Douglasism : By Accident

Categories (circumstances and even adversity as medium, æsthetic and context). Not gone to waste; put to good use; all fair game; mill grist; better than nothing; the show must go on; blessings in disguise. If criteriæ matched, certain artists and even specific works appear entered into different categories, which themselves often crossover with each other.

Positive destruction and unwasteful disposal towards catharsis, sacrifice, riddance, changed mind, clean break, rift with past, fresh start, moving on:

Brandon Anschultz: ‘Approximately 1350 Hours of Painting and 2 Hours of Woodchipping’, 2002 – 2010. After much consideration and questioning of issues of use-value, to argue for-and-against devoted and laborious art practice, Anschultz chose a particularly satisfactory personal favourite painting, pulverised it using powertools, then mixed the substance with other materials, producing a new sculpture. Anschultz repeated the same process with other works.

This specific venture, led Anschultz to shred 17 paintings from an 8-year period, using a woodchipper, probably taking less time than was even spent on single works. The surviving end-result presented as 1 unit. As much a mass of rubble, as memorial to the many works now unified.

John Baldessari: ‘Cremation’, 1969 - 1970. Baldessari’s decision to have most of his earlier 1953 - 1966 (so therefore “pre-career”) paintings cremated (with official registration, public announcement, photographic records, urn of ashes and commemorative memorial plaque — as well as some dust worked into baked cookie biscuits).

Marcel Broodthærs: ‘Pense Bete’, 1964. 1 of the earliest visual artworks by the former pœt, Broodthærs. Remaindered copies of his Pense Bete pœms bundled together and stuck into a crude plaster support; no longer functioning as (ignored?) books — but vested with more significance, interest and value, as an art object.

Guglielmo Achille Cavellini: ‘Cassette che contengono opere distrutte’ (‘Crates containing destroyed works’), 1966 - 1970. Despite being a respected and innovative collector, champion and patron of others, Cavellini as an artist in his own right was automatically dismissed and written off as some wealthy amateur with a pastime.

Subsequently, Cavellini elected to dismantle, cut apart and burn his arte-matiere / neo-dada / nouveau-realiste / pop / arte-povera brightly coloured and plain wood paintings, objects, motifs, reliefs and sculpture; the fragments, rhythmically arranged in wall-hung and free-standing cages (themselves sometimes made from these works or especially repainted, charred, sawn-up or reshuffled etc). Possible and intentional objectives and consequences include loss, cleansing, reappraisal and revenge.

Although Cavellini continued producing such work (which still survives intact) during and after this phase, another series from then (the ‘I Carboni’ or ‘Carbons’, 1968 - 1970) includes images and components or entire works partially or completely pyrogravured and fire-damaged.

Another outcome was Cavellini’s “Autostorificizzazione” (“Auto-Historification” 1971 — 1990). The Cavellini entry in in “Revelation and epiphany bringing new departures towards sidelines, diversification and even downright career-moves”.

Jan Dibbets: ‘My Final Assemblage’. Dibbets stacking his monochrome paintings (themselves predating his sculptures) as the last object he would make — before moving onto becoming a pioneer of conceptual art.

Nico Dockx & Jan Mast: 'CRYPTICCRYSTALCLOUD', 2004, ongoing and progressive. Moving-image footage of Dockx, as an almost idealised but tragi-heroic figure, armed with a broom, throwing around and mixing up some or maybe all of his very own duplicate or even original archive, scattered everywhere. Dockx's disruption irreversibly scrambling any previous chronology, alphabetical order or categoric sequence, but the same data can be (re)assessed, encouraging consultation and research. The digital media processed through infinitely randomly generative software and graphics by Dockx and Mast, breeds literally endless possibilities of unpredictable selection, combination and quality of imagery, which constantly multiplies. Installed and shown as a multi-screen projection.

Jean Dupuy: Dœs Dupuy throwing most of his paintings into the River Seine in Paris between 1967 and 1968 (before relocation to New York, moving onto working with technology and other mediums, then the later anagrams etc) count as an event / work (is there any documentation / publications / ephemera / artwork / material etc?)?

Tracey Emin & Sarah Lucas: When Emin and Lucas’ Shop came to an end, they burnt most of the unsold and unstolen artworks. Some (perhaps Lucas’ “share”) were disposed of, whilst Emin placed hers in a wooden casket, ‘The Shop 14 January to 3 July 1993’, 1993.

Iqbal Geoffrey: Since his youth and early career in 1950’s Post-Partition Pakistan (then the United Kingdom, United States and elsewhere), Geoffrey has regularly burnt the majority of his output from fixed timescales, regardless of any exposure or even his own or other’s interest, belief and opinion in them. An action, conducted both in private and as a public event, with or without documentation and relics to show for it. Motives include Geoffrey and other’s appreciation from longing for what’s missed, as well as purging. This practice becomes 1 of various interfaces between Geoffrey’s relatively conventional artworks and his conceptual art / life / society crossover.

Susan Hiller: ‘Recycled Works’ and ‘Relics’, 1971 - 1972 onwards. Early works using her own even earlier paintings, some cut and bound up (‘Painting Blocks’ and ‘Painting Books’, 1971 onwards). Others, burnt, then sealed in labelled glassware (‘Hand Grenades’ 1969 - 1972, ‘Measure by Measure’ 1973 - 1992, ‘Recent Works’ etc, 1972 onwards).

Also, pale and ghostly, unravelled canvas threads, with paint deposits and traces still visible, woven and plaited into ‘thread drawings’ and ‘deconstructed paintings’, some produced during a week-long performance at Matt’s Gallery, London, ‘Work in Progress’, 1980.

As with all Hiller’s practice, rooted in her anthropological background. Despite the works unrecognisable form, theres still the symbolic and physical ritual to the action, then sheer fact they are kept, preserved, classified, presented and considered — much the same as any accepted cultural artefact — yet also becoming different and enhanced.

Michæl Landy: 'Breakdown', 2001. Much publicised live-event, tackling the significance of commodification upon just about every aspect and stage of life. Landy conducted an audit, cataloguing his entire personal property (including examples of his own work and archival material), also making various connected preparatory works, charting scenarios gone through. 'Breakdown' took place as an Artangel commission, housed in a former C & A store in London's Oxford Street, where Landy and helpers used industrial recycling technology to reduce everything down to its material, regardless of any personal, æsthetic, functional or monetary value to Landy or others. The ensuing debris was scattered in a landfill-site in Essex.

Pieter Laurens Mol: 'Dinsdag 20 Februari 1968', 1968. Burning of some then-recent works. Action leading to and represented by wooden framed black & white photograph recording the event, shown near an accordingly labelled modest round metal box, containing at least some (or maybe all?) saveable ashes. Not just a statement, but haunting charisma, mystery and even tragedy.

In addition to possible intentions and arising issues shared with other artists and works also included here, Mol's main concern and aim was probably mostly latterday alchemical experimentation towards change and difference, as well as darkness, melancholia and enigma, also using adventurousness, invention, humour and play to challenge notions and hope of both (self) importance, as well as the fear and likelihood of shortcomings.

Tania Mouraud: ‘Autodafé’, Hopital Paul Brousse, Villejuif, 1969. Mouraud’s almost private event (staged in a hospital for often terminally-ill cancer patients), whereby she made a bonfire of many of her hard-edge / pop-art / nouvelle figuration / figuration narrative paintings. After ‘Autodafé’, Mouraud moved onto more lingual, conceptual and political work instead, with which she’s still active to this day.

Robert Rauschenberg: Following the advice of an Italian critic reviewing an early show, Rauschenberg gathered up the unsold works leftover — and threw them all off a certain bridge into a certain river.

Jean-Pierre Raynaud: ‘la Maison’, 1969 - 1993. Authorised demolition by Raynaud of his own self-built house at La Celle Saint-Cloud (Raynaud’s own blank tile covered “Psycho-Objects” on a grander scale — the “Psycho-Objects” being 3d versions of Francis Bacon’s prison-cell style luxury apartment interior-decor background settings and an ancestor / prophecy of Damien Hirst’s clinical / medical / hospital chic). A decision brought about because of some personal change / externally imposed conditions. Stunning still photos and video / film moving image footage, 1000 wheeled buckets containing rubble, books of Raynaud’s ‘la Maison’ from before and after the destruction etc (La Maison de Jean-Pierre Raynaud and La Maison 1993 / Epuise de Jean-Pierre Raynaud, both by Denyse Durand-Ruel, Yves Tissier and B. Wauthier-Wurmser, published by Editions du Regard, Paris).

Penny Slinger: "A pivotal point in my disillusionment with the traditional 'art world / gallery scene' came when I was unable to create the kind of opening I wanted for Opening*. I had wanted everyone to come as a bride and/or groom and we were to have a wedding feast of erotic edibles. When it didn't happen, I felt my whole vision for the exhibit to be diluted. I had not wanted sterile objects just hanging in an art gallery, I had wanted my pieces to be tokens of an experience. I decided to burn all the remaining art at the end of the exhibit to make my point and at least have some kind of ritual. I invited the press. The night preceding the intended burning, I mentally, spiritually and emotionally evoked burning the pieces, so that I went through it in myself, and released my attachment before the actual event. I was surprised how big of a let go it was. The next morning I awoke to the headlines, 'Molten plastic falls on children's heads' — an amusement arcade had burnt down…Obviously my gesture would be most inappropriate at this time. I called off the burning."

* Opening, Penny Slinger, solo exhibition, Angela Flowers Gallery, London, 1973

Damage, neglect, decay, deterioration, interruptions and attacks kept and used:

Rasheed Aræen: ‘What’s It All About, Bongo?’ 1991. Work addressing the then Gulf-war, named after graffiti attacking Aræen’s Artangel Trust commissioned public billboard project, ‘The Golden Verses’, of earlier that same year.

Robert Barry: "A dealer of mine had shown a projection in his gallery. After the show, he decided to clean the slides, because after a piece has been running for some time you really have to take the slides out, wipe them off. There are little bits of dust and grease and things from the projector that get onto them. Well, something happened and all the slides spilled all over the floor. They weren't numbered. So he put them back in an order based on his memory and his feeling. He asked me to check it over. I did it when I was in Eindhoven. To me it was a total chaos! No way would I ever arrange them in that order. It was completely wrong. Now I hadn't seen the piece for a couple of years. I had some recollection of it, but I didn't remember it exactly. I had to put them into the order that was right. I couldn't put it back to what it was — the only way it could be; that particular selection of pictures and words I guess, in my mind anyway, it had to be a certain way."

From, It's about time / Il est temps, word for word / mot par mot 3, Robert Barry & Rene Denizot, Editions Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 1980

Ian Breakwell: Diary entry (and any audio record?) describing 1 of Breakwell’s early expanded-cinema screenings, live performance and lecture presentation events in some hotel — disrupted by loud and destructive domestic arguments in the kitchen.

Breakwell Tape recording the Old Bailey law court car bombing by mistake (because machine was left running when the phone rang, then….).

Marcel Broodthærs: Isi Fiszman’s purchase — then deliberate damage of work by Broodthærs. The same work/s given visible, sometimes crude and even emphasised repairs.

Richard Crow / Institute of Rot: Breakage and leaking in the post of a bottle of wine mailed to Crow by fellow artist, Rut Blees Luxemburg (of her family’s Blees-Ferber Mosel Riesling). The remains were still shown in that state, as part of Crow’s ‘Grenzganger’ performances and installation, Artspace, Sydney, 1996 — also referring to homeless performer / philosopher, Wolfgang G (member of the German homeless theatre group, Der Ratten) gaining attention to himself by throwing a wine bottle across a public space.

Another performance and installation Crow staged while in Australia was ‘Bad Habitus’, John Poynter Gallery and Police Museum, Newcastle, 1996. 1 of the performances and some extensive building work ended up having to happen at the same time. A stray dog came in off the street, then snaffled up and made off with a meat-pie from 1 of Crow’s floor pieces.

See also Richard Crow / Institute of Rot entry in "Mistakes, blunders, mix ups and misunderstandings".

Simon Cutts: ‘Homage to Homage to Georges Seurat’, bookwork, Coracle Press, London, 1986. Archived correspondence between Cutts and the (then) Arts Council of Great Britain over deteriorating quality and condition of Cutts’ ‘Homage to Georges Seurat’, print, Tarasque Press, Nottingham, 1972 (using “hundreds & thousands” confectionary decoration as a visual play on Seurat’s pointilliste painting!) and attempted problem-solving.

General Idea: Work / documentation about the burning down of their ‘1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion’.

Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid: In 1981 (1 year After Komar & Melamid's 1980 defection to the United States), their 'Portrait of Hitler' was slashed by an ex-Trotskyite(!) disc jockey. Komar & Melamid decided any changes be left and kept, considering the attacker to be their co-author.

Anne & Patrick Poirier: Decision to leave an interfered with / rearranged / vandalised work (one of their pseudo archæological / classical / antiquity fragments / remains / finds) in that same state and even act upon it — thereafter often making and presenting such works as cairn / pile / mound.

Daniel Spœrri: ‘les Os du Szekely Guljas, en Collaboration avec les Rats de la Galerie Schwarz’, 1960. Before-and-after studies of 1 of Spœrri’s “Tableaux Piege” assemblages (remains of meals preserved on tabletops), which vermin and other parasites had eaten (unclear if the work was ever restored).

Sturtevant: Whilst Sturtevant performed one of her mock Joseph Beuys “Aktions” (before Beuys himself ever went to, worked or showed in the United States), an audience member pushed a custard pie into her face. As often with live performances, the moment is captured on photograph.

Interestingly enough, that qualifies Sturtevant for this, Sturtevant never having acted upon: objections from Clæs Oldenburg over her re-enactment of his Store; the Joseph Beuys estate and others forbidding reproduction, exhibition or display of her “Beuys Works” etc (despite Beuys’ own approval of her earlier “Beuys Works”); Andy Warhol offering “Factory” hangers-on and assistants to pull her “Warhol” silkscreen prints; Robert Rauschenberg using her “Jasper Johns”, instead of the genuine-article in one of his “Combine” assemblages; in the early days, Sturtevant’s better known and more successful male contemporaries buying her pastiches and copies of their work; Sturtevant insisting feminism and gender politics aren’t high up or anywhere whatsœver at all on the agenda behind her work.

Gavin Turk: 'Robert Morris Untitled 1965 - 1972', 1990. Student work, copying Robert Morris 4 equal mirror cubes (that "include" the host space and viewers, several versions exist, each belonging to a different major museum). The reflective foil in Turk's work very quickly deteriorated (looseness, stains, oxidisation, warping etc), contrasting to the still immaculate originals by Robert Morris. When Turk's career took off, he chose to keep the work in that state and condition, deeming many intentions and arising issues were enhanced, while also entirely new dimensions arose.

Elegy for lamented deficit made good serving as gain:

Coil: 'A Slip in the Marylebone Road', ...And the Ambulance Died in His Arms, Threshold House, 2005, live album of Coil performing at All Tomorrow's Parties festival, Pontin's Holiday Camp, Camber Sands, 2003. A true story recounted by the duo's frontman and lyricist, Jhonn Balance (Geoff Rushton), in which his then-recent loss of his special "precious green notebook" to a street robbery is mourned, perhaps also exalted, but definitely shared.

Nota Bene: ...And the Ambulance Died in His Arms is Coil's final active release, but only came out after Balance's 2004 untimely death-by-misadventure.

Tacita Dean: ‘Girl Stowaway’, 1994. Objects (newspaper boats and hats) made using Dean’s made-up Guardian newspaper article of the same work suffering loss through others negligence — reacting to various all-too-real incidents, while she and others worked upon it (the original source-material disappearing in transit, the place where some of the filming was shot becoming a crime-scene etc).

Max Ernst: ‘La Retour de la Belle Jardiniere’, 1967. Late-career painting celebrating and eulogising Ernst’s earlier ‘The Fair Gardener (The Return of Eve)’, 1923. Seized by the Nazis for the infamous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) touring exhibition of 1937, included in the “An Insult to German Womanhood” section. Possibly destroyed / still missing — unless resurfaced?

Robin Klassnik & Anthony Scott: Work (in what media?) charting Klassnik and Scott’s (real / fictitious / remade?) hunt / quest / search for missing work/s. Klassnik and Scott’s contribution to the 1971 Biennale de Paris des Jeunes Artistes. A vehicle theft having claimed the work/s.

Lilian Lijn: 'Lost Koan', 2007, 250 x 150 cm base diameter, Glass reinforced polyester, Perspex, motorised drive and fluorescent lights

“The title for this work has a dual meaning, referencing, as it does, two quite different matters.

My first series of Koans* were made in 1969. In order to make them, I had to have a mould made and I, therefore, made 3 Koans of the same size, 5’6” (168cm) high and 40” (101.5cm) base diameter; ‘Anti-gravity Koan’, ‘Space Displace Koan’ and ‘Exit Matter Koan’. ‘Space Displace Koan’ is now in the Tate collection, however, both ‘Anti-gravity Koan’ and ‘Exit Matter Koan’ were purchased by the Boissonas family for their sculpture collection in Flaine, France and subsequently they were terminally damaged in a fire.

In the late 1990’s, I decided to remake them changing both the scale and the angle of the cone. ‘Zero Gravity Koan’ and ‘Lost Koan’ are the result. The title ‘Lost Koan’ refers to the disaster of losing the original works but it also refers to a much more recent experience. In 2005, during my NASA residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, I interviewed astrophysicist and renowned expert on the aurora borealis, Dr. Stephen B. Mende. I was fascinated by the visual thoughts arrayed upon his whiteboard and asked him to explain their meaning to me. His explanation was fascinating, and surprisingly connected to my own work, when he referred to the space above the poles where the solar wind meets with the earth’s magnetic field as the lost cone.

* Koans are about relating the parts to the whole. This is a continuous theme in my work. Koan is a Japanese word for a paradoxical riddle given to young Buddhist monks as aids for meditation. A typical Koan would be What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping? I used this as the title for a fiIm I made in 1975 about the Koan series of my work.”

©, Copyright, Liliane Lijn

Heather Tweed: 'Lost not Found: Abscission', 2009 onwards. Following earlier thefts of artworks and components (seemingly for the garments and accessories), as well as her lifelong sense of impermanence and love of ancient Egypt, Tweed has staged interventions outside host venues, whereby finds and treasure are left hidden for the public, not just to find and take, but towards more engagement and exchange as well.

Erica van Horn: ‘Scraps of an Abortive Collaboration’, bookwork, Coracle Press, Docking, 1994.

Recycling and Salvage:

Laurence Burt: ‘Blue Torso, Green Hand’, 1964 and ‘Keepsake Miniature of Blue Torso, Green Hand’, 2001. Burt’s smaller (and out-of-bounds?) shrine remaking his earlier participationary toy sculpture (including original components), which was destroyed by some unclear and unstated cause in 1979.

Jake & Dinos Chapman: ‘Fucking Hell’, after the loss of the original ‘Hell’, 2000 (and many more works by the Chapman Brothers and others), when supercollector, Charles Saatchi’s storage warehouse burned down in 2004, the Chapman Brothers produced a revised and rechristened version, partly using some traceable remains, but still a series of vitrines, laid out in swastika formation, each glass case housing a model landscape, all populated by ghost and mutant genocide victims, rising up against the military.

Arshile Gorky: In January 1946, a studio fire claimed around 1 year's worth of work by the expatriot Armenian "Father of Modern North American Painting". Despite his increasing success, this proved to be another setback to Gorky, both by itself and combined with his diagnosis, recovery attempts and contending with cancer. Starting again, too ill, weak and tired to do much or any painting, the convalescent Gorky began drawing, until 1st himself, then his work grew stronger again.

Reliant on memory and surviving preparatory material and works, Gorky attempted to resurrect lost works. Sometimes using materials saved from the fire, Gorky continued from where he'd left off, but also moved onwards. A specific example addressing this episode is 'Charred Beloved', whereas others born out of it include, 'The Betrothal'.

Derrick Greaves: Representational drawings, collages and paintings executed on remains of Greaves’ flood devastated collection and archive, both of his own and others works on paper, as well as other material sharing the same storage.

Jiri Kolar: Collages using manhandled works, inspired by their newfound condition and look, also another of his many self-invented processes.

Conservation, repairs, reinforcement, replacement:

From, It's about time / Il est temps, word for word / mot par mot 3, Robert Barry & Rene Denizot, Editions Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 1980

Marcel Broodthærs: Isi Fiszman’s purchase — then deliberate damage of work by Broodthærs. The same work/s given visible, sometimes crude and even emphasised repairs.

Man Ray: 'Object to Be Destroyed', unique original artwork, 1923; ‘Indestructible Object', editioned multiple, 1958 (also known as 'Object of Destruction', 1932; 'Eye-Metronome', 1933; 'Lost Object', 1945; 'Last Object', 1966; 'Perpetual Motif', 1972 and 'An Indestructible Multiple', undated / unrealised). All incarnations consist of a functioning metronome, with a photograph of an open human eye (at 1st probably Kiki of Montparnasse, then thereafter usually Lee Miller). Man Ray made or used the work to be present where and when ever he worked. The work's 1st exposure was in 1932, in the Surrealist number of Edward W. Titus’ English language periodical, This Quarter (guest-edited by Andre Breton), which reproduced Man Ray's line illustration of the work (as ‘Object of Destruction') and mode d'emploi:

"Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow."

Man Ray replaced what may well have been a photograph of Kiki of Montparnasse's eye, with that of Lee Miller's, due to Miller's leaving him and Paris to return to the United States.

The following year (1933), saw the work's premier as 'Eye-Metronome', exhibited at Galerie Pierre Colle in Paris.

In 1957, a show (also in Paris) reappraising Dada included 'Object to Be Destroyed'. Only a week after opening, visitors included Jean-Pierre Rosnay, leading the "Jarrivistes" (possibly a jeux de mots, mixing the originator of Ubu, absurdism and Pataphysics, Alfred Jarry, with "arrivistes"?), who showered their manifesto flyers and exclaimed "We Jarrivistes advise the Dadaists, surrealists and consorts that the reign of minus is over . . . Long live pœtry!", before uplifting 'Object to Be Destroyed', taking it out into the street, drawing a pistol, taking aim and firing, obediently carrying out the title to the word (also partly enacting 1 of Andre Breton's Surrealist "Acts" — only not against other lifeforms). The "Jarrivistes" also readily announced themselves as "not surrealists but sure realists", and "not a movement but "motion itself, perpetual motion." To which Man Ray himself reacted, "These things were done 40 years ago. You are demonstrating against history"; a member of the police pondered, "Why shoot it?"; while the self-proclaimed "founder" of Dada, Tristan Tzara, commented "Isn't it wonderful?"

'Object to Be Destroyed' being insured, enabled Man Ray to spend the compensation on making a multiple in an edition of 100, titled ‘Indestructible Object', 1958, published by Daniel Spœrri's Editions MAT.

Man Ray also discussed and proposed a whim or serious to plan, for himself and / or others to destroy at least 1(?) example of this work, as (part of?) a live event, 'An Indestructible Multiple', only no such performance ever took place.

Marcel Marien: “Seven years ago I made a work entitled ‘La mort qui ne passé pas’ (‘Death dœsn’t go by’). It shows a death’s head with an egg-timer placed underneath horizontally like a bow-tie. The sand, of course, remains in the first bulb, the second one being empty, contrary to what happens in its normally vertical position.

This work was shown in Paris this summer for two months, but was not returned to me since it mysteriously disappeared, having apparently been stolen.

In the meantime, the object was chosen for an international exhibition on the subject of time considered as the fourth dimension. It will open in Brussels next November and close in London in April 1986 after having been to Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Austria, and France. In order not to disappoint the organizers nor to deprive so many unsuspecting people in so many countries, I decided to make a copy of the vanished object.

In the spiritual sense, it was in fact as easy for a cook to churn out the same Irish stew every day providing he always uses the same ingredients. I easily found the image of the death’s head as I had taken it from the cover of a book on anatomy. I only had to buy a new copy; the last one in the store as it happens.

As to the egg-timer, that was a little more difficult. I needed the bulbs of the sort that was in common use seven years ago. Fixed to the wall you had to just turn it upside-down and watch while the water was boiling. Owing to the energy crisis as well as to the progress of more sophisticated industrial devices, that kind of egg-timer doesn’t seem to be used anymore. After a long and boring search, I finally located a hardware store where three forgotten egg-timers, covered with dust, were still available. I bought one, and immediately made the copy of my stolen work.

As I finished signing it, I had a sort of illumination about the reason why somebody had risked stealing the original. It was probably somebody like me who badly needed an egg-timer for a more or less similar purpose. Somehow it was as if we were face to face in front of a two-way mirror which suddenly shatters. For a different, but nonetheless, quite suitable approach, one could evoke Duchamp’s suggestion: to use a Rembrandt as an ironing board.”

From, Abandon Ship! (Excerpts from a book still to be written), Marcel Marien, translated and edited by John Lyle, Transformaction, Sidmouth, 1984

Juan Miro: ‘Self-Portrait 1937 - 1960’. Described by Miro himself as “an adjustment and synthesis, not 2 works”. The 1937 original is a laborious and meticulous pencil drawing executed directly onto canvas, depicting a magic realist study of his own facial features and expressions, with much stylization and detail; strangely similar to Miro’s earlier work, than his better known playful automatism. When requested for a 1940 exhibition in New York, rather than part with his beloved original, Miro commissioned others to make another, as faithful as possible to his own handiwork. For another exhibition in 1960, Miro reworked the copy, this time in his more recognizable trademark gestural style.

Michelangelo Pistoletto: 'Venere degli Stracci' ('Venus of the Rags'), various versions, 1967 - 1971 onwards. Replica of the Callipigia Venus statue, turned to face away from the viewer, in front of a pile of torn and crumpled old clothes, otherwise used by Pistoletto to clean and polish his reflective "mirror" pictures. After the breakage of an early example, Pistoletto decided any mending be made obvious, in keeping with the rags.

Ad Reinhardt: When a museum complained that one of Reinhardt’s black on black (pure / invisible / standard etc) paintings was damaged accidentally and needed restoration, Reinhardt recommended / offered / gave them a new / existing painting — alongside some aphoristic advice, claiming it looked even more like the work they had than it ever could have done itself (perhaps based on some much earlier exchange between Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein about Picasso’s portrait of Stein and Stein herself one day becoming like each other).

Jœ Tilson: Wooden sculpture remade — because a fanatic obsessive had stolen the original.

Jeffrey Vallance: Vallance’s retrieval of his ‘Wall Socket Plate Installation’, decorated power switches and points from Los Angeles County Museum, where he had much earlier illegally planted them.

Unfinished business, sequels, addenda, updates, reassessment, retraced footsteps, hindsight, developments:

William Anastasi: ‘Continuum’. Photocanvases, depicting installation views of Anastasi’s earlier works made and shown in the same space (‘Six Sites’ 1966 - 1967 onwards), also photocanvases, which portray the very walls hung on. Each show took place at and depicted Virginia Dwan Gallery, New York.

Billy Apple®: Events and videoworks (any other material?) of meetings where Apple® interviewed fortune tellers, mediums and psychiatrists etc, discussing potential causes and meaning behind his namechange (from Barrie Bates to Billy Apple®), then also outcomes upon himself, his identity, psychology, disposition, behaviour and even possible circumstance etc.

Rasheed Aræen: 1970’s and onwards works / live events where Araeen’s earlier Islamic art / design / culture meets western modernist abstraction (arrived at in advance and independently of U.S Minimalism — despite Aræen being in the U.K, non-western and an “outsider”) get played against more socially engaged iconography and political / racist realities.

John Baldessari: Baldessari heralding his increasing changeover to conceptual art, photographing the tail ends of heavy goods vehicles, which he found his own otherwise abstract paintings (un / consciously?) resembled. See also: ‘Cremation’, 1969 - 1970, in "Positive destruction and unwasteful disposal towards catharsis, sacrifice, riddance, changed mind, clean break, rift with past, fresh start, moving on" — which doubtless involved many of these very such works.

Alighiero e Bœtti & Anne-Marie Sauzeau Bœtti: ‘Classifying the Thousand Longest Rivers in the World’, bookwork, Ascoli Piceno, Rome, 1977. The Bœtti's research and enquiries to glean and ascertain the examples and sequence entered into a giant Afghan woven embroidery, 'The World's Thousand Longest Rivers', 1970 - 1977, were all too frequently met with much data generated and consulted proving uncertain and contradictory. The "findings" gathered, presented, edited and published by the Bœttis often include the discrepancies alongside each contender.

Simon Cutts: Amending his “found pœm” (lifted from ‘Guantanamera’ lyrics!), ‘I prefer the streams of the mountain to the sea’, by adding “still” between “I” and “prefer” (also, the variations on that with Ian Hamilton Finlay, Straiks, illustrated by Sydney McKGlen, Wild Hawthorn Press, Lanarkshire, 1973 — and Cutts’ more recent sourcebook, Coracle Press, Clonmel, 2004 “almost a manifesto revealing the source of the dictum I prefer the streams of the mountains to the sea used over the last thirty five years”).

Chris Dorley-Brown: ‘Revisit / Spot the Difference’, 1987-2002. Series of otherwise ordinary photos of inner-city London — one suite made many years before the more recent others. The 1st group depicts East London (recorded for semi-official commission), then much later Dorley-Brown revisited the exact vantage points and scenes, to remake what were otherwise the very same compositions, according to identical formulæ — only also including every plus and minus since. Symptoms bear witness to social, political, economic and cultural changes happening over the interim period (gentrification, urban renewal, privatisation of former social-housing etc).

Marcel Duchamp: ‘L.H.O.O.Q / rasee’, Cordier & Ekstrom, New York, 1964. Towards the end of his life and career, Duchamp issued invited private dinner guests with a self-parody of his own notorious "Rectified Readymade" 'L.H.O.O.Q', 1919 (postcard of the Mona Lisa — with goatee beard, moustache and the title — which becomes "Elle a Chaude au Cul" — "She has got a hot ass!"). Only this time, left facially blank and further inscribed, "rasee" ("shaved").

Hans Haacke: Additions to work presenting information about investigations into provenance of an old master painting.

Any work (not just mention in publications) charting events occurring after 1st showing of ‘Der Pralinenmeister’ (exposee into Peter Ludwig’s chocolate business empire and art collecting practices)?

Richard Hamilton: ‘Five Tyres Abandoned’, 1963 and ‘Five Tyres Remoulded’, 1972, limited edition prints. As far back as 1951, Hamilton (whose pre-art background was as an engineering draftsperson) had shown much interest in imagery of 5 distinct vehicle tyre tread types, because of the supposed insight gleaned, that they might be studied for analysis, as well as possible means of their development. Occasionally, Hamilton’s lectures included projected slides of preparatory stages, towards what grew into these works.

The original ‘Five Tyres Abandoned’ editions are linear and meticulous, epitomising much else of Hamilton’s printmaking, with evidence of research, planning and progression. Around the same time, Hamilton was engaged in almost normal typographical embodiment and presentation of Marcel Duchamp’s otherwise facsimiled manuscript Green Box sketches and notes (published 1960); only a few years before Hamilton’s laborious duplication of Duchamp’s ‘Large Glass’ and other glass paintings. Unsurprisingly, while also looking more akin to function than fine-art, ensuing end-result resembles archival working material or blueprints, instead of any finished product.

Hamilton’s title includes reference to his acceptance of defeat, quitting project as futile, finding desired technical precision and visual detail extremely difficult or even impossible to achieve, needing facilities either inaccessible then or still unknown and yet to exist.

Early the next decade, a U.S dealer sought out relatively advanced computer information technology and industrial manufacturing, allowing Hamilton’s intentions to finally be realised. Combined labours paid off, leading to an embossed (or even moulded) relief. When eventually published, ‘Five Tyres Remoulded’ came accompanied by an especially commissioned explanatory text, written by E. Schreiber. It is also interesting to note that Hamilton went on to become an innovative pioneer of digital art and design.

Juan Miro: ‘Self-Portrait 1937-1960’. Described by Miro himself as “an adjustment and synthesis, not 2 works”. The 1937 original is a laborious and meticulous pencil drawing executed directly onto canvas, depicting a magic realist study of his own facial features and expressions, with much stylization and detail; strangely similar to Miro’s earlier work, than his better known playful automatism. When requested for a 1940 exhibition in New York, rather than part with his beloved original, Miro commissioned others to make another, as faithful as possible to his own handiwork. For another exhibition in 1960, Miro reworked the copy, this time in his more recognizable trademark gestural style.

Meret Oppenheim: ‘Souvenir du Dejeuner en Fourrure’, 1972. Upon being invited by a gallerist to produce authorised editioned replicas of her earlier and best-known work, the iconic fur-lined teacup, saucer and spoon of 1936 (which overshadowed most of the rest of Oppenheim’s work), Oppenheim accepted, only instead she devised a garish, kitschy and ornate framed icon — with a furry motif of a roadsign teacup, saucer and spoon.

Giulio Paolini: 'Diaframma 8 (Aperture 8)', 1965. Photocanvas showing the artist, wearing winter clothes, in a street, carrying a blank canvas. The work's title refers to the equipment and procedures used. Completely unclear if deliberate or not, 2 years later, Paolini made another photocanvas of same size (80 high X 90 cm wide), 'D867', 1967. This time, depicting himself elsewhere, during summertime and dressed accordingly, but with 'Diaframma 8'.

'Un Quadro' (A Painting), 1970. "Celebrating" the 10th anniversary of Paolini's 1st major work,'Disegno Geometrico' (Geometric Drawing'), 1960, with 14 photocanvas copies of the original. Not 10 units, so unclear what if any significance lay behind the quantity. Each inscribed on the verso side as though for fictitious authorship, provenance and dedications.

Other works by Paolini where images of earlier works or extracts reappear, questioning both limitations and possibilities.

Charles Ray: During Ray’s later and present career and success, remaking a student work, seemingly very much towing the line of his expat U.K former “New Generation” sculptor, tutor (and predating other early works still kept and extant), only this new and improved version has higher production standards and quality, as well as being taken more seriously, given greater attention and allowed more permanence and worth more than the original, not forgetting the notions of artistic roots and developments (Ray’s later and better known work usually deals with notions of perception and reality, through scale and imitation etc).

Goran Trbuljak: When selected to be in the 2005 Croatian Pavillion at the 51st Venice Biennale, Trbuljak's input was the printed statement:

"Goran Trbuljak*, 1976.

*The need to add a footnote to a text is more important than whatever might be in the footnote 30 years later. 1976 - 2005".

The conclusion or next-stage to an earlier conceptual-era work.

Jeffrey Vallance: ‘Blinky the Friendly Hen’, 1978 onwards. As a student work, Vallance had a supermarket frozen chicken given a funeral and buried in a Los Angeles pet cemetery, claiming it to have been his pet, “Blinky the Friendly Hen”. 10 years later (in 1988 — by which time Vallance moved deeper into symbolism, iconography, mysticism, myth, ritual, conspiracy theory, the supernatural and anthropology etc — and became a successful artist and partial celebrity — while the grave and pet cemetery gained some cult status, which it still has), Vallance had “Blinky the Friendly Hen” exhumed for a forensic autopsy and post-mortem in an attempt to establish cause of death and conditions occurring since. The original bookwork Vallance privately put out 1st time round was especially republished with extra material by Art Issues Press, Los Angeles. For the 30th anniversary (2008), Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica staged a celebratory exhibition featuring new and earlier “Blinky the Friendly Hen” work by Vallance (‘Blinky Chapel’ etc), alongside shows by invited artists (James Goodwin, Laurie Hassold, Marjan Hormozi, Dave Shulman and Scottie Vera). Smart Art Press (also in Santa Monica) published a 3rd revised version of the bookwork, 30th anniversary Edition of Blinky the Friendly Hen, with dvd and previously unseen material. Vallance claims he hopes there to be still more “Blinky the Friendly Hen” works and events every decade.

Vallance’s retrieval of his ‘Wall Socket Plate Installation’, decorated power switches and points from Los Angeles County Museum, where he much earlier illegally planted them.

Gil J Wolman: 'L'Anticoncept a New York', 1990. Critical revision of Wolman and Guy Ernest Debord's Lettriste / Situationist film, 'L'Anticoncept', 1951 (mostly blank, otherwise a spoken word voiceover commentary soundtrack, projected onto inflated weather balloon). Later version filmed from the screen, facing the audience.

Hindrance and cancellation becoming carte-blanche go-ahead:

Artists Anonymous: Video recording conflict with landlord of their London space, after being locked out during what was otherwise supposed to be an open-evening.

Stuart Brisley: 'Survival in Alien Circumstances', 1977, Documenta 6, Kassel

When invited to contribute to Documenta 6, Brisley's planned project was an open-air time-based event and ensuing temporary earthwork. Brisley (and his assistant, Christoph Gericke) would excavate a pit, knowing there'd be World War 2 rubble (during the production, human bone fragments were also found). However, the site hoped for or promised was given to the U.S artist, Walter De Maria (for his more high-profile and subsidised sculpture -of a kilometer-long steel rod buried in the ground — dependent on corporate engineering and institutional foundation's support and finance).

Despite that, Brisley was still able to continue nearby. In addition to original intentions and expectations, new factors arose. Most notable is that Walter De Maria's work could be argued to have been at most a mere idea on a grand scale, while Brisley's more modest or even abject anti or tragi heroism involved potentially shared experience towards insight. Rather than attempt to identify or define any, it seems better to compare and contrast the artist's statement (excluding any acknowledgment of or reaction to displacement caused by co-exhibitor, Walter De Maria's — as covered elsewhere by both Brisley and others), instead encouraging consideration:

"Digging a hole in which to make a place to live for two weeks, then leaving the evidence as an installation as echo. Choice of site was fortuitous as the rubble from the Second World War was deposited there, eventually forming the base for a park. In digging I came across all manner of detritus, including fractured parts of human bones, verified by a doctor friend visiting the site. Digging was to be continued for two weeks.

As the whole progressed, eventually a public path was reached, and then my assistant and I began to dig downwards, coming across a thick concrete floor. Having broken through that we continued downwards until the last day when we stood up to our necks in water and it was impossible to go down further. That stage of the work was completed when we lay quietly in the water for 30 minutes.

My assistant was German so we were able to converse with local people and others. We asked passers by what response they had to the work. A number of them said the hole reminded them of a mass grave thus compounding the presence of human detritus among the rubble. I was working with miners in the North East (‘The Peterlee Project’) at the time and was influenced by their own testaments to their working lives."

©, Copyright, Stuart Brisley

Andre Cadere: Having to reduce the size of 1 work (a rod / staff / totem), so as to be allowed in Fondatione Mæght in Paris (after 1 of many oppositions to Cadere’s ‘Barre de Bois-Ronde’ “placements”, which squatted other people’s shows uninvited).

Coum Transmissions: 'Airborne Spells, Landborn Smells', Brook Green, London, 1974. After a missed plane flight to Morocco, where they were scheduled to perform, members of Coum Transmissions chose to still conduct an event, by and for themselves, in a London park. 'Airborne Spells, Landborn Smells' purportedly included symbolic or even real internal difference settling and resolution, exploration of interpersonal and relationship issues, gender and social roles and identity, as well as questioning worth of acceptance, support, audience, importance and venue for creativity. While not as extreme as other adverse backlash against Coum Transmissions and later Throbbing Gristle, 'Airborne Spells, Landborn Smells' attracted some interest, concern and opposition from the public and local Police.

Claire Fontaine: ‘Nurseryworld’. Pre “Claire Fontaine” planned site-visit and trophy salvage to an empty derelict building — coming to nothing when upon arrival with relevant equipment needed — the building was no longer there anymore, having been demolished to make way for the garden area of some luxury home developments. However, this change was in keeping with many of the original concerns, hopes and interests the artist had in the name of the premises and issues arising. There is a photo of the exterior, then also a (later) written and recorded prose text of the same name by Douglas Park, a remake of the shopsign and (possibly?) a miniature model of the building (and other material / work?).

Tim Flitcroft & Elaine Arkell: ‘Free Fall / The Ghost of Presence Past’, 2007. Flitcroft’s contribution to the Reverend Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly's Halloween-timed, occult, possession and exorcism themed group exhibition, Spectre vs. Rector (christened after an early song by The Fall, also referencing the scholarly horror author, M.R James), at Ingrid Z’s Residence Gallery, London, 2007, was to camp there overnight (as the "ghost"), captured on thermal, infra-red and time-lapse security and surveillance cameras. In the morning, Flitcroft found that for whatever reasons, the camera hadn't worked, so nothing came out. Very much in keeping with accounts of supposedly supernatural phenomena, at least coinciding with film and negatives ending up either with unexplained images or just plain blank. In collaboration with Arkell, Flitcroft's body outline motif was marked out using tape (like a crime-scene or life-class), from which Arkell took a frottage rubbing onto paper, as forensic evidence, sacred relic, Turin-shroud etc to show for Flitcroft's "ghost".

Hamish Fulton: Early / later photo and text works involving journeys / travel / walking / visits to places capturing the same place at different times. A striking example being, ‘A Public Footpath on Nackington Farm, Canterbury’, whereby what in 1970 was an open and clear track — by 1971, had become overgrown, with obstructive chains hung across it, blocking access — rendered no longer very public or much of a footpath anymore.

Another practice of Fulton’s has been finding similar appearing scenes, either not far apart and relatively near — or in completely different countries and continents.

Lydia Lunch & Bjarne Melgaard: Melgaard invited veteran RANTeuse, Lydia Lunch to contribute to his After Shelley Duvall ’72 (Frogs on the High-Line) solo show with self-curated group exhibition, Maccarone Gallery, New York, 2011. Melgaard suggested that Lunch maybe perform at some stage. Lunch replied (or reacted), declining Melgaard's offer, giving practical and personal reasons against doing so — but still with impressive wording; also proposing that Melgaard somehow use the message (or “pœm”!) in a painting — with any sales profits split between them. Advice which Melgaard accepted, painting 2 equal canvases, each one with Lunch's message facsimiled and blown-up large-scale.

Nota bene: Lunch and Melgaard's email addresses both included the word "frenzy".

Invalided IN, ON-sick, legs broken to bring good luck:

Joseph Beuys: During Beuys’ “Aktion”, ‘Kukei, akopee-Nein! Braunkreuz, Fettecken, Modellfettecken’, for the Festival der Neuen Kunst, Technische Hochschule, of Aachen, in 1964, a right-wing protestor punched Beuys in the face, bloodying Beuys’ nose. Beuys used the nosebleed to parody Hitler’s moustache (as a travesty of Hitler), whilst making a fascist salute and raising a beer stein with a crucifix in it. Heinrich Riebesehl’s photograph of this pose was circulated in the German media — and to this day is still synonymous with Beuys.

Andre Cadere: Late photo of Cadere, seated on his hospital bed, wearing pyjamas, with hair loss from chemotherapy and holding a ‘Barre de Bois-Ronde’ (counting as 1 of his guerrilla "placements", instead of squatting other's exhibitions).

Coil: Jhonn Balance (Geoff Rushton) having a fit or attack, breaking a window, then bleeding. The other driving-force of Coil, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, encouraging Balance to smear and wipe the blood onto blank record sleeve covers, otherwise due to be adorned with artwork for 1 of Coil’s limited edition subscription-only releases.

Tony Lopez: 'New Zone West', 1983. Sustaining broken bones during a performance-series about (and against) nuclear-power. Given how this tied in with many of the concerns, as well as x-rays being generated, Lopez deemed this part of the work, ensuing material generated appears in related artwork and publication.

Michelle Naismith: 'le Palais de Justice (I choose also black)', 2002. During the filming, the main character (a shiny pvc black egg, with fishnet stockinged legs and sports shœs) unexpectedly stumbled, fell and got badly hurt. Others present, involved and helping, rushed forward to help. Naismith included this footage in the final version, as well as changing the subtitles in reference to it.

Kenny T Schachter: 'I Used To Hate New York', single track audio cd single, Zingmagazine, New York, 2000. Schachter's 2000 I Hate New York one-off pop-up group exhibition in London was visited by 2 criminals posing as bona fide visitors feigning interest. Instead, they attacked and overpowered Schachter, used work from the show to trap him into part of the premises and stole equipment. After rescue, escape and recovery, Schachter wrote, played and recorded the song, 'I Used To Hate New York' about the episode and wider situation. Copies of the cd inserted into Zingmagazine 13, New York, 2000.

Nota Bene: since then, Schachter relocated to London, not far from the same place — and also established a gallery — rather than his earlier nomadic practice.

Lawrence Weiner & Peter Gordon: ‘The Society Architect Ponders The Golden Gate Bridge’, opera produced and staged in Berlin and Bonn, 2000, bookwork published by Walter Kœnig Verlag, audio excerpt appearing in anthology / compilation, Crosstalk (produced by Mendi & Keith Obadike, Bridge Records, New york, 2008). Libretto etc based on a transcribed real-life court-case, with Weiner as plaintiff attempting to collect damages for injuries caused by an intoxicated driver. However, the court case became centred upon the validity and value of non-object based art.

Mistakes, blunders, mix ups and misunderstandings:

Kenneth Anger: ‘Scorpio Rising’, 1963. Processing lab’s delivery to Kenneth Anger of a religious instruction movie (The Road to Jerusalem, by Family Films), instead of Anger’s own work-in-progress. Whereupon Anger included the footage into ‘Scorpio Rising’ (unclear whether anybody else got Anger's material, then what if any outcome or reaction was).

Arman: Arman’s chosen name-change was based on a printing error in a 1957 Galerie Iris Clert exhibition invite / catalogue, missing out the “d” from “Armand Fernandez”.

From, It's about time / Il est temps, word for word / mot par mot 3, Robert Barry & Rene Denizot, Editions Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 1980

Marcel Broodthærs: ‘la Faute d’Orthographe (Mea Culpa)’, Editions Galerie Smith, Brussels, 1964. The very 1st editioned work by Broodthærs, which came about when he was scheduled to be in a portfolio of (otherwise CoBrA, informele and taschiste etc artist’s) prints, then saw his name misprinted and incomplete on the prospectus / advert / order coupon, so Broodthærs indicated and corrected the mistake — a facsimile reproduction of which became his contribution.

Butthole Surfers: 'Creep in the Cellar', Rembrandt Pussyhorse, album, Touch and Go / Red Rhino, 1986. Due to the Butthole Surfers use of found recording tape, the lead-in track 'Creep in the Cellar' (and final track, the remix, ‘In the Cellar’) includes a reversed Country n Western violin solo. The Butthole Surfers deemed this fitted in and was too difficult or even impossible to change or remove.

In addition to this uninvited guest appearance, both 'Creep in the Cellar' and another Rembrandt Pussyhorse track, 'Perry', each feature traditional piano and organ input from the recording studio's owner — who allowed the Butthole Surfers usage of his premises — on condition he was allowed to contribute.

Nota Bene: The Butthole Surfers’ much more high profile and successful later album, Electriclarryland, Capitol Records, 1996, includes the track, 'Cough Syrup' — featuring incongruously out-of-place cello by John Hagen.

Coum Transmissions: When Coum Transmissions became the avant garde band, Throbbing Gristle (which soon replaced their art practice), their debut album 2nd Annual Report / Music from the Death Factory, 1977, on their own Industrial Records label, ended up with brief snippets of creepily sicklysweet orchestral (Auschwitz?) chamber-music, whenever theres otherwise no sound between and within different tracks — because the master-tape was a found recording — and Throbbing Gristle and the pressing plant had no choice but to keep it. Somehow or other, each outburst seems to belong and work where they appear, in keeping with everything else.

Richard Crow / Institute of Rot: The critic, Ed Scheer misread “bring freude ins leben” (on the label of the ill-fated wine Rut Blees-Luxemburg mailed from Europe to Crow in Sydney, Australia, for ‘Grenzganger’ performance at Artspace), meaning “bring joy / happiness in/to life”, as “bring DR SIGMUND FREUD in/to life” (“bring freud ins leben”) instead. Later on, “Bring Freud Ins Leben” became inspiration and the title for Crow’s contribution to Walter Seidl and Ursula Maria Porbst’s Prospective Sites and Europart/25 Peaces (public art hi-tec media billboard projects, in and around Vienna and Salzburg, 2005 - 2006). ‘Bring Freud Ins Leben’ is 2 photographs, each depicting a Dr Sigmund Freud doll placed in outdoor settings.

See also Richard Crow / Institute of Rot entry in "Damage, neglect, decay, deterioration, interruptions and attacks kept and used".

Man Ray: Using footage from cine-camera sent flying from a moving vehicle (or redoing process to achieve same effect).

Douglas Park & Ronee Hui: Park’s text and Hui’s imagery both ruined on Hui’s pages in the 2003 Sharjah biennale book — but the same material redone independently by Park and Hui as it should otherwise have been.

Red cards and flags:

Rasheed Aræen: ‘How could one paint a self-portrait!’, 1978 - 1979. Large scale icon of Aræen’s own face — covered in racist graffiti. Entered for the 1978 John Moores painting prise — only to be rejected as “not accepted” — at which Aræen chose to affix the notification document — representing officialdom, institutional and legalised discrimination, alongside the supposedly “unofficial” and “vernacular” (but still stage-managed and vested-interest purpose-serving) abuse and attitudes.

Artist’s pages (other works?), using correspondence (and other material?) about other artist’s objection to Aræen’s proposal for / inclusion in a 1980’s show at Ikon gallery, Birmingham — for which Aræen planned to stage the traditional Islamic ritual slaughter and consumption of a live goat (by qualified / authorised priest / butchers etc), alongside the destruction and display of some heavyweight art theory book (published in Aræen’s monograph, Making Myself Visible, Kala press, London 1984, then later on in Museum as Arena, Kunsthaus, Bregenz, 2001).

Derek Boshier: Unopenable (mock children’s?) book, reacting to censorship and outcry over allegations made in projects by both Conrad Atkinson and Tony Rickaby, as part of Boshier’s late 1979 Lives (then) Arts Council of Great Britain group exhibition. Possibly other work / material.

Damien Bourdaud: ‘Wheres My Catalogue?’ Publication / other material(?) protesting the cancelled reprinting of a catalogue originally put out by Tanja Grunjert Gallery (New York) of / including Bourdaud. The grounds given, that Bourdaud’s content and imagery were too extreme to justify public funds and resources from the French state / Loire Region.

Andre Cadere: Having to reduce the size of 1 work (a rod / staff / totem) so as to be allowed in Fondatione Mæght in Paris (after 1 of many oppositions to Cadere’s ‘Barre de Bois-Ronde’ “placements”, which squatted other people’s shows uninvited).

Jake & Dinos Chapman: ‘Bring Me The Head Of Franco Toselli’ (editioned multiple) and ‘Fun & Games’ (video), both published by Ridinghouse Editions, London, 1995. The Italian art dealer / gallerist, Franco Toselli’s refusal to show the Chapman’s / their work, prompted them to destroy their ‘Mummy & Daddy Chapman’ dept-store window display dummy sculpture, keeping only the head from the decapitated ‘Daddy Chapman’ — complete with dildo phalluses for the nose and chin. They made this bust resemble Toselli. In the film, 2 porno queens find and make gainful employment for the Chapman’s creation.

CRASS: ‘The Sound of Free Speech’, 2 minute silent track, 1978. Small Wonder’s release of CRASS’ debut album, The Feeding of the 5000, was without the blasphemous and anti-religious song, Reality Asylum, after objections and complaints from workers at the pressing plant. Instead, CRASS replaced Reality Asylum with a blank track — while also founding their own record label to put out an extended version of Reality Asylum, then much else by themselves and others. Later rereleases of The Feeding of the 5000 include the original Reality Asylum.

Danny Devos: ‘Anarchy!’, 1979. “Because I had problems with the owner of the gallery concerning my performance, I tied him up, read an explaining text and hung him with his feet to the ceiling of his own gallery. 29 September 1979 - Galerie Valckesteyn, Bergen-op-Zoom”. Danny Devos

From, Performan, (works, January 1979 – June 1982), bookwork, various often self-published editions, 1982 onwards.

Nota Bene: Most of Devos’ other early solo body-art performances and those with others (then not much later as Club Moral, with Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven), usually involved himself taking risks with his own body, often caused by set-up and allowed-for scope for inevitable audience-input (including, Devos himself, hung upside down).

Felipe Ehrenberg: Expecting, allowing for, keeping and enhancing state censorship of satirical (and pornographically obscene?) cartoons, lampooning Mexican government and leaders.

John Giorno / The Dial-A-Pœm Poets: 'Disconnected', LP compilation album, Giorno Pœtry Systems, New York, 1974.

"THIS ALBUM IS A DO-IT-YOURSELF DIAL-A-PŒM KIT

Dial-A-Pœm received millions of phone calls, yet we were disconnected.

Open the lines to the pœts! We used the telephone for pœtry. They used it to spy on you. Pœtry plumbers suite! We invite you to do it yourself. Start your own Dial-A-Pœm in your own hometown. Get hooked up to the telephones. Call your local telephone company business office; order a system and put on it these LP selections; put on your own local pœts and we'll supply you with more pœts.

The system we used at The Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Architectural League of New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and in Albany, New York was 12 telephone lines each connected to an automatic answering set, which holds the recording of a pœt reading a pœm. Each phone line has a different pœm and all the phone lines were changed daily. So dialling one number, you randomly got one of 12 pœts. There are 70 Dial-A-Pœm pœts, each with at least 12 selections, or over 1,000 selections in all.

The system can disconnect:

your phone,

your gas,

your light,

your food,

your home.

But they don't disconnect pœtry! (yet)"

David Hockney: 'The Diploma', 1962. In 1962, the Royal College of Art in London warned the already successful David Hockney that he wouldn't graduate if he refused to write an essay. Hockney used the Royal College of Art's own printmaking facilities and personnel to produce an etching (including the Royal College of Art's heraldic crest coat of arms!) depicting a scene satirizing the Royal College of Art hierarchy and protocol — as well as the artwork being a parody of a diploma. The Royal College of Art relaxed or even at least partly changed their rules, for Hockney and maybe others.

Douglas Pearce / Death in June, Boyd Rice / NON, Albin Julius Martinek / Der Blutharsch, Ian Read / Fire + Ice: On 18^th November 1998, pressure from activists influenced Lausanne’s police chief, Bernard Metraux’s decision to prevent Douglas Pearce and his industrial / apocalyptic / avant / dark / neo folk band, Death in June from appearing at a pre-arranged concert. However, likeminded collaborators, Boyd Rice (aka NON), Ian Read’s Fire + Ice and Albin Julius Martinek’s Der Blutharsch were permitted to play as earlier expected (despite belonging to the same controversial scene — and also often being target for accusations of extreme rightwing belief, action and allegiance).

The day beforehand, a press-conference was staged, in front of various concerned parties. The proceedings included Pearce, with a sign on his uniform, escorted by Rice and Julius Martinek, both wearing gorilla suits –and swastika insignia armbands.

A petition for Metraux’s resignation was circulated amongst concertgœrs, eventually scoring184 signatures. Onstage, a man passed off as Pearce appeared, then revealed himself to be Rice (Pearce often performs masked, as well as in uniform). In reaction to these developments, Rice performed an especially altered cover-version of Death in June's C'est un Reve, which later appeared on the compilation, Der Tod Im Juni, Gœart, 1999, accredited to “NON & Freunde”.

Some scene-followers created a website, featuring posted concert photographs (since defunct / offline).

Much of Death in June and Julius Martinek’s album, Operation Hummingbird, New European Recordings, 2000, is about the episode (in particular, the lead-in track, Gorilla Tactics).

As Pearce later explained:

”This has to do with politics, not to do with me, because they had a local election, and they thought I was going to bring an army of skinheads to Lausanne and destroy the city. Because they've heard from someone in Germany, who contacted a policeman in Bern. And the policeman in Bern contacted the authorities in Lausanne. This is like gossip. This is like fishwives. This is like old women. I don't care about old women gossiping. If at the end of the day, it means I don't play, good, I don't want to play in the city of old women talking about people behind their backs. And they are so stupid they believe in all the rumours.

When I had a meeting with the Council a day before the concert, they were absolutely petrified of me. I wanted to play the records and say 'I am not going to destroy you' but they were just so scared. Because they were worried about their political future. They were not thinking about Death in June as being a Nazi group, they are thinking that I, Jean-Pierre Nobody, want to be Mayor of this town and I must win the good citizens over of this town to my cause and, therefore, I will be a knight in shining armour, I will always stand up to those things that everybody hates. So, I will stand up to Nazi, skinhead hordes that are coming to destroy Lausanne.'

Of course, there were no Nazi, skinhead hordes and I didn't play and they got elected. So, life goes on. The fishwives got their way.”

From, interview-transcript between Douglas Pearce and Junda (conducted at Laboratory, Modern Art Institute, Warsaw) Gothic Info webzine, 2001 (since defunct / offline, but still at official Death in June website http://www.deathinjune.org).

Nota Bene: Whatever else has been and can be rightly or wrongly said, Pearce is openly gay; his previous band, Crisis, were linked to left-wing politics; Crisis and early Death in June bandmate, Tony Wakeford, was sacked partly for (temporary — and later regretted) National Front membership (Wakeford went on to form the temporary Above the Ruins, then the ongoing Sol Invictus — and worked with Pearce, in Death in June and other projects); Death in June have performed in Isræl and Japan — and Pearce claims to have “read more pages of Das Kapital than Mein Kampf” (quote from interview between Douglas Pearce and Ivor Vaganov, Gorod N (n.44 349), 3-9, November, 1999, Rostov-on-Don, reappearing complete on Russian webzine, Achtung Baby, 1999 (since defunct / offline, but still at http://www.deathinjune.org).

Roland Penrose: Penrose's chosen entry of his 'Portrait', 1939 (now in Tate Gallery Collection, London) for the 1940, United Artists exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London — was turned down and returned by selectors after found at least one inscription offensive (most probably, "arse"). Penrose replaced 'Portrait' with another painting ('From the House Tops', 1939), depicting humanoid hands making deaf and dumb sign-language — to spell out the more extreme word, “shit”!

"A BRUSH WITH THE R A.

Mr Roland Penrose, the surrealist painter, submitted a

picture to the United Artists' exhibition at the Royal

Academy just opened.

It was rejected, on the grounds that certain written words embodied in its composition were unseemly. But the artist was invited to send an alternative work.

He did so, and it now hangs in a prominent position. lt is a picture of glove-stretchers.

I suggest to the hanging committee that they study the

deaf-and-dumb language. lf so they may find that the fingers in the picture suggest, by sign, a word even more unseemly than those in the picture they rejected.”

Evening Standard, 8 January 1940. William Hickey (then Tom Driberg)

“I am amused to see that one of the pictures in the Royal Academy's School of Paris exhibition has been borrowed from the collection of Mr Roland Penrose, the Surrealist painter.

It is 11 years since Penrose had anything to do with an

exhibition at the Academy, and on that occasion he caused a fine flutter among the Academicians.

Early in the war he sent some pictures to a United Artists show run by the Academy. One was rejected on the grounds that it contained in its composition certain written words which were "unseemly". The artist was nettled; but he accepted the invitation to submit an alternative work.

This picture, showed four pairs of hands talking deaf-and-dumb language. Alas for the RAs, The hands were saying a much more unseemly word than the original picture had contained.

The then president of the RA. Sir Edwin Lutyens, laughed when it was pointed out to him that the Academy had been scored off in this way. The picture was not taken down.

Perhaps the incident is not quite forgotten at Burlington House, however. The current president, Sir Gerald Kelly, gave a dinner last night to mark the opening of this exhibition. And Mr Penrose was not invited.”

Evening Standard, 13 Januarv 1951

- The painting was stolen in 1943, but the monotvpe for it is still in existence and was used by the Arts council for the retrospective exhibition of the work of Roland Penrose in 1980.

From, Roland Penrose, Scrapbook 1900 – ‘81, Thames & Hudson, London / Rizzoli, New York / Ediciones Polgrafa, Barcelona / Editions Cercle d'Art, Paris, 1981

Betty Tompkins: 'Censored Grid'. Both in the early 70's, then later in the 00's, customs official's seizure of Tomkins' large-scale photorealist 'Fuck Paintings' (based on close-up pornography details), inspired Tomkins to make other works on paper, showing same subject-matter, covered in or even made out of images made up from rubber-stamp prints, saying "CENSORED".

Interpersonal arguments, disagreement, disputes, conflict, falling out, wreaked vengeance, insults, score and difference settling:

Billy Apple®: When allowed opportunity to work with public advertising space, Apple® addressed payment problems with patrons.

Rasheed Aræen: Artist’s pages (other works?), using correspondence (and other material?) about other artist’s objection to Aræen’s proposal for / inclusion in a 1980’s show at Ikon gallery, Birmingham — for which Aræen planned to stage the traditional Islamic ritual slaughter and consumption of a live goat (by qualified / authorised priest / butchers etc), alongside the destruction and display of some heavyweight art theory book (published in Aræen’s monograph, Making Myself Visible, Kala press, London 1984, then later on in Museum as Arena, Kunsthaus, Bregenz, 2001).

Artists Anonymous: Video recording conflict with landlord of their London space, after being locked out during what was otherwise supposed to be an open-evening.

Chris Burden: Finding fault with critic’s reviews of his work and shows. Giving advice, correction and suggesting possible improvement to their attempts and efforts.

Sophie Calle: Inclusion in Calle’s work of interpersonal problematics (objections, accusations, action taken etc) from people used in her reality-warp scenarios.

Coum Transmissions: 'Airborne Spells, Landborn Smells', Brook Green, London, 1974. After a missed plane flight to Morocco where they were supposed to perform, members of Coum Transmissions chose to still conduct an event, by and for themselves, in a London park. 'Airborne Spells, Landborn Smells' purportedly included symbolic or even real internal difference settling and resolution, exploration of interpersonal and relationship issues, gender and social roles and identity, as well as questioning worth of acceptance, support, audience, importance and venue for creativity. While not as extreme as other adverse backlash against Coum Transmissions and later Throbbing Gristle, 'Airborne Spells, Landborn Smells' attracted some interest, concern and opposition from the public and local Police.

Simon Cutts: ‘Homage to Homage to Georges Seurat’, bookwork, Coracle Press, London, 1986. Archived correspondence between Cutts and the (then) Arts Council of Great Britain over deteriorating quality and condition of Cutts’ print, ‘Homage to Georges Seurat’, Tarasque Press, Nottingham, 1972 (using “hundreds and thousands” confectionary decoration as a visual play on Seurat’s pointilliste painting!) and attempted problem-solving.

From, Performan, (works, January 1979 – June 1982), bookwork, various, mostly self-published editions, 1982 onwards.

Iqbal Geoffrey: Geoffrey’s gift to an artworld figure of an ‘Eye-brush’ (toothbrush with razorblade stuck on — as prisoners and others use for weapons).

In 1984, after London's National Gallery turned down Geoffrey's application to be artist-in-residence (on grounds the position was selected — not applied for), Geoffrey (a lawyer, as well as artist) equally unsuccessfully attempted legal action. Not without widespread media coverage — and Geoffrey's secret scattering of pubic hair throughout National gallery and public urination protest by Geoffrey, using the nearby fountains in Trafalgar Square, as well as relic (dispensing flask).

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Publications / propaganda / editions / ephemera / artwork / media coverage etc connected to Hamilton Finlay’s various “wars” against artworld figures and officialdom agencies (earlier conflicts against editors, publishers and other people of letters; Scottish Arts Council; local regional council / authority over planning permission deficit and subsequent seizure, repossession and evictions; the French “artworld” over wrongful and unfounded Nazi accusations around time of major public commission; National Trust and Jonathan Cape publishers for misinterpretations and misrepresentations etc).

David Hockney: 'The Diploma', 1962. In 1962, the Royal College of Art in London warned the already successful David Hockney that he wouldn't graduate if he refused to write an essay. Hockney used the Royal College of Art's own printmaking facilities and personel to produce an etching (including the Royal College of Art's heraldic crest coat of arms!) depicting a scene satirizing the Royal College of Art hierarchy and protocol — as well as the artwork being a parody of a diploma. The Royal College of Art relaxed or even at least partly changed their rules, for Hockney and maybe others.

Robert Morris: ‘Statement of Æsthetic Withdrawal’, 1963. Frame containing engraved lead relief depicting front and side plan view of Morris’s previous work ‘Litanies’ (another 1963 lead relief, with a bunch of keys, each engraved with part of a quote from Marcel Duchamp, 1 key in a lock and the impression worn by the keys) alongside legal documents thereby reclaiming or denouncing any merit or worth from ‘Litanies’. Everything is described as an “exhibit” (as though legal and forensic evidence). Morris made ‘Statement of Æsthetic Withdrawal’ in reaction to Phillip Johnson (architect and collector) deciding to keep ‘Litanies’ — but not pay for it — on the grounds it was not art. ‘Statement of Æsthetic Withdrawal’ was given to Johnson by Morris (like the shirt off his back!). Much later, Johnson donated both works to Moma NYC (whether or not either or both of them are art — and / or Johnson is an architect and / or his work counts as architecture!). Presumably theres now much greater specific and focused interest in ‘Statement of Æsthetic Withdrawal’ than in ‘Litanies’ — due to more conceptual nature and engagement and use of factors in society.

Some scene-followers created a website, featuring posted concert photographs (since defunct / offline).

Much of Death in June and Julius Martinek’s album, Operation Hummingbird, New European Recordings, 2000, is about the episode (in particular, the lead-in track, Gorilla Tactics).

As Pearce later explained:

Of course, there were no Nazi, skinhead hordes and I didn't play and they got elected. So, life goes on. The fishwives got their way.”

Roland Penrose: Penrose's chosen entry of his 'Portrait', 1939 (now in Tate Gallery Collection, London) for the 1940, United Artists exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London — was turned down and returned by selectors after found at least one inscription offensive (most probably, "arse"). Penrose replaced 'Portrait' with another painting ('From the House Tops', 1939), depicting humanoid hands making deaf-and-dumb sign-language — to spell out the more extreme word, “shit”!

"A BRUSH WITH THE R A.

Mr Roland Penrose, the surrealist painter, submitted a

picture to the United Artists' exhibition at the Royal

Academy just opened.

It was rejected, on the grounds that certain written words embodied in its composition were unseemly. But the artist was invited to send an alternative work.

He did so, and it now hangs in a prominent position. lt is a picture of glove-stretchers.

I suggest to the hanging committee that they study the

deaf-and-dumb language. lf so they may find that the

fingers in the picture suggest, by sign, a word even more unseemly than those in the picture they rejected.”

Evening Standard, 8 January 1940. William Hickey (then Tom Driberg)

“I am amused to see that one of the pictures in the Royal Academy's School of Paris exhibition has been borrowed from the collection of Mr Roland Penrose, the Surrealist

painter.

It is 11 years since Penrose had anything to do with an

exhibition at the Academy, and on that occasion he caused a fine flutter among the Academicians.

This picture, showed four pairs of hands talking deaf-and-dumb language. Alas for the RAs, The hands were saying a much more unseemly word than the original picture had contained.

The then president of the RA. Sir Edwin Lutyens, laughed when it was pointed out to him that the Academy had been scored off in this way. The picture was not taken down.

Evening Standard, 13 Januarv 1951

- The painting was stolen in 1943, but the monotvpe for it is still in existence and was used by the Arts council for the retrospective exhibition of the work of Roland Penrose in 1980.

From, Roland Penrose, Scrapbook 1900 – ‘81, Thames & Hudson, London / Rizzoli, New York / Ediciones Polgrafa, Barcelona / Editions Cercle d'Art, Paris, 1981

Austin Osman Spare: Declining offer of portraiture commission from Adolf Hitler — in favour of replying with a photo of Spare parodying Hitler’s parting and moustache, accompanied by a waspish message denouncing Hitler from Spare’s maverick occultist and esoteric worldview (“Only from negations can I wholesomely conceive you. For I know of no courage sufficient to stomach your aspirations and ultimates. If you are superman, let me be forever animal”). Later, Spare made self-portraits of himself a la Hitler, including some with inscriptions similar to the original riposte.

Survival Research Laboratories: In 1985, Survival Research Laboratories staged ‘Extremely Cruel Practices: A Series of Events Designed to Instruct Those Interested in Policies that Correct Or Punish’ (1 of their apocalyptic spectacles, with automata and other machinery, pyrotechnics, explosives and animal carcasses), as an offsite event for LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions). Beforehand, Survival Research Laboratories found out that some people planned to watch from a nearby bridge, avoiding payment of $8 U.S in 1985 money (and perhaps escape risk from the event itself, enjoying it from a safe-distance, instead of on the frontline). Survival Research Laboratories treated this vantage-point with butyric acid, the stench being so powerfully vile and fowl as to deter people from spending much time near anywhere affected. Also, further extending all total experience and intensity.

J’a©©use / quelle ©oin©iden©e:

Rasheed Aræen: 1970’s and onwards works / live events where Aræen’s earlier Islamic art / design / culture meets western modernist abstraction (arrived at in advance and independently of U.S Minimalism — despite Aræen being in the U.K, non-western and an “outsider”) get played against more socially engaged iconography and political / racist realities.

General Idea: Legal dispute with LIFE magazine over General Idea’s FILE “Megazine” — and the “reformed” numbers (any ensuing work / material?).

Raymond Hains: ‘Flagrant Dali’. In October 1954, Hains was surprised to find that le Club Français du Livre edition of The Secret Life of Salvador Dali “memoirs” of Salvador “Avida Dollars” Dali reproduced his 1947 experimental photograph ‘La main multipliée par un jeu de miroirs’ — without his knowledge, agreement, mention or payment. Supported by others, Hains’ exposed the affair in Combat 20th May 1955. Much later, Hains posed with a croissant as a Salvador “Avida Dollars” Dali “moustache”.

Hi Red Center / Genpei Akasegawa: Emballage / empaquette objects (some as contraband with police labels attached), also production artefacts (such as printing plates etc) and documentation (especially, the retrospective A Bundle of Events, edited by Shigeko Kubota, designed by George Maciunas, published by Fluxus editions, New York, 1965), connected to Akasegawa’s copied ¥ banknotes in Hi Red Center artworks, events and exhibitions — then subsequent law-enforcement action brought (although these Hi Red Center manifestations and the earliest authority investigation were around 1963 - 1964 — the court-case trials were between 1967 - 1970 — by which time the Hi Red Center had disbanded — also worth noting is that the charges against Akasegawa were over producing material resembling official documents — not forgery of legal tender currency).

Mali: ‘Waves’. Work about a local business / advertising company putting out an ad, strangely similar to Mali’s self-portrait with the sea superimposed, not long after being shown nearby.

Douglas Park: Artwork (collage / text etc) about an idea of Park’s seemingly used (but if so, neither aware, consulted, accredited or paid) by another more exposed and successful artist — who was involved in the same project where the same work had appeared.

Campaigns, Exposure, Protest, Satire:

Artists Anonymous: Video recording conflict with landlord of their London space, after being locked out during what was otherwise supposed to be an open-evening.

Damien Bourdaud: ‘Wheres My Catalogue?’ Publication / other material(?) protesting the cancelled reprinting of a catalogue originally put out by Tanja Grunjert of / including Bourdaud. The grounds given, that Bourdaud’s content and imagery were too extreme to justify public funds and resources from the French state / Loire Region.

Guglielmo Achille Cavellini: 2 instances of Cavellini’s “Autostorificizzazione” (“Auto-Historification”) become specifically relevant here. “Autostorificizzazione” (“Auto-Historification”) meant (at least in principle!) launching oneself into history and importance (for more detail, consult “Revelation and epiphany bringing new departures towards sidelines, diversification and even downright career-moves”).

‘Elenco dei Movimenti e Protaganisti’ (‘List of Movements and Protagonists’), 1973. A modern art-history chronology — where Cavellini inserted his “Autostorificizzazione’ where it would be — if recognized and accepted.

Also, in 1976, Cavellini wrote to Dr Willi Bongard at Art-Aktuel periodical, pointing out that the astronomical amounts of “Mostre a domicilio” (“Exhibitions at home”) his mailouts added up to (on grounds of receipt, with or without display), he (a practitioner of “Autostorificizzazione”) should be top of the “Kunstkompass” (chart, listing then-contemporary artists according to success and exposure). Very soon after, Cavellini published his own amended version of the “Kunstkompass”.

Iqbal Geoffrey: In 1984, after London's National Gallery turned down Geoffrey's application to be artist-in-residence (on grounds the position was selected — not applied for), Geoffrey (a lawyer, as well as artist) equally unsuccessfully attempted legal action. Not without widespread media coverage — and Geoffrey's secret scattering of pubic hair throughout National gallery and public urination protest by Geoffrey, using the nearby fountains in Trafalgar Square, as well as relic (dispensing flask).

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Publications / propaganda / editions / ephemera / artwork / media coverage etc connected to Hamilton Finlay’s various “wars” against artworld figures and officialdom agencies (earlier conflicts against editors, publishers and other people of letters; Scottish Arts Council; local regional council / authority over planning permission deficit and subsequent seizure, repossession and evictions; the French artworld over wrongful and unfounded Nazi accusations around time of major public commission; National Trust and Jonathan Cape Publishers for misinterpretations and misrepresentations etc).

David Hockney: 'The Diploma', 1962. In 1962, the Royal College of Art in London warned the already successful David Hockney that he wouldn't graduate if he refused to write an essay. Hockney used the Royal College of Art's own printmaking facilities and personel to produce an etching (including the Royal College of Art's heraldic crest coat of arms!) depicting a scene satirizing the Royal College of Art hierarchy and protocol — as well as the artwork being a parody of a diploma. The Royal College of Art relaxed or even at least partly changed their rules, for Hockney and maybe others.

Some scene-followers created a website, featuring posted concert photographs (since defunct / offline).

Much of Death in June and Julius Martinek’s album, Operation Hummingbird, New European Recordings, 2000, is about the episode (in particular, the lead-in track, Gorilla Tactics).

As Pearce later explained:

Of course, there were no Nazi, skinhead hordes and I didn't play and they got elected. So, life goes on. The fishwives got their way.”

Richard Serra: Documentation (original photographs, artwork, publications and mainstream media coverage) charting the removal and destruction of Serra’s controversial ‘Tilted Arc’ public sculpture.

Run-ins and clashes with bureaucracy, officialdom, law-enforcement and criminal-justice:

Artists Anonymous: Video recording conflict with landlord of their London space, after being locked out during what was otherwise supposed to be an open-evening.

Rut Blees Luxemburg: 'Science Fiction', 2002. During the course of her duties, photographing public places, at night-time, Blees Luxemburg was in a London Royal Park, when some horse-riding mounted police stopped, then asked Blees Luxemburg what she and her assistant were doing. After the police moved on, Blees Luxemburg photographed the track where they'd been, with horse's footprints and manure left behind.

Andre Cadere: Oppositions to Cadere’s ‘Barre de Bois-Ronde’ “placements” squatting other people’s shows uninvited. Having to reduce the size of 1 work (a rod / staff / totem), so as to be allowed in Fondatione Mæght in Paris.

Official adverts placed in art and other periodicals, announcing Cadere as unwelcome / banned from visiting / attending cultural events and venues.

Possibly other problems encountered and compromises and adaptations made.

Coum Transmissions: 1976 Obscene mail prosecution court case (declared as public art event), at Highbury Magistrate’s Court, London — with full documentation and commentary generated in dossier bookwork, G.P.O Versus G.P-O: A Chronicle of Mail Art on Trial Coumpiled by Genesis P-Orridge, Ecart, Geneva, 1976 (much more recently since reprinted by Art Metropole, Toronto, 2002). “G.P.O” stands for the U.K’s then postal agency, “General Post Office”, prosecuting Genesis P-Orridge! The offending specimens were published as cards by Albrecht D’s Reflektion Verlag, Stuttgart.

Felipe Ehrenberg: Expecting, allowing for, keeping and enhancing state censorship of satirical (and pornographically obscene?) cartoons, blaspheming against Mexican government and leaders.

John Giorno / The Dial-A-Pœm Poets: 'Disconnected', LP compilation album, Giorno Pœtry Systems, New York, 1974.

"THIS ALBUM IS A DO-IT-YOURSELF DIAL-A-PŒM KIT

Dial-A-Pœm received millions of phone calls, yet we were disconnected.

Open the lines to the pœts! We used the telephone for poetry. They used it to spy on you. Pœtry plumbers suite! We invite you to do it yourself. Start your own Dial-A-Pœm in your own hometown. Get hooked up to the telephones. Call your local telephone company business office; order a system and put on it these LP selections; put on your own local pœts and we'll supply you with more pœts.

The system we used at The Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Architectural League of New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and in Albany, New York was 12 telephone lines each connected to an automatic answering set, which holds the recording of a pœt reading a pœm. Each phone line has a different pœm and all the phone lines were changed daily. So dialling one number, you randomly got one of 12 pœts. There are 70 Dial-A-Pœm poets, each with at least 12 selections, or over 1,000 selections in all.

The system can disconnect:

your phone,

your gas,

your light,

your food,

your home.

But they don't disconnect pœtry! (yet)"

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Publications / propaganda / editions / ephemera / artwork / media coverage etc connected to Hamilton Finlay’s various “wars” against artworld figures and officialdom agencies (earlier conflicts against editors, publishers and other people of letters; Scottish Arts Council; local regional council / authority over planning permission deficit and subsequent seizure, repossession and evictions; the French “artworld” over wrongful and unfounded Nazi accusations around time of major public commission; National Trust and Jonathan Cape Publishers for misinterpretations and misrepresentations etc).

David Hockney: 'The Diploma', 1962. In 1962, the Royal College of Art in London warned the already successful David Hockney that he wouldn't graduate if he refused to write an essay. Hockney used the Royal College of Art's own printmaking facilities and personel to produce an etching (including the Royal College of Art's heraldic crest coat of arms!) depicting a scene satirizing the Royal College of Art hierarchy and protocol — as well as the artwork being a parody of a diploma. The Royal College of Art relaxed or even at least partly changed their rules, for Hockney and maybe others.

John Latham: Request to return missing library book, letter of dismissal and other material (concerning Latham and other’s partial consumption and distillation of Central Saint Martins Art School library’s copy of U.S critic, Clement Greenberg’s Art & Culture), included in John Latham’s briefcase of relics and documents linked to that episode, ‘Art & Culture (aka Still & Chew)’, 1966 - ‘69, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

George Maciunas: Ephemera about Maciunas’ property and real-estate conflicts with New York legal authorities and criminal underworld. Maciunas deemed his ventures an art project (or mission?) and these premises to be works. Same as with the “discovery” and colonisation of buildings and neighbourhoods anywhere in the world, within and after Maciunas’ lifetime, his and others usage and occupation simply played into the hands of development and gentrification, pricing most pockets and means out of the market.

Jill Magid: In 2005, Jill Magid was commissioned by the Dutch secret service (AIVD) to create a work that would "reveal the human face" of the organization. During the next three years she met with 18 agents who volunteered to be interviewed, but remained anonymous even to her. The project resulted in a variety of forms, among them her non-fiction novel, Becoming Tarden. Forty percent of the manuscript was censored by the AIVD in 2008. After legal negotiations with the organization, Magid agreed to let it seize the uncensored body of the book after being exposed—under glass and out of reach—from her solo exhibition Authority to Remove at the Tate Modern in London, 2009-10. The redacted paperback edition of Becoming Tarden was published later that year.

Some scene-followers created a website, featuring posted concert photographs (since defunct / offline).

Much of Death in June and Julius Martinek’s album, Operation Hummingbird, New European Recordings, 2000, is about the episode (in particular, the lead-in track, Gorilla Tactics).

As Pearce later explained:

Of course, there were no Nazi, skinhead hordes and I didn't play and they got elected. So, life goes on. The fishwives got their way.”

Nota Bene: Whatever else has been and can be rightly or wrongly said, Pearce is openly gay; his previous band, Crisis, were linked to left-wing politics; Crisis and early Death in June bandmate, Tony Wakeford, was sacked partly for (temporary — and later regretted) National Front membership (Wakeford went on to form the temporary Above the Ruins, then the ongoing Sol Invictus –and worked with Pearce, in Death in June and other projects); Death in June have performed in Isræl and Japan — and Pearce claims to have “read more pages of Das Kapital than Mein Kampf” (quote from interview between Douglas Pearce and Ivor Vaganov, Gorod N (n.44 349), 3-9, November, 1999, Rostov-on-Don, reappearing complete on Russian webzine, Achtung Baby, 1999 (since defunct / offline, but still at http://www.deathinjune.org).

Roland Penrose: Penrose's chosen entry of his 'Portrait', 1939 (now in Tate Gallery Collection, London) for the 1940, United Artists exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London — was turned down and returned by selectors after found at least one inscription offensive (most probably, "arse"). Penrose replaced 'Portrait' with another painting ('From the House Tops', 1939), depicting humanoid hands making deaf-and-dumb sign-language — to spell out the more extreme word, “shit”!

"A BRUSH WITH THE R A.

Mr Roland Penrose, the surrealist painter, submitted a

picture to the United Artists' exhibition at the Royal

Academy just opened.

It was rejected, on the grounds that certain written words embodied in its composition were unseemly. But the artist was invited to send an alternative work.

He did so, and it now hangs in a prominent position. lt is a picture of glove-stretchers.

I suggest to the hanging committee that they study the

deaf-and-dumb language. lf so they may find that the

fingers in the picture suggest, by sign, a word even more unseemly than those in the picture they rejected.”

Evening Standard, 8 January 1940. William Hickey (then Tom Driberg)

“I am amused to see that one of the pictures in the Royal Academy's School of Paris exhibition has been borrowed from the collection of Mr Roland Penrose, the Surrealist painter.

It is 11 years since Penrose had anything to do with an

exhibition at the Academy, and on that occasion he caused a fine flutter among the Academicians.

This picture, showed four pairs of hands talking deaf-and-dumb language. Alas for the RAs, The hands were saying a much more unseemly word than the original picture had contained.

The then president of the RA. Sir Edwin Lutyens, laughed when it was pointed out to him that the Academy had been scored off in this way. The picture was not taken down.

Evening Standard, 13 Januarv 1951

- The painting was stolen in 1943, but the monotvpe for it is still in existence and was used by the Arts council for the retrospective exhibition of the work of Roland Penrose in 1980.

From, Roland Penrose, Scrapbook 1900 – ‘81, Thames & Hudson, London / Rizzoli, New York / Ediciones Polgrafa, Barcelona / Editions Cercle d'Art, Paris, 1981

Betty Tompkins: 'Censored Grid'. Both in the early 70's, then later in the 00's, customs official's seizure of Betty Tomkins' large-scale photorealist 'Fuck Paintings' (based on close-up pornography details), inspired Tomkins to make other works on paper, showing same subject-matter, covered in or even made out of images made up from rubber-stamp prints, saying "CENSORED".

Lawrence Weiner & Peter Gordon: ‘The Society Architect Ponders The Golden Gate Bridge’, opera produced and staged in Berlin and Bonn, 2000, bookwork published by Walter Kœnig Verlag, audio excerpt appearing in anthology / compilation, Crosstalk (Bridge Records). Libretto etc based on a transcribed real-life court-case, with Weiner as plaintiff attempting to collect damages for injuries from a car accident caused by an intoxicated driver. However, the court case became centred upon the validity and value of non-object based art.

Dan Wolgers: “The final peak of irritation was reached some months later in an episode at the Liljevalchs gallery, a traditional art venue in the Swedish capital. Wolgers accepted the invitation to participate in a group show, but instead of submitting objects for display, he decided to remove some instead. He stole two quite valuable benches and took them to the Stockholm Auction rooms, where they were sold a few days before the opening. At the exhibition there was nothing to be seen apart from a plate with the artist’s name.

An interesting process, intertwining questions of æsthetics and law, followed: a lawsuit was filed against him by two private citizens, and after a long and absurd trial (the transcript of which is worthy of publication), he was found guilty of misappropriation. The notification of the verdict was mailed to the artist, who immediately - without even opening the envelope — sold it to a Norwegian collector.”

Forgotten / unknown names: Chinese artist (which one? There were 2. Since forgotten the name. Never revisited during its course) in the 2001 survey show, Unpacking Europe at Boijmans Van Abbemuseum, Rotterdam. Before the show even started, this artist staged an intervention in a local street / public place. 2 bogus “policemen” intervened — and robbed the artist. As was said during the press conference, they were “unpacked by Europe!”! Apparently, as part of / in addition to whatever else the same artist/s had in Unpacking Europe, they also included documentation charting progress of the subsequent ensuing investigation of the complaint.

Trojan Horses / Stealth Extras:

Daniel Buren: ‘P H Opera’, 1974 - 1977. After appearing in a group show of conceptual art at le Palais des Beaux-Arts / het Paleis voor Schone Kunsten / Bozars in Brussels, Buren somehow wrangled an overstayed welcome reign-of-terror there — dragging on over the next 3 years. Buren’s presence consisted of a serial changeover of anonymous and discreet, yet dominant and overwhelming interventions, using his customary trademark colour-striped screens, sheets and panelling, appearing and placed in and around different features (these ones, always pale blue and white, almost exclusively using the ceilings, very much referencing that establishment’s long history or tradition of temporary and portable fixtures), while the program carried on as normal. Not counting permanent and public works, ‘P H Opera’ was certainly the most long-term of Buren’s “Institutional Critique” projects — and debatably the most ambitious, daring and challenging. Considered and described as a theatrical spectacle, ‘P H Opera’ interacted with every exhibition staged there during this period. When Buren was meant to appear in a survey of French art — he surrendered his gallery space and publication pages to the young politico collective, POUR. Various developments (and sometimes, difficulty and conflict) happened between Buren, the institution’s hierarchy, personnel, exhibiting artists and organisations. The finale was a bona-fide solo-show only of Buren’s ‘P H Opera’, accompanied by a publication chronicling intentions, origins, course-of-events and afterthoughts. In 1992, Yves Gevært published du velum au volume, a limited edition portfolio, with samples taken from ‘P H Opera’, cut, folded and bound.

Roisin Byrne: ‘Woopsa Daisie’. On the 3rd of the 11th 2008, Byrne was asked to participate in a show and pay for it. After handing over the work, which predictably cracked and broke, the show fee was waivered and Byrne was paid the price of the work.

‘Massage’. On the 4th of December 2009, Byrne placed an order for a neon sign intended to be at all times turned off. On hearing she was in fact the second artist that week to make such an order, she ordered the other artist’s (Ryan Gander!) instead of hers.

Luis Carvajal: ‘Stop History!’, 2001. When Carvajal was 1 of the artists on Alfred Camp’s stand at Art London 2001 artfair, he noticed almost next to Camp’s space was a space leading to some non-public staircase. While passing through the doors of the vestibule was permitted (to get to the other side of the same storey), these accessible stairs were out of bounds. Carvajal decided to use this space, whether or not his work would be allowed to stay. Carvajal’s intervention was to design, print up and cut out some trompe l’œil “graffiti” letters (as he often makes and works with), spelling out “STOP HISTORY!” that he proceeded to spray-mount onto the walls (with all stages videœd). Unsurprisingly, Carvajal’s action met with opposition from the artfair and premises personnel.

Mike Kelley: ‘From My Institution to Yours’, 1987. Installation at Los Angeles County Museum, 1988. "Kelley: “From my Institution to Yours' was basically dealing with the fact that I am a domesticated artist. I am operating within the art institutional world. There are various art institutions, and these institutions are interdependent on each other. I was teaching at Cal Arts and I went into the janitorial offices and took some drawings the janitors did. They were just for their own amusement. I was interested in the fact this is an art academy, there was also some art that was in direct opposition to the institution. This work represents my institution, not from the artist's standpoint but from the worker's standpoint. I was invited to be in a show in L.A County Museum. I built a worker's shrine based on the model of a Russian revolutionary agitprop shrine. I blew up these janitorial cartoons and I put them in this workers' shrine. The idea was, I wanted to run a ribbon through the museum, right through a door that was for employees only, down to the worker's area in the museum so that people who saw the shrine would follow the ribbon and realize they couldn't get through the door, and there would be a big sign there and a battering ram. And the sign would say something like "The Museum is preventing you from joining with the other workers. There is real worker's art down in the bowels of the museum, so take this battering ram and knock the door down and go down and see it." But they wouldn't let me do it... So instead, I ran a ribbon out from the shrine and I hung carrot on it. People followed the carrot and they went into the shrine. I said, well, if I can't perform a union of workers in the museum, then I will set up an open conflict between the museum-goers and the workers. So the guards were instructed that as soon as somebody followed this ribbon into the shrine, they should throw them out. The two institutions were the art school and the museum. And they were my two institutions, presenting my products to the world. That's what the piece was about. It's always a bit embarrassing to be a professional artist and to do the sort of confrontational work and to know you're basically like a neutered doggy. Everything you do is fine and dandy. But at the same time, because I believe art is a symbolic act, it still has an effect on an ideological level. And that's why I'm not totally depressed about art production. In fact, I think it's important that it operates in the intellectual sphere. It isn't just about brute force and slitting each other's throat. That's what politics are."

From, Ein Gesprach A Conversation, Mike Kelley & Thomas Kellein, Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 1994

Rubens Mano: ‘Vazadores’ (‘Leakers’), 2002. Mano’s contribution to the 2002 Sao Paolo Biennale consisted of Mano’s own seemingly belonging, sympathetic and credible entrance — allowing admission to an unpaying and unauthorised public. The relevant authorities decided Mano’s ‘Vazadores’ could stay — only if they had an extra security-guard on-duty, especially to control or even prevent any people getting in that way. Mano chose to appoint a uniformed custodian, to monitor and critique how fairly and effectively this was conducted. Various reasons led Mano himself to pull ‘Vazadores’ during the course of the show, before it would have otherwise ended.

Terry Smith: ‘Stolen Property’, 1996. When Smith was 1 of the selected invitees visiting the former Bankside power station, that’s now the Tate Modern in London, he remembered that his uncle had worked there, deeming it to be a totalitarian environs. Most of Smith’s works were wall drawings, often using imagery and objects found en situ (the burnt remains of a ladder, a drawn and annotated plan of an old fishing boat etc). However, as well as these commissioned and official works, executed at the site and only recorded by photographs and working drawings, Smith also removed and kept door fittings (locks, bolts, handles, keyholes etc). ‘Stolen Property’ is shown in plastic bags a la seized artefacts / court-case exhibits etc.

Survival Research Laboratories: In 1985, Survival Research Laboratories staged ‘Extremely Cruel Practices: A Series of Events Designed to Instruct Those Interested in Policies that Correct Or Punish’ (1 of their apocalyptic spectacles, with automata and other machinery, pyrotechnics, explosives and animal carcasses), as an offsite event for LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions). Beforehand, Survival Research Laboratories found out that some people planned to watch from a nearby bridge, avoiding payment of $8 U.S in 1985 money (and perhaps escape risk from the event itself, enjoying it from a safe-distance instead of on the frontline). Survival Research Laboratories treated this vantage-point with butyric acid, the stench being so powerfully vile and fowl as to deter people from spending much time near anywhere affected. Also, further extending all total experience and intensity.

Jochem Vanden Ecker: While artist in residence at FLACC in Genk, as an extension of his land art and outdoor activities, Vanden Ecker would bring natural objects into public and private places around the interior of FLACC — knowing they contained, bred and attracted insects and left traces.

Krysztof Wodiczko: In 1985, At the height of the late Apartheid Regime in South Africa, as authorized official Artangel public art commission, Wodiczko projected agitprop political iconography onto Nelson's Column, in London's Trafalgar Square. However, Wodiczko also projected a swastika onto the crest of nearby South Africa house. Wodiczko's intervention continued for 2 hours — until prevented by the police (on grounds of being a "public nuisance"). Perhaps deliberately, ensuing dramatic photographs resemble historic images of the Berlin Reichstag. Ever since, this has been often cited and discussed as an instance of effective and powerful art-as-protest.

Revelation and epiphany bringing new departures towards sidelines, diversification and even downright career-moves:

China Adams: 1 of China Adams' works recorded using an official "California All-Purpose Acknowledgment" registered document form (approved by then "Notary Public", Thanoo Sungcavana), declaring: "Let it be known:

On October 24, 1996, China Adams came to the conclusion that her job at the Florence Crittenton Center in Lincoln Heights, California prevented her from spending sufficient time on her series entitled, "Paintings Without Paint." Consequently, she terminated her employment and sought a position which would allow her to work from home, simultaneously earning income while dedicating the necessary amount of time on her paintings. On October 27 1996, China Adams under the alias, Phœbe, was hired as a phone sex operator.

On December 21, 1996, Phœbe engaged in a conversation with "Jœ" from "Los Angeles" enabling her to create her audio-painting without paint diptych entitled, ‘Hail Mary.’

Billy Apple®: Barrie Bates’ 1962 U.K deed-poll namechange to Billy Apple® (and commemorative hair and eyebrow bleaching — depicted in a portrait by soon-to-be Beatles photographer, Robert Freeman, both look and image ahead of their time printed onto many early offset-litho canvases). A decision brought about mainly because of his then trademark works of chromatic bronze fruit still-lives — often of an apple leitmotif. Also, very much part of his increased exploration of links and rifts between art and real-life, often those concerning commodification and society, furthering this interest even more. Many of these early (London and New York) works, serve as striking “missing-links” between Pop-Art and rising conceptualism (ideas, thinking, critique, projects, documentation, information etc). Since then and after returning to his native New Zealand in 1975, Apple® continues to use this name, still investigating corporate commercialism.

Arman: Arman’s chosen name-change was based on a printing error in a 1957 Galerie Iris Clert exhibition invite / catalogue, missing out the “d” from “Armand Fernandez”.

Guglielmo Achille Cavellini: The most extreme of Cavellini’s inventions had to be his “Autostorificizzazione” (“Auto-Historification”), from 1971 until his death in 1990. This meant (at least in principle!) launching oneself into history and importance.

Cavellini’s “Autostorificizzazione” took the form of mass-produced and distributed promotional material (“encyclopedia entries”, stickers, posters, postage-stamps and bookworks etc), as well as original artworks, exhibitions and live performances etc.

While gaining some artworld visibility and even moderate success, Cavellini’s biggest following lay with the international mail-art or “Eternal Network” underground — often leading to work made about Cavellini and playing with his publicity ephemera — and events held in his honour.

See also Cavellini's ‘Cassette che contengono opere distrutte’ (‘Crates containing destroyed works’), 1966 - 1970 and ‘I Carboni’ (‘Carbons’), 1968 - 1970, both included in "Positive destruction and unwasteful disposal towards catharsis, sacrifice, riddance, changed mind, clean break, rift with past, fresh start, moving on".

Danny Devos / Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven / Club Moral: ‘Illegal’ “On July 30, 1980 I mailed out invitations to friends and acquaintances to search me in the International Cultural Centre. Then I went in hiding in the building, without food, drink and with sleeping-tablets at hand. On August 2, 1980 I was found by Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven 30 July – 2 August 1980 – ICC, Antwerpen” Danny Devos

From, Performan, (works, January 1979 – June 1982), bookwork, various, mostly self-published editions, 1982 onwards.

This encounter partly led to Danny Devos (DDV) and Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (AMVK) forming Club Moral punk / industrial / noise / performance / multimedia group, as well as event venue for other’s events, with the interlinked Force Mental fanzine.

Gary Hume: Questionnaire (Hume’s contribution to Instructions Received, curated by Liam Gillick, Galeria Gio Marconi, 1993), requesting opinions, suggestions and advice about possible improvements to his work (at that time, mostly large scale and glossy polytychs of skull-like hospital doors). Interestingly, not long afterwards, Hume quit such almost abstract trademark paintings — in favour of his still glossy, but more imagistic pop icons. Hume’s then-London gallery, Karsten Schubert let Hume go — only for Hume’s new departure to prove more successful than ever before.

Image Bank: An art collective — which became better known and more successful, as an archive / agency serving corporate / communications industry.

Its unclear if any members made any specific works / material, related to this changeover.

Kurt Ryslavy: Establishing an Austrian wine trading business (the 1st in Belgium and amongst the earliest outside Austria), after importing and serving some Austrian wine, as part of You’re Right to Laugh at Galerie Richard Foncke, Ghent, 1990. Since then, Ryslavy’s practice and life as an artist and (Austrian) wine merchant have been intertWINEd as one (or wine) and the same. Ryslavy’s short-story recounting the genesis of his business, appears in every extended European language, in his bookwork, Europær, Schlebrugge, Vienna, 2007.

Lawrence Weiner: Weiner’s embodiment of his plans as statements (flexibly presented and adapted to all manner of media, contexts and places). A strategy which partly came about after Weiner’s appearance in a 1968 group exhibition at Windham College, Putney, Vermont, where Weiner’s planted posts and cord enclosure and barrier ended up at odds against the non-art activities of campus users. Reminding Weiner that it was sufficient or even more effective to use language instead of or even as materials and actions.

The same year (1968), Weiner defined his ‘Declaration of Intent’:

“1. The artist may construct the piece.

2. The piece may be fabricated.

3. The piece need not be built.

Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist, the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.”

Another factor was Count Giuseppe Panza de Biumo, having Weiner’s texts signpainted onto walls.

Generative production, 1 and the very same single stone killing many birds at once: (As well as images of and from part or entire works copied and resurfacing in other works, as done by Art & Language, Marcel Broodthærs, Philip Huyghe, Jasper Johns, Jiri Kolar, Rene Magritte, Giulio Paolini, Vettor Pisani, Ed Ruscha, Patrick Van Cæckenbergh etc)

Joseph Beuys: Beuys’ addition to and regrouping of earlier drawings and works on paper (including juvenilia and even school course work and science projects!). Also, selection and arrangement of extant original works, editioned multiples and personal property in his “vitrines”.

Gino De Dominicis: '14 January 1977 - 14 January 1978', Galleria Pia Monti, Rome, 1977-1978. Distinct features and entire sculptures, remade and brought together into a new composition. Functioning unlike how they would otherwise appear and be considered. Maybe De Dominicis’ attempt at a common-law-of-averages of "findings" and even "achievements", from throughout his life’s-work quest, to solve the setbacks and attain the secrets and mysteries of mortality, life, time, nature, science and reality.

These highlights and greatest-hits number: an 'Invisible Cube' square on the floor; a boulder, inside the crime-scene outline; a balanced red rubber ball; 2 blue vases (1 supported, the other floor-based); all underneath a brass column from the ceiling, tapering off into a sharp spike, where it touches the rock.

Tracey Emin: Earlier artwork, as well as other personal property from her previous life and times. Mainly as examples of human-interest and experience, still as Emin’s own work, but almost becoming readymades or relics.

Lœk Grootjans: 'Foundation for the benefit of the aspiration and the understanding of context (formerly known as the institute for immediate knowledge, real perception and logic features according to the most contemporary monochrome paintings)', 1998 onwards.

Including, 'The Final Remains of a contemporary monochrome Painter...', 1998. Laboratory environment with scientific glassware preserving specimen extracts taken from Grootjans’ materials and works, presented on display, for supposed consideration and analysis, towards supposed “insight”.

Also, 'The Remembering Department', 1998. Storage shelving and other fixtures, mostly empty, except for dust left staying behind, as reminders of where Grootjans’ works and equipment had once been put and kept.

Philip Huyghe: Certain works re-presented again in different states, sometimes deemed as other works altogether.

Martin Kippenberger: Works with existing and remade paintings, housed inside real and made-up industrial containers, as though at some transitional and more humble stage (like transit, storage, awaiting collection, rejection or even disposal), instead of being on display or for sale.

John Latham: During his later life and career, Latham sometimes added to older works, furthering many of his concerns and theories about time.

Bruce Mclean: ‘ People Who Make Art In Glass Houses’, 1969. Mclean posing, making measurements and dressed up to like a “star”, wearing sunglasses etc, in a derelict roofless greenhouse, full-up and overloaded with more of his “New Generation” student sculptures (from his earlier time at Central St Martins) than could fit in or be removed. Another of Mclean’s early works, cynically fault-finding and sending-up problems and traits, to values and practices of both the artworld and society in general.

Giulio Paolini: 'Delfo II', 1968. Photocanvas (part of an irregular series), depicting Paolini himself, wearing and holding some 3d works of his (a statuary bust mask, a robe cloak gown, many flags on 1 flagpole, a flat motif of a vast staircase etc), posing as a travesty of a classical figure or actor, despite otherwise more humble and latterday setting and clothes, still plainly present and visible.

'Unisono', videowork, 1974, ghost images of Paolini's works until then (1960 - 1974), flash up and linger over each other.

Other works by Paolini where images of earlier works or extracts reappear, questioning both limitations and possibilities.

Tom Phillips: Throughout Phillips’ career, he has set out to make residual and secondary by-products, equally inventive and laborious as his idea and subject led output — but concentrating on the act and experience of painting. Durational, matter, process and system paintings, using mixed and unmixed saved / offcast / leftover / remaining / wasted / unused paint, from specific works, fixed timescales and Phillips’ ongoing practice in general. Another sideline of Phillips is to re-present and degenerate imagery already used previously, but unlike when 1st used and created or to the same ends.

Sarkis: Project to actually reuse and transform otherwise finalised extant works, as an ongoing and progressive concern.

Goran Trbuljak: Declaring the verso side of 1 of his paintings to be another separate work altogether, by itself, in its own right and merit.

Franz Erhard Walther: ‘Erst Werksatz’, 1963 - 1969. Walther’s earlier textile works and components, folded up, in storage and on display. Even if wearing or activation isn’t permitted, they can still be viewed and thought about, both as themselves and in relation to the body and action, then immediate and wider environments.

Unknown / forgotten name: Czech painter based in the Netherlands, using multiple paintings simultaneously worked on, to make and process each other (in addition to or instead of brushes and other implements). At least some of them partly look like "snow" and "beach sand" "angels" (bodyprints made by lying down on ground, then moving around, to leave teardop or butterfly shaped motifs), hybrided with the early t.v signal / organic propeller pictures by Lawrence Weiner.

Unexpected and involuntary good-Samaritans, backup, support, collaborators, documentation and outsourced subcontracting:

Rasheed Aræen: Artist’s pages (other works?), using correspondence (and other material?) about other artist’s objection to Aræen’s proposal for / inclusion in a 1980’s show at Ikon gallery, Birmingham — for which Aræen planned to stage the traditional Islamic ritual slaughter and consumption of a live goat (by qualified / authorised priest / butchers etc), alongside the destruction and display of some heavyweight art theory book (published in Aræen’s monograph, Making Myself Visible, Kala press, London, 1984, then later on in Museum as Arena, Kunsthaus, Bregenz, 2001).

Andre Cadere: Official adverts placed in art and other periodicals, announcing Cadere as unwelcome / banned from visiting / attending cultural events and venues.

Possibly other problems encountered and compromises and adaptations made.

Jacques Charlier’s photojournalism exposing Cadere interventions as causing difficulties for ordinary museum personnel. Later, writers, critics and reviewers mistaking Charlier’s cartoons about Cadere — for being work by Cadere himself!

Coum Transmissions: Accumulative display of ensuing press cuttings writing up Coum Transmissions' notorious swansong exhibition, Prostitution, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1976 — as part of the work on show — which Cosey Fanni Tutti later described as “daily press cuttings about press cuttings”!

‘The Gary Gilmore Memorial-Society’, 1977. Postcard with Monte Cazazza. Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti finally met and collaborated with fellow extreme mail and performance artist, Monte Cazazza, during their 1st visit to the United States — just when murderer, Gary Gilmore (who actually insisted on his right to die) was executed. The trio each posed bound in a chair and blindfolded (later, claiming loaded guns were involved). A t-shirt was made and put out by London punk boutique, Boy. Allegedly, a Hong Kong newspaper (which?) somehow obtained 1 or all images, believed them to be official execution pictures and printed them on their front-page.

Alan Jones: Including newsclippings and satirical cartoons about his own infamous fetish maid 3 piece suite furniture in work (such as the 1970’s print portfolio, ‘Ways and Means’).

Katinka “Tinkebell” Simonse: Dearest Tinkebell, bookwork, Torch, Amsterdam, 2009. Mostly anonymous hatemail sent to Simonse, reacting against her art practice (especially that involving the suffering and death of live animals). Further input (such as analysis and critique of the hatemail and senders) by N.R.C Handelsblad, Ine Poppe, Vincent W.J van Gerven Œi and Coralie Vogelaar.

Jeffrey Vallance: Unsuspecting straight mainstream media (oblivious and ignorant as to Vallance’s real motives) approaching Vallance themselves to cover his earlier projects (such as ‘Cultural Ties’ neckwear exchange with world leaders etc).

Douglasism

Monday, September 16, 2013

By Accident

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