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ROUBIB IRIE S)IE Rs

weeeveeSeEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK

Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York
WHERE ARE WE? There are plenty of reasons to wond er. And even more,

perhaps, to ask why we don’t won{™ der mor e often. Especially since the rej ference points we habit-

ually rely upon to situate ourselves are so mf any and so easily mistaken for fjothers bound to lead us

astray. Most of the time we wou Id just as soon pretend that w e are sure of our sur-

roundings, and, so, sure of ourselves and who we are. Rather that than pose the simple questions that
might abruptly shatter the illusion of dependable normalcy. | The decision to enter unfamiliar ter-
ritory means accepting the possibility, perhaps the probability, of losing our way. Travelers relish this
state but mo st of us, even those who dre am of foreign places, are cautious about strik-
ing out on®& our own—though getting lost in af rmchair revery can be dangerous as well. Sometimes
the decision to ve “@ nture forth is made for us, and we wander about, unaware of our jeopardy. Plans
for going “here” misfire and we end up “there,’or nowhere that we know. The
classic fable of thus being transplanted without warning is The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy tells her
companion Toto in a quavering voice, “I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore,” her combined
apprehension and anticipation hit a sympathetic but similarly ambivalent chord in the majority of
listeners. | Parall el worlds like Oz serve double duty. They comment 0 4n and
crystalize aspec own, all the while reassuring us that tr uly there’s no plac
2 “ic J

home.” By whi nt the places whose rules we instinctiv ely understand, he

and endorse. But what of allegorical worlds that do not neat ly ref.
ours, worlds that cannot be reconciled to what we take for granted at “home”? Moreover, what
happens when one steps outside one’s usual environment, only to find that one cannot go back, or
that once back nothing seems the same? The furniture has been moved, and the memory of its orig-
inal configuration blurred. Every th ing is off— slightly or drastically —
lightly off” the most disconcerting ffof all po ssibilities. Art may correct or heighten
this se nse of disorientation; in either case it transp orts us. If hat, at least, is the deeply though
diff erently felt desire of most peop le, and it is far from inconsequential. To be
moved by art is to be lifted out of one’s usual circumstances and taken out of oneself, the better to
look back upon the place one has departed and the limited identity one has left behind. With or
without metaphysics, and for however brief a moment it lasts, this state may be fairly called
transcendence. But where are we th en? The museum is the modern paradigm of
such worlds apart. For some, its§r oom Js enclose a higher spiritual reg ion, in which case
claims of transcendence may take on explic tly religious connotations. These spa “@ re and special
precincts constitute a model for an ise unachievable human orde rliness, as well
as the site for rituals of meditation and adoration. Housing major upheavals this dialectic has occasioned. Futurist per-
altars to pure intent and certain “quality,” they are the unclut- formance and environments, Dada cabaret, Merz-rooms,
se
tered shrines for art’s contemplation. To this way of think- Surrealist gallery installations, and their offshoots supposed
ing, art is both vehicle and destination, with the museum a a holism as absolute as that of transcendent abstraction but
protected and protective domain in which the transposition in every other respect antithetical to it. In these perplexing,
takes place. Even when conceived of in entirely secular or if not alarming, counterrealities one thing did not lead to
materialist ways, the museum as sanctuary exists in defiance another, apparent cause did not produce logical effect, sym-
of the flux outside its walls. bols did not match with or were not governed by their con-
Design variants of the museum and the gallery—which ventional referents. Nor was the gallery the orderly extension
have become virtually interchangeable—are several, but near- of its contents. Quite the opposite. Long before Allan Kaprow
ly all revert to what Brian O'Doherty once and for all tagged theorized Happenings as the spatial and temporal exten-
the White Cube.' This austere box is the essential architec- sions of Pollock’s turbulently overall canvases, artists were
ture for essentialist painting and sculpture. A three-dimen- applying the radical compositional ideas they had developed
sional pop-up version of nonobjective painting’s purest in two-dimensional collage, montage, and paintings to three-
two-dimensional examples, the White Cube is a container dimensional spaces of every type.’
perfectly modeled upon the White (or otherwise flatly paint- Dissent from the established order does not in itself guar-
ed) Squares it was destined to contain. There, an ideally antee the successful artistic expression of an alternative vision,
disinterested viewer confronts of course. It is no easy matter to
autonomous objects whose func- ee Ve sme
yaI IG es)IOS ee represent discontinuity or dis-
tion is to focus the troubled mind. Extreme contingencies function in a compelling way—no easier certainly than to
or mundane encumbrances are not permitted to pass the make a plausible model of perfection. Especially given that
entrance to this rarified realm and so interrupt the mute what actually goes on around us often enough exceeds our
exchange. most irrational fantasies, without mentioning our tolerance
The century has been unkind to such Utopian hopes, for either the reality or idea of chaos. Still, the two impuls-
however. Neither the wholesale transformation of the world es—toward order and disorder—are inseparably linked.
prescribed by social revolutionaries nor its formal reconfigura- Inasmuch as the modernist notion of logical purity was con-
tion according to vanguard blueprints has occurred. ceived of in tension with a modern sense of confusion and
These failures were anticipated or answered by some who unease, then the aesthetic ambition to stir misgivings or instill
modified the puritan version of the modernist program in acute alienation corresponds to the longing for quiet, or con-
its details but persisted in the hope of insulating art from stitutes a form of resistance to oppressive stasis and regula-
worldly imperfections. Meanwhile, the poignant absurdity tion. Successfully contradicting the essentialist view of
of such visions of a benignly rational modernity was always modernity entails finding, if not the elemental terms, then
contested. Often the preferred terms used in opposition were at least the most direct and effective devices for evoking a
pointedly unintelligible, raucous, mocking, or abrasive. A world out of joint. If these devices are to describe a universe
counterforce thus enters into the picture, and its material of myriad parts or extreme polarities they must be economical
expressions occupy an uncertain and destabilizing place with- as well as apt, since concentrating one’s attention on com-
in the White Cube. Any account of modern art that leaves pound or contradictory images demands at least as great an
such a manifold tendency out 1s incomplete, just as any that effort as it takes to reduce experience to a single, coherent
for the sake of polemical convenience denigrates it as an set of variables.
awkward precursor, annoying sideshow, or decadent after- Mimetic in principle, such work offers a mirror to real-
math of high modernism is falsified. ity, but violates expectations by distorting, fragmenting, or
Anti-art is immanent in Art-for-art’s-sake, just as doubt editing the reflection it gives. Never, as so often charged,
shadows belief and protest answers doctrine. Modernism in simply a gratuitous joke at the public’s expense, modernism
its fractured fullness is the history of the minor upsets and of this kind disturbs but does not muddy our vision. Instead,

1. Inside the White Cube: The Ideology ofthe Gallery Space, by Brian O'Doherty, Lapis Press, Santa Monica and San Francisco, 1976, 1986, p. 91. |
Jackson Pollock,” by Allan Kaprow, Artnews, October 1958, pp. 24-26.
2. “The Legacy of
 it sharpens the focus. Transgression is thus ever ready to the works in the exhibition are for its duration linked to the
20
spring the trap on transcendence. Eager to be transported, many comparable constellations of the recent and not so
one can abruptly find oneself thrust through an anything- recent past that fill the separate mansions within modernism’s
but-juvenile Looking Glass. The central image may or may overarching house. One hopes that by their presence these
not hold—for reasons one may or may not easily divine— works will highlight some of the connections between that
but around it, as within it, incongruity, disproportion, and structure and the world around it.
anomalous omissions and inclusions of detail are to be expect-
ed. Not due to sheer perversity of artistic intent, as the pub-
lic is encouraged to believe by genteel philistines who dismiss
DAVID HAMMONS
vanguard provocations as incidental to or digressive from Despite twenty years of activity, David Hammons has been
art’s higher civilizing goal. And certainly not merely in order until very recently a virtual stranger to the museum world,
to distract the viewer from the world with fun-house diver- and remains indifferent to its house rules. The White Cube
sions. On the contrary, the urge to displace or otherwise dis- holds no magic for him. What is to some the laboratory of
orient responds to a still deeper desire to re-place and reorient. art, is to Hammons an arbitrary and ominously clinical envi-
Dislocation, therefore, implies calculated shifts of loca- ronment, inhospitable to the lived forms he collects and
tion and point of view and the indirect collaboration of artist transfigures. If it signifies anything, it 1s the challenge to find
and audience in mapping previously unimagined spaces, or whatever manifestation of ordinary human vitality that has
remapping those taken for granted as self-evident. Such pub- survived or can survive its antiseptic ambiance. Instead,
lic involvement is demanded in the exhibition, since the Hammons has preferred the city as a workplace and its cit-
artists —Louise Bourgeois, Chris Burden, Sophie Calle, David izens as his audience and sometime co-workers. Street flotsam
Hammons, Ilya Kabakoyv, Bruce Nauman, and Adrian and jetsam are his materials. What he brings to the gallery
Piper—have so carefully set the stage for our initial estrange- is all and sundry that it traditionally excludes. What he
ment. All test our vision for impatient habits of observation extracts from those materials and brings to the objects and
and the reflex need for reassurance when confronted by unfa- installations that he has created outside the museum are the
miliar circumstances or familiar but hard-to-endure causes marvels and mysteries that lie already and everywhere to
of anxiety. Each requires the individual beholder to recon- hand along heavily trafficked thoroughfares, in public parks,
sider their identity in light of a given situation and the and in the so-called vacant lots littered with the evidence of
freedom or restriction of movement—hence, perspectives— their constant nomadic occupation and use.
imposed upon them within it. Impermanence is the governing fact of urban reality.
As important as this loosely shared ambition, however, Nothing stays anywhere for long, and nothing stays the same.
are the pronounced differences in intent, method, and moti- Alertness to random possibility is the key to Hammons’s
vation these artists act upon. To that extent, the show’s orga- various production, and that variousness testifies to the luck
nizing principle is at the same time a disorganizing principle. that favors the prepared mind of this scavenging artist.
Mindful of the amount, but especially of the diversity of Accepting the transiency of metropolitan life as a working
installation work currently being done, the aim here has been condition, and gradual dilapidation of one’s art as its like-
to bring together as wide a range of formal, poetic, and social ly fate, is a bold but seemingly self-defeating stance.
practices as possible in such a numerically small sampling. Numerous studio-based artists have made out-of-studio
Representing themselves rather than any tendency or gen- forays, but rarely has that option been adhered to so fully,
eration or group, the artists and their work nonetheless mix for so long, or with such savvy equanimity as it has by
origins, ages, purposes, and styles in a way that meaningfully Hammons. “I like doing stuff better on the street, because
complicates the attitudes and ideas they express individual- art becomes just one of the objects that’s in the path of your
ly, and so constellates a system of intricate connections and everyday existence. It’s what you move through, and it doesn’t
equally telling disjunctions. Spread throughout the muse- have superiority over anything else.”* As a result, much of
um, including the subtly changing “permanent” collection, his work survives only in memory or in photographs. Besides

3. “David Hammons,” by Kellie Jones, Real Life Magazine (Autumn 1986), p. 4.

his body-prints and paper pieces of the 1960s and 1970s— Moreover, Hammons noted, “a black person’s lips have
21
born in Southern Illinois and educated in Los Angeles, where touched” every bottle from which they came, and every one
he started to work, the artist came to New York in 1974— that he recycled to make his bottle-brick fences and coils.°
and his ongoing creation of smaller assemblages, some of The street-wise recognize them for what they are: empty
Hammons’s most important pieces have disappeared, among pints of Night Train, poor people’s wine of “choice.”
them, Delta Spirit, a collaboratively built beach cabana done Unmistakably emblematic of the African heritage are the
in 1983, and the two versions of Higher Goals (1982 and 1986), twists and clumps of hair Hammons collects from barber-
telephone-pole-high and bottle-cap-adorned basketball hoops shops and binds into or glues onto wire, paper, rock, and
and boards placed in a Harlem lot and in Brooklyn’s Cadman elephant dung—the latter harvested from Brooklyn’s Prospect
Plaza. Several of Hammons’s indoor environments have also Park Zoo. “T first saw hair on some African sculpture in the
been broken up, for example, his untitled homage to com- Chicago Art Museum [sic],” Hammons recalled. “I decid-
poser and saxophonist John Coltrane and evocation ofjazz’ ed that that was the essence of African culture. You look at
musical migrations in America done for the downtown space that hair: no one can have that hair unless you're African.
Exit Art. That was my common denominator to making purely African
Like jazz, Hammons’s art consists of improvisations on art. People of color have wooly hair.” °
a repertory of themes. As often as not, it cues into and off In this and many other ways, Hammons’s work, includ-
of the intuitions and energies of his temporary collabora- ing Public Enemy, his piece for this exhibition, identifies and
tors, be they builders, sidewalk supervisors, or musicians. identifies itself with a people omnipresent in the United
Even with a long lead time or a complex project, the artist States, yet constantly overlooked or pushed to the margins.
prefers to make it up as he goes along on site. Such was the Hammons'’s elusive ubiquity makes an argument and stakes
case for this exhibition: various proposals were discussed a claim on their behalf; he is the everywhere and insistently
during the year that has preceded it, but until Hammons visible spirit of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Working
arrived for the actual installation all options remained open uptown in Harlem, across the river in Brooklyn, and down-
and the result wholly unforeseen. Largely constructed or town on the Battery beach or on Saint Mark’s Place, the
composed out of found objects and leftover substances, artist has taken the measure of New York and made his
Hammons’s work constitutes a reclamation project of sorts. whimsical but uncompromising persona known through-
Like Surrealist assemblage, his method thus fulfills the role out. This hit-and-run strategy has an urban guerrilla aspect,
of revaluing discarded artifacts by recombining them with but, instead of attacking the already scarred city, Hammons
other eccentric and unwanted bits of debris. Yet, inasmuch embellishes it, leaving behind lyric reminders of the richness
as Hammons secures an at least temporary place and pur- of African-American culture and of its healing powers. A
pose for things dislodged from their original locations or product of that culture and of the streets in which so much
function, his particular choice of materials is predicated on of it has been nurtured, Hammons’s sensibility thrives on
a cultural rootedness equal to their physical rootlessness in harsh realities ignored by many but at their own risk, since
the hard city setting. as they worsen in neglect the peril posed to all only increases.
The culture in question is that of Americans of African “The reason I love New York is that the social conditions
descent. A short index of the things Hammons conjures with are so raw. You don’t have to guess what’s going on,”
includes: bottles, bottle caps, paper bags, fried chicken wings, Hammons has said.’ When he sets to work, having exposed
coat hangers, cigarettes, old cloths, boom-box radios, records, himself to that rawness, “all of the things I see socially—
tires, hair. Each has a “spirit” already in it, Hammons has the social conditions of racism—come out like sweat.”®
said, and each invokes yet other spirits in the manner of its Among the challenges facing Hammons—and anyone
redeployment.’ Bottle caps are applied to poles and woven who understands htm—is to confront racism and the vio-
into shredded tires like cowrie shells in traditional African lence it gives rise to and turn them around, thereby enlist-
craft. The tens of thousands of bottle caps he has thus incor- ing destructive energies in constructive causes. A case in
porated were retrieved from Harlem bars by the artist. point: in 1988 Hammons painted a blond, whiteface

4. “Art People: Hammons’s Visual Music,” by Douglas McGill, New York Times, July 8. 1985, p. 15. | 5. David Hammons,”
by Kellie Jones, p. 4. | 6. “Tragic Mask Sparks Hammons Retrospective at P.S. I,” by Charlie Ahearn, The City Sun, January 16-22, 1991, p. 25.
| 7. “Issues & Commentary II: Speaking Out: Some Distance to Go...” Art in America, September 1990, p. 80. | 8. Ibid.
 likeness of Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, with the a very specific situation. Little is gained and much is obscured
22,
caption “How do you like me now?” and placed it in the by drawing hasty parallels between his work and that of con-
heart of a black section of Washington, D.C. Taking the ceptual or installation artists of the West, although Kabakov
piece as an affront, some men from the neighborhood and his peers did have limited access to European and
knocked it down with sledgehammers. Exhibiting the piece American art magazines, and for the past twenty years their
two years later in his retrospective, the artist left the dents work did on occasion mysteriously materialize outside the
and made a foreground fence of hammers. A critical reflection Soviet Union before the artists themselves were at all free
of racist stereotypes, the image had been additionally charged to leave. Essentially Soviet in his attitudes and sources, this
by the hostility vented on it—a hostility provoked by the collector of refuse is by the same token a collector of souls
very racism it accused. Both the portrait and the hammers in the tradition of Gogol. His universe—and it is a large
“represent the anger felt by blacks,” Hammons said. “They one—is peopled by the myriad alter egos he has reconsti-
didn’t smash it. They anointed it.” tuted from his sweepings. Or else, projecting his own mul-
Work that makes its ties to a specific community so clear tifaceted identity into and through these archetypes, he has
risks being dismissed by the uncomprehending as narrowly provided them with rooms oftheir own in which to live out
addressed to that primary community or merely typical of it. or reinvent their destinies. Often crammed together within
No such ghetto encircles or confines Hammons. As local as the tight seclusion of a re-created collective housing project,
his aesthetic is, it is also cosmopolitan; Antonio Gaudi, Marcel these spaces are the frameworks of their existence and their
Duchamp, Federico Fellini, and Simon Rodia, self-trained self-portraits.
architect of the Watts Towers, are all acknowledged influences. A much-looked-up-to elder unstatesman of the Soviet
Hammons’s junk-amalgams also bear comparison with avant-garde, Kabakov has been active since the mid-1960s.
Rauschenberg’s Oracle or his early Combines. Each of these Born in 1933 into a poor and fatherless household, he matured
examples exudes the atmosphere of its particular place and during World War II and the worst period of Stalinist and
moment—fin de siécle Barcelona, Paris and New York of post-Stalinist oppression. Trained from the age of ten to be
the teens and twenties, postwar Italy, the anarchically expan- an artist, Kabakov long earned his livelihood as an illustra-
sive City of Angels at midcentury, or New York in the six- tor. Starting with stories by Sholem Aleichem, he has made
ties. Hammons’s work does the same. With this distinction: drawings for over 120 published works, most of them for
he never stands still and he travels light. Setting out from children. The fanciful but entirely legible graphic manner
125th Street in Harlem, Hammons has given himself a rov- he developed for that purpose is the hallmark of his inde-
ing vantage point from which to view the larger world. As pendent projects. Working the gap between writing and the
he shifts ground, however, the markers he leaves behind always plastic arts—but always leery of great literature and great
direct our attention to his point of departure, in effect dar- painting—Kabakov is to a large extent a book artist, though
ing us to take the A Train and retrace his path to its acces- hardly a bookish man. Prior to the mid-1980s much of his
sible but still more distant African origins. production consisted of boxed, loose-leaf albums, in which
he would develop a single image or idea over pages of neat-
ly rendered drawings and text. Each of these was a parable
RE eka AKO. of or extended metaphor for the longings and constriction
Ilya Kabakov’s world is as cramped as Hammons’s is wide of contemporary Soviet life. Since that time, he has taken
open and far-flung. At any rate, that is the first impression. some of those themes and realized them as full-scale envi-
Both are dense with humanity, both subsist on scraps. “For ronments. Although different in conception, his omnibus
us, the art lies here on the streets,” said Kabakov of the 10 Characters, for example, exists both on the page and as sit-
Soviets of his generation. “It’s not the artistic tradition but uational sculpture.
daily life that brings new ideas.”'° “No garbage is more or Installations seem to spring from his hand without hes-
less important, it is all midportant.”"' In perfect agreement tation, as if they had been slowly perfected in his mind long
with Hammons’s on this, Kabakov’s attitudes are native to before there was any prospect of actually building them.

9. “Scorecard,” Sports Illustrated, December 24, 1990, p. 14. | 10. “Ilya Kabakov: Profile of aSoviet Unofficial Artist,” by Katrina F.C. Cary,
Art & Auction, February 1987, pp. 86-87. | u. “The Man Who Flew Into Space,” by Robin Cembalest, Artnews, May 1999, p. 178.
When invited to do a piece for this museum, the artist briefly bleakness and awkwardness of mainstream Soviet life to
reconnoitered the galleries and then quickly detailed his pro- which they are the oppositional exception. Meanwhile, some-
»
posal in a notebook. Between that sketch and the final work, thing has happened to disrupt the meeting, and viewers are
he made no major changes. invited to look down, from the boardwalk that
Common to his work in both two- and three-dimen- inexplicably traverses the hall, at a massing of tiny white
sional formats, besides a melancholy humor, is an uncanny figures that appear to be the cause of that disruption.
ordinariness. As remote as its historical context and as alien Who these intruders are is never said. Impossible to make
as its decor, this completely imagined world induces an out individually, they are nonetheless oddly imposing. In
immediate suspension of disbelief. Well-worn or desper- part that is a result of their number and spotlit centrality.
ately homemade, everything that awaits us seems to have In larger part, though, it is a function of their mysterious
been there a long time, imbuing the atmosphere with a com- but hinted origins. Minuscule and ephemeral, these fea-
fortless nostalgia. The clock has stopped for these orphaned tureless white “everymen” are emanations from the vast and
objects and vacant chambers, and it stops for us as well. even more featureless white void that envelops and occa-
Making sense of the illusion that we so readily accept is sionally opens into Kabakoy’s otherwise claustrophobic archi-
difficult, however, since the situations and protagonists depict- tectures. Warrenlike, those habitations are not just
ed are not merely foreign but intrinsically absurd. Kabakov’s nightmarish improvisations of collectivization. They also
dissent is thus slyly insinuated into a skewed naturalism. protect their dwellers from being cast adrift in the still more
Rather than overtly caricaturing official Soviet art in the terrifying wastes of a nation forever tearing itself down to
fashion of younger artists such as the émigré team of Komar build itself up. But even as they are sheltered from this no-
and Melamid, Kabakov has turned its conventions inside man’s-land, the blinding white vacuum beckons Kabakov’s
out with an almost affectionate regard for their stolidly pro- characters, promising escape from their mean quarters.
saic inadequacy. Some years ago, Georgy Lukacs argued that Although represented by flat white-paper cutouts, this empti-
instead of being its antithesis Solzhenitsyn’ fiction signaled ness 1s a dynamic volume.
the long-delayed fulfillment of the Socialist Realist program. Playful as it is at times, and now imperceptibly circum-
For different reasons in a very different time, Kabakov has scribed by the summer revolution in Moscow, Kabakov’s
fused that aesthetic to countertendencies represented by art is in its context as pointedly political as any being made
Bulgakov and the others in that long Russian line of satiri- today. It is also a positive demonstration that if such art is
cal metaphysicians and mystics, producing a kind of Socialist to powerfully address social conditions it must first and
Surrealism at once grim and magical, down-to-earth and finally excite the imagination. Poetic reference to a snow-
otherworldly. bound and eternal Russia, ambivalent commentary on
The Bridge has elements of both. As Kabakov explains in Bolshevism’s failed Utopia, Kabakov’s fathomless and active
his notes for the project, installation as a medium permits emptiness is at the same time metaphoric of a universal exis-
the sharp juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible artifacts tential dilemma. All who are subject to its conflicting terms
and symbols, and therein lies its attraction. The basics are experience their incommensurable imperatives as a constant
simple. From the utilitarian furniture that crowds the room, tug between movement and inertia, vibrant hope and numb
to its plain doors and stark lighting fixtures, Kabakov’s recon- despair, turmoil and regimentation. Implicit in the Sublime,
struction of The Tenants’ Club of Moscow Housing Project accordingly, is an equally boundless Anti-Sublime. That is
No. 8 gives one a sense of the dreary mediocrity of Soviet what Kabakov means when he writes, “Every person living
society. Nothing is spared his precise, unsentimental atten- here lives, consciously or not, in two dimensions, the first is
tion. This unwelcoming gathering place has been set up for ‘construction’ organization, the second, the destruction and
an official lecture on the demerits of unofficial art, examples annihilation of the first. Emptiness creates an atmosphere
of which are propped against the drab gray walls between of stress, excitedness, strengthlessness, apathy and causeless
oxblood banners. Although the work of artists outside the terror.”'* Seeking refuge in burrows and islands of habita-
system, the paintings nonetheless exemplify some of the tion, he continues, people “build bridges across emptiness.

io, “On Emptiness,” by Ilya Kabakoy, translated by Clark Troy, Between Spring and Summer; Soviet Conceptual Art in the Era of Late Communism,
Tacoma Art Museum and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1990, p. 55.
24 But these communications, all of these roads, paths, high-
ways, rivers and railroads belong to a somewhat different
“As far as the work goes, I feel it is completely apolitical,”
she told Lucy Lippard in a 1972 interview.” The question
form of emptiness and are in a certain sense the opposite of she asked at the outset was simple: “How are people when
the life of islands, this fellowship of people swimming in you're not there?” An implicit corollary was: “What are the
emptiness.” The restlessness such alienation prompts is boundaries of personality when one carries on as if they were
nonetheless positive: “One of the most important signs of not there?” As a response, Piper devised a series of actions
life is flight, dislocation, driveness. The wind of emptiness she performed on public buses: talking to herself, for exam-
carries off and blows residents from their burrows . . . admit- ple, or—the opposite—stufhing her mouth with a cloth. In
ting no delay, letting no one become rooted. Each person ts either case she proceeded as if nothing she was doing was
provisionally present here, as if they have arrived from out of the ordinary, all the while closely monitoring the
nowhere very recently.”'* Viewers who peer down from effects of her behavior on others and on herself. Her culti-
Kabakov’s bridge at the jumble around them and the dele- vated eccentricity was far from gratuitous, and so, despite
gates of emptiness huddled and untouching beneath their its outward appearance, far from Dadaesque provocation.
feet participate in this uneasy condition. Poised between dull Although she adhered to the principles of Conceptualism
disorder and the ambiguously luring abyss, they are neither as set forth by Sol Le Witt, who maintained that “trrational
above nor beyond it all, but smack in the middle of the thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically,” Piper
no-place at the core and periphery of Kabakov’s cosmos. differed from her friend and colleague in that she was not a
“mystic,” but a strict rationalist in search of demonstrable
truths. Pitting logically determined misconduct against illog-
eS AAS Da EAI ical decorum, her performances were less instances of anar-
Adrian Piper describes a related predicament and insists that, chism or purely aesthetic speculation than of a philosopher
whether conscious of the fact or not, the public shares it testing a hypothesis.’*
with her. An African-American woman of very light com- Inevitably, the question of how people are when you're
plexion, Piper occupies the all-but-untenable middle ground not there raises the follow-up question of why they may
between Black and White. At worst, given America’s histo- refuse to see you when you are. The issue’s significance and
ry and habits, this means a zone between bitter adversaries; awkwardness increase as it becomes apparent that the rea-
at best, for the time being, it is fraught with possibilities for sons for refusing to recognize someone’s presence can be
hurtful misunderstanding. In either case the territory is ill- linked precisely to the attributes that make them stand out.
marked and its frontiers and extent unclear. Although her Not paying attention to a woman on a bus with a rag in her
situation is unusual and specific—at once hereditary and mouth—or, nowadays, a woman in rags—takes a special
socially preordained—the ramifications of her investigations effort. Not identifying the woman you are speaking to as
into it are far-reaching indeed. “black” because her skin appears to be “white” is a subtler
Piper's sustained exploration of this treacherous middle matter, but it may require a similar denial that entails unpleas-
ground represents a confluence of personal necessity and ant consequences for both parties. In 1986, after repeatedly
firm artistic decision. Turning a blind eye and a closed mind finding herself in situations where people made racist com-
to it is a common and to a degree understandable reflex, ments, apparently unable to discern her heritage or unwill-
given the odds that curiosity will be repaid with a slap. All ing to believe that someone who looked like her and mingled
along, however, Piper has shown a predilection for ambigu- in their setting could be “black,” Piper responded by print-
ous situations. Well before her work centered on problems ing up a calling card she then handed out to ignorant
of racial identity and self-identification, she was preoccu- offenders. It reads as follows:
pied by the criteria used to differentiate people and the Dear Friend,
unspoken limits set on their conduct. Having started as a Lam black.
minimalist sculptor in the late 1960s, the artist’s early con- Tam sure you did not realize this when you made/ laughed at/ agreed
ceptual experiments were unconcerned with social issues. with that racist remark. In the past I have attempted to alert white

3. Ibid., p. 56. | 14. Ibid., p. 59. | 15. “Catalysis: Interview with Adrian Piper,” by Lucy Lippard,
reprinted in From the Center: Feminist Essays on Woman’s Art, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1976, Pp: 170. | 16. “Sentences on Conceptual Art,”
by Sol LeWitt, reprinted in Sol LeWitt, edited and with an Introduction by Alicia Legg, essays by Lucy Lippard,
Robert Rosenblum, and Bernice Rose, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1978, p. 168.
people to my racial identity in advance. Unfortunately, this invariably suffering and strife they depict alongside images of com-
causes them to react to me as pushy, manipulative, or socially inappro- fortable middle-class life, “but it is your responsibility.”
45
priate. Therefore, my policy is to assume that white people do not make Ultimately, any system based on bloodline percentages
these remarks, even when they believe there are no black people present, and or categorical distinctions of skin color is absurd. In every
to distribute this card when they do. way injurious to individuals and to society, racism is, not
I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure least, an offense to reason. Piper, a trained and practicing
you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me. philosopher as well as an artist, and in that unique among
Sincerely yours, her conceptual peers, pointedly instructs us that rationality
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper cannot blandly coexist with irrationality, nor can it survive
The strategic poise Piper maintains in the face of casual big- in a vacuum. Those propositions are the focus of her con-
otry is consistent with the basic thrust of her thinking. tribution to this show. The third in a series of recent instal-
Wounded rage, the natural response to such an affront, she lations, all with the same title, What It’s Like, What It Is, #3
sublimates into stern civility. A product of the will and of consists ofa tiered geometric structure reminiscent of min-
the mind, this patient, didactic persona is her praxis and the imalist sculptures of the 1960s and 1970s. In the middle stands
form of her content. Rather than accommodate others, the a tall box, each facet of which frames a video screen. Together,
artist's severe politeness affirms their existence, flaws and all, as if in three dimensions, they show the face, back, and left
and demands of them full reciprocity. At issue is the ever- and right sides of a black man’s head. The litany he enun-
treacherous gap between appearance and reality, reflex ciates and denies represents a partial list of negative charac-
response and reasoned conclusions. Regardless of the
99 66
teristics ascribed to his “kind.” “T’m not pushy,” he says,“I’m
medium she chooses—since 1967 Piper has worked in not sneaky, I’m not lazy, I’m not noisy, I’m not vulgar,
performance, texts, sound, drawings, photomontage, and I’m not rowdy, I’m not horny, I’m not scary, I’m not shift-
installations—the set of problems she addresses remains the less, ’'m not crazy, I’m not servile, I’m not stupid, I’m
same: at what threshold do people perceive difference? under not dirty, I’m not smelly, I’m not childish, I’m not evil.” As
which circumstances do they admit to it? where does your he speaks, his head turns and his gaze sweeps the pristine
physical or psychic space end and mine begin? is there any amphitheater, staring back at those that stare at him, as well
such space that we share? as at his own mirrored image on the surrounding walls. From
Perversely, the fact of racism is one of the key things we all sides come music and, faint behind it, the noise of a crowd,
in this country have in common: the borderline of “black- vital and vastly bigger than the one in the room: it is the
ness” as it is generally understood is the borderline of “white- sound of the populous and motley world beyond.
ness” as well. In a mixed and miscegenating society, no one In other words, at the center of the White Cube stands a
can claim to know its exact location. Piper’s unfixable place “black” victim of offhand insults and arbitrary classification.
in that polarized schema is empirical proof of the schema’s These incompatible terms—the reassuring order of Platonic
failure to describe reality. Her decision to make her “black- forms and the intrusive Other whose identity hangs in the
ness” public thus serves not merely to warn whites of her balance between hard-lived fact and oppressive fiction—
critical presence but to remind them that, given this nation’s define Piper's dilemma and ours also. Were it not a question
history, their own racial makeup may be subject to question. of race, but of sexuality, or class, or of whatever kind of desire
And even if it were assured, the logical and moral impera- brutally conflicts with actuality, the tension between tran-
tive to recognize and reject prejudicial stereotypes remains scendent aspirations and the weight of the human condition
a general obligation and hence a bond among citizens of all would be the same—and the sadness, since the damage done
ancestry. “If chose to identify myself as black, whereas you is to those who have every right to think, imagine, and act
do not,” Piper explained in her 1990 video installation Out without prior constraint. On that score, Piper shall have the
of the Corner, “that’s not just a special fact about me. lesa last words, from a recent autobiographical essay; counter-
fact about us. It’s our problem.” “It’s not your fault,” read posed to those of Hammons, Kabakoy, and other artists in
several of her most recent photomontages, referring to the the show, their sense, already large, becomes larger still.
 Abstraction is flying. Abstracting is ascending to higher and higher curled himself up into a 2' x 2' x 3' space for the duration
26
levels of conceptual generalization; soaring back and forth, reflectively cir- of the performance; in Bed Piece (1972) he remained silent on
cling around above the specificity and immediacy of things and events in a cot for twenty-two days. These were exercises in with-
space and time... . Abstraction is also flight... . Abstraction isfreedom drawal and solitary endurance. Shout Piece (1971), in which he
from the socially prescribed and consensually accepted. ... Abstraction is sat suspended above a gallery floor surrounded by glaring
a solitary journey through the conceptual universe, with no anchors, no movie lights and yelled at unwary entrants, “Get the fuck
cues, no signposts, no maps... .” out, get out immediately,” and TV Hijack (1972), in which
Until the racial tensions plummeted Piper back to earth, Burden interrupted a cable-television interview and held the
this was her unrestricted intellectual and aesthetic domain. host hostage at knife-point, were as confrontational as the ear-
That fall was triggered by the anxiety of whites, and while lier examples were withdrawn or masochistic.
accepting its direct consequences, Piper does not disown her Whether he was acting out violence or directing it toward
past revery nor concede its future return. himself, the reasons for and discipline necessitated by Burden’s
Each of [their |responses—fear, fantasy, mistrust, suspicion, anger, early works were the same: transforming ideas and images
confusion, ignorance—obstructs my self-transcendence, my ability to lose into crucibles, Burden wanted to touch raw nerves. The
myself temporarily in the other, in the world, in abstract ideas. These are artist’s habit of putting himself and others in actual harm’s
the barriers my art practice reflects, because they are the ones that keep me way also puts Burden directly at odds with the “simulation”
grounded. ... Lam no longer drunk on abstract theory, because the sober- theorists of the 1980s. For the latter, the world exists only
ingfacts press in on my daily life too insistently. . . . So partly by my as a composite of simulacra or representations; for Burden
own choice, partly by accidents of my birth and position in society, I am the body is a conceptual medium, not a concept. Instead of
cornered, hemmed in, somewhere in the basement of the building, prepar- shocking the public’s sensibilities, Burden sought to jolt its
ing to crash my way out. My art practice is a reflecting mirror of light senses so as to activate being and consciousness simultane-
and darkness, a high sunny window that holds out to me the promise of ously. The threat of danger or discomfort ceased to be an
release into the night."* aesthetic or symbolic gesture and became a jarring event, for
which the artist prepared himself mentally and physically.
Naysayers and thrill-seekers forced Burden to revise his
(Ce
Uk Us) Mole
IB Aedes tactics, however. As with other kinds of situational art, one
“Pretend not to know what you know” is a recurrent text really had to be there, but few people were, and among them
in Piper's latest work. Verifying what we know firsthand even fewer reliable witnesses. Except for the artist’s own terse
against what we know intellectually has been Chris Burden’s accounts of each action, and a certain amount of art-world
long-standing project. Of a generation with Piper—Burden commentary, the literature around Burden’s performances
presented his first performances in 1971—the latter artist is tended predictably and discouragingly to the extremes of
the more empirical of the two. Initially his body was the ridicule or sensationalism. On the one hand, then, he was
prime tool of research, and he put it to extreme tests. Most dismissed as a preposterous art-fakir, on the other, he was
infamous was Shoot. Curious to know what it was like to be cheered on as a vanguard daredevil. Newsweek critic Douglas
shot, Burden stood in front of a gallery wall and had a friend Davis dubbed him “the Evel Knievel of art.”
put a .22-caliber bullet through his arm. Other comparably From the late 1970s onward, Burden diversified his means,
painful or perilous actions consisted of the artist strapping producing objects, machines, assemblages, collages, and
himself to live wires in such a way that a small mishap would artist’s books. Whatever format he chooses, he continues to
complete the circuit and electrocute him (Prelude to 220 or literalize ideas, particularly institutional or political attitudes
110 [1971}), of his lying corpselike next to a car parked close normally taken for granted. Invited to make a work for the
to street traffic (Deadman [1972]), of his crawling almost Wadsworth Atheneum in 1985, Burden constructed a pyra-
naked across shards of glass (Through the Night Softly [1973]), mid of gold ingots worth exactly one million dollars, and
and of his being nailed Christ-like to a Volkswagen surrounded the decidedly arte-non-povera construction with
(Transfixed [1974]). For Five Day Locker Piece (1971) Burden “armed” matchstick guardians. That same year he installed

17. “Flying,” by Adrian Piper, in Adrian Piper: Reflections 1967-1987, curated by Jane Farver, Alternative Museum, New York, 1987, p. 20. |
18. Ibid., p. 24. | 19. “Wrestling the Dragon,” by Suzanne Muchnic, Artnews, December 1990, p- 128.
Samson at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. Consisting of a A Tale of Two Cities, or the recent design for an ecologically
turnstile connected to a mechanism powering a jack that sound, sail-driven destroyer—Burden has remained neutral.
27
drove two massive pressure-plate-capped timbers against the Neither an avowed pacifist nor declared partisan, he is
outer walls of the museum each time a patron entered, fascinated by the potential for violence but refuses to take
Burden’s “exhibit” measured traffic by increments that would sides. The politics of his work consists not in his approval
eventually precipitate the collapse of the museum itself. or disapproval of the arms race or the ostensible justifications
Burden’s 1986 excavation of the floor and concrete footing for it, but in his determination to render intelligible the huge
of Los Angeles’s “Temporary Contemporary,” Exposing the scale on which preparations for war are constantly being
Foundation of the Museum, was a similarly ambitious and even made. “I’m interested in the gray areas, not black or white.
more obvious act of cultural undermining. Apparently I like to take something that people look at one way and
fulfilling alarmists’ worst fears of aesthetic subversion, the turn it around and examine it from the opposite direction.
work allayed them at the same time. After all, both institu- When I did a piece on the neutron bomb, that didn’t nec-
tions still stand, and the usual business of art goes on inside. essarily say that the neutron bomb was a bad thing.”” But
To Burden’s way of thinking “deconstruction” is scarce- he added, “I kept thinking, 50,000 tanks, what the hell is
ly word-play: it’s a contracting job. The artist voiced the that? Did they drop a digit? Add one too many? It’s an
implicit questions posed the White Cube by these two pro- abstraction rather than a real thing, and my fear is that peo-
jects in a recent interview. “Is the museum a pretty thing, a ple make those kinds of decisions in a very abstract way, like
temple to architecture?” he asked rhetorically. “Or is it just the B-52 pilots who used to eat lunch while dropping bombs
a tin shed whose only value is to keep the rain off the art?” over Hanoi: they couldn't see or hear the bombs go off so
Far harder to objectify and so demystify than the sym- it wasn’t real to them.”
bols of cultural authority are the abstractions used to appor- Conceived of seventeen years after the end of the American
tion political clout. In an international balance of power phase of the conflict and almost ten years after the comple-
based on mutual deterrence, all the contenders calculate their tion of Maya Lin’s Washington monument to our troops,
relative advantage—or disadvantage—in stockpiled weapons. The Other Vietnam Memorial is Burden’s effort to make the full
Generals and arms dealers persuade the public that there is impact of our might real. Although the Memorial is a depar-
safety in numbers, but after a certain point the numbers sur- ture from his “gray-zone” projects because of the artist’s
pass comprehension. If so many bricks of gold equal a mil- stated opposition to United States involvement in Southeast
lion dollars, how many submarines—paid for by how many Asia, the point of commemorating the Vietnamese dead is
million millions of dollars and pounds of gold—make up less a laying of blame than an accounting of the sheer mag-
the American fleet? Or, to get an accurate measure of the nitude of the slaughter in which we took part. At first much
former Red Menace, how many tanks could the Warsaw debated but now generally embraced by citizens of all polit-
Pact field? These are the mathematical war games played in ical persuasions, Maya Lin’s work lists by name every one
earnest at the Pentagon and the Kremlin, and they are the of the American losses—the total runs to 57,939 men and
war games restaged in miniature with typically deadpan sim- women. The Vietnamese figure is vastly larger and ultimately
plicity by Burden. To answer the first question, Burden fab- unknowable. At a minimum, it comes to 3,000,000 dead dur-
ricated 625 cardboard subs and hung them on transparent ing just the American episode of the generations-long
filaments like a school of lethal goldfish. To answer the sec- Indochina war. Derived from conversations with journalist
ond, he ranked 50,000 nickels topped by 50,000 matchstick and historian Stanley Karnow, former members of the South
“cannons” and entitled it The Reason for the Neutron Bomb, since Vietnamese government, and contacts with delegates of the
it was then the assertion of American planners that a vast present Vietnamese regime, this number includes some
mechanized army required the development and manufac- 250,000 soldiers and 1,500,000 civilians and refugees in the
ture of these tactical nuclear weapons. South, some 700,000 military dead and 250,000 missing in
In each of these demonstrations, as in his other military action in the North, plus estimates of civilian losses in the
follies—for example, the immense toy-soldier Armageddon, North and along the heavily embattled border regions. Exact

20. “Taboo Hunter: A Current Chris Burden Survey Demystifies the Demystifter,” by Ralph Rugoff, L.A. Weekly, April 22-28, p. 43. |
21. “Wrestling the Dragon,” p. 126. 22. “Taboo Hunter,” p. 43.
 records equivalent to those kept by the Pentagon are not I had no habits, I didn’t know anyone. I had no place
28
available from the various Vietnamese sources, although its to go, so I just decided to follow people—anybody. It
own losses are remembered by virtually every family on both became attached to these people, so J took a camera and
sides. As a result, Burden’s monument is intrinsically dif- made notes.”” :
ferent from Maya Lin’s. At loose ends and with nothing but her affective com-
In order to register the 3,000,000 casualties he was obliged pass to guide her, Calle became a geographer of displace-
to take a basic catalogue of nearly 4,000 Vietnamese names ment and an anthropologist of intimacy achieved or failed.
as verbal integers and permutate them. A degree of abstrac- Between April 1 and April 9 of 1979 she invited twenty-four
tion necessarily persists. Even so, the war that so many want people to sleep in her bed, one at a time, in rotation, ques-
to consign to the past has never been more actual, with the tioning each in a neutral manner and photographing each at
enormity of the bloodletting at last represented in toto. intervals during their rest.
Reckoning the gross facts of history in terms of the fate of Sleepers, also known as Bed or Big Sleep, consists of select-
individuals, Burden’s The Other Vietnam Memorial thus partial- ed photos interspersed with brief transcripts of these con-
ly retrieves the Vietnamese dead from statistical purgatory versations. In New York during 1980, she picked people up
and so from a double disappearance: the 3,000,000 it sym- outside of The Clocktower and Fashion Moda—two alter-
bolically lists are the displaced persons of the American native art spaces, the first in Manhattan, the second in the
conscience. Bronx—and asked them to lead her to someplace that was
important to them. On arrival she took their pictures and
wrote down the explanations for their choices. In Venice
OM hems, Weg ee the next year, she hired herself out as a chambermaid fora
Absence and fleeting presence obsess Sophie Calle as well, month, recording her activity as she made composite por-
but for her they are mundane, rather than epochal, contin- traits of the occupants of the rooms she cleaned from snap-
gencies. Like Piper, she is interested in the point at which shots of the things she found in their drawers and luggage.
awareness of others is reciprocated, then becomes self-recog- A spy in the house of banal love—in this menial capacity
nition. Like Kabakov she collects souls, though as often as Calle not surprisingly walked in on a couple having sex—
not they are soon lost once more. In other respects, though, she later rode the less-than-romantic Trans-Siberian Express
her images and narratives have an almost forensic quality, to Vladivostock and recorded the awkward understanding
recalling the existential mystery stories of Marguerite Duras, she established with a sixty-year-old Soviet man who shared
Natalie Sarraute, or Alain Robbe-Grillet. For Calle, as for the compartment (Anatoli [1984]). In Paris again, she came
these veteran practitioners of the French “new novel,” the upon a man’s address book lying on the sidewalk. Intrigued
smallest of details are closely examined, since none is so by her find and anxious to know more about its owner, M.
ephemeral that it may be discounted as an essential clue to Pierre D., she tracked down all those listed and interviewed
the identity of an elusive author. them about the man, publishing the results in the Paris daily
Calle’s scrutiny can be direct and interrogatory, or it can Liberation, from August 2, 1983, until September 4 of that
be surreptitious and voyeuristic. In either case, the focus of year. For The Blind (1986), she asked twenty-three sightless
her attention shifts constantly between objective inquiry and people what their idea of beauty was and then juxtaposed
subjective musings, just as she may at any point shift roles photographs of their faces to photographs she felt were
from that of the watcher to that of the person being watched. emblematic of their answers.
The artist’s conceptual, as well as literal, point of departure An intrepid spectator, Calle is an emotional speculator
was simple enough. Returning to Paris in 1979 after seven as well. Introducing herself physically and psychologically
years away from her home ground, Calle experienced a into unknown situations, she reconstitutes the character and
physical disorientation that triggered an even more profound feelings of others from scattered insights and materials gleaned
sense of psychic alienation. “When I came back, I felt during her alternatively considerate and prying inquiries. On
lost in my own city. I had forgotten everything about Paris. occasion, Calle has relinquished the role of the observer and

23. “Surveillance on the Seine,” by Andrea Codrington, “View,” The Journal ofArt, November 1990, p. 26.
placed herself under observation. This change from active quiz, Calle’s project prompts some subtly disconcerting
subject to passive object repolarizes the erotic charge that is thoughts regarding the separateness of cultural and indi-
8
a more or less obvious but consistent part of her behavior- vidual memory. The substance and range of reactions Calle
ist poetics. For Suite Vénitienne (1980-91), she dressed in a documented should, at very least, give pause to those who
blond wig, dark glasses, and raincoat and in that film-noir declare themselves to be sure of the import of such canon-
disguise pursued a man with whom she was casually acquaint- ical pictures. Objective standards of aesthetic value are pow-
ed from Paris to Venice and back to Paris. For La Filature erless to deflect the subjective impulses that abbreviate and
(1981), or Shadow, she had herself followed by a private eye transform images according to need or vantage point.
throughout the course of one day. Recollections of some participants read like the answers to
Being shadowed and being a shadow are two halves of a Rorschach test; given the subject matter of some of the
the same transitory reality. Everything, this role-switching paintings—Magritte’s The Menaced Assassin, for example—
game seems to argue, depends on a stolen or studying glance. this is altogether appropriate. In other instances, the state-
However brief or artfully contrived, encounters between ments seemed less focused on the art than on its
herself and strangers, and encounters with herself via strangers, extra-aesthetic associations. More than the idiosyncrasies of
are testimony to her passage through space and time. Existence the responses, though, and more than the prismatic facsim-
is verified by surveillance, and mnemonically preserved. ile of the absent image, what one takes away from these frag-
Having once caught our attention, moreover, something out ile inscriptions and cursory drawings is a sense of the mutually
of sight or out of hearing is never finally out of mind. The affirming but unstable relation between the beholder and
most casual of contacts leaves its imprint, and endures in that the thing beheld. Eventually, the paintings will return to
imprint. This rule covers all things onto which or into which their allotted spaces and the texts will be erased and the
the individual imagination projects itself—including art. sketches removed. In the meantime, the ghosts on the wall
Enlarging for this exhibition upon a single experiment are not so much those of the artists’ handiwork as the specters
made in Paris several years ago, Calle asked a cross-section of anonymous passers-by who lingered for a while in the
of museum staff members what they recalled of several paint- White Cube, then moved on.
ings that had been removed from their usual locations in the
galleries. All of these painting were classics of their kind.
One, Edward Hopper’s House by the Railroad, was the first OKO Neva eONGN
(Gas Ones
work ever acquired for the permanent collection. The per- For over fifty years Louise Bourgeois has been giving shape
sonnel interviewed were selected to represent all levels of to memory. Her childhood is the source of much of her
involvement with the paintings: curators, preparators, reg- imagery and all of her motivation. That was hardly an idyl-
istrars, framers, conservators, and others who handled or lic time for the artist, nor was her family a model one. But
otherwise had direct contact with the work. Also involved neither were the tense relations among its members wholly
were guards and maintenance workers who frequented the outside the norm. All things considered, the divided loyal-
galleries on a daily basis. Everyone was posed the same ques- ties, hurts, resentments, and the frustrated quest for exclu-
tions, and everyone, whether studio-trained or untrained, sive love Bourgeois recalls were typical of those inherent in
was requested to complement their oral description by mak- the classic Oedipal dynamic of mother, father, and child.
ing simple sketches of what they remembered. From these What is extraordinary is the severity of the psychic wounds
fragments a composite visual and verbal image of the miss- Bourgeois endured and the consuming passion she has devot-
ing work was arrived at and then laid out in its exact dimen- ed to re-creating her past—not that doing so has resulted
sions on the wall normally reserved for the “real” thing. Calle in happier endings for her stories. The reverse is almost
calls the substitutes that make up her installation Ghosts, after always the case. Compulsively diagramming the permuta-
the French expression for the labels used to tell museum vis- tions of the primordial family triangle, Bourgeois has invent-
itors where a painting no longer on view has gone. ed multiple surrogates for each of its disaffected protagonists
Neither a sociological survey nor an art historical pop and played all the parts in rotation. Working out needy
 ambivalence and furious anxiety toward the characters in boxes, the central table of Confrontation (1978), with its rows
30
this drama, Bourgeois has invested her changeling persona of bulbous shapes, repeats the iconography of the previous
in effigies of
an alternately implosive and explosive individ- piece. At its unveiling, Bourgeois organized what she called
uality and used it to symbolically confront icons of intractable “A Banquet/ A Fashion Show of Body Parts,” for which per-
otherness. formers donned latex sheaths sprouting similarly obscene
Bourgeois, still full of surprises, remains a thoroughly lumps and bumps. Leveling her implacable feminine gaze
contemporary artist. The singularity of her work derives as on patriarchal and scholarly authority, Bourgeois gleefully
much from its formal and material variety as it does from enlisted a number of famous art historians into this festively
any particular innovation or image. Over the course of her androgynous masquerade.
career she has painted, drawn, made collages and assem- The mood of recent installations has been more
blages, modeled in clay and plaster, carved in wood and introverted. Like the contiguous wooden modules in
marble, and experimented with latex and resins, often aban- Confrontation, the hinged panels of Articulated Lair (1986)
doning a process for years, only to return to it later with frame an arenalike space, but the enclosure is reserved for
renewed enthusiasm and greater demands. Installation has a solitary occupant, with escape doors at either end in case
been among her aesthetic preoccupations from the very of intruders. The environmental works in various states of
beginning. Consisting of dozens of abstract “personages,” completion now spread around her Brooklyn studio make
Bourgeois’s first two solo exhibitions at the Peridot Gallery, in use of a house-of-cards, or accordion, construction similar
1949 and 1950, were both conceived of as environments. to that of Articulated Lair. Encircled by cast-off doors of every
These vertical elements were paired, grouped, or spread out description, these cells contain meager and mysterious
in loose proximity to one another. The arrangement appeared furnishings. In each, as in Kabakov’s rooms, the phantom
almost nonchalant, making their combined psychological inhabitant is represented by secret amulets and soiled ameni-
effect all the more startling. Meeting the artist’s freestand- ties. Eavesdropping through broken window panes or the
ing figures on an equal but unsure footing—the sculptures cracks between the doors, the viewer may steal glimpses of
were planted in the floor without bases—members of the these hermetic accumulations of detritus, and puzzle over
public found themselves mingling with anthropomorphic the obsessive personalities they evoke.
shapes that leaned toward and away from neighboring pieces Bourgeois’s bulky and aggressive piece for this exhibition
like guests at an interminable and enigmatic gathering, The contrasts markedly with the delicacy of such fetishized spaces.
presence of these listing, clustered forms made viewers Age has certainly not mellowed her contradictory nature;
acutely conscious of their own physical and emotional dis- instead it has made her more ambitious and more experi-
position, that is, their relative equilibrium, sensitivity to mental in its expression. Quick to see the possibilities in
touch, and isolation. found objects on an intimate scale, her keen, pack-rat eyes
After this debut, Bourgeois continued to mount shows scan the large horizons as well. In this case, inspiration came
in which the ensemble effect was crucial to the impact of when she spotted several huge steel lozenges sitting next to
individual works, but it was only in the mid-1970s that she the road. They were a few of the thousands of leak-prone
began to make full-scale installations. The first of these, gasoline storage tanks currently being excavated on orders
Destruction of the Father (1974), 1s a low cavern bathed in from the Environmental Protection Agency. Assemblage,
reddish light. Its ceiling is covered by ranks of breasts or the artist has said, is a process of recuperation and restora-
phallic mounds, as is the floor, which is also littered with tion, a means of reestablishing order among exiled things
casts of animal haunches. Although one may well recoil from that have lost their normal function. In this regard she and
its biomorphic swellings and scattered butcher's scraps, the Hammons are at one. The satisfactions of the hunt, Bourgeois
womblike hollow nonetheless beckons. That simultaneous explained, lie literally underfoot in a mesmerizing urban
attraction and repulsion is characteristic of Bourgeois’s art, chaos. “Now, for an artist, you well understand, this can be
as are mixed messages of other, less physical, kinds. full of fantastic objects and you look at them and that is the
Surrounded in an ellipse by upright screens and low, cutoff beginning of the assemblage. It is a rescue mission.”

24. ‘Meanings, Materials and Milieu,” by Robert Storr, Parkett, No. 9, 1986, p- 85.
Disowned by the industrial system that had created them, flesh and steel, instinct and mechanics, domestic architec-
31
these rough, voluminous tanks represented a unique oppor- ture and body cavities, Bourgeois has invented an infernal
tunity to turn obsolete technology to poetic uses. The artist self-impregnating and self-delivering machine for a Heavy
promptly struck a deal to have several hauled away to her Metal age. It is not, however, an erotic device, and certain-
studio in Staten Island, where she could attend to them at ly not a bachelor machine on the Duchampian plan. Bourgeois
her leisure. is a woman, not a man, and the imagined occupant of this
The first step of Bourgeois’s creative procedure typical- two-celled structure is a presexual child baffled by the antithe-
ly involves choosing, or in the case of assemblage, taking sis of adult masculinity and femininity and threatened
possession of, her materials. The second step is to recognize by the repeated, exclusionary, physical union of its mother
a content latent in the particular form. Simplicity is the and father. For such fearful offspring, return to the protec-
essence of both, but the resulting images are invariably poly- tion of the maternal body is the ultimate wish. Twosome
valent and complex. In this instance, Bourgeois associated invites such fantasies, but taking refuge in either capsule is
the extended cylindrical form of the tanks with the low-lying equivalent to climbing into bed with monstrously copulating
Easton, Connecticut, house in which she, her husband, and parents. Grotesque and, to that extent, darkly humorous,
her sons lived on and off during World War II and for a Bourgeois’s hollow contraption nevertheless echoes with a
period thereafter. The row of windows and side entrance terrible loneliness.
she cut into the tanks are characteristic of that family retreat.
Episodes of intimate alienation are as much a part of that
memory, however, as they are of memories of her growing Ba UG eeeINeAT visas
up in her parents’ household outside Paris. Bruce Nauman leaves us nothing but room for doubt. And
The key to the formal logic and metaphoric significance so, room for thought. Over the past twenty years he has
of Twosome lies in a studio piece done in the mid-1980s. Made framed structures, composed phrases, juxtaposed images,
of lengths of ordinary pipe of decreasing diameters insert- and compounded contradictions that put the viewer on the
ed into one another, this so-called Nest symbolizes the basic spot in ways that make one uneasily aware that the “spot”
self-containment of each part of this neatly telescoped com- itself 1s shifting ground. Nauman’s rhetorical questions have
posite. It is a model of closeness and a demonstration of no ready answers; at least, the artist refuses to provide any.
insularity: every section touches another at a single point, His environments, though often emphatically symmetrical,
and all but the centermost surround one or more compo- have no centers, none, that is, that one can occupy without
nents, yet each remains essentially hollow and the whole feeling out of place or no place at all. Paradigmatic of all
does not fuse. Enormously enlarged and reduced to its basic that followed, Nauman’s first installation, done in 1972,
relation, Twosome is otherwise much the same in its structure resounded with a blunt demand: “Get out of my mind, get
and import. out of this room.” The implication 1s plain—in his art, phys-
There are differences between these two pieces, though, ical space and mental space are synonymous. The paradox
and those differences further exacerbate the work’s implic- posed is equally plain, for by shaping the former he offers
it psychological tensions. The programmed interaction of access to the latter. Art-loving members of the public ask-
its two unequal halves elicits imaginative physical interac- ing to be let into his imagination thus find that they enter
tion with the viewer. Like the soft, biomorphic Destruction of at their own risk, since that love may not be reciprocated,
the Father, the hard kinetic void of Twosome entices and wards while the other passions they discover may prove intolera-
off the bystander. Big enough for someone to crouch inside bly intense. Artistic hospitality, the voice insists, can be
but difficult to enter, this chambered lair is at once a place revoked at any time or may discomfit all concerned. “Pay
to hide and—should the inner tank retract definitively into attention, motherfuckers” —printed backwards—reads the
the outer one a—trap. Meanwhile, the automatic insertion text of a lithograph made a year after the 1972 installation.
and withdrawal of the small cylinder into the larger cylin- If one gets Nauman’s meaning, one gets it coming and going.
der has obvious and ominous sexual connotations. Conflating Generally speaking—and literally speaking in the case of
 Anthro/ Socio, his piece for this exhibition—Nauman’s art ts Clown Torture (1987). Another tape showed a harlequinesque
32
a projection of frustration and ambivalence and the more acrobat painfully contorting herself on a chair in response
or less overt hostility they provoke. Once asked about his to curt off-camera commands. Elsewhere in the room wax
affinity for Duchamp and Pop, Nauman explained that he heads hang on wires, and video images of the same head
was interested in work “where you used public means of com- receiving the occasional whack of a board are projected on
munication for private purposes.” This said, the private rudimentary canvas screens. Called Shadow Puppets and Instructed
motives and experience that lay behind his variform output Mime (1990), this piece and others like it are droll and unnerv-
are impossible to adduce from the fragmentary evidence it ing syntheses of Beckett, Bozo, and sadistic Guignol.
provides. In Nauman’s work, as in that of Jasper Johns, whose Nauman often reprises texts, situations, or characters this
sensibility parallels but also differs from his, personal factors way, sometimes employing a single medium, sometimes alter-
are so elusively encoded that attempts to pin them down nating media. Meaning thereby accrues to a given idea or
condemn one to misunderstanding. The author is unknow- image by repetition and variation. Apparently indifferent to
able, as are the psychological or intellectual causes of the anx- the issue of developing a signature style—Nauman has none
ieties and conflicts of perception he names. It is the naming or many, depending on how one looks at the many formats
of them and the constant state of being anxious that matter. he has resorted to and his unique way of handling each—
Expressive in the highest degree, and of many things— the artist is intent instead upon developing his thought wher-
sexual tensions, global violence, moral uncertainty, and skep- ever it takes him. The video installation created for this show
ticism about the metaphysical claims of art-—Nauman’s art exemplifies that process and its perplexing rewards. The
is never expressionist, that is, never merely declarative, despite script is based on an earlier text-drawing that said, “Feed
its sometimes categorical use of language. Virtually every Me/Eat Me, Help Me/Hurt Me.” The equation of nur-
term or proposition appears in the context ofits antithesis. ture and abuse, consuming need and being consumed recalls
Whether carved in stone in one version or emblazoned in the ambiguities embodied in Bourgeois’s self-devouring mech-
neon in another, the seven cardinal virtues are, for example, anism. Consistent with his present preoccupation with learned
superinscribed with the seven cardinal vices in a manner that dependency, Nauman puts the issue in even harsher and more
leaves open the question of whether they have been pitted masochistic terms. Any plea for help is an admission of help-
against each other or offered as a deadlocked and self-can- lessness, these doubled imperatives imply, just as any admis-
celing unity. Far from being dandified in the Duchampian sion of powerlessness in turn grants power to others.
manner or glib as in that of much post-modernist art, When he adds the word “anthropology” to the first phrase
Nauman’s irony forbids one both easy choices and easy and “sociology” to the second, Nauman introduces an explic-
escape from choices. itly social dimension to what might otherwise be a strictly
Nauman’s tone and mode of address change constantly, intimate plea. Rather than “using public means of commu-
moreover. Conceptual severity and disturbing content are nication for private purposes,” in this instance Nauman has
often presented in a comic guise. Punning has long been his reversed his strategy in order to root a public discourse in
practice, but recent videos have taken off-topic jokiness to the private realm. The sciences of human conduct, sociolo-
new extremes, a jokiness all the more disturbing for under- gy and anthropology, purport to give us exact knowledge of
tones of peril. One featured a clown standing in an empty ourselves and so, presumably, reasonable guidance in improy-
room holding a fishbowl with a live fish to the ceiling with ing our lot. Behavioral conditioning and systems of control
a pole. Were he to move, the bowl would come crashing and constraint belie such a benign expectation. Tainted by
down on his head. Thus stranded, he stared at the viewer, hubris inside the academy, outside it, social engineering is
plaintively asking for help that the viewer, of course, could prone to totalitarianism. Voiced in at once plaintive and
not give. Making matters worse—and more absurd—sey- stentorian tones, Nauman’s text articulates an old and basic
eral of the TVs on which he appeared were turned sideways fear that the rational powers we appeal to for help will turn
and upside down so that the “gravity” of his predicament on and destroy us. (His subtext might be construed as a
was reversed in a visual play on words. The piece is titled retort to those who crib from such disciplines with the vain

25. Bruce Nauman: Neons, Brenda Richardson, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1982, azo
ambition of logically resolving art’s paradoxes.) Leery of the flight—as Piper explained—but we can’t. Or, cast adrift,
social sciences’ present sophistications, Nauman’s emerging we may look for shelter in burrows—of which the museum
33
view of the human condition—his recent neon friezes of on occasion seems a capaciously chambered variant. Kabakov
sexual subjugation and general mayhem are further confirma- reminds us, however, that dislocation is a sign oflife. Many
tion—is less skeptically post-modern than classically of the hard truths and conflicting impulses we must con-
Hobbesian. “No society,” Hobbes wrote of the state tend with are familiar, yet their power to disturb is undi-
of nature, “and which is worst of all, continual fear and minished. History does not repeat itself, but neither will it
danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, go away; Burden in particular has shown that things that we
nasty, brutish, and short.” thought were once and for all behind us now stare us in the
Wandering into and around the empty, penumbrous face. Bourgeois, Calle, Hammons, and Nauman meanwhile
room of Anthro/ Socio, the viewer is bombarded from every express restlessness born ofdistinct and compelling causes
direction by calls for help emanating from multiple moni- that are less exemplary of the historical moment than ofan
tors and projectors. The solitary, unblinking head that intones acute, sometimes excruciating, alertness to the inconsisten-
Nauman’s words in plain chant becomes a chorus and his cy and irresolution of everyday experience.
short command a canon. Thus surrounded, it is impossible Such elusive states of being and such unforgiving con-
to stand still for long. In spite or because of the ambient tradictions are troubling; few artists these days have the
noise, one finds oneself whistling in the mental dark. Wordsworthian good fortune of recalling emotion in tran-
Long ago, Nauman credited Duchamp for having thought quility. So, too, looking at work of this kind means letting
to substitute objects for ideas. Expanding on that prece- go of ameasure of our security; still fewer members of the
dent, Nauman substitutes environments for ideas as public can reflect on their experience at a comfortable dis-
well. Regardless of the specific means, however, his intent tance. It takes an act of will for viewers to venture from the
is to trigger unprepared responses. Conceptually rigorous, sidewalk into rooms that deliberately focus on some of the
Nauman is also emotionally exigent. Denied the possibility pressures they thought they were briefly leaving behind, only
of taking a firm position on or in his work, his audience is to plunge back into the tumult with a heightened sense of
forced to react. The intensity of that reaction invests the uneasiness. It also takes imagination, as does putting one-
provocation with meaning, fulfilling the artist’s basic demand selfin someone else’s place to consider things from their
that we pay attention to how it feels to be torn between extremes vantage. Some of these installations assume our capacity to
and on one’s own. do the latter, others invite us into circumstances that are less
public and didactic than private and evocative—even though
the fact of our being there and in generally unknown com-
Peo ER BIN TAS pany is itself social. None of these works are predicated on
these works are in design and appearance—and it bears our coming to final terms with the issues they raise; none
repeating that the artists who created them were chosen for put our doubts to rest by offering solutions. To have done
their singularity, hence their dissimilarity—they are all in so would be a failure of imagination on the artist's part, and
some way demanding. Each requires that the individual view- to single-mindedly seek such a way out would be a compa-
er physically and psychologically enter into a space conceived rable failure on the viewer's part. Yet having reset our
in the image of instability or mystery or aggravated ambi- compass in order to navigate these strange spaces, and
guity. It is a lot to ask, since these are difficult times. But reground our lenses to adjust for their apparent distortions,
difficult times are the matrix of modernism. Although we we may find that on returning to “reality” we actually move
have been promised a new order, major upheavals abroad about with greater freedom and see with greater clarity.
take place daily, while cracks in the fagade of domestic peace Whatever the improvement on that score, like people exit-
increase. All around us fault lines in the social terrain, matched ing a theater, we will step back into the world, which for a
by fissures in our consciousness, grind and shift and sud- moment at least will open out to us as freshly detailed and
denly gape. Under these circumstances we may wish to take sharply various.
Mmewrse BOU
mereOls CHRI
S BURDEN SO
PHIE CALLE
DAVID HAMM
me ILYA KA
Ss m
MmakKOV BRUC
ENAUMAN A
DRIAN PIPER
 INR IIS IOS INO IVES

feet> E-. BeO U-”

Geometry has no scale unless you give it scale. You can see it as the size of the universe, or you can see

R (5 fk C) ] S it as the size of a crawling snail. You must

give geometry a size. [his piece was invest-

ed with the size of the family. It is scaled to the relations of the family and the house. | The opening

and the mechanics are very important, because the small one can roll in and out without interference

and with great ease. They each have their place but they're completely isolated from each other. But

on the other hand, to be next to each other is better than to be lost in the outside. | It relates to birth,

sex, excretion—taking in and pushing out. In and out covers all our functions. In and out is a key to

the piece. It’s a meditation on these words, a metaphor for being in and out of trouble, in and out of

fashion, in and out of line, in and out of synch, in and out of focus, in and out of bounds. | A two-

some is a closed world. Two people constitute an environment. One person alone is an object. An

object doesn’t relate to anything unless you make it relate, it has a solitary and poor and pathetic qual-

ity. As soon as you get concerned with the other person, it becomes an environment, which involves

not only you, who are contained, but also the container. |It is very important to me that people be

able to go around the piece. Then they become part of the environment—although in some ways it is

not an environment but the relation of two cells. |Installation is really a form between sculpture and

theater, and this bothers me. What the visitor thinks and feels interests me. But I am not doing things

for people, I’m doing things for myself. This has to be understood. I am not a teacher. I do not want

to preach or convince. All I want is the right to affirmation, which ts very modest. Very modest. | If

the viewer is trying to find out what I want to say, they cancel themselves out of the game. The per-

son has to be free and in touch with their emotions, with their intellects. The point is to have a reac-

tion when they see that thing. If they say, “Hey, this bothers me, suddenly I’m breathing faster,” or

“T’m startled,” this I do like. I don’t want them to be interested in me, I want them to be interested in

what I did. If it bothers them, then I’m really successful. If it doesn’t bother them, I feel I don’t have

any communication. It makes me feel lonely, if they don’t react. rRoM AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STORR

Opposite top: The artist's home in Easton, Connecticut, c. 1947

Opposite middle: Louise Bourgeois. Preparatory sketch for TwOSOME. 1991. Pencil on paper, 8% x 11". Photo: Erik Landesberg
Opposite bottom: Louise Bourgeots. Untitled (work for Dislocations). 1990. Steel gas tanks. Photo: Peter Bellamy
VOW
LS Ee BOWRIGE Oils
 INSTALLATION PROCESS

eT Alt tous" é
Louise Bourgeois. Tw OS OME. 1991. Steel, motor, and paint; 6'3%" D, 40'5/2" L (extended).
Courtesy Robert Miller Gallery, New York. Photos: Peter Moore
 LOUISE BOURGE OMS

40 BORN
Paris, 1911
1982
Louise Bourgeots: Sculpture and
Lives in New York Drawings, Robert Miller Gallery,
New York
SEiEIE
Cal EyD)
SOLO 1981
EXHIBITIONS
Louise Bourgeois: Femme Maison,
1989-91 Renaissance Society,
Louise Bourgeots: University of Chicago
A Retrospective Exhibition,
1980
Frankfurter Kunstverein
The Iconography of Louise Bourgeois,
(traveling exhibition)
Max Hutchinson Gallery,
1989 New York
Louise Bourgeois —Sculpture,
Robert Miller Gallery, 1979
Louise Bourgeois, Sculpture 1941—
New York
1953. Plus One New Piece, Xavier
Fourcade Gallery, New York SELECTED 1970
GROUP Annual Exhibition: Contemporary
1978 EXHIBITIONS
American Sculpture, Whitney
Triangles: New Sculpture and
1989 Museum of American Art,
Drawings 1978, Xavier Fourcade
Magiciens de la Terre, Centre New York
Gallery, New York
Georges Pompidou, Paris
1968
1974 Bilderstreit, Museum Ludwig, Annual Exhibition: Sculpture,
Sculpture 1970-1974, Cologne Whitney Museum of
112 Greene Street, New York
1987 American Art, New York
1964
Biennial Exhibition, 1965
Louise Bourgeois Recent Sculpture,
Whitney Museum of Les Etats Unis: Sculpture
Stable Gallery, New York
American Art, New York du XX Siécle (organized under
1953 the auspices of the International
1985
Louise Bourgeois: Council of The Museum
Eau de Cologne, Monika Spriith
Louise Bourgeois: Works from the Drawings for Sculpture and Sculpture, of Modern Art, New York),
Gallery, Cologne
Sixties, DIA Art Foundation, Peridot Gallery, New York Musée Rodin, Paris
nue 1984—85
Bridgehampton, New York
Third Dimension: 1963
1987-89 Sculpture of the New York School, Whitney Museum of
Louise Bourgeois, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The Taft Museum, Cincinnati American Art, New York 1962
(traveling exhibition)
Primitivism, The Museum of Annual Exhibition: Sculptu re

1987 Modern Art, New York and Drawings, Whitney Museum

The Louise Bourgeois Exhibition, of American Art, New York
1983
The Art Museum of Florida
Biennial Exhibition, 1960
International University, Miami
Whitney Museum of American Annual Exhibition:
1985 Art, New York Contemporary Sculpture and
Louise Bourgeois, Serpentine Drawings, Whitney Museum of
Gallery, London 1973 American Art, New York
Biennial Exhibition,
Louise Bourgeois: Retrospektive 1947— Whitney Museum of American Aspects de la Sculpture Americaine,
1984, Maeght-Lelong, Paris Art, New York Claude Bernard Gallery, Paris
1950
1982—83 Sculptures, Peridot Gallery, 1955-57
Louise Bourgeois: Retrospective, New York Annual Exhibition of Contemporary
The Museum of Modern Art, American Sculpture, Watercolors and
New York L959)
Drawings, Whitney Museum of
Late Work 1947 to 1949:
American Art, New York
17 Standing Figures,
Peridot Gallery, New York

Left to right: SOLO EXHIBITION. 1950. Peridot Gallery, New York. Photo: Aaron Siskind
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FATHER. 1974. Latex, plaster, and mixed mediums, 7'9%" x 11'10%" x 8'1%". Photo: Peter Moore
CONFRONTATION, 1978, mixed mediums, and performance of A BANQUET /A FASHION SHOW OF BODY PARTS,
October 21, 1978, at the Hamilton Gallery of Contemporary Art, New York. Photo: Peter Moore
 PREVIOUS WORK

1953
Annual Exhibition of Contemporary 41
American Sculpture, Watercolors and
Drawings, Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York
1951
Annual Exhibition of Contemporary
American Sculpture, Watercolors and
Drawings, Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York
1946
Annual Exhibition of Contemporary
American Sculpture, Watercolors and
Drawings, Whitney Museum of.
American Art, New York

1945
The Women, Art of This Century
Gallery, New York
Annual Exhibition of
Contemporary American Painting,
Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York

SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bloch, Susi. “An Interview with
Louise Bourgeois.” The Art
Journal (Summer 1976): 370-73.
Bourgeois, Louise. “Freud’s
Toys.” Artforum (January 1990):
Ab Cy,

Bourgeois, Louise. “A Project

by Louise Bourgeois.” Artforum
(December 1982): 40-47.
Brenson, Michael. “A Sculptor
Comes Into Her Own.” The New
York Times, 31 October 1982, H29.

Gardner, Paul. “The Discreet

Charm of Louise Bourgeois.”
Artnews (February 1980);
80—86.

Hughes, Robert. “A Sense of

Female Experience.” Time, Larson, Kay. “Bourgeois at Morgan, Stuart. “Taking Storr, Robert. “Louise
22 November 1982, 116. Her Best.” New York, 1 October Cover: Louise Bourgeois Bourgeois: Gender &
1984, 60—61. interviewed by Stuart Morgan.” Possession.” Art in America
Kirili, Alain. “The Passion for
Artscribe (January/February (April 1983): 128-37.
Sculpture—A Conversation Lippard, Lucy R. “Louise
1988): 30-34. Wallach, Amei. “A Life
with Louise Bourgeois.” Arts Bourgeois: From the Inside
(March 1989): 68-75. Out.” Artforum (March 1975): Pels, Marsha. “Louise Transformed By Sculpture.”
26-33 (reprinted from From the Bourgeois: A Research for Newsday, 31 October 1982:
Center: Feminist Essays on Art Gravity.” Art International Section 2, pp. 2-3.
[New York: Dutton] 1976). (October 1979): 46-54.

ARTICULATED LAIR. 1986. Rubber, various sizes; steel, 11' high. Photo: Peter Bellamy
be i als © hepe Lu}( > pore)7 Z § x z rerp © 4 fool J

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Right: Chris Burden, Preparatory sketch for THE OTHER VIETNAM MEMORIAL. I99Q1.
Ink on paper, 11 x 8%". Photo: Erik Landesberg
 INI WIS IES INOINES

I just thought somewhere there should be a memorial to the Vietnamese that were killed in the war.
ayy
So I wanted to make this book, sort of like Moses’ tablet, that would be an official record of all these

three million names. I would suspect that we will be lucky if we get twenty-five percent of the names;

other ones would be nameless, basically faceless, bodies. They

werent even written down. Little x’s, as opposed to names. C lI R I

There will be a lot more x’s, and that says something right there. | I don’t think anyone has ever

Pent) EN
S B thought about the

that there’s such an imbalance. The piece is just a presentation of fact. It’s information in a slightly

altered form. I want the size of the sculpture, of the book, to reflect the enormity of this horror. |The

work really talks about the U.S. and the idea that you could fix everything up with might. I also think

of this recent war and hearing things like “The stigma of Vietnam is now erased.” I mean, no matter

how good you feel about this last war, I think this piece addresses our whole consciousness in this

country, which is basically “Carry a big stick and whomp ‘em.” | To me it’s sort of a test. If the elite

audience that comes to The Museum of Modern Art gets angered by this and feels it’s muckraking,

then imagine what a sort of Joe Average will feel about the “other” Vietnam memorial. So the audi-

ence is definitely part of the work. It’s really a litmus test: I’m curious to see how people will react.

|Just to bring the issue up is political, or I’m sure will seem that way. For me it’s sort of problematic
because I like the grayer zones better, where good and evil are not so clear. But in this case I don’t

think you can look at this list and see that there are three million names and not think, “Jesus Christ,

what did we do in Vietnam?” | The basic point is that human beings have this huge capacity for

great good and great evil, and there’s nothing inherently evil in anybody or inherently good. Hope-

fully, people will be good, but information’s part of it, and the information's out there. You have to

know some history, it helps you to know the right course to take. But if the evil is always suppressed

and hidden, then fican keep growing like a fungus. FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STORR
 CHRIS BURDEN/INSTALLATION PROCESS

ARTE

Chris Burden. THE OTHER VIETNAM MEMORIAL. 1901. Steel and etched copper, 3 SURE coTDS
Collection Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles. Photos: Peter Moore
 CHRIS BURDEN

BORN 1987 1988 Bear, Liza, and Willoughby

Boston,April 11, 1946 Hoffman Borman Gallery, Santa Committed to Print, The Museum Sharp. “Chris Burden: The
Livesin California Monica, California of Modern Art, New York Church of Human Energy.”
Avalanche (Summer—Fall 1973):
SELECTED 1983 1981
54-61.
SOLO Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inaugural Exhibition, Museum of
EXHIBITIONS
New York Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Burden, Chris. “B-Car.” Choke
1989 (September 1976): 23-26.
1982 1979
Kent Fine Art, New York
Rosamund Felsen Gallery, The Reason for the Neutron Bomb, . Chris Burden 71-73 (Los
Josh Baer Gallery, New York Los Angeles Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Angeles: Chris Burden, 1974).
1988 New York
1980 ———.. Chris Burden J4—Wo
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, SELECTED (Los Angeles: Chris Burden,
Newport Beach, April 17—June New York BIBLIOGRAPHY 1978).
12. Traveled to the Institute of Bear, Liza. “Chris Burden...
SELECTED ——. “Chris Burden.” Flash
Contemporary Art, Boston, GROUP Back to You: An Interview with Art January—February 1977):
February 18—April 9, 1989; EXHIBITIONS
Liza Bear.” Avalanche (May—June
Carnegie-Mellon University Art 40-44.
1990 1974): 12.
Gallery, Pittsburgh, May 3- . “Garcon [sic].”
Just Pathetic, Rosamund Felsen
July 9, 1989 Gallery, Los Angeles
Art Contemporary no. 2-3 (1977):
aie
New Works
for the New Spaces:
Into the Nineties, Wexner Center
for the Visual Arts, Columbus

THE FLYING KAYAK, 1982. Canvas kayak with wings and rudder, suspended six feet above the gallery floor; four industrial fans;
and 16 mm color film loop. Kayak: 9' wing span, 4'6" H x 12'6" L; fans: 70" H; wooden staircase (not in photo): 7'1" H x 312" L x 64" w.
Shown installed at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. Photo: D. James Dee
 PREVIOUS WORK

47

. “100 M.P.H./100 M.P.G. —.. “Sculpture in Three Horvitz, Robert. “Chris McGill, Douglas. “Art Made of
“ee ”

Criss Cross Double Cross (Fall Parts.” Art Com (Summer 1975): Burden.” Artforum (May 1976): I-Beams and Concrete.” New
1976): 37-38. 15-19. 24-31. York Times, 3 August 1984, part 3,
. “Coals to Newcastle.” Burden, Chris, and Alexis Knight, Christopher. “The
pazes
High Performance (March 1979): Smith. B-Car: The Story of Proof of Burden Exhibit Is in Review of Chris Burden’s
12-13. Chris Burden’s Bicycle Car Its Power.” Los Angeles Herald Dreamy Nights, in Avalanche,
(Choke Publications, 1977). Examiner, 8 May 1988, EI-E2. (December 1974): 13.
——.. “The Curse of Big
Job.” High Performance (March Burden, Chris, and Jan ——. “Artist Chris Burden Review of Chris Burden’s
1979): 2-3. Butterfield. “Chris Burden: Rediscovers Tradition.” Los Deadman, in Avalanche
Through the Night Softly.” Arts Angeles Herald Examiner, (Winter—Spring 1973): 2.
. “Oracle.” Vision
(March 1975): 68-72. 22 January 1984, Es.
(September 1975): 50—s1. Review of Chris Burden’s You'll
Cooper, Dennis. “Chris Burden: Larson, Kay. “Best of Burden.” never see my face in Kansas City, in
——, “Chris Burden.” Flash
Christine Burgin Gallery.” New York Magazine, Avalanche (Spring 1972): 6.
Art (June-July 1975): 39-41.
Artforum (March 1988): 136. 18 September 1989, 65-66.
Schjeldahl, Peter. “Brainy Bliss.”
Goldberg, Roselee. “Chris Seven Days, 1 November 1989, 68.
Burden 71-73.” Art-Rite (Winter
White, Robin. “Interview: Chris
1976-77): 40. Burden.” View (January 1979):
I—ZOe

EXPOSING THE FOUNDATION OF THE MUSEUM. 1986. “Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art,” Inaugural Year Exhibit,
December 1986—January 1988. Collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Photo: Squidds and Nunns
 Clockwise from upper left:
Edward Hopper. HOUSE BY THE RAILROAD. 1925.
925 Oil on canvas, 24 4 x 29".
z) Given anonymously.
) ) Photo: Kate Keller
Amedeo Modigliani. RECLINING NUDE. ¢. 1919. Oil on canvas, 2812 x 457%". Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Photo: Soichi Sunami
Georges-Pierre Seurat. EVENING, HONFLEUR. 1886. Oil on canvas, 25% x 32". Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy. Photo: Soichi Sunami
Giorgio de Chirico. THE ENIGMA OF A DAY. 1914. Oil on canvas, 6'1'4" x 55". James Thrall Soby Bequest. Photo: Kate Keller
 IMI IUS IES INCOMES

They sometimes put a photo in place of a missing painting, or a piece of paper that says, “This is the
ae
work of so and so and was lent to this museum from this date to that date.” In French they call that a

fantéme—a ghost; I don’t know if they say that in English. | What I did was to replace the painting

with the memories of people. Just anybody that is used to passing it. I’m not only interested in people
who have to look at the painting, like curators, but also in people who simply go because they follow

that same path, like when you take a road to go back to your house and you cross a street again and

again, because it’s just there on your way. They can be somebody who cleans, the

guards. | I never have an idea about the quality of their memory. I am not sur- S ©)

prised by what they say. It might be the smallest little details that move me the most. There is no rule.

fo te - CAL LSE
The interest lies in the traces people leave behind, in the details of life, when you don’t know who they

are, but you know what kind of toothbrushes they use, or how they leave their bed undone. | What

prompted me here is that I was in

front of that empty spot with two

nails in the wall. And that’s all. I just

saw that hole in the wall and two

nails, and the little piece of paper

that was supposed to tell you what

was there—and it just came to me.

There is no other way to explain it.

- It’s just the emptiness that gave me

S x ~ the idea. Or the shape. Sometimes

when a painting ts removed there is a shape that stays there. That simply called the idea forth natural-

ly. For me it’s not natural to Say why ildo it and what I feel. FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STORR

René Magritte. THE MENACED ASSASSIN. 1926. Oil on canvas, 59/4" x 6'47". Kay Sage Tanguy Fund. Photo: Rolf Peterson
 SOWIE CALI Is

50

Sophie Calle. GHOSTS. 1991. Paint, silkscreen, and color laser prints. Dimensions of the installation pieces:
HOUSE BY THE RAILROAD, 38 X 48"; RECLINING NUDE, 31X 49"; EVENING, HONELEUR, 3I X 38";
THE ENIGMA OF A DAY,7'8" x 6'n"; THE MENACED ASSASSIN,
6'10" x 7'8". Collection the artist. Photos: Peter Moore
INSTALLATION PROCESS
 SOVWMIs
Ns (AIL IIs

My love. | got on board the Teroas Stberkcn to Moseow. on mi way te Vhadivestoek. Twas Ortober 290 1984. 220 pam fb had eae 7 compertment 6
berth nomber 3. The other taavetior was in berth 4. 7 sat dowa, waited for him. Ve 2:30 he wathed ta. Vote nn his styties who heres at tie. and +
He speaks in Ru ». Liell hit in Beenel that dont anderstead. \nother shouts he says. De Ganthe Chea, after a sdenen. he further: Karepe
tm Know whether | play ebess 1 shake my head. No. te covers his fice with his hands ia mck despaic. V few min later HLMEIOT To € fora
more compatible companion. One by eae. be introduces the ratire papuhtion af the neihboring compartments They look me over « seuss. hesitate. In the ead they alwiy=
say no. The man gives ups stishes his eight sititeas To our quarters. Finally, seated aeross from mie. he ditmdunes bimeelfs Vnatate Vorols bie wiche Presilente Kotkhose
Viadivostock. tell him oy name, Sophie, and make appropriate gestures indieatiog that Lama wetter aod photsrapher Voatoly thigks he daderstonds Saphir be says
Vtlumaniie? So begins communal life in our 4 square meters. Anatoli wants me to sit down. He opens one of his suitcases, damps the contents onte the small tible between
our beds. There ace hardboiled vees, meatballs, tomatoes, chocolute, bread. sausa es hailed: potatoes tangeriaes, and five quarts of vodka. bam to eat TC is an order, We
begin our First conversation, Our shared vocabulary is saath Vratoli knows how fo sey: Communiste Paserste Marcha. Vitterriad. Thorez. 1 Tamanitie De Cautle
And Tean reply with koracho Gull right), savten [omorros ) sper), andl curt, bofie Cpafatoe). Qur routine bests Anatol derides when che day is to start
To wake me up. he shouts Saphiel ac the topof bis lungs, Then by AU his wateh and gives me exuetly five minutes to get dressed. My time up, he barges in. without
tronbling to Knock. He has set up breakfast for me on a tittle fable aad he tatimates the veder: eat There isa dash of vodka. cold cuts. own tomatoes. 1 is always \oatoli
whe sets the hible, organizes the meals. (six of his ¢ he suitesses are eramumed with food) As for me Tdeeide when we go to hed (Since \aatolis saoriag is so dramatic we
agree that] have the right toa thiety minute Fead Lime when i cames to going tn sleep. Lalso do the beds wash ap aur few dishes. clean up the compartment. When thy
train sfaps. Anatoli drags ine out, down to the entree of the ntilvary station for a quick took at tbe uaknown city. Then we dash back te the Grain. Last ohe \natolis
splis wake me up. He was in te SL switehed on the tight. looked at hint, and: he said, Rascisti. paum. poum. poum. Indira Ghandi. Thats alk \nd today he dido't want to
play chess he broke his las (E tost the winder on his watch. From tinte fo time Anatoli mutt a word such as Mitterrand. oe Paris, just like that for the plee une
Of being understood. Or he pet me and asks: Saphir. communistiZ Mn Ls te hack. Me night 1 sing Le temps for bim Gites his favorite) or The Partisans Song
When he isn't eati cor sleeping. or reading. Anatali plays « with our ae + in compartinents Sant’. When he wins E hear the shout of triumph int corridor.
Championni Viadivostock! When bis usual partoers have bad ene Anatoli sett me dawe i front of his board and moves my pieces for ate. He alway= m me lose
Anatali drinks a qnart of youka a day. And between swig Frequently makes the woof the cms Anatoli hides his money beneath a pillow, \matoli wears Three Tops jeans
When we talk be spends a lot of tine slappi his forehead with bis hands in disbelief and aonavance. But those seme bands have alse informed me that Anatole is 68. chat
he has two daughters born in 1954, and 19 ai he divorced his wife wad that she fives in Mloseow. and that he has hod nwo heart attacks. one in TTB the other in TBO

Top: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STORIES. 1988. Texts, black and white photographs with wooden frames, six gelatin-silver prints;
photographs: each approximately 39/2 x 67"; enlarged text: 19% x 19%". Shown installed at the Auxiliary Gallery,
Fred Hoffman Gallery, Santa Monica, July 1989. Photo: Squidds and Nunns
Bottom: ANATOLI. eee
1984. Stenciled
| graphite,
raphi 265 black and white and color photographs;
2 edition #2/2; text: 54%" x; 11'8" :
photographs: each, 742 x 9/4". Shown installed at the Pat Hearn Gallery, New York. Photo: Tom Warren
 PIKE WIOIIS WOIRIK

1983 Breslauer, Jan, and Connie

Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris Hatch. “Sophie Calle on 53
Watching Big Brother.” L.A.
1981
Weekly, 1 September 1989, 39.
Canon Photo Gallery, Geneva
Carr, C. “Unauthorized
SELECTED
GROUP Access.” Village Voice,
EXHIBITIONS 22 August 19809, 94.
1989 Casadio, Martuccia. “Sophie
At Face Value, Kettles Yard Calle: Private Eye.” Interview
Gallery, Cambridge, England (March 1991): 60.
Culture Medium, International Gerstler, Amy. “Sophie Calle.
Center of Photography, Fred Hoffman.” Artscribe
New York (January/February 1990) 85.
Shifting Focus, Serpentine Gallery, Irmas, Deborah. Sophie Calle: A
London Survey. Santa Monica:
Nos Années 80, Fondation Fred Hoffman Gallery, 1989.
Cartier, Jouy-en-Josas Knight, Christopher. “A
Histoires de Musée, Musée d’ Art Cultural Self-Portrait, Warts
Moderne de la Ville de Paris and All.” The Los Angeles Herald
Examiner, 7 August 1987, 41.
L’Invention d’un Art, Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris Pagel, David. “Sophie Calle.”
Arts (November 1989): 97.
1988
Art & Text, First Bank Skyway Pincus, Robert L. “Sophie
Gallery, Minneapolis Calle: The Prying Eye.”
Art in America (October 1989):
Tendances Actuelles de la Photographie
192-97.
en France, Centre National de la
Photographie, Paris Raison, Bertrand. Sophie Calle
BORN 1988 (Cluses, France: Centre d’Art de
Paris, 1953 Galeria Montenegro, Madrid 1987 Flaine, 1987).
Lives in Paris The New Who’s Who, Hoffman
1987 Renard, Delphine, and
Borman Gallery, Santa Monica
SELECTED Centre d’Art de Flaine, Cluses Christian Caujolle. Anatoli
SOLO 1986
EXHIBITIONS 1986 (Dunkirk: Ecole Regionale des
F’ Four French, Lang & O’Hara Beaux-Arts Georges Pompidou
Ecole Regionale des
1991 Gallery, New York
Beaux-Arts Georges Pompidou de Dunkerque, 1986).
Luhrig Augustine Gallery,
de Dunkerque 1984 Rochette, Anne. “The Post-
New York
La Chambre, Centre National Beaubourg Generation.” Art in
Centre d’Art Contemporain,
Pat Hearn Gallery, New York de la Photographie,
Orléans America (June 1987): 46-47.
A Suivre..., Musée d’Art Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Galerie Crousel-Hussenot, Paris Scarpetta, Guy. “Sophie Calle:
Moderne de la Ville de Paris 1981 le jeu et la distance.” Art Press
De Appel, Amsterdam Autoportraits, Centre Georges
1990 (February 1987): 11.
The Institute of Contemporary School of Fine Art, Hobart, Pompidou, Paris
Smith, Roberta. “Young East
Art, Boston ‘Tasmania Galerie Zabriskie, Parts Villagers at Sonnabend
Matrix Gallery, University of 1985 1980 Gallery.” Ihe New York Times,
California at Berkeley Association Pour |’Art Une Idée en l’Air, 24 October 1986, C30.
Contemporain, Nevers The Clocktower, New York;
Galeria La Maquina Espaijiola, Weissman, Benjamin.
Museotrain FRAC Limousin, Fashion Moda, New York “Sophie Calle — Fred Hoffman
Madrid
Limoges SELECTED Gallery.” Artforum (November
Galerie Crousel-Robelin/ BIBLIOGRAPHY 1989): 161.
BAMA, Parts 1984
Espace de rue Porm, Nimes Alden, Todd. “Family Plots.”
1989 Arts (February 1990): 71-74.
Fred Hoffman Gallery,
Santa Monica Baudrillard, Jean. “Please
Follow Me.” Postface to Suite
Vénitienne by Sophie Calle, 1988.

SUITE VENITIENNE. 1980-91. Confessional and audio, 9'8" x 63" x 49/2".

Shown installed at the Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, 1991. Photo: Tom Warren
 SERS

4%
 IMR UNSUS IWOWES

I think we’re pretty much numb to the visual arts in New York City. But we still have to go out and
55
attempt it, even if you know you're failing. It’s like watching basketball. There's no play that hasn’t

been made. So in art I’m slightly impressed once in a while, but mainly I’m trying to find a new

vocabulary that I’m not used to, that frightens me and brings richness to me and this great city.

It’s hard dealing with that white cube. I don’t see the importance ofinteracting with it. To me it’s

like playing Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center. I started off showing on paintboards in Jewish recre-

ation centers because they were the only ones in Los Angeles that gave shows to black artists. I’ve

shown around swimming pools, with art on easels, art on trees, in bars, in barbershops and cafés.

I’ve done all that. The white walls are so difficult because everything is out of context. They don’t

give me any information. It’s not the way my culture perceives the world. We would never build a

shape like that or rooms that way. To us that’s for mad people, you get put in them in the hospital.

DAVID HAMM
There's no other place that I'd seen that kind of room until I came into the art world. | I’m pre-

pared, regardless. You have to be prepared to burst in that ray of

©) N S light when it comes and do with it whatever. I have to meet the

challenge. It’s a good feeling to try and outsmart myself. This challenge is incredible because the

white space is not giving any information back. You have to bring everything to it. |Art is a way
to keep from getting damaged by the outside world, to keep the negative energy away. Otherwise

you absorb it, if you don’t have a shield to let it bounce off of. Then you really go crazy. |It’s like
listening to Sun Ra’s music. It’s so beyond blackness, or whiteness. It’s over and beyond the rain-

bow. | Cultural statements in art can damage free thought or no-thought, which is the best thought.

I would love to be free enough to have no thoughts. FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STORR

Opposite: David Hammons. Preparatory sketch for PUBLIC ENEMY. 1991. Pencil on paper, 8/2 x 11". Photo: Erik Landesberg
DAVID HAMMONS
 INSTALLATION PROGESS

David Hammons. PUBLIC ENEMY. 1991. Photographs, sandbags, police barricades, prop weapons, confetti,
balloons, leaves, and paint; dimensions of the room: 14 x 37 x 43’. Collection the artist. Photos: Dawoud Bey
 DAVID HAMMONS

BORN Retrospective exhibition. 1976 SELECTED

GROUP
Springfield, Illinois, 1943 Institute of Contemporary Art, Dreadlock Series, Just Above
EXHIBITIONS
Lives in Harlem, New York P.S. I, Long Island City, New Midtown, New York
York 1990
SPLEGL ED 1975
SOLO
The Decade Show, Studio Museum/
1989 Greasy Bags and Barbeque Bones, Just
EXHIBITIONS New Museum/ MoCHA,
Exit Art, New York Above Midtown, New York
New York
1991
Retrospective, traveling to
1982 1974 Just Pathetic, Rosamund Felsen
Higher Goals, public installation, Fine Arts Gallery, Los Angeles
Institute of Contemporary Art, Gallery, Los Angeles
Harlem, New York
Philadelphia; San Diego 1971
Rewriting History, Kettles Yard,
Museum of Contemporary Art 1980 Brockman Gallery, Los Angeles
Cambridge, England
The Window, The New
1990
Museum of Contemporary Art, Black USA, Museum
Jack Tilton Gallery, New York
New York Overholland, Amsterdam

1977 1989
Nap Tapestry: Wire and W try Hair, Committed to Print, The Museum
Neighborhood Art Center, of Modern Art, New York
Atlanta Awards in the Visual Arts 8, High
Museum ofArt, Atlanta

DELTA SPIRIT HOUSE. 1983. Mixed mediums.

Shown installed at ART ON THE BEACH, Battery Park, New York . Photo: Dawoud Bey
 PIE WWOWS WORK

We

1988 1980 BIBLIOGRAPHY Kimmelman, Michael. “Turning

Art as a Verb, Maryland Institute Betty Parsons Gallery, the Familiar into the
Berger, Maurice. Interview with
College of Art, Baltimore New York Extraordinary.” The New York
David Hammons, in “Issues &
1986 Franklin Furnace, New York Commentary II. Speaking Out:
Times, 28 December 1990, €24.
Higher Goals, Public Art Fund, Some Distance to Go...” Larson, Kay. “Dirt Rich.”
Times Square Show, New York
Cadman Plaza, New York Art in America (September 1990): New York Magazine, 14 January
1972 80-81. 1991, 68.
1983
Los Angeles County Museum
Art on the Beach, Battery Park, Hess, Elizabeth, “Getting His Reid, Calvin. “Chasing the Blue
of Art
New York Due.” The Village Voice, 1 January Train.” Art in America
1970 1991, 81. (September 1989): 196-97.
Message to the Public, Spectacolor
La Jolla Museum of Art
Billboard, New York Jones, Kellie. “David Wallach, Amei. “Pick-up
Oakland Museum, California Hammons.” Real Life Magazine Games.” New York Newsday, 23
1982
(Autumn 1986): 2-9. December 1990, part 11, 3, 22.
Higher Goals, public installation,
Harlem, New York Kimmelman, Michael. “Giving
Voice to the Ephemera of the
Urban World.” The New York
Times, 19 May 1989, €33.

Left) HIGHER GOALS. 1982.

Poles, basketball hoops, and bottle caps; poles, 40'. Shown installed in Brooklyn, New York, 1986. Photo: Dawoud Bey

Right: WHO'S ICE IS COLDER? 1990.

Flags, oil drums, and ice. Shown installed at the Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, 1990. Photo: Ellen Page Wilson
 . RG doo Oe) < Seg 2 |
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 AIS WAS IWS ISKONIMES

A rather ambitious attempt to establish the correlation between art and “mysticism” is embedded in
61
the installation. Long ago, in icons and the Gothic style, for example, art was understood as
serving a high, religious-mystical origin, and the separation of the two appeared to be simply impos-
sible. In modern times, the artistic work became autonomous. The painting, and then the artist
himself, and finally his profession itself, became his personal affair. The connection between mysti-
cism and art has become highly problematic. In the art of the Late Renaissance, the former is still
preserved, both in the subject matter and in a particular “high” order or style. But subsequently, with
the change in the subjects depicted, it’s as though mysticism disappears altogether from painting.
(I am speaking here not about individual artists, but about the general state of affairs.) |But back
to the subject at hand. The subject of the installation The Bridge is rather simple. In the room where
the viewer finds himself, an exhibit of paintings should have taken place, but as a result of the appear-
ance of something mysterious—mystical—it cannot take place. The paintings, freeing up the space
for the purpose, wind up being squeezed to the walls by chairs, benches, and the table, turning into
common objects much like the furniture that obscures them. Art (the “paintings,” of course, repre-
sent “art”)must move aside, to the edge, to the corners in the darkness, yielding to the mysterious,
“mystical” center, which is brightly illuminated. That’s the story. |But then a new genre of art
appears onstage, like the “installation” (if, of course, you can consider it to be art, and this is still a
question), giving everything a differ-
ent angle. Installation, by its very ] L J A kK A
nature, may unite—on equal terms, with-
out recognition of supremacy—not only various forms of culture (paintings, objects, texts), but in
general anything at all, and most of all phe-
B A kK C) \/ nomena and concepts that are extraordinarily
far from one another. Here, politics may be com-

bined with the kitchen, objects of everyday use with scientific research, garbage with sentimental eftu-
sions. ... The installation as a genre is probably a way to give new correlations between old and familiar
things. By entering an installation, these correlations, these various phenomena, reveal their dependence,
their “separateness, ” but they may reveal as well their profound connection with each other, which
was perhaps lost long ago, which they at some time had, and which they always needed. And particular-
ly important ts the restoration of that whole that had fallen into its parts, and that I spoke of at the
EXCERPT FROM THE ARTIST S$ NOTE, THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE INSTALLATION THE BRIDGE
beginning of this note.

Opposite top: Ilya Kabakoy. Preparatory sketch for THE BRIDGE. 1991. Marker and color wash on paper, 11% x 1572". Photo: Erik Landesberg

Opposite bottom: Ilya Kabakov. Preparatory sketch for THE BRIDGE. 1991. Marker on paper, 1174 x 1642". Photo: Erik Landesberg
 ILYA KABAKOV/INSTALEATIONSPROCES>

G2

|
i]
i
a

Ilya Kabakov. THE BRIDGE. 1991. Wood, furniture, found and made objects, fabric, light fixtures, light bulbs, and paintings;
dimensions of the room: 13 x 53 x 36’. Courtesy of Ilya Kabakoy; Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York;
Dina Vierny, Paris; Private collection, Bern. Photos: Dawoud Bey
 ILYA KABAKOV

1989 1981
The Green Show, Exit Art, New Twenty-Five Years ofSoviet
York (traveling exhibition) Unofficial Art 1956-1981, C.A.S.E.
Museum of Soviet Unofficial
The Beautiful ’60°s in Moscow, The
Art, Jersey City
Genta Schreiber University
Art Gallery, Tel Aviv University Russian New Wave,
Contemporary Russian Art
Magiciens de la Terre,
Center of America, New York
Musée National d’Art
Moderne, Centre Georges 1979
Pompidou, Paris Twenty Years of Independent Art
from the Soviet Union, Bochum
1988
Museum
Bonn Kunstverein
The Square's Fourth Dimension,
Ich Lebe, Ich Sehe: Kiinstler der
Mart Gallery, Rockenberg
Achtziger Jahre in Moskau,
Kunstmuseum, Bern 1978
Russian Nonconformist Painting,
Venice Biennale
Saarland Museum, Saarbrucken
BORN 1988 1987
Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, 1933 10 Characters, Ronald Feldman New Soviet Art, Palazzo Reale,
Gegenwartskunst aus der Sowjetunion:
Lives in Moscow Fine Arts, New York (traveling Turin
Ilya Kabakov und Iwan Tschuikow,
exhibition). Traveled as Museum fiir Gegenwartskunst,
SELECTED 1977
SOLO The Untalented Artist and Other New Art from the Soviet Union,
Basel
EXHIBITIONS Characters to ICA, London The Herbert F. Johnson
1990 Before Supper, Kunstverein, Graz Museum of Art, Cornell
Four Cities Project, Orchard University, Ithaca, New York
Gallery, Derry, Ireland, 1985
Kabakov: Paintings and Drawings, New Soviet Art, An Unofficial
Seven Exhibitions ofaPainting, Dina Vierny Gallery, Paris Perspective, Venice Biennale
Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel
Am Rande (Along the Margins), 1976
The Rope ofLife & Other Kunsthalle, Bern Contemporary Russian Painting,
Installations, Fred Hoffman Palace of Congress, Paris
SELECTED
Gallery, Santa Monica GROUP
EXHIBITIONS
1975
He Lost His Mind, Undressed, Ran The Russian (Glezer Collection),
Away Naked, Ronald Feldman 1991 Artists’ Union, Vienna
Fine Arts, New York Soviet Art Around 1990,
Kunsthalle, Diisseldorf 1974
1989 Progressive Tendencies in Moscow
(traveling exhibition)
Que sont ces petits hommes? (1957-1970), Bochum Museum
1986
Galerie de France, Paris 1990
Kunstverein, Diisseldorf 1973
(traveling exhibition). In the USSR. and Beyond,
Traveled as Who Are These Little Stedelyk Museum, Amsterdam Centre National des Arts Russian Avant-garde: Moscow—73,
Men? to the Institute of Plastiques, Paris Dina Vierny Gallery, Paris
Between Spring and Summer:
Contemporary Art, Exhibit of Paintings, 28 Malaja 1970
Soviet Conceptual Art in the Era of
Philadelphia Gruzinskaja, Moscow Today’s Russian Avant-garde in
Late Communism, Tacoma Art
Exhibition ofaBook Museum (traveling exhibition) Moscow, Gmurzynska Gallery,
Photographs and Paintings,
(.
Ausstellung Eines Buches), Cologne
Adaptation & Negation of Socialist Center for Technical Aesthetics,
Daadgalerie, Berlin Moscow New Tendencies in Moscow,
Realism, Aldrich Museum of
White Covers Everything but Itself, Contemporary Att, Ridgefield, Fine Arts Museum, Lugano
One-Evening Exhibition
De Appel, Amsterdam Connecticut at the Soviet Artists’ Union, 1969
Communal Apartment, Sydney Biennale 1990 Artists’ Club, Kuznetskij Most, Moscow’s New School, Interior
Kunsthalle, Ziirich Moscow Gallery, Frankfurt-am-Main

Artists’ Club, Zholtovskij

Street, Moscow

Left;HE LOST HIS MIND, UNDRESSED, RAN AWAY NAKED. Installationl, MY MOTHER’S LIFE ITI. 1990.
Seventy framed pages of black and white photographs with texts, mounted on decorative paper, each
31 x 23" (framed).
Shown installed at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, January 6—February 3, 1990. Photo:
D. James Dee
Right! HE LOST HIS MIND » UNDRESSED, RAN AWAY NAKED. Installation m1. 1983—90. Five Socialist Realist murals
(acrylic on paper) and eight enamel paintings on masonite. Shown installed at Ronald
Feldman Fine Arts,
New York, January 6—February 3, 1990. Photo: D. James Dee
 PREVIOUS WORK

Ilya Kabakov: Ten Characters, 6

Exhibition catalogue (London: 5
ICA, in association with Ronald
Feldman Fine Arts, Inc., New
York, 1989).

Jolles, Claudia, and Viktor

Misiano. “Eric Bulatov and Ilya
Kabakov.” Flash Art
(November—December 1987):
81-83.

Kabakoy, Ilya. “La Pelle.”

Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art
moderne, Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris #26 (Winter
1988): 92—110.
Kabakoy, Ilya. “Discussion of
the Three Layers.” A-Ja (1984):
30-31.

Kabakoy, Ilya. “The Kitchen

Series.” A-Ja (1984): 26-27.
Kimmelman, Michael. “Soviet
Artist as a Storyteller of Not-
Always-Pretty Tales.” The New
York Times, 19 January 1990, C26.
Kuzminsky, Konstantin K. Art of
Russia and the West, no. 1 (March
1989):80-91.
Lloyd, Jill. “An Interview with
Ilya Kabakoy: The ‘Untalented
Artist’—A Schizophrenic Way
of Life.” Art International
(Autumn 1989): 70-73.
Morgan, Stuart. “Kabakov’s
Albums.” Artscribe (May 1989):
57—59-

Salisbury, Stephan. “Painting a

New Day in Soviet Art.”

eal / 4 The Philadelphia Inquirer,

29 December 1989, D1, D6.
1968 SELECTED Gainbrell, Jamey. “Perestroika
Exhibition with E. Bulatov, BIBLIOGRAPHY Shock.” Art in America (February Tupitsyn, Margarita. “Ilya
The Blue Bird Café, Moscow Cary, Katrina F.C. “Tlya 1989): 124-34, 179. Kabakoy.” Flash Art (February—
Kabakoy: Profile of a Soviet March, 1986): 67-69.
1967 Groys, Boris. “Ilya Kabakovy.”
Young Moscow Artists, The Renzo
Unofficial Artist.” Art & Auction A-Ja (1980): 17—23.
(February 1987): 86—87. Tupitsyn, Victor. “Tlya
Botti Art Group, Cremona line Aero solution Kabakov.” Flash Art
1966
Cembalest, Robin. “The Man Manuscript, 1982. (March/April 1990): 147.
Exhibition of Sixteen Moscow Artists,
Who Flew Into Space.” Artnews
(May 1990): 176-81. Huttel, M. “The Mathematical
Sopot-Poznan, Poland Gorsky.” Manuscript, 1982.
1965 Heartney, Eleanor. “Nowhere
Contemporary Alternatives/ 2, to Fly.” Art in America (March
Castello Spagnolo, L'Aquila, 1990): 176-77.
Italy

THE MAN WHO FLEW INTO SPACE FROM HIS APARTMENT. 1981-88. From 10 CHARACTER S.with
1988. Six poster panels
collage, furniture, clothing, catapult, household objects, wooden plank, scroll-type painting, two pages of Soviet paper, diorama; dimensions
of the room: 8' x 7'1" x 12'3". Shown installed at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, April 30—June 11, 1988. Photo: D. James Dee
 /

seq Vue rol/OG

NEGO 7

3S
WAAR

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a

Left: Juliet Myers. Videotape still of singer Rinde Eckert, for Bruce Nauman, ANTHRO /$0C10. 1991. Photo: Juliet Myers

Top right: Bruce Nauman. Preparatory sketch for ANTHRO /S$0C10. 1991. Pencil on paper, 18% xX 21/2". Photo: Erik Landesberg
Bottom right:
ig Bruce Nauman. Lyrics
) to ANTHRO / SOCIO. too1.
9 Pen on Pat
paper, 13 x 84". Photo: Erik Landesbergg
 PUK WMS IES IN(O) IES

I think I’m interested in a certain amount of disorientation, not in controlling the movement of

viewers. | It’s a pretty aggressive piece, and the aggression comes from these three different places

and keeps shifting, which makes it hard to focus. It’s not easy to decide where to put your attention;

seeing things out ofthe corner ofyour eye; knowing something is going on behind you. Ilike those
ideas. I like the size of the room, it gives me a chance to make some big images without having

them crowd each other. | The equipment begins to break up the space a little bit. There’s stuff

projected which you can walk around or walk through, and because | have different sets of imagery

I can move around—things will come at you from different places, at different times. | It must

come out of the core of why I do anything. There never seems to be an answer, and that’s what keeps
me interested. I don’t think you can pick any one piece and figure out what the motivation was.

Maybe when you look at a lot of work you have a stronger feeling for what makes it work. In a sense,

maybe, it’s all different ways of investigating ... frustration. |There’s no way to avoid connections,

but the most interesting ones to me are the ones where there appear to be connections from a long
time ago. It’s clear that there was work that I didn’t totally understand when I made it and that
has implications that are suddenly useful to me again. These things are sort of circular, because of

what you didn’t know before. It occurs in this piece. I was working with FEED ME, an image that

I'd worked with a couple of years ago. Although that had a very powerful emotional root at the time,

it has another at this time. It still has resonance. |With this project, the phrases I wanted to use
were “FEED ME, EAT ME” and “HELP ME, HURT

ME,” but it didn’t sound so good coming out of my mouth. B R U @

The complexity of the information, of the material, demanded more clarity and precision than

ees AL) Vi
I was able to

so I used Rinde Eckert, who ts a performance artist and a classically trained opera singer. les

pretty intense. I ended up having him sing, “FEED ME/EAT ME/ANTHROPOLOGY”

and “HELP ME/HURT ME/SOCIOLOGY.” rrom an INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STORR

 BRUCE NAUMAN/INSTALLATION PROCESS

68

Bruce Nauman. ANTHRO/ SOCIO. 1991. Video installation, disk players, monitors, projectors; dimensions of the room: 13 x 59 X 52".
Courtesy of Leo Castelli, New York, and Sperone Westwater, New York. Photos: Dawoud Bey
 BRIG NAUMAN

BORN 1976
FO Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941 Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Livesin New Mexico Sperone Westwater Fischer,
SELECTED New York
SOLO
EXHIBITIONS 1975
Leo Castelli, New York
1989
Castelli Graphics, New York 1974
Wide White Space, Antwerp
Lorence-Monk Gallery,
New York 1973
University of California, Irvine
Donald Young Gallery, Chicago
Leo Castelli, New York
Earl McGrath Gallery,
Los Angeles 1972-73
Bruce Nauman: Works from
1988
1965-1972 (traveling exhibition):
University of New Mexico,
Los Angeles County Museum
Albuquerque (permanent
of Art; Whitney Museum of
installation)
American Art, New York;
University of California, Kunsthalle, Bern; Stadtische SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
GROUP
San Diego Kunstalle, Diisseldorf; Stedelijk Butterfield, Jan. “Bruce
EXHIBITIONS

1986—88 van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Nauman, the Center of

1977
Museum fiir Gegenwartskunst, Palazzo Reale, Turin; Yourself.” Arts Magazine
Documenta 6, Kassel
Basel Contemporary Arts Museum, (February 1975): 53-55.
Houston; San Francisco 1976
Kunsthalle, Tubingen Nauman, Bruce. “Notes and
Museum of Modern Art Rooms P.S. 1, Institute for Art
Projects.” Artforum (December
Stadtisches Kunstmuseum, and Urban Resources, Long
1971 1970): 44.
Bonn Island City, New York
Ileana Sonnabend, Paris
Pincus- Witten, Robert. “Bruce
Museum Boymans—van 1975
Leo Castelli, New York Nauman: Another Kind of
Beuningen, Rotterdam Drawing Now, The Museum of
1968 Reasoning.” Artforum (February
Modern Art, New York;
Kunstraum, Munich
Leo Castelli Gallery, New York traveled to Kunsthalle, Ziirich; 1971): 30—37-
Badischer Kunstverein, Stadtisches Kunsthalle, Baden-
Konrad Fischer, Diisseldorf
Karlsruhe Schjeldahl, Peter. “Only
Baden; Albertina Museum,
1966 Connect,” The Village Voice,
Hamburger Kunsthalle Vienna; Sonia Hente-Neils
Nicholas Wilder Gallery, 20—26 January 1982, 72.
Foundation, Oslo
The New Museum of Los Angeles
Sharp, Willoughby. “Nauman
Contemporary Art, New York 1971
Interview.” Arts Magazine (March
Rooms P.S. 1, Institute for Art
Contemporary Arts Museum, See ):RS
1970 22—27.
and Urban Resources, Long
Houston
Island City, New York . “Bruce Nauman.”
The Museum of Contemporary Avalanche (Winter 1971): 23—25.
1969
Art, Los Angeles
When Attitude Becomes Form, Smith, Bob. “Interview with
University Art Museum, Kunsthalle, Bern; traveled to Bruce Nauman.” Journal (Spring
Berkeley Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; 1982): 35-38.
1986—87 Institute of Contemporary Art,
Tucker, Marcia.
London
Kunsthalle, Basel “PheNAUMANology,”
ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de Anti-Lllusion: Materials/ Procedures, Artforum (December 1970):
la Ville de Paris Whitney Museum of American 38-44.
Art, New York
Whitechapel Art Gallery,
London 1968
9 at Leo Castelli, Leo Castelli
1982—83 Warehouse, New York
The Baltimore Museum of Art
1966
Eccentric Abstraction,
Fischbach Gallery, New York

Left! ROOM WITH MY SOUL LEFT OUT/ROOM THAT DOES NOT CARE. 1984. Celotex, 34' x 48! x 30'6".
Shown installed at Leo Castelli, New York, 1984. Photo: Dorothy Zeidman
Right! RATS AND BATS (LEARNED HELPLESSNESS IN RATS) II (view 2). 1988. Three ¥4" videotapes, six television monitors,
one projector, and one live camera. Shown installed at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1988. Photo: Dorothy Zeidman
 PREVIOUS WORK

Pall

CAROUSEL. 1988. Steel and cast aluminum, 17'9" in diameter.

Shown installed at Konrad Fischer, Diisseldorf, 1988. Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum. Photo: Dorothea Fischer
 . Ci cuascen t
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 AIR IOUS US INO WES

I would like people to sit in the bleachers and think of where they are sitting as an amphitheater of the
Te
sort that one would sit in to watch Christians being devoured by the lions and also to watch football
games and other sports, but also to catch the reference that they are in some sense sitting on sculpture
ofthe late 1960s. | Western culture is intrinsically a colonizing culture. That's what it means to com-
mit oneself to the notion of this culture’s universality. So Western culture is my culture. I have very
strong reservations about attempts to carve up the cultural and artistic terrain as if ethnic groups occu-
pied discrete parts of it. I think it belongs to all of us. The underrated part is the extent to which we
all contribute to it. It’s not just a white male preserve. My own training and sensibility as an artist
are very strongly influenced by Minimalist and conceptual principles. This piece is an attempt to bring
forward not only some aspects of my own formalist sensibilities that people keep on denying exist, but
also to integrate those with concerns of race and racial identity, stereotyping, and so forth. Minimal-
ist sculpture and ways of thinking aspired to the highest kind of universality and the most Platonic of
forms. At the same time, it represented an ideological stance, in that all ideational references are intend-
ed to be absent. Those are the two sides of it I find very interesting, that Minimalism’s conception of
universality is exclusive rather than inclusive. One of the obstacles to inclusive universality is thinking
about black people as nonpersons or as inferior or subhuman or invisible or childish or dirty. Part of
the aspiration to inclusive universality, which I am totally enthusiastic about, 1s the naming of those
impediments and the attempt to transcend them. The naming of them is, of course, an extremely
unpleasant and painful matter for those who are maimed by those slurs and also for those who recog-
nize those slurs as expressions of their own deep feelings. That’s what it’s all about, for me: the rela-
tion between universal categories that really do apply universally and stereotypes that purport to apply
universally, but in fact represent exclusionary limitations of vision or perception or conceptualization,
I find it discouraging when someone says of my work, “The message is obvious, she’s against racism.”
I think that expresses an unwillingness to pursue the implications of the tssues and strategies I explore
in the work—it’s like shutting down at square one. | try for ultimate clarity, with multiple reverbera-
tions and multiple implications at the same time. | try for simplicity, not oversimplification.
I don’t want to make any prescriptions about what people should do. I just want to pene-
trate the layers of illusion and self-deception as far as possible and do it cleanly without
losing any of the mind-bending complexity of the ISSUES. FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STORR

wei AN PIPER
Opposite: Adrian Piper. Preparatory sketch for WHAT IT’S LIKE, WHAT IT IS, #3. 1991.
Pen on paper, 11 X 8%". Photo: Erik Landesberg
 ADRIAN PIPER/INSTALLATION PROCESS

74

Adrian Piper. WHAT IT’S LIKE, WHAT IT IS, #3. 1991. Video installation, two audio tracks, fluorescent lighting, mirrors,
and stepped construction; dimensions of the room: 14 x 31 x 31'. Adrian Piper/Courtesy John Weber Gallery, New York. Photos: Peter Moore
Actor: John L. Moore HI
 INIDIRIVNIN, IOP
IEIR

SELECTED 1981
76 GROUP The Gender Show, Group Material,
EXHIBITIONS
New York
1991
1980 =
Awards in the Visual Arts,
Issue: Twenty Social Strategies by
Hirshhorn Museum and
Women Artists, Institute of
Sculpture Garden, Washington,
Contemporary Arts, London
D.C. Will travel to The
Albuquerque Museum ofArt, 1977
History, and Science; Paris Biennale, Musée d’ Art
Toledo Museum of Art Moderne, Paris

1990 1975
Art in Europe and America: The Bodyworks, Museum of
1960s and 1970s, Wexner Center Contemporary Art, Chicago
for the Visual Arts, Ohio State
1971
University, Columbus
Paris Biennale, Musée d'Art
BORN 1989 1989—90 Moderne, Paris
New York City, 1948 Cornered, John Weber Gallery,
L’Art Conceptuel, Une Perspective,
Lives in Massachusetts New York 1970
Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris Information, The Museum of
EDUCATION Merge, Messages to the Public, (traveling)
Modern Art, New York
School of Visual Arts, Times Square, New York,
Public Art Fund
1989 1969
New York: A.A. (Fine Arts) Making Their Mark: Women Move
Harvard University, Cambridge: LANGUAGE LI, Dwan Gallery,
Adrian Piper, Matrix Gallery, into the Mainstream 1970-85,
Ph.D. (Philosophy) New York
University Art Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum
SELECTED Berkeley (traveling) Concept Art, Stadtisches Museum,
SOLO Leverkusen
EXHIBITIONS 1987 1988
Adrian Piper: Reflections 1967-1987 Committed to Print, The Museum Plans and Projects as Art,
1991
(retrospective), [he Alternative of Modern Art, New York Kunsthalle, Bern
What It’s Like, What It Is, #1,
Museum, New York. Traveled (traveling) SELECTED
Washington Project for the
to Nexus Contemporary Art BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arts, Washington, D.C. The Turning Point: Art and Politics
Center, Atlanta; Goldie Paley Berger, Maurice. “The Critique
What It’s Like, What It Is, #2,
in 1968, Cleveland Center for
Gallery, Moore College of Art, of Pure Racism. An Interview
Contemporary Arts
Directions Gallery, Hirshhorn Philadelphia; University of with Adrian Piper.” Afterimage
Museum and Sculpture Garden, Colorado Art Gallery, Boulder; Art as a Verb, Maryland Institute
(October 1990): 5-9.
Washington, D.C. Power Gallery, Toronto; The of Art, Baltimore
Lowe Art Museum, The Borger, Irene. “The Funk
Space, Time and Reference
University of Miami, Coral Lessons of Adrian Piper.”
1967-1970, John Weber Gallery,
Gables; Santa Monica Museum Helicon Nine (1986): 150-53.
New York
of Contemporary Art; Brenson, Michael. “Adrian
1990
Washington Project for the Piper's Head-On Confrontation
ARTWORKS: Adrian Piper,
Arts, Washington, D.C. of Racism.” The New York Times,
Williams College Museum of
Art, Williamstown 1980 26 October 1990, €36.
Adrian Piper at Matrix 56, Farver, Jane. “Adrian Piper.”
Why Guess? University of Rhode 1985
Wadsworth Atheneum, Adrian Piper: Reflections 1967-87.
Island Art Gallery, Kingston Kunst mit Eigen-Sinn, Museum
Hartford; in conjunction with Retrospective catalogue (New
Pretend, John Weber Gallery, Moderner Kunst, Vienna
Adrian Piper, Real Artways, York: The Alternative Museum,
New York Hartford The Art of Memory/ The Loss of 1987).
Why Guess?, Exit Art, New York 1971 History, The New Museum of
Goldberg, Roselee. “Public
One Man (sic), One Work, New Contemporary Art, New York
Out of the Corner, Film and Video Performance, Private Memory”
York Cultural Center, New {with Laurie Anderson, Julia
Gallery, Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York York Heyward, and Adrian Piper].
1969 Studio International (July—August
Three Untitled Projects (postal), 1976): 19-23.
0 to 9 Press, New York

Left: voTE/ EMOTE. 1990. Wood shelf with four silk-screened lightboxes, pens, paper, 7' x 13'84%4" x 48%".
Shown installed at John Weber Gallery, New York, 1990. Photo: Fred Scruton
Right: Untitled construction. 1967. Wood and paint, 36" x 6'. Photo: the artist
 PRs WONOIS WORK

ah

Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo. Lewis, JoAnn. “Images Menaker, Deborah. Rinder, Lawrence. Artist’s sheet.
“Dilemmas of Visibility: That Get Under the Skin.” ARTWORKS: Adrian Piper. Adrian Piper: MATRIX/
Contemporary Women Artists’ The Washington Post, 22 June Exhibition catalogue BERKELEY, University Art
Representations of Female 1991, GI, G5. (Williamstown: Williams Museum, Berkeley, mid-
Bodies.” Michigan Quarterly Review
Lippard, Lucy. “Catalysis: An
College Museum of Art, 1990). August—early November 1989.
(Fall 1990): 584-618.
Interview with Adrian Piper.” Paoletti, John. “Adrian Piper.” Sims, Lowery Stokes. “The
Hayt-Atkins, Elizabeth. NYU Drama Review (March Adrian Piper: Reflections 1967-1987. Mirror The Other.” Artforum
“The Indexical Present: 1972): 76-78. (New York: John Weber (March 1990): 111—15.
A Conversation with Adrian Gallery, 1989).
Marks, Laura U. “Adrian Piper: Thompson, Mildred.
Piper.” Arts Magazine (March
Reflections 1967—1987.” Fuse Phillpot, Clive. “Adrian Piper: “Interview: Adrian Piper.”
1991): 48—S1. (Fall 1990): 40-42. Talking to Us.” Adrian Piper: Art Papers (March—April 1988):
Johnson, Ken. “Being and Reflections 1967-87. Retrospective 27-30.
Mayor, Rosemary.
Politics.” Art in America catalogue (New York: The
“Performance and Experience.” Watkin, Mel. The Racist Within:
(September 1990): 154—61. Arts (December 1972): 33-36.
Alternative Museum, 1987).
Some Personal Observations.
Kosuth, Joseph. “Art After Raven, Arlene. “Civil Brochure accompanying the
Philosophy II.” Studio Inter- Disobedience.” The Village Voice, exhibition What It’s Like, What It
national (November 196g): 161. 25 September 1990, Arts Section Is, #1 (Washington, DIG:
cover and 55, 94. Washington Project for the
Arts, 1991).

OUT OF THE CORNER. 1990. Video installation with seventeen monitors,

sixty-four black and white photographs, one overturned table, sixteen overturned chairs, and music soundtrack.
Shown installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1990. Photo: David Allison
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ee Sees Ole MUSEUM OF MODERN ART HS,
Mrs. Henry Ives Cobb, Vice Chairman Emeritus; Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, President Emeritus; David Rockefeller, Chairman of the Board; Mrs. Frank
Y. Larkin, Donald B. Marron, Gifford Phillips, Vice Chairmen; Agnes Gund, President; Ronald S. Lauder, Vice President; John Parkinson III, Vice

President and Treasurer. Frederick M. Alger II, Lily Auchincloss, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Celeste G. Bartos, Sid R. Bass, H.R.H. Prinz Franz von
Bayern**, Hilary P. Califano, Thomas S. Carroll*, Marshall S. Cogan, Robert R. Douglass, Gianluigi Gabetti, Lillian Gish**, Paul Gottlieb, Mrs.
Melville Wakeman Hall, George Heard Hamilton*, Barbara Jakobson, Philip Johnson, John L. Loeb*, Mrs. John L. Marion, Robert B. Menschel,
Dorothy C. Miller**, J. Irwin Miller*, S. I. Newhouse, Jr., Philip S. Niarchos, James G. Niven, Richard E. Oldenburg, Peter G. Peterson, John
Rewald**, David Rockefeller, Jr., Rodman C. Rockefeller, Richard E. Salomon, Mrs. Wolfgang Schoenborn*, Mrs. Robert F. Shapiro, Mrs.
Bertram Smith, Jerry I. Speyer, Mrs. Alfred R. Stern, Mrs. Donald B. Straus, Robert L. B. Tobin, E. Thomas Williams, Jr., Richard S. Zeisler. *
Trustee Emeritus. ** Honorary Trustee. EX-OFF1C10: David N. Dinkins, Mayor of the City of New York; Elizabeth Holtzman, Comptroller of the City of

New York; Joann K. Phillips, President

ofTheInternational Council. AM CK NNO WILEDGEMEN T Slamnew
to the museum world. That fact has made me especially aware of the debt I owe to the many seasoned people who have devoted their skills,
imagination, and good will to this exhibition. There is not enough space to name them all, nor are the names I cite below in any order of impor-
tance. Nevertheless, I would like to thank Richard Oldenburg; Agnes Gund; Cora Rosevear; Fereshteh Daftari; Jody Hanson; Tavia Fortt; Marc
Sapir; Alexandra Bonfante-Warren; Karen Meyerhoff; Aileen Chuk; Barbara London; Jerome Neuner; Philip Yenawine; James Snyder;
Dan Vecchitto; Richard Palmer; Eleni Cocordas; Don McLeod; Emily Kies-Folpe; Joan Howard; Noriko Fuku; my unflappable assistant, Alina
Pellicer; Dawoud Bey; Scott Frances; Peter Moore; and all the staff members who participated in Sophie Calle’s project. I would also like to thank
my colleagues Carolyn Lanchner, Kynaston McShine, and Laura Rosenstock for welcoming a newcomer to the Museum. My special thanks go
to Kirk Varnedoe for inviting me at all. | The exhibition and catalogue were made possible by generous grants from the Lannan Foundation,
the Peter Norton Family Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Marcia Riklis Hirschfeld, Meryl
and Robert Meltzer, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art,
The Bohen Foundation, and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art. | For their support in producing this catalogue, I would
like to thank the Department of Publications, Osa Brown, Director; Harriet S. Bee, Managing Editor; Nancy Kranz, Manager of Promotion and
Special Services; Timothy McDonough, Production Manager; and the Graphics Department and its Director, Michael Hentges. For their
participation in installing Dislocations in The Museum of Modern Art, I would particularly like to acknowledge the following staff members:
Workshops: Foreman Carpenter, Attilio Perrino, Francis O’Donohue, Giuseppe Maraia, Frank Peables, George Sivulka, Chris Van Alstyne,
Gunther Wildgrube; Exhibition Production: Douglas Feick, Robert Stalbow; Film Department: Charles Kalinowski, Anthony Tavolacci; Frame
Shop: Laura Foos; Housekeeping: Housekeeping Manager, Naomi Del Bianco, Dominick Tomasello; Building Operations: Supervisor, Peter
Geraci, Zinovy Galinsky, Ron Genovese, Ilie Marinescu, Robert Pizzurro; Painters’ Shop: Supervisor, Desire Van Hove, Santos Garcia, Don
Peters; Preparators: Supervisor, Gilbert Robinson, Christopher Engel, Stanley Gregory, Joe Matellio, David Moreno; Security: Elroy Clarke.
The following outside people participated in the installations: The Other Vietnam Memorial: Chris Bakala, Tim Brennan, Chris Buck, David Carlson,
Mike Czuba, Paul Dickerson, Sue Evans, Peggy Reynolds of Immaculate Construction, Leo Modrcin, Peter Engel and Wes Pittenger of New
Cut, Inc., Chester Poplaski, Mick Raffle, Jim Schmidt, Larry King and William Nitzberg of Technology for the Arts, Rurkit Tiravanya, and Sven Travis;
Ghosts: Takeshi Arita, Paulette Giguere, David Ravitch; Public Enemy: Jules Allen, A. C. Hudgins, George Mingo; The Bridge: Emelia Kanevsky, Chuck Agro;

Anthro/ Socio: Dennis Diamond, Rinde Eckert, Juliet Myers, Video D Studios, Inc.; What It’s Like, What It Is, #3: John L. Moore III, Paul Coffrey of

George Washington University T.V., Susanna Singer, Karl Kalbaugh of Soundwave, Inc., Steve Dougall of Technovision, and Matt Dibble of Videosphere.
JOISTS TG MILI as ONIN Ss Louise Bourgeois
Chris Burden
Sophie Calle
David Hammons
Ilya Kabakov
Bruce Nauman
Adrian Piper

TAB OF
oie @: At LON An Essay by Robert Storr

CON TENS
JAI
IUS Psy GN EBs |INS TAL DA ELON Re) ai
PREVIOUS WORK Pontaeoeroees 36
Chris Burden Az
Sophie Calle 48
David Hammons 54
Ilya Kabakov 6o
Bruce Nauman 66
Adrian Piper 72

Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art TS)

Acknowledgements 79
 BOURGEOI
CHRIS BURDEN

. — SOPHIE CALLE

record of an “exhibition of seven Tellnicks