Commentary

"Eine Sammlung von Original-Multiples. Herausgegeben in zweimonatigen Abständen von Januar bis Dezember 1968 von William S. Copley. Hergestellt bei The Letter Edged in Black Press Inc., New York in einer Auflage von ca. 2000 Sets. Die sechs Objektumschläge im Format 18 x 33 cm sind in den Original-Versandkartonagen im Format 19 x 34,5 cm verpackt. Sie bestehen aus einer Sammlung von 73 Original-Multiples, in verschiedenen Formaten und Techniken (Papier, Pappe, Kunststoff, Schallplatten, faksimilierte Notizen, Briefe, Bücher, Objekte und Tonbänder). Die Edition wurde 1988 um zwei Tonkassetten ergänzt, die für die Auflage 1968 geplant waren, aber seinerzeit nicht fertiggestellt wurden. Der Brief ist schwarz umrandet." (LL) Manche Objekte befinden sich aufgrund ihrer Größe außerhalb der Objektumschläge (Kunstverpackungen), aber innerhalb der Versandkartonagen. Um das zu dokumentieren wurden von ihnen Einzelaufnahmen angefertigt. (BB)

Linn Lühn und Beate Bischoff

Commentary

De Maria’s Chicago Project consists of proposed sketches and correspondence for then forthcoming exhibition Art by Telephone. Conceived as a “phone-in” exhibition of conceptual art—artists would literally call in their instructions—De Maria proposed the telephone itself as art object: a standard black rotary phone installed in the gallery with an accompanying statement, “If this telephone rings, you may answer it. Walter de Maria is on the line and would like to talk to you.” Although the exhibition would open in late 1969, at the time of publication it was indefinitely postponed, existing, itself, as only a proposal.

Commentary

Exemplifying the dark humor that underpinned many of the SMS contributions, Nancy Reitkopf designed luggage labels from some of the most disasters in history. In addition to the well known Titanic and Hindenburg, Reitkopf also references the Luisitania—sunk by German submarine during WWI—and the Andrea Dorea, a major cruise ship that sank in 1956. In the context of the other well-known events, her reference to the “Calvary Motor Inn” remains a mystery.

Commentary

Known for his early pop art collages, Hamilton continued to use found photographs as his source material, including this postcard beach scene on Whitley Bay, England. Using the accordion bellows of his camera, the artist rephotographed the scene in eight progressive blow-ups to create a paper accordion extending from the sepia postcard. As details are enlarged, legibility breaks down, and a crowded beach is reduced to a single shadowy figure.

Laut Werkverzeichnis Hamilton "Druckgrafik und Multiples, 2002/04" Titel "to Mother" und nicht "for Mother". Mother meint das Mutterbild auf das sich die Ausschnitte beziehen.

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Anticipating his monumental wrapped buildings, Christo first addressed the aesthetics of display with Show Cases, Show Windows, and Store Fronts. Although each is set off with a clear glass facade, the view is immediately occluded by drapes of fabric or paper lining the interior. For SMS, Christo combined his blueprint-like maquettes with the architectural dimensionality of his installations; a rendition of the life-size Corridor Store Front, this hinged booklet reveals an interior sketch through transparent mylar windows cut out of the cover.

Commentary

Das Blatt zeigt die Anordnung der Arbeiten in der Mappe.

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Versandkartonage bedruckt mit: The Letter Edged in Black Press Inc. 246 W. 80th St. , New York, N.Y. 10024

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Well-known for his found-footage films, Conner also worked across media, including pen and ink drawing. His signature style is characterized by meandering rivulets of black ink densely drawn in dizzying ornate patterns. Often using mandalas and other symbology in his designs, here Conner references the economic symbol of value: the dollar bill. Intricate designs are printed on a series of identical “dollars” using the same black, white, and green color palate as US currency. Bound as “Legal Tender,” the identical bills connect art’s reproduction to monetary multiples.

LL

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In dem Briefumschlag mit dem Inhaltsverzeichnis befindet sich außerdem ein Eisstiel.

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Das Blatt zeigt die Anordnung der Arbeiten in der Mappe.

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One of the last pieces the artist produced before his death in October 1968, Duchamp’s Contrapetrie reprises the spinning word-play discs from his 1923 masterpiece Anemic Cinema. The quasi-alliterative phrase inscribed on the front of this record can be roughly translated, “We dodge the bruises of the Eskimos in exquisite words.” The record itself captures Duchamp reading many such enigmatic phrases.

M.M.

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Versandkartonage bedruckt mit: The Letter Edged in Black Press Inc. 246 W. 80th St. , New York, N.Y. 10024

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A wink, perhaps, to Duchamp’s modified Mona Lisa, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), Man Ray reproduced Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic self-portrait. Underlining its nature as copy, a rough black and white reproduction with sepia overlay replaces the fine detail in red chalk of the original. Like Duchamp’s mocking additions of mustache and goatee to the Mona Lisa, Ray creates an assisted readymade by adding a comical smoldering cigar. The authorial power of da Vinci is further undermined by naming him merely as the “father” of his most famous painting.

LL

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This track synthesizes many of the techniques and ideas popular among experimental composers during the late 1960s. While the piece represents a more mainstream take on the explorations of La Monte Young, who influenced Riley tremendously, Riley also incorporates Coltrane-inspired saxophone as well as the effects of time lag accumulators and tape loops, tools that would also become crucial for the composer Steve Reich. These experiments also had considerable impact in the world of popular music, influencing musicians ranging including The Who to The Velvet Underground.

Commentary

Das Blatt zeigt die Anordnung der Arbeiten in der Mappe.

Commentary

Versandkartonage bedruckt mit: The Letter Edged in Black Press Inc. 246 W. 80th St. , New York, N.Y. 10024

Commentary

While the theme of image-reproducibility was important to a number of the SMS project Paul Bergtold’s Concept Bergtold is comprised of an investigation of the Xeroxed image. Building on the success of Mel Bochner’s well-known exhibition of Xerox-filled binders, Bergtold’s delicately folded, loose-leaf artist’s book is filled will with a variety of soft, subtle Xeroxes of a variety of objects. Some, like the Plastic Image, clearly reference the visual language of contemporary abstract painting, while others, like the Vacuum-Formed Image, allude to other the other great reproduced, vacuum-tube image technology–television.

MM

Commentary

Phenakistiscope is filmmaker Hollis Frampton’s hommage to early cinematic devices, a reinvention of the 19th century animated discs of the same name. Printed with instructions to “Impale on Pencil. Peep through slots. Spin counter clockwise. Observe in the mirror,” the spinning disc becomes a hand-held movie set into motion by the hand of the viewer. Creating a whimsical play on this “first true cinema,” the artist used sequential 16mm film images to update the original hand-drawn phenakistiscopes and invent the first photographic one.

LL

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Picard’s individually singed polka-dot bow ties are simultaneously quaint and macabre. Only one in a series of “destruction art” pieces performed by the artist in the late 1960s, burning had become her metier; in the same year, Picard also created Burnt Ties and Cigarette Burned Necktie from silk and plastic men’s ties. Much like the burning of draft cards in the anti-war movement, destruction art was overtly political and socially conscious, directed to “make us more aware of the life-destructive forces of our surrounding reality.”

LL

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20-seitiges gedrucktes Heft mit autobiographischen Impressionen in bedruckter Folie eingeschlagen.

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As part of the nouveau realiste movement, Arman strove for a new literalness in his use of materials. Well known for his installations of quotidian physical objects, Arman here presents a darkly humorous take on the act of squeezing paint from a tube. Tortured Color is a DIY assembly kit for a vise that could compress a paint tube to the point of explosion.

MM

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The earliest pioneer of what was eventually termed “minimalist music,” La Monte developed a signature style based on the isolation and marked prolongation of single tones. Believing that their ubiquity suggested a psychic and cosmic importance, Young quickly turned to electric sounds as the source of his music. By the time that SMS was released, Young had in fact been living an environment of continuous electrical tone for several years.

MM

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Das Blatt zeigt die Anordnung der Arbeiten in der Mappe.

Commentary

Versandkartonage bedruckt mit: The Letter Edged in Black Press Inc. 246 W. 80th St. , New York, N.Y. 10024

Commentary

One of Bruce Nauman’s earliest, publicly exhibited works, Footsteps is part audio recording and part craft project. While the sound aspect of the work relates to Nauman’s longstanding use of his body as an art-making device, the interactive, assembly-required nature of Footsteps relates to many similar examples in SMS. To hear the piece, viewers would have to take apart the paper mount, form a loop with the magnetic tape and then manually maintain tension in the loop as it played on a reel-to-reel machine.

MM

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Die Galerie Linn Lühn ordnet das Werk dem Konzeptkünstler Lawrence Weiner zu.

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Faltblatt mit Gedicht und fotografischem Porträt der Dichterin

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A playful and romantic work, Mend Piece consists of the fragments of coffee mug, a tube of superglue, and the directions to shatter and then repair a mug of your own. In addition to her landmark Cut Piece, Ono’s Mend Piece also references an episode in her courtship with John Lennon. While Lennon was still married to Cynthia, Ono sent the Beatles star an enigmatic gift: a broken cup and instructions for the cup to be repaired. The two became a couple shortly after the release of SMS.

MM

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SMS was intentionally designed without editorial commentary, yet founder William Copley’s The Barber Shop can be viewed as a statement on the core concerns of the publication. A bright orange dossier enclosing newspaper clippings, postcards, and legal documents presents Chicago barber Maestro Gerhard’s controversial fight with city hall to reproduce a drawing of the city’s iconic Picasso Sculpture. The Barber’s Shop reads like a legal brief on art copyright, a case study on the nature of image reproduction so central to the magazine’s own “original reproductions.”

LL

Commentary

Das Blatt zeigt die Anordnung der Arbeiten in der Mappe.

Commentary

Versandkartonage bedruckt mit: The Letter Edged in Black Press Inc. 246 W. 80th St. , New York, N.Y. 10024

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Diadram, shiny silver folder with unbroken seal

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An artist known for drawing on abstruse scientific and mathematical material, Venet’s Astrophysics contains an unidentified voice reading the entirety of “Infrared Polarization of the Infrared Star in Cygnus,” a letter to the editor published by the astronomer Fred Forbes in Astrophysical Journal. While interest the subjects of Cold War science such as information theory reached a fever pitch in the art world at the end of the 1960s, Venet’s often wholesale appropriations of scientific documents pushed this interest to its logical extreme.

MM

Commentary

An artist known for drawing on abstruse scientific and mathematical material, Venet’s Astrophysics contains an unidentified voice reading the entirety of “Infrared Polarization of the Infrared Star in Cygnus,” a letter to the editor published by the astronomer Fred Forbes in Astrophysical Journal. While interest the subjects of Cold War science such as information theory reached a fever pitch in the art world at the end of the 1960s, Venet’s often wholesale appropriations of scientific documents pushed this interest to its logical extreme.

MM

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An example of the sometimes purposefully lowbrow humor that appeared in the SMS publications, Johns in Art Galleries records snippets of conversation the artist overheard in the restrooms of various prestigious galleries. The piece’s title puns on the name of Jasper Johns, an avant-gardist of the previous generation who, by the time that SMS was produced, had become part of the establishment gallery world.

MM

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While many of the works included in SMS were designed to be interactive, only Giorno’s contribution came in the form of a game. Modeled on Surrealist exercises such as the Exquisite Corpse, players are invited to predict their future by drawing cards that each link excerpts of appropriated text with items derived a stereotyped Chinese restaurant menu. While the piece might now seem to have problematic Orientalist overtones, it was intended in the same non-serious spirit as the predictions found on the inside of fortune cookies.

MM

Commentary

Das Blatt zeigt die Anordnung der Arbeiten in der Mappe.

Commentary

Versandkartonage bedruckt mit: The Letter Edged in Black Press Inc. 246 W. 80th St. , New York, N.Y. 10024