By accident: Note From the Author

This incarnation of By Accident will be a transition or hybrid between research / proposal states and the form such an ambitious undertaking might have if accepted by an important and major institution or museum as a blockbuster exhibition.  Advantages are: much of the reasoning and process behind it can be known and shared; greater intimacy, directness and maybe dialogue become possible; even if never realized “for-real” on full-blown scale, at least some version has materialised; perhaps changes and improvement can be added from feedback and insight.  Hopefully, this airing afforded to By Accident may partly or largely lead to it being taken up.

This production of By Accident, will be very a la Mel Bochner’s seminal art exhibition, Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed as Art, School of Visual Arts, New York, 1966.  As may or might not be known, Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed as Art was originally to have been presented as relatively conventional objects (framed prints) and show (hung on walls).  However, the host institution (School of Visual Arts, New York) deemed this was both expensive and unjustified.  Because of that (and also in keeping with the idea — and much conceptualism), Mel Bochner ended up presenting everything bound in 4 loose ring leaf binder files, each on a separate pedestal / socle / plinth / column, for viewers to read, browse and study.  Exhibits Mel Bochner chose, included: preparatory material by Dan Graham and Eva Hesse; sketches by the minimalists Dan Flavin and Sol Lewitt; an itemised invoice sent to another minimalist, Don Judd for the materials and fabrication cost of 1 of his works; a mathematician’s calculations, formulæ and equations; a page from a number of Scientific American; a musical score by the composer, John Cage; the 1st image was a plan of the gallery space; the collection finished with the assembly diagram for the Xerox machine used to produce Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed as Art.

In many ways, Mel Bochner’s Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed as Art becomes a candidate qualifying for By Accident.  Another model for this presentation are certain activities of Marcel Broodthærs’ Musee d’Art Moderne Departemente des Aigles which displayed postcards and real or faked-up packing crates of old master paintings.

A large proportion of By Accident will be copied reproductions, installation views and close-up studies of desired works, alongside information and related material.  Where available, publications, ephemera, editions and actual works will be displayed.  A point these aspects raise and get across is what merit or insight there is to any cultural experience, whether immediate or with benefit of explanation.

©, Copyright, Douglas Park, 2009