Page 48 - Studio International - September 1973

Tanglewood Press have enrolled Christo in a
Plexiglas and aluminium Double Shop Window.
In France, apart from Denise Rene's activity,
there are a number of enterprising new
publishers — Nouvelles Images, Multiples Paris,
Guerin of Avignon, and particularly Galerie
Boutique Germain whose current artists include
Roy Adzak, Alice Hutchins, Mark Brusse,
Ruth Franken and Lilian Lijn.
Italy too shows some staying power in the
field, with Plura Edizioni, Ariete, which
includes a new work of Barry Flanagan in its
current list, and two new publishers—Numero
of Venice and Rome and Venturi of Bologna.
Italy, one would have thought, with its great
reputation in modern industrial design and
manufacture, could have led the field. The
exhibition `Italy: The New Domestic
Landscape' held in the Museum of Modern Art,
New York at the end of last year, revealed all too
clearly that the requisite talent and know-how
was going into the more direct and lucrative
field of domestic design.
There remains a strong desire among many
artists to work in an area which by-passes art
dealers or exhibition circuits, achieving a rapport
with a more generalized public, in which
purchasing or possessing has no decisive role.
At the Serpentine Gallery this month there is an
exhibition which records such an effort. The
American artist Denis Masi and his English
colleague Ian Colverson recently rented fifty-
four poster sites throughout the United
Kingdom and two London buses, each for a
period of one month, on which to display large
printed posters. In fact an additional twenty-five
sites were donated by the agents, British
Transport Advertising and Mills & Allen. The
sites vary in cost from £5 to £20 a month,
dependent on position, and the buses are LI I a
side. Masi and Colverson designed a large,
sombre, abstract poster, to x 7 feet, printed
through normal commercial channels and put
up by professional billstickers. The project was
partially subsidized by The Arts Council. The (Above)
object of the experiment was to expose a large Robert Rauschenberg Plot 1973
From Reality and Paradoxes portfolio
public to an art statement and to record in still A collage of six magazine cutouts and brown
photographs, film and tape-recordings their paper bag plus embossing and five silkscreens,
reactions. This, in fact, was an exercise in handprinted 32 x 23 in., edition too
Published by Multiples Inc., New York
multiple art but one, of course, requiring no-one (Left)
to buy and possess an object. It was not merely One of Masi and Colverson's multiple art
close to the normal experience of advertising poster sites, at Garratt Lane, Wandsworth,
London to x 7 ft
art, but also to the range of entertainment arts (Top right)
where experience is the sum total of the artist's Gianfranco Frattini and Livio Gastiglioni
object. Boalum segmental flexible lamp 1966-70
Masi and Colverson have possibly suggested a Plastic and metal, each segment 35½ x 2 3/8 in.
Manufactured by Artemide, shown in the
useful development in the multiple art field. It exhibition `Italy: The New Domestic
can only be exploited by subsidized Landscape', at the Museum of Modern Art,
organizations, the Arts Council or museums in New York, in 1972
(Centre right)
different parts of the country. The sites should Salvador Dali with his sculpted frame,
prove inexpensive, since the agents are willing published in an edition of 600 by
to provide them at reduced costs, or even free, Templeton, Rawlings and Davis Ltd, London
once the total of their monthly bookings are (Bottom right)
Joseph Beuys Felt Suit
known. As a form of patronage the The suit was tailored to Beuys's measurements,
commissioning of large prints has its attractions except for the arms and legs, which were made
and their production costs through normal longer. Approx. 66 x 4o in., edition too
Published by Edition René Block,
commercial channels would be low. distributed by Multiples Inc.
94