Artists' Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art

377 Pages·2011·23.38 MB·English

by  Gwen Allen

Arti sts’ MAg Az i n es

ARTISTS' MAGAZINES
AN ALTERNATIVE SPACE
FOR ART
GWEN ALLEN
THE MIT PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
© 2011 Massachusetts Institute of TecnoIogy
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This book was set in Helvetica Neue and Minion Pro
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Library of Congress Catalogingin-Publication Data
Allen, Gwen, 1971-
Artists' magazines an alternative space for art /
Gwen Allen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN (hardcover: alk. paper)
i Art, odern-2Oth centuryPeriodicals.
2. Art, r odern-2Oth centuryHistoriograpy.
Title.
N64g0A58 2011
70g045dc22
2010022787
io g 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 i
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VII
INTRODUCTION 1
i THISISNOTTOBELOOKEDAT 13
ARTFORUMIN THE 1960S AND 1970S
2 THE MAGAZINE AS A MEDIUM 43
ASPEN, 1965-1971
3 ARTONANDOFFTHEPAGE 69
OTO 9,1967-1969
4 AN ARTISTS' MAGAZINE 91
AVALANCHE, 1970-1976
5 THE MAGAZINE AS AN ALTERNATIVE SPACE 121
ART-RITE, 1973-1978
6 THE MAGAZINE AS MIRROR 147
FILE, 1972-1 989
7 ARTISTS' MAGAZINES IN THE 1980S 175
REAL LIFE, 1979-1994
8 EPILOGUE: INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITY 201
INTERFUNKTIONEN, 1968-1975
APPENDIX: A COMPENDIUM OF ARTISTS' 227
MAGAZINES FROM 1945 TO 1989
NOTES 315
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 347
INDEX 351

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank the following artists and editors who generously offered their recollections and
insights, especially those who agreed to be interviewed for this project: Vito Acconci, Liza Béar,
AA Bronson, Benjamin Buchloh, Edit deAk, Dan Graham, Friedrich Heubach, Thomas Lawson,
Bernadette Mayer, Susan Morgan, Brian O'Doherty, Walter Robinson, and Willoughby Sharp.
Others who willingly gave of their time and helped with my research include Leonard Abrams,
Michael Andre, Rasheed Araeen, Anna Banana, Elliott Barowitz, Sally Beers, Julian Blame, Mel
Bochner, Yve-Alain Bois, Daniel Buren, Victor Coleman, Tricia Collins, David Dalton, Debbie
DeStaffan, Herbert George, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Andy Graham, Suzanne Hammer, Naoyoshi
Hikosaka, David Hlynsky, James Hugunin, Ron Kolm, William Leavitt, Steven Leiber, Philip
Leider, Les Levine, Lucy Lippard, Gerhard Johann Lischka, Harley Lond, Tom Marioni, Raul
Marroquin, Dick Miller, Alan Moore, Cynthia Navaretta, Suzanne Ostro, Otto Piene, Howardena
Pindell, Lucio Pozzi, Judy Rifka, David Robbins, Dorothea Rockburne, Nancy Schoocraft, Pamela
Seymour Smith Sharp, Ingrid Sischy, Tense Slotkin, Terry Smith, Carol Squiers, Betsy Sussler,
Gerhard Theewen, Reiko Tomii, Herman de Vries, Brian Wallis, Helene Winer, Bob Witt, and
Judith Wong.
The research, writing, and publishing of this book were made possible by fellowships from
the Henry Luce/American Council of Learned Societies and the Stanford University Art and Art
History Department. I was also fortunate to receive a Getty Library Research grant. I am espe-
cially thankful for release time from teaching made possible by a San Francisco State University
Vice Presidential Award and a Presidential Award. A San Francisco State University Mini-Grant
subsidized permission and licensing fees for this book's illustrations.
Portions of chapter 4 were published in Artforum and Art Journal, and I thank the editors
of these publications, and especially Tim Griffin, Don McMahon, and Patricia Phillips, for their
feedback. I also thank the archivists and librarians at the Getty Research Library, the Museum of
Modern Art Library, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Library, and the National Gallery
of Canada for their patience and help with my research.
This book began as a dissertation under the direction of Pamela M. Lee, and it is profoundly
indebted to her intellectual guidance and inspired by her own scholarship and writing. I also thank
the other members of my dissertation committee, Maria Gough, Michael Marrinan, and Nicholas
Jenkins, for their feedback and support.
I feel fortunate to have worked alongside dear friends and colleagues at the Maine College
of Art, especially Joe Begnaud, Aimée Bessire, Adriane Herman, Beata Niedzialkowska, Chris
Thompson, and Ling-Wen Tsai. At San Francisco State University I am thankful for the support of
my colleagues in the Art Department, particularly fellow art historians Judith Bettelheim, Whitney
Chadwick, Mark Johnson, Santhi Kavuri-Bauer, and Richard Mann. I am also grateful for my
vii
students, both MECA and SFSU, whose enthusiasm for the book's topic helped sustain my own
engagement with it.
I wish to acknowledge several others who have been crucial to the completion of this book
and to the well-being of the author. First, I must single out Karen Rapp, who read the entire man-
uscript at various stages and provided invaluable feedback and insights (not to mention moral
support); this book would be impossible without her. Jill Dawsey and Julian Myers also read
portions of the manuscript and offered incisive comments. Tirza Latimer offered wise and
generous suggestions at a key moment. Geoff Kaplan was an important interlocutor in the field
of graphic design, and also helped with the images for the book. Eda ufer's friendship has been
important, even over a distance. Kerry Hanlon has been there for me in many ways over many
years. Others whom I wish to thank for various kinds of encouragement and assistance include
Fabienne Adler, Zachary Barowitz, Kelly Baum, Hsiao-Yun Chu, Carlton Evans, David Henkin,
Corey Keller, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Rael Lewis, Sheila Lyons, Sarah Malakoff, Gabriela Muller,
Kaz Okada, Dana Ospina, Jessica Riley, Andre de Abreu Serrao, and Cherise Smith.
It seems somehow fitting that a book that is so much about the processes of publishing
and editing has benefited so greatly from the support of my own editor at the MIT Press, Roger
Conover. His knowledge and acute understanding of the topic informed the conceptualization
and realization of this project, and enriched the experience of writing it. For this I am most ap-
preciative. Also at the MIT Press, I sincerely thank Matthew Abbate, who saw this book to press,
and Margarita Encomienda, who designed it, as well as Paula Woolley and Anar Badalov for their
efforts in the preparation of this book.
For their love and support, I thank my family: my parents, Anne and William Allen; my
sisters Elizabeth Allen and Rebecca Allen; Peter Pocagar; John Esteves; and my nieces and
nephews, Jacob, Liam, Benjamin, Lauren, and Jillian.
This book is dedicated to Phyllis Johnson, whom I unfortunately never knew, but who would
have been pleased and surprised, I think, to know that her little magazine was not forgotten.
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
The expectation of failure is connected with the very name of a Magazine.
NOAH WEBSTER
In 1788 the American publisher and dictionary writer Noah Webster, founder of several short-
lived periodicals, lamented the precarious enterprise of publishing a magazine. The average
life span of a magazine in the United States between 1741 and 1850 was only eighteen months,
and it was not until well into the nineteenth century that the advertising industry made magazine
publishing a reliably profitable business. Yet the ephemerality that defined the magazine at
the dawn of its invention has remained fundamental to the social possibilities inherent in this
particular form of printed matter. To publish a magazine is to enter into a heightened relation-
ship with the present moment. Unlike books, which are intended to last for future generations,
magazines are decidedly impermanent. Their transience is embodied by their unprecious formats,
flimsy covers, and inexpensive paper stock, and it is suggested by their seriality, which presumes
that each issue will soon be rendered obsolete by the next.
During the 196os and 1970Smagazines became an important new site of artistic practice,
functioning as an alternative exhibition space for the dematerialized practices of conceptual art.
Abandoning canvases, pedestals, and all they stood for in the established institutions of modern-
ism, this art sought out lightweight and everyday media, and relied heavily on texts, photographs,
and other kinds of documents. Conceptual art depended upon the magazine as a new site of dis-
play, which allowed it to be experienced by a broader public than the handful of people actually
present to witness a temporary object, idea, or actor in the case of earth art, ambitious enough
to make the trek to the remote locations where this work tended to reside. As the art historian
David Rosand observed of the pivotal new role of the art magazine during this period, "you read
it. But you read it because it told you what was going on partly because so much of what was
going on was not to be seen in the galleries."3
While artists used the magazine to document their work, they also began to explore it as
a medium in its own right, creating works expressly for the mass-produced page. These original
artists' contributions (sometimes called artists' projects, artists' pages, or magazine art)4 investi-
gated the distinct materiality of the magazine as well as its unique properties as a form of com-
munication. The everyday, throwaway form of the magazine mirrored art's heightened sense of
its own contingency in the 196os and 197os:its insistence on the actual time and place in which
was it encountered. Inexpensive and accessible, the magazine was an ideal expressive vehicle for
art that was more concerned with concept, process, and performance than with final marketable
form. Indeed, the ephemerality of the magazine was central to its radical possibilities as an alter-
native form of distribution that might replace the privileged space of the museum with a more