31 cms)

Oxymoron LEGAL and TENDER

Bruce Connor (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008)

Conner worked in a variety of mediums from an early age. He began making short movies in the late 1950s. Conner’s first and possibly most famous film was entitled A MOVIE (1958). A MOVIE (all titles of all Conner works, per his explicit directions, are to be typed in ALL CAPITALS ALL THE TIME) was a poverty film in that instead of shooting his own footage Conner used compilations of old newsreels and other old films. He skillfully re-edited that footage and created an entertaining and thought-provoking 12 minute film, that while non-narrative has things to say about the experience of watching a movie and the human condition. A MOVIE subsequently (in 1994) was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

Conner and his wife moved to Mexico circa 1962, despite the increasing popularity of his work. The two —along with their just born son— returned to USA and were living in Massachusetts in 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Conner filmed the television coverage of the event and edited and re-edited the footage with stock footage into another meditation on violence which he titled REPORT. He was an active force in the San Francisco counterculture of the mid-1960s as a collaborator in light shows for the legendary Family Dog at the Avalon Ballroom. He also made intricate black-and-white mandala-like drawings (many of which he lithographed into prints) and collages made from 19th-century engravings, which he first exhibited as THE DENNIS HOPPER ONE MAN SHOW.

In the 1980s and 1990s Conner continued to work on collages, including ones using religious imagery, and inkblot drawings that have been shown in numerous exhibitions, including the 1997 Whitney Biennial. His innovative technique of skillfully montaged shots from pre-existing borrowed or found footage and use of pop music for film sound tracks have inspired generations of filmmakers, and are now considered to be the precursors of the music video genre. When told of his impact on music videos and his status as “the Father of MTV,”, Conner would reply, “Not my fault.”

Conner, who had twice announced his own death as a conceptual art event or prank died on 7 July 2008, and is survived by his wife, American artist Jean Sandstedt Conner, and his son, Robert.

10 Beautiful Collages by Marcia Herscovitz

10 Collages
by Marcia Herscovitz (less than 13 x 22 inches / 34 x 61 cms)
Marcia Herscovitz (American, 1945 – 1974)
We can find very little about Marcia’s other works except a great collage in Allan Aldridge’s Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. She apparently interviews herself in the UK underground magazine OZ (no 24) but we no longer have a copy to check this.

Three Color Separation
by Alain Jacquet (less than 10 x 12 inches / 25 x 31 cms)

Alain Jacquet (bornFrance, 22 February 1939 – died New York, 4 September 2008)

Jacquet was a French Pop Artist. Originally a student of

Red Green Blue : Pop! Francais

architecture at École des Beaux-Arts he never practised his trade, instead he trained himself as a painter and began making works based on the ink dot patterns that made up newspaper photographs and comic-strip artwork. Jacquet’s paintings have been compared to those of Lichtenstein who was working from similar source material creating works using enlarged, ‘benday’ dots. However, Lichtenstein’s dots are one colour over a solid colour or white background whilst Jacquet recreates the ‘daisy’ or ‘florette’ pattern which occurs in four colour offset lithographic print.

1964 he made his first real public impact with his reconstruction of Monet’s, Dejuner sur l’herb in his own style. Jacquet based other of his paintings on Manet’s Olympia, Ingres’s La Source, and de Chirico. Some of the most appealing of his works were original and entertaining pop cubist paintings, intricate but lucid colour harmonies. Jacquet’s work tended to be closer to American pop than to French art, and he divided his time between Paris and New York.

A 2-year-old girl choked to death today on an Easter Egg.
 by Ray Johnston

A 2-year-old girl choked to death today on an Easter Egg.
by Ray Johnson (less than 9 x 12 inches / 22 x 31 cms)
Ray Johnson (Born in Detroit October 16, 1927, Died Sag Harbor, N. Y. January 13, 1995)

Ray Edward Johnson was a seminal Pop Art figure in the 1950’s and 60’s and an important early conceptualist, was called “the most famous unknown artist”.

His preferred medium was collage, integrating texts and images from a multiplicity of sources from mass media to phone conversations, Johnson became “a virtuoso rivaling and surpassing his associates Rauschenberg and Twombly. Johnson’s innovativeness spread to “Correspondance” (mail) art, indeed Johnson not only operated in what Rauschenberg famously called ‘the gap between art and life’ but he did one better: he erased the distinction between art and life.

Johnson left Detroit in the summer of 1945 to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina where the final summer term was spent with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning (there with Elaine de Kooning), Buckminster Fuller, and Richard Lippold. Johnson participated in Cunningham’s Satie Festival which culminated in “The Ruse of Medusa”. Cage, Cunningham, Fuller, the de Koonings, Lippold, Ruth Asawa, and Arthur Penn were among the cast and crew. It was later called “a watershed event in ‘mixed media’…”

In 1948, Johnson moved to New York, where he joined the downtown art scene, befriending Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Cy Twombly. After a number of performance-like installations in 1954-55, Johnson burned many of his works in Twombly’s fireplace in a gesture which John Baldessari replicated in his “Cremation”. By the mid-to late-1950s, Johnson’s collages became increasingly referential as he included portions of advertisements and images of Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Temple, among others in a way that pre-dated the 1960s works of Pop artists, in his typically self-deprecating way, Johnson would say that he didn’t make Pop Art, he made “Chop Art”.

In 1959, Johnson met Billy Linich (later known as Billy Name) at Serendipity in New York, and in 1963 Johnson introduced Linich to Warhol. Billy was a key collaborator and participant in Warhol’s Factory.

In 1962, Johnson founded the “New York Correspondence (sic) School,” a name invented by Ed Plunkett and used by Johnson for his international network of Mail Art participants.

As his contemporaries became increasingly famous, Johnson purposefully receded from view, cultivating his role as outsider, maintaining personal connections via mail art and telephone in place of physical interaction. He was known primarily to the artists who continued to admire him including Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Christo and Jeanne Claude, Chuck Close, and Robert Rauschenberg as well as a close circle of friends, admirers, and collectors. Only a handful of people were ever allowed into his house during this time. Eventually, Johnson ceased to exhibit or sell his work commercially altogether. On January 13, 1995, Johnson was seen diving off the bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island and backstroking out to sea. His body was recovered soon thereafter.

Thesis by Lee Lozano (less than 12 x 12 inches / 31 x 31 cms)

Lee Lozano (1930–1999)

Born Lenore Knaster, she started to use the name “Lee” at the age of fourteen. She attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate from 1948 to 1951. After traveling in Europe for a year, Lozano moved to New York City to pursue her career as an artist.  Her so-called “comix” often featured hand-held tools embellished to resemble genitalia or positioned in a suggestive manner. These images were sometimes accompanied by provocative texts and sexual innuendos. Lozano’s art of this period is often compared to early works by Claes Oldenburg and late works by Philip Guston. In the late 1960s she experimented with a more Minimalist aesthetic, creating monochromatic “Wave” paintings based on the physics of light. In February 1969 she commenced her General Strike Piece, in which she withdrew from the New York art world. Her instructions to herself were as follows:
GRADUALLY BUT DETERMINEDLY AVOID BEING PRESENT AT OFFICIAL OR PUBLIC “UPTOWN” FUNCTIONS OR GATHERINGS RELATED TO THE “ART WORLD” IN ORDER TO PURSUE INVESTIGATIONS OF TOTAL PERSONAL AND PUBLIC REVOLUTION. EXHIBIT IN PUBLIC ONLY PIECES WHICH FURTHER SHARING OF IDEAS & INFORMATION RELATED TO TOTAL PERSONAL AND PUBLIC REVOLUTION.[3]

In August 1971, she began another notorious work of refusal, Decide to Boycott Women. What began as a one-month experiment intended to improve communication with women wound up as a twenty-seven year hiatus from speaking or otherwise relating to them. After being evicted from her studio loft on Grand Street in SoHo, Lozano moved to Dallas, Texas in 1972, culminating yet another project (Drop Out). Lozano fell into relative obscurity until the late 1990s, when she was diagnosed with inoperable cervical cancer.
In a 2001 interview, Lucy Lippard noted, “Lee was extraordinarily intense, one of the first, if not the first person who did the life-as-art thing. The kind of things other people did as art, she really did as life–and it took us a while to figure that out.”

The Mirror of Genoveva
by Meret Oppnheim (less than 10 x 13 inches / 26 x 34 cms)
Meret Oppenheim (6 October 1913, Berlin — 15 November 1985, Basel)

The Mirror of Genoveva by Meret Oppnheim

A German-born Swiss, Surrealist artist, and photographer. Oppenheim was a member of the Surrealist movement of the 1920s along with André Breton, Luis Buñuel, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and other writers and visual artists. Besides creating art objects, Oppenheim also famously appeared as a model for photographs by Man Ray, most notably a series of nude shots of her interacting with a printing press.

At the age of 18 she went to Paris and enrolled at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. After meeting Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, and Man Ray, she became absorbed in Surrealism and was invited by Giacometti and Arp to exhibit with the Surrealists in 1933. She continued to contribute to their exhibitions until 1960. Many of her pieces consisted of everyday objects arranged as such that they allude to female sexuality and feminine exploitation by the opposite sex. Oppenheim’s paintings focused on the same themes. Her originality and audacity established her as a leading figure in the surrealist movement

Oppenheim’s best known piece is Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) (1936). The sculpture consists of a teacup, saucer and spoon that the artist covered with fur from a Chinese gazelle. It is displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was chosen, by visitors, as the quintessential Surrealist symbol.
She is credited with coining the phrase

“Nobody will give you freedom, you have to take it.”

A proposed comic-section for the New York Times

A Proposed Comic Section For The New York Times
by Bernard Pfriem (less than 20 x 28 inches / 50 x 70 cms)
Bernard Pfriem (1916- 1996)

Phreim was primarily known as the innovative and progressive founder and director of the Lacoste School of the Arts in Lacoste (Provence), France, 1962-1991.

Farewell To Faust by George Reavey (less than 18 x 24 inches / 45 x 60 cms)
George Reavey (born May 1, 1907 – died August 11, 1976)

Farewell To Faust by George Reavey

Reavey’s father, was from Belfast and his mother, was Russian. He was born in Vitebsk and moved to Novgorod in 1909, where the young poet was educated and became a fluent Russian speaker. When his father was arrested in 1919, during the Civil War, mother and son fled to Belfast.

In 1929, Reavey moved to Paris with his friend Trevelyan. Ostensibly, this was so that he could improve his French for the entry examinations for the Indian Civil Service, but in fact he was in search of an entry into the avant garde artistic circles based in that city. He met Thomas MacGreevy, who introduced him to Beckett, James Joyce, Brian Coffey and Denis Devlin and to many of the writers who published in transition.

As a poet, Reavey fell more or less out of the public eye after moving to the States, however, he continued to publish collections including Colours of Memory (1955) and Seven Seas (1971). This latter was issued by Coffey from his Advent Press imprint. A group of seven Reavey poems were printed in the 1971 1930s special issue of The Lace Curtain and he was represented in John Montague’s Faber Book of Irish Verse (1974).

Album 
by Clovis Trouille (less than 15 x 15 inches / 40 x 40 cms)

Clovis Trouille, (1889-1975)

His service in World War I gave Trouille a lifelong hatred of the military, expressed in his first major painting Remembrance (1931). The painting depicts a pair of wraith-like soldiers clutching white rabbits, an airborne female contortionist throwing a handful of medals, and the whole scene being blessed by a cross-dressing cardinal. This contempt for the Church as a corrupt institution provided Trouille with the inspiration for decades of pictorial blasphemies.

Trouille was declared a Surrealist by André Breton – a label Trouille accepted only as a way of gaining exposure, not having any real sympathy with that movement.

"oh quel cul t'as" from al-BUM

After showing his contempt for Authority, Trouille’s other favourite subject was sex, as shown in his 1946 portrait of a reclining nude shown from behind entitled Oh! Calcutta, Calcutta! – a pun on the French phrase “oh quel cul t’as” which translates roughly as “oh what a lovely ass you have” The paintings title was adopted as the title for the famous comedy musical  that had sex as the main topic. Created in Broadway in 1969 by Kenneth Tynan, it featured Samuel Beckett as one of its librettists and John Lennon among its composers.

Trouille always wanted to stay independent. He never wanted to depend on galleries. Almost all of his life, he worked as a restorer and decorator of department store mannequins in Paris. He only painted in his spare time. His work consists of only a hundred paintings which he reworked, sometimes for years.

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The cover for SMS #1

The first issue was, apparently, the only copy that Ted Powers opened. He was probably so astonished, as the disparate bundle of art fell from the folder, that he never gave the series any more attention (one of his few mistakes). If he had he would have found that the folder contained works by extraordinary individuals who would be a major influence on culture for many years to come.

Little box of Earthquake and Cotton
by Irvine Petlin (less than 20 x 14 inches / 50 x 35 cms)

Irving Petlin (born December 17, 1934 in Chicago, Il)

An American artist and painter renowned for his mastery of the pastel medium and his work in the “series form” in which he uses the raw material of pastel, oil paint and unprimed linen, and finds inspiration in the work of writers and poets

Petlin attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1953-1956 where he received his BFA during the height of the Chicago Imagist movement. At a critical juncture Petlin attended Yale to study under Josef Albers, subsequently earning his MFA in 1960.

Since the 1960s, Petlin has been a leader in artists’ political activism when he became one of the founding members of “Artists and Writers Against the War in Vietnam”. Petlin continued his militant interventions after the 1960s through such activities as his participation in the “Artists’ Call Against the U.S. Intervention in Central America”

The full, unfolded, image

Project For A Bridge
by Su Braden (less than 8 x 12 inches / 20 x 31 cms)

Su Braden (born 1940)

Braden is a British Conceptual artist and author of many highly influential books including, Artists and People.

Die cut Project For A Bridge

Black Dress
by James (Lee) Byars (less than 11 x 11 inches / 28 x 28 cms)

James (Lee) Byars (born Detroit 10 April 1932 – died Cairo 23 May 1997)

He studied art, philosophy and psychology at the Merrill-Palmer School in Detroit. He visited Japan in 1957/58 and was to return at various times until 1967. In 1958 his folded-paper pieces are briefly displayed in an emergency stairwell of the Museum of Modern Art in New York – thanks to his contact with curator Dorothy Miller. Byars’ performances in 1964 in New York’s Central Park and in 1967 outside the Museum of Contemporary Crafts reach a wider audience. At this time he creates the costumes for “collective” performances, e.g. Four in a Dress (1967).

Zen and Noh Theatre were influences on Byars as much as the conceptual practices of the Sixties. His sense of theatre was paramount, whether having a Catholic nun in full habit unfold A 1,000-Foot Chinese Paper or being ferried by gondola across the Grand Canal in Venice in gold suit and blindfold.

In 1972 after a failed attempt to become “Artist of the Pentagon”, Byars moved to Europe.

Black Dress

Store Front
by Christo (less than 8 x 12 inches / 20 x 31 cms)

Christo (born Bulgaria, June 13, 1935) and
Jeanne-Claude (born Casablanca, June 13, 1935, died November 18, 2009)

Store Front Card with Mylar

The couple first met in Paris in October 1958. Their first collaboration was 1961, when they covered barrels at the port of Cologne and in 1962, they undertook their first monumental project, Rideau de Fer. Although they were simultaneously holding their first exhibition at a gallery, it was this project that made Christo and Jeanne-Claude known in Paris.

In 1964, Christo and Jeanne-Claude arrived in New York City and after a short trip to Europe, they settled in the United States.

Although poor and lacking fluency in the English language, Christo displayed his work in several galleries, including the well-known Castelli Gallery in New York. Christo began to create Store Fronts which he built to scale. Sale of the Store Fronts helped finance their larger projects.

Chicago Project
by Walter De Maria (less than 9 x 12 inches / 23 x 31 cms)

Walter De Maria (born in Albany, California on October 1, 1935)

Chicago Project

De Maria studied art at the University of California, Berkeley from 1953 to 1959. He and La Monte Young, participated in Happenings in the San Francisco area.
In 1960, De Maria moved to New York. His early sculptures from the 1960s were influenced by Dada and this influence led De Maria into using industrially manufactured materials such as stainless steel and aluminum His piece, “Cage”, for John Cage, was included in the seminal 1966 “Primary Structures” exhibit in New York.

De Maria became the drummer an artist/musician collaborative group which included Lou Reed and John Cale, and was a precursor to The Velvet Underground.

From 1968 De Maria produced Minimalist sculptures and realized Land art projects in the deserts of the southwest US, with the aim of creating situations where the landscape, nature, light and weather would become an intense, physical and psychic experience. The Lightning Field (1977) is De Maria’s best-known work. It consists of 400 stainless steel posts arranged in a calculated grid over an area of 1 mile × 1 km. The time of day and weather change the optical effects. It also lights up during thunder storms.

A Postcard – For Mother
by Richard Hamilton (less than 9 x 24 inches / 23 x 61 cms)

Richard Hamilton (born 24 February 1922)

Postal Card - For Mother

Hamilton worked as an apprentice where he discovered an ability for draughtsmanship and began evening classes at St Martin’s School of Art which eventually led to his entry into the Royal Academy Schools.

He spent two years at the Slade School of Art, and began exhibiting at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).

At the first Independent Group meeting, held at the ICA, in 1952, Hamilton was introduced to Eduardo Paolozzi’s seminal presentation of collages produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During that same year he was introduced to Victor Pasmore who gave him a teaching post based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Among his students were Tim Head and Bryan Ferry.

From the mid-1960s, Hamilton was represented by Robert Fraser and even produced a series of prints Swingeing London based on Fraser’s arrest, along with Mick Jagger, for possession of drugs. This association with the 1960s Pop Music scene continued as Hamilton became friends with Paul McCartney resulting in him producing the cover design and poster collage for the Beatles’ White Album.

Pharmaceuticals
by Julian Levy (less than 12 x 7 inches / 30 x 17 cms)

Julien Levy (1906-1981)

Pharmaceuticals

Levy began his foray into the avant-garde arts during his years as a student at Harvard and became an avid art promoter and collector, and expressed a particular affinity for photography and European Surrealism.

He launched the first of several group exhibitions featuring the Surrealists. This exhibition’s key attraction was Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory. Also on display were notable Surrealist pieces acquired by Levy during his years in Paris. He represented Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp and others.

My Country ‘Tis of Thee – West Germany 1968 (4 views)
by Kasper König (less than 10.5 x 10.5 inches / 27 x 27 cms)

Professor Kasper König (born 1943)

My Country Tis Of Thee

Professor Kaspar König has distinguished himself as a prominent and gifted curator. At only twenty-three years of age he curated the Claes Oldenburg exhibition at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

In 1985, he was appointed director of the newly establish Art and the Public Realm program at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and three years later, he accepted a professorship at Frankfurt’s Städelschule, before ultimately being named its director in 1989. During this same period he became founding director of the Portikus, exhibition hall in Frankfurt/Main.

In 2000 he was responsible for In-Between Architecture, the arts projects of the EXPO Hannover, and was also appointed director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

Photograph – Hottentot Apron
by Sol Mednick (less than 22 x 28 inches / 56 x 70 cms)

Sol Mednick (born 1916, died 1970)

Hottentot Apron

Mednick was primarily a commercial and scientific photographer, but also a creative designer and teacher based mostly in New York and Philadelphia. He was responsible for developing the photography department of the Philadelphia College of Art, now University of the Arts, where their Gallery space is named for him. He was also a founding member of The Creative Photographers’ School which was conceived as a home study school.

Luggage Labels
By Nancy Reitkopf (less than 15 x 10.5 inches / 30 x 48 cms)

Luggage Labels

Nancy Reitkopf (born 1938)

Despite  the wit  of these luggage labels that precede the entire “Holidays in Other Peoples Misery/Hell’ discourse. this seems to be the only item that Nancy Reitkopf ever produced. Its inclusion may be the result of Nancy’s relationship with the SMS production Manager, Bernard Reitkopf who she often referred to as her husband.

Two Proposition in Black by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela  (less than 10 x 24 inches / 16 x 60 cms)

La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935)
Marian Zazeela (born April 15, 1940)

An American composer and musician, Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer and his works have included many of the most important and radical music of the late 20th Century. His music has influenced Art, Dance, and Contemporary Pop musicians, such as The Who, Velvet Underground, Jarvis Cocker and John Lennon.

In 1962,Young met  Zazeela who joined Young’s musical group Theatre of Eternal Music as vocalist. She would also produce lighting environment for the performers, a precursor to Warhol’s Lights for the EPI, and the myriad of Lightshows that would follow from in the 60′s and continue past the RAVE culture.
The Theatre of Eternal Music, was an ensemble who at various times included
John Cale, Billy Name, Terry Riley, Angus Mclise and possibly most importantly Tony Conrad. Young’s position of pieces being there before and after a performance, denied the action of a composer. The result of which was that the work could not ‘marketed, sold, or used to fund future performances.

Conrad in particular resented Young holding hours of recordings and not allowing them to be made available to a small but enthusiastic market.

Two Propositions in Black by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela

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