Public Knowledge : Selected Writings by Michael Asher [1 ed.] 9780262354028, 9780262042673

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Public Knowledge

Writing Art series edited by Roger Conover Art after Philosophy and After: Collected Writings, 1966–­1990, by Joseph Kosuth [out of print] Rock My Religion: Writings and Projects 1965–­1990, by Dan Graham [out of print] Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris (October Books), by Robert Morris [out of print] Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances, by Barbara Kruger The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings 1960–­1993, by Gerhard Richter Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973–­1994, by Bill Viola Out of Order, Out of Sight. Volume I: Selected Writings in Meta-­Art 1968–­1992, by Adrian Piper Out of Order, Out of Sight. Volume II: Selected Writings in Art Criticism 1967–­1992, by Adrian Piper Imaging Desire, by Mary Kelly Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923–­1997, by Louise Bourgeois Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Interviews, by Krzysztof Wodiczko Two-­Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art, by Dan Graham Imaging Her Erotics: Essays, Interviews, Projects, by Carolee Schneemann Essays on Art and Language, by Charles Harrison Conceptual Art and Painting: Further Essays on Art and Language, by Charles Harrison Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages (October Books), by Ed Ruscha Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism, by Mike Kelley Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words: Writings and Interviews, by Bruce Nauman Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Writings, 1975–­2001 (October Books), by Martha Rosler Minor Histories: Statements, Conversations, Proposals, by Mike Kelley The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986–­2003, by Gregg Bordowitz Cuts: Texts 1959–­2004, by Carl Andre Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser, by Andrea Fraser Language to Cover a Page: The Early Writings of Vito Acconci, by Vito Acconci Feelings Are Facts: A Life, by Yvonne Rainer Solar System & Rest Rooms: Writings and Interviews: 1965–­2007, by Mel Bochner Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006–­2009, by Ai Weiwei Dissolve into Comprehension: Writings and Interviews, 1964–­2004, by Jack Burnham Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke, by Hans Haacke On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters: The Writings of Hollis Frampton, by Hollis Frampton We Are in Open Circuits: Writings by Nam June Paik, by Nam June Paik Public Knowledge: Selected Writings by Michael Asher, by Michael Asher

Public Knowledge

Selected Writings by Michael Asher

Michael Asher

edited by Kirsi Peltomäki

© 2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All writings and works by Michael Asher © Michael Asher Foundation All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Dante MT pro and Neue Haas Grotesk Pro by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Asher, Michael, author. | Peltomäki, Kirsi, 1970-­editor. Title: Public knowledge : selected writings by Michael Asher / Michael Asher ; edited by Kirsi Peltomäki. Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2019] | Series: Writing art | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018054295 | ISBN 9780262042673 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Art. Classification: LCC N6537.A8 A35 2019 | DDC 700-­-­dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2018054295 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents List of Illustrations  .xi Preface: Writing as Interface, by Kirsi Peltomäki  .1

Part 1 On Writing and Documentation Notes on book project for The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983: “Book Proposal” (1974) .9 Letter to Valerie Smith, director of Sonsbeek 93, Arnhem, 1993, and Jan Brand, editor of the Sonsbeek 93 catalog (January 1, 1993)  .10 Letter to Matthias Michalka, art historian and curator at Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2010)  .13

Part 2 Artistic Practice Entry from Contemporary Artists book (1977)  .15 Notes to Rudi Fuchs, director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven: “Notes on Text” (ca. 1978)  .18 Letter to Jan Butterfield, art critic (December 17, 1979)  .20 Correspondence about work for l’art conceptuel, une perspective at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1989–­1990  .21 Letter to Claude Gintz, curator at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (April 5, 1988)  .21 Letter to Claude Gintz, curator at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (May 3, 1989)  .23 Notes on work for Galerie Roger Pailhas, Marseille, 1988 (ca. 1989)  .26

Note to the reader: Dates in parentheses are those of the original document in Michael Asher’s archive or, if previously published, date of publication; other dates presented are those of exhibitions or events.

Writings on work for Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1990  .28 Notes on work for Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1990 (1990)  .28 Reflection upon work process: “My Own Problems in Doing This Work as It Is Linked to Writing” (1991)  .29 Notes for lecture at Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, Paris, 1991: “Response” (1991)  .31 Interview with Hou Hanru (1991)  .35 Notes for lecture at Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, Paris, 1992: “A Quick Description of My Work” (ca. 1992)  .45 Letter to Mark Francis, cocurator of Carnegie International 1991, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1991–­1992 (October 5, 1992)  .46 Statement on artistic practice: “Overview” (1994)  .48 Notes for lecture at Institut für Gegenwartskunst, Vienna, 1996  .49 “Third Draft Lecture Notes, Vienna” (1996)  .49 “Kunstraum Lecture Notes” (1996)  .50 Notes for lecture: “Who Is the Artist Working For?” (1999)  .52 Notes on public art: “Artworks Can Be Understood as Public” (ca. 2000)  .53 Notes: “Artist/Architect” (ca. 2002–­2005)  .56 Interview with Ginger Wolfe-­Suarez: “Michael Asher Interview” (2004)  .57 Letter to Etienne Wynants, curator at Etablissement d’en face, Brussels (November 19, 2006)  .63

Part 3 Public Address: Lectures Notes for lecture for “Modern Art Museums and Their Spectators” conference at Tate Gallery, London, 1997 (1997)  .65

Notes for lectures for student participants in work for Made in California: NOW at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000—2001  .70 “Lecture” (2000)  .70 “LACMALab” (2000)  .72 Notes for lecture at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in conjunction with A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968, 2004 (2004/2006)  .79 Notes for lecture for “Works in Progress” lecture series at Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2005 (2005)  .88

Part 4 Public Address: Exhibition Statements Statement on work for Heiner Friedrich Gallery, Cologne, 1973 (1973)  .99 Statement on work for Los Angeles in the Seventies at The Fort Worth Art Museum, 1977 (1977)  .100 Statement on work for Museum Haus Lange, Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Krefeld, 1982 (1982)  .102 Exhibition handout for work for 74th American Exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago, 1982 (1982)  .106 Statement on work for In Context exhibition series at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1983)  .110 Statement on work for Ex-­tension at Occidental College, Los Angeles, 1986 (1986)  .112 Statement on work for l’art conceptuel, une perspective at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1989–­1990 (1989)  .113

Part 5 Writing about Individual Projects Notes on work for La Jolla Museum of Art, 1969 (ca. 1969)  .117 Notes on work for Spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970 (ca. 1969)  .120

Notes on work for the gallery of Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, 1975 (1974, 1976)  .122 Notes on work for Ambiente/Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, 1976: “Outline of Thoughts as They Pertain to Venice” (1976)  .128 Notes on work for Claire S. Copley Gallery, Los Angeles, and Morgan Thomas Gallery, Santa Monica, 1977: “Two Galleries” (1976)  .130 Notes on work for Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1977 (1976–­1977)  .133 Notes on work for Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1977: “Artist/Participant/Audience” (1977)  .140 Notes on work for 73rd American Exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago, 1979: “Washington” (ca. 1979)  .142 Letter to A. James Speyer, curator of Twentieth-­Century Painting and Sculpture at Art Institute of Chicago (December 12, 1980)  .145 Addendum to proposal for work for Art Institute of Chicago (1981)  .148 Writings on work for Vocation/Vacation exhibition series at Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, 1981  .150 “Observations” (1981)  .150 Letter and enclosure to Brian L. MacNevin, curator at Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre: “Preliminary Outline: Conditions of Sale and Reinstallation of Work from Vocation/Vacation Exhibition in Banff” (June 23, 1982)  .154 Letter to David Joselit, art historian (June 20, 1988)  .156 Proposal for work for Stuart Collection at University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, 1991: “Project Proposal for Stuart Collection” (ca. 1989)  .159 Proposal for a work (unrealized): “Permanent Collection/ Trust Fund” (ca. 1990)  .162 Writings on work for Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1991  .166 “Note to Myself” (1990)  .167 “Thoughts about Centre Pompidou Project” (1991)  .172 Description of exhibition (ca. 1991)  .174 “Installation Relationships to Library Beaubourg” (1991)  .176

Letter to the Editor of Flash Art International (October 21, 1991)  .178 Notes on work for Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997 for Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, 1997  .180 “Münster Project” (1997)  .181 “Münster” (1997)  .191 Lecture at Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London, 2003: “Michael Asher, Excerpts from a Lecture, London, June 2003” (2003)  .192 Interview with Anna Harding: “Conversation Between Anna Harding and Michael Asher, December 2004–­March 2005” (2004–­2005)  .195 Notes on work for Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2008 (2008)  .199

Part 6 Teaching Practice Writings on professional degrees in the arts (1988–­1989)  .203 Notes on professional degrees in studio art (ca. 1988)  .203 Letter to Julie Gordon, Office of Academic Affairs, Office of the President, University of California (December 6, 1988)  .205 Letter to Julie Gordon, Office of Academic Affairs, Office of the President, University of California (December 16, 1988)  .212 Letter to Adele Shank, Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Degree Programs in the Arts, University of California, San Diego (June 1, 1989)  .218 Notes on Post Studio Art class (ca. 1990)  .220 Letter to Jonathan Liss, recent art school graduate: “My Teaching Approach” (July 1, 1998)  .222 Statement on teaching philosophy: “Overview” (ca. 2000)  .224 Conversation with Stephan Pascher on teaching (2005)  .225 Index  .239

List of Illustrations

Portrait of Michael Asher, 1968.  xiv Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA, Made in California: NOW, 2000–2001, installation view, first rotation of student reinstallation.  77 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA, Made in California: NOW, 2000–­2001, museum label.  78 No title, 1966. Heat-­formed Plexiglas (clear).  81 No title, 1966. House paint on tapered wood with radiused top end and bottom end faired into wall.  85 The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA, A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968, 2004.  86 Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1990, installation view.  90 Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1990, detail of installation.  92 Museum Haus Lange, Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Krefeld, West Germany, 1982.  104 Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 74th American Exhibition, 1982.  109 The Temporary Contemporary, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA, In Context, 1983–­1985.  111 Advertisement by Michael Asher for l’art conceptuel, une perspective at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France, 1989–­1990.  114 La Jolla Museum of Art, La Jolla, California, USA, 1969.  119 The gallery of Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California, USA, 1975.  127

La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy, Ambiente/Arte, 1976.  129 Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, USA, 1977.  138 Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 73rd American Exhibition, 1979, statue of George Washington in original location.  143 Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 73rd American Exhibition, 1979, installation view of Gallery 219 with statue of George Washington.  144

Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada, Vocation/Vacation, 1981.  152 Permanent work for the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA, 1991.  161 Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, 1991.  170 Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, West Germany, Skulptur Ausstellung in Münster 1977, 1977.  187 Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, West Germany, Skulptur Projekte in Münster 1987, 1987.  188 Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany, Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997, 1997.  189 LWL-­Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany, skulptur projekte münster 07, 2007.  190 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2002–­2003, installation view, second rotation of student reinstallation.  194 Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, California, USA, 2008.  201

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List of Illustrations

Portrait of Michael Asher, 1968, Costa Mesa, California, USA. Photograph by John F. Waggaman. © Michael Asher Foundation.

Preface

Writing as Interface

Michael Asher (1943–­2012) was an American artist associated with conceptual art, site specificity, and institutional critique. Approaching each project with a rigorous and extensive understanding of specificity, Asher formulated works that typically responded to some aspect of preexisting material, social, or ideological aspects of a situation; indeed, his artistic practice was mostly based on invitations from galleries, museums, and exhibitions. Along with his artwork, Asher’s decades-­long teaching practice at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) influenced generations of artists, many of whom differ considerably from Asher’s approach to making art, but nevertheless acknowledge the pivotal importance of their contact with him at CalArts. After a brief period of practice that involved making increasingly less-­sculptural works during the 1960s, Asher predominantly shifted to producing temporary works for specific situations. Hence, few of his works have lasting material presence (although there are a handful of exceptions, such as his work for the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla). Because most of his works ceased to exist at the end of the exhibition period, the record around them has acquired critical importance. Although much of his situational work involved texts, exposure to Asher’s writing has been limited. He gave few interviews, didn’t write art criticism, and rarely published extensive accounts of his own work. Yet writing, and, in a broader sense, language, was central to his artistic practice. Rather than an end to itself, language served as an interface in his practice. Writing was a tool to work out ideas, negotiate institutional parameters, articulate thought processes, reflect on institutional scenarios, and communicate the stakes in realized works. At times, Asher wrote about what actually happened in a given situation, in particular when the finished work differed from the plans the artist might have had for it. He also used writing to address specific audiences: he wrote to himself to think through artistic problems, to curators to propose works, to critics to communicate with them, and to viewers in order to convey information in a particular exhibition. Language in its spoken form was equally important in Asher’s practice. He conducted much of his preparatory work for individual projects by phone through conversations that often lasted for hours. His teaching practice also relied on spoken language. In his legendary Post Studio Art classes at CalArts, Asher structured the

discourse around a given student’s artwork rather than the predetermined (and limited) time frame allocated for the class meeting. (The Post Studio classes were notorious for running into late evening after a Friday morning start.) In a similar manner, spoken discourse was a key component of his pedagogy in the independent study meetings he conducted with students at CalArts. Asher used writing in multiple stages of his process. When he was preparing a work, he wrote project notes, idea lists, and correspondence. Writing was a tool for compiling ideas and trying out connections between concepts, procedures, and facets of the institutional situation. Most of these process notes were written by hand, often in basic spiral-­bound, ruled notebooks or canary, legal-­ruled writing pads. Aside from notes, Asher used his notebooks to brainstorm, make lists of ideas, write down contact and other relevant information, and, occasionally, to draw diagrams of exhibition spaces and record ideas for installing components of his work. The writings in these notebooks range from short notes to fully developed statements he composed in several drafts. One notebook might contain ideas for, and information about, multiple projects. In terms of his own archives, Asher filed some notebooks separately while tearing out specific pages and filing them in meticulously categorized project folders. Occasionally he cut and taped sections of text together from multiple originals to construct new texts, sometimes occupying long strips of paper that he later folded and salted away in the file cabinets that comprised perhaps his most prominent household furnishings. Though Asher made many of the pertinent arrangements for his projects by phone, he also used written correspondence in his working process to articulate proposals and explain complex conceptual ideas, as well as respond to curators. At times, he would have letters or other documents typed, but even those might contain Asher’s hand-­edited changes. He often saved multiple drafts of letters, and when an original was faxed to the recipient, he attached the fax transmission slip to the letter to document its sent status. Sometimes he wrote during the work’s exhibition period, observing and analyzing the realized situation, thus using writing as a method of thinking through results. Frequently, he wrote about a work after its realization in order to elaborate on its themes, consider responses to it, and reflect on its subsequent relevance. The writings selected for this volume are intended to convey instances of Asher’s thinking and practice. Although some previously published documents (such as interviews and exhibition statements) have been included, most texts in this collection are being made available to a wider public for the first time. All of the previously unpublished texts in this collection are located at the Michael Asher Foundation, in the archive the artist compiled and maintained during his lifetime. The construction of this archival record mattered a great deal to Asher:

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he organized documents carefully, in many cases filing multiple versions of texts. These documents vary in their scope, presentation and degree of polish. Notes and correspondence were arranged by Asher in file cabinets, along with other pertinent materials (such as brochures, maps, and other research material) as well as correspondence from host institutions. Within this archive, Asher established multiple organizational categories. He filed documents by project but also maintained separate categories; for example, the files that were used when preparing his well-­ known Nova Scotia book Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979, written by Asher in collaboration with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (and initially with the collaboration of Kasper König). Many of the texts included in Public Knowledge were occasioned by specific proposals, works of art, or institutional situations. These texts are connected to Asher’s practice at a particular moment, reflecting his thinking about the formation of meaning in art and society in relation to artists, institutions, and the public. Throughout these texts, certain themes recur, in particular those related to structures of knowledge and labor, key topics in Asher’s artistic practice. “Public knowledge,” the title of this collection, is a phrase and theme the artist used in his writings on several occasions. For Asher, knowledge was not an abstract quantity or even a solely individual property; knowledge was functional, critical, and most definitely had a public dimension he linked in his projects to access, agency, and empowerment. In a 1980 letter to curator A. James Speyer (included in part 5 of this collection), Asher outlined two proposals for a work for the permanent collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. One of the proposals centered on housing and real estate in the context of the critical function of the museum and the exchange between the public and private sectors. In this project, two private houses from different parts of town would trade places by being physically moved to new foundations, then placed on sale, “so [that] there remains public knowledge of the transition” from one location to another.1 In this proposal (which remained unrealized), the public records documenting a real estate transaction—­itself a form of archived writing—­would constitute a referential and even ethical access point for the public. In his writings, Asher discussed the relationship of the viewer and the transformative potential of knowledge on several occasions. In his lecture notes, “Artworks Can Be Understood as Public,” written for a conference on public art around 2000 (see part 2 of this book), Asher connected the viewing public to available modes of knowledge, arguing that works of art generate “access to a meaning, which gives the viewers tools to reconfigure something other than already prevailing knowledge.”2 In Asher’s view, art enables active encounters that bear the potential to reimagine dominant cultural narratives.

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Asher emphasized the production and dissemination of knowledge in the context of his teaching practice as well. Describing a particularly productive group of students in his Post Studio Art class in the spring of 1989 (in part 6 of this collection), Asher noted that “[these students] expected art to communicate as a critical examination of culture and the circulation of knowledge which cultural practice draws upon.”3 This account of artistic practice positions an engagement with communication and circulation of knowledge as the ultimate outcome of art education, a view differing from other more conventional measures of success in the contemporary art world. He further aligned this emphasis on public knowledge with his own artistic practice in a statement on teaching philosophy written around 2000 (also included in part 6 of this book), in which he connected his work to “a concern over the privatization of knowledge and its stratification”4 and characterized his artistic practice as “rooted in questions about the circulation of knowledge.”5 Asher further articulated his thoughts on the importance of making and keeping knowledge public in an 1999 interview with Stephan Pascher. In this instance, Asher discussed his work for The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Asher’s work for that exhibition consisted of a catalog that listed works of art that had been deaccessioned from the museum’s collection. In his interview with Pascher, Asher argued that works of art, when exhibited in museums, become part of the public sphere, and this placement denotes a fundamental right to access that is separate from the ownership of any given work of art: [If works of art are removed from public museums,] you can’t expect people to forget [them]. It becomes a part of their knowledge. We have to understand that things that are on view are part of the circulation of knowledge and you can’t take people’s knowledge away from them without them questioning it.6 This recurring emphasis on “the circulation of knowledge” in Asher’s writings points to the importance of a communicative dimension in his practice: Asher took viewers into account, considered what the work might have conveyed to them and how it might have been understood by them in the context of the situation at hand. The ideological as well as practical parameters of his artistic practice were integrated into language that was driven by purpose rather than convention (although Asher was keenly aware of conventions as productive of meaning in his writing as well). Language, with all the precision and substance that it could carry, was critical in this communicative effort. The writings in this collection are organized in six parts according to the subject matter and scope of the text. Within each part, the texts are organized chronologically, from earliest to latest, with the understanding that some of these texts lack

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precise dates and are situated in a range rather than a single year. The titles of individual texts include two types of dates: the dates in parentheses are those of the original document in Michael Asher’s archive, or, if previously published, the date of publication. When texts are associated with a particular exhibition, the date for that event is also included without parentheses. The first part of this book includes three short texts, wherein Asher considers the role of writing and documentation in his practice. The second includes texts that reflect on artistic practice in broadly applicable terms. The third part features lecture notes that served as a basis for speaking to an audience, while the fourth part features statements about individual projects Asher wrote for viewers at specific exhibitions, and were intended to be read in conjunction with viewing the work in question. The fifth part is a compilation of texts written about specific works and their situational contexts, and the sixth and final part includes documents concerning pedagogy and the structure of art education. Each text is introduced by editor’s notes that include information about the type and status of the original documents, which range from short, fragmentary notes to polished, extensively edited correspondence. The editor’s notes also include rudimentary information about specific artworks that are connected to the texts, and the relevant institutional situations. This book, however, does not provide thorough descriptions of Asher’s projects; for that purpose, I encourage readers to consult other dedicated sources, such as Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979 and numerous exhibition catalogs.7 Generally speaking, my editorial approach seeks to retain Asher’s authorship of these texts as closely as possible. Asher meticulously edited every text or interview that was slated for publication, but many of the texts in this collection are previously unpublished, and while all previously unpublished texts in this collection were archived, and thus preserved by Asher, the writing in them was not necessarily polished. The overall editorial approach toward these texts has been to facilitate the ease of reading while maintaining a sense of Asher’s thinking and his distinctive use of writing. Some texts are presented in facsimile, as they are best seen in the original due to the difficulty of transcription. Most of the texts have been transcribed and copyedited to silently correct evident misspellings and punctuation. In some cases, the formatting of the texts is adjusted for ease of reading. Transcript notes in square brackets within the texts indicate the presence of any additional elements found on the page in the original document, while any words inserted by the editor or the Michael Asher Foundation to address clear omissions are enclosed in square brackets. In instances in which Asher used square brackets, these have been converted to curly brackets: {}. Except for these standard copyediting procedures, the content of Asher’s texts has not been changed. All remaining

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punctuation and style (such as ellipses or emphasis) is retained from the original documents. When multiple drafts were present in Asher’s archive, I selected the text’s latest version, unless stated otherwise. In documents containing handwritten edits by Asher, passages the artist definitively crossed out have been omitted and his insertions are included. If Asher assigned a title to a text, I used that document’s extant title and placed it in quotation marks. If a text did not have a clearly recognizable title, I provided a descriptive title (i.e., letter, statement, or notes) without quotation marks. These descriptive titles also contain information about the context of the writing (for example, an exhibition) when that context is an integral part of the text itself. In most instances, texts are included in their entirety. In the rare instances in which parts have been left out, those omissions are indicated and the content of the omitted part is described. This book began with conversations with the artist during his lifetime. Following his death in 2012, I continued the project with the permission of the Michael Asher Foundation, which graciously allowed me to conduct research in his archive while the archive was being processed. My work on this project as an art historian has been separate from my more recent participation in the Michael Asher Foundation, on the board of which I have been honored to serve since 2015. The foundation’s concern with maintaining historical accuracy and contextual clarity regarding Asher’s work has been critical in making this publication possible; ultimately, however, I take responsibility for the selection of these texts and their arrangement. My editorial process of compiling this book was based on extensive sessions of reviewing materials in Asher’s archive, transcribing handwritten originals, researching and determining their context, and providing information as well as some critical interpretation of that context in the editor’s notes that accompany the individual texts. In the course of this research I returned to many documents I viewed while working on my earlier book, Situation Aesthetics: The Work of Michael Asher (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), but this time my process was guided by the archive rather than specific research questions. This book would not have been possible without the support of multiple individuals and institutions. Roger Conover at the MIT Press is the main reason this book exists in the first place, and his continued support over the years—­more years than perhaps either of us initially envisioned—­provided the pathway for the completion of this project. Matthew Abbate and Margarita Encomienda saw the work through to production at the MIT Press with infinite patience. The support of those who work on Asher’s archive, and those who work for the Michael Asher Foundation, has been equally crucial. In particular, Karen Dunbar, Karin Lanzoni, Roxy Gonzalez, and Poppy Coles have been instrumental. The board of

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the Michael Asher Foundation has supported this project during years of intense activity, and its decision to allow research in the archive during the initial years of operation made it possible to make these writings available in a timely manner. In addition, Dee Williams provided much information that was simply not available elsewhere. I would like to thank all the copyright holders for their permissions to print or reprint texts and images in this book, as well as for the important—­and delightful—­conversations about Asher and the situations around his work. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyrighted material. I apologize for any errors or omissions, and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. My editorial work here has been supported, in part, by the Center for the Humanities and the School of Arts and Communication at Oregon State University. I received a College of Liberal Arts Publication Support Grant from Oregon State University for image permissions. And, finally, the entire project would have been unthinkable without my family who not only endured but truly supported my frequent travel to, and preoccupation with, the archive.

1 Michael Asher, Letter to A. James Speyer, curator of Twentieth-­Century Painting and Sculpture at Art Institute of Chicago (December 12, 1980). 2 Michael Asher, Notes on public art: “Artworks Can Be Understood as Public” (ca. 2000). 3 Michael Asher, Notes on Post Studio Art class (ca. 1990). 4 Michael Asher, Statement on teaching philosophy: “Overview” (ca. 2000). 5 Michael Asher, Statement on teaching philosophy: “Overview” (ca. 2000). 6 Asher in “Cave Notes: Stephan Pascher and Michael Asher Examine Asher’s Recent Work at the MoMA,” Merge 5 (Summer 1999): 26. Edited versions of this interview have been published in three anthologies: in Christian Kravagna, ed., The Museum as Arena: Artists on Institutional Critique (Cologne: Walther König, 2001), 106–­112; in Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, eds., Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 366–­376; and in Jennifer King, ed., Michael Asher (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 129–­140. 7 Michael Asher, Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979, ed. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1983).

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Part 1 On Writing and Documentation

Notes on book project for The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983: “Book Proposal” (1974)

Editor’s Notes: In these notes, Asher considers the role of documentation and the book format in his artistic practice, outlining key relations between “presentation” (the artwork) and “documentation” that were operative in his practice. Asher wrote these notes in a notebook in the early stages of his book project for The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1983). Asher worked on the Nova Scotia book from 1973 onward, first with German curator Kasper König and then with German art historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, who ultimately became the editor and coauthor of the volume. Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979 was copublished by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) in 1983, in conjunction with Asher’s project for the In Context exhibition series that helped launch MOCA. This book has become an invaluable sourcebook for generations of artists and critics on Asher’s early work. The text reproduced here is an example of Asher’s process or brainstorming notes. It is situated in a notebook that includes a range of texts, such as to-­do lists, a draft for a chronology of Asher’s education, drafts for particular descriptive sentences, notes about potential illustrations for the book, details about the fabrication of early works, and a number of notes addressed to König as part of their collaboration on the book project. Asher drew lines above and below to separate this note graphically from other elements on the notebook page.

Book Proposal 1)  Interest in clarity and reality so as to further understand my past work through some type of documentation. 2)  Try to use a book format for [documentation], yet using documentation to establish a similar inquiry that is found in a presentation. 3)  A book of documentation to be published and received in some way by others. 4)  A book which, in spirit, contains a similar attitude as a presentation—­ vis-­à-­vis {continuity} or other using diagrams, photos, or description to carry intent.

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Letter to Valerie Smith, director of Sonsbeek 93, Arnhem, 1993, and Jan Brand, editor of the Sonsbeek 93 catalog (January 1, 1993)

Editor’s Notes: This handwritten text is located in a notebook that Asher filed in his project folder for the outdoor sculpture exhibition Sonsbeek 93 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. It is a draft for a catalog statement that Asher wrote at the request of Valerie Smith, the curator of the exhibition, and Jan Brand, the editor of the catalog. In this draft, Asher reflects on the function of the exhibition catalog as a genre and outlines his position on publishing notes about his working process in the catalog. He returns to the themes of “documentation” and “presentation,” considering the spatiotemporal proximity of the documentation (in the exhibition’s catalog) to the presentation (the artwork in question concurrently on view). Asher’s work for Sonsbeek 93 involved tree stumps with signs placed upon them. The signs featured words that referred to mechanical camera parts, in reference to tourism and the role of photography in documenting experiences. Asher’s thoughts here set important historical precedents for recent cultural conversations on photography, cultural sites, process, technology, and the widespread embrace of those technologies as devices and processes instrumental in the production of discourse, signification, and social relations. The text included here also contains analysis that pertains to Asher’s overall approach to site specificity and the machinery of the temporary exhibition with its conventions of publicity and documentation in the form of the catalog. Transcribed here are passages that he annotated with “OK” in the margins, as well as two paragraphs preceded by question marks (the last two in the text). In the top margin, Asher has labeled the document with “For catalog” and “Second draft.” The text transcribed here covers three and a half pages of Asher’s notes. In the original notebook, these pages are followed by two and a half pages of text, which were omitted because of their fragmentary quality. In those notes, Asher drafts out elements of the text that eventually would be published in the exhibition’s catalog, including notes on mechanization and other technologies as they pertain to photography, uses of scenery in landscape photography, and what Asher calls the “aesthetic experience” as well as the “leisure experience.” Asher also wrote a different text for the occasion, marked “Third draft,” elements of which were included in the published catalog. In the beginning of the letter below, Asher is referring to Smith’s early idea for the catalog, which would have engaged the artist in a dialogue with a figure whom the editors would have chosen for the occasion.

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1/1/93 Dear Valerie Smith and Jan, For the catalog, I was requested to write a dialogue or have an exchange of letters with another person which would help the reader gain an idea of my practice. In December, while visiting Arnhem I spoke to you and Jan about the difficulty of me being able to do this. I proposed that I write a short essay regarding the installation I plan on doing. Since then, I have been thinking about an aspect of the exhibition I don’t understand, and that is the catalog as a document of the process rather than a document of the artwork. I think a lot can be learned from a catalog which reveals the process, if it includes such information as: why the director chose to do this specific type of an exhibition; why they chose certain artists; how funds were used in the categories of travel, lodging, shipping, maintenance, staff salaries, administrators’ salaries, cost of construction of different installations, and entertainment expenses; as well as negotiations for funding, funding amounts, funding sources; and what happens during the exhibition; and finally dismantling the exhibition. Reproducing notes and written material regarding the construction of an artwork seems to be only in the service of substantiating the fact that the artists gave their artworks some thought and time. But the spectators can decide this for themselves when they see the final artwork. In the case of myself, these notes only confuse the spectator about what I am interested in since my notes represent different decisions I am trying to make regarding the artwork’s construction. These notes, for me, are very unimportant, and I don’t wish to see them gain a surplus of value where it is particularly unnecessary for the aesthetic experience and will not be of any benefit. As a matter of fact, these notes are not process but—[Note: Sentence ends here in original.]

Assuming that I will be doing the project I first proposed, the essay I write represents my initial thoughts about this artwork but does not necessarily represent how this artwork functions. I will be able to write about it once it’s completed and I can view it in operation. The artwork I propose for Sonsbeek 93 is to take place within Park Sonsbeek. It includes approximately twenty-­five tree stumps from various parts of the park, which are in the proximity of walk paths, as bases for steel plaques or nameplates secured to the tops of the tree stumps so they may be seen from the pathways. Engraved upon the steel plaques are words which refer to parts of a camera apparent upon the outside of the camera body.

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In some respect, the artwork I have proposed turns around the nameplate as a momentary substitution for the fallen tree. Other than for decoration or a sign of mastering light, I don’t understand the purpose of the landscape photo. This artwork refers as much to the topography of the camera body as it does to the landscape as a way of beginning to interfere with the limits of the landscape code. [ . . . ]

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Letter to Matthias Michalka, art historian and curator at Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2010)

Editor’s Notes: This typed draft letter is addressed to Matthias Michalka, a curator at Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK) in Vienna at the conclusion of MUMOK’s exhibition Changing Channels: Art and Television 1963–­1987. That exhibition is one of few instances during Asher’s lifetime that featured documentation of Asher’s work rather than a site-­specific project made for the situation. In this instance, that documentation was presented as color photographs: stills from the video produced as part of Asher’s work for the exhibition Via Los Angeles, organized by the Portland Center for the Visual Arts in Portland, Oregon, January 8 to February 8, 1976. In that work, Asher had prepared and screened a thirty-­minute program of a camera trained on a local TV station control room. Michalka had written to Asher on behalf of MUMOK to ask about the possibility of purchasing the photographs (in other words, the documentary video stills) that had been prepared for exhibition purposes. Asher’s response addresses the relationship between an artwork and its documentation in his practice. In this response, Asher expresses a distinct preference for “a catalog or book format” rather than treating the still photographs as objects of art in themselves.

Dear Matthias, Documentation is crucial in order to begin to understand most of my work. Except for special moments such as your exhibition, I feel documentation should be framed precisely as fragments which give the reader a record of the original. The experience of the original can never be had through documentation, and the intent of the artwork can be misunderstood when the documentation of the work substitutes itself for the actual work. In this case, an example of presenting documentation could be better understood in a catalog or book format. In such a case, you can print many more frame stills and have historians write an essay (or several) that discuss the general and specific characteristics of this project as well as the historical, theoretical, and critical implications of the Portland project. This would hopefully open up a debate surrounding the ideas in the work and how they respond to past production and possibly effect future work for other artists, as well as myself. I hope this example begins to answer your question. Let me know your thoughts. Sincerely, Michael

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Part 2 Artistic Practice

Entry from Contemporary Artists book (1977)

Editor’s Notes: In 1976, Asher was invited to contribute to a reference book of artists’ bibliographies. The book, Contemporary Artists (London: St. James Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), edited by Colin Naylor and Genesis P-Orridge, was published the following year. The entry below was included in the book. It follows the format set by the editors for participating artists. Asher’s framing of artistic practice in relation to the artist’s biography in the artist’s statement that concludes his entry is closely related to his work for the gallery of the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County (1975). In that work, Asher had closed off entry to the gallery space and, instead, posted a statement using removable letters on a notice board in the lobby. The statement read, “IN THE PRESENT EXHIBITION I AM THE ART.” Some of Asher’s notes analyzing the Otis work after its realization are included in part 5 of this book.

Asher, Michael. American. Born in Los Angeles, California, USA, 15 July, 1943. Studied liberal arts and sciences, Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, California, 1961–­63; anthropology and art, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 1963–­64; New York Studio School, 1964–­65; fine arts, University of California, Irvine, 1965–­66 (BA 1966), graduate studies, 1966–­67. Worked as advertising sales representative for West Coast Industries, New York, 1964. Assistant teacher in sculpture, 1966–­67, painting instructor, 1967–­68, University of California, Irvine. Instructor in industrial arts, Anaheim Union High School District and Garden Grove School District, California. Executed design for “The Art of the Indian Southwest,” Balboa, California, 1971. Worked as research assistant for use of cardboard materials in furniture, Los Angeles, California. Visiting artist, University of California, Irvine, 1973; California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, 1973; Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1974; Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, 1975. Art Instructor, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, 1976. Traveled in England, Germany, Netherlands, 1972–­76. Awards: Art Purchase Award, Contemporary Art Council, Los Angeles County Museum [of Art], 1967; Short-­Term Activities Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, 1973; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1974; Artists Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, 1975. Mailing address: 1135 Amoroso Place, Venice, California 90291, USA.

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Individual Shows: 1969  1970  1972  1973  1974  1975  1976 

La Jolla Museum of Art, California Gladys K. Montgomery Art Center, Pomona College, Claremont, California Market Street Program, Venice, California Gallery A 402, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia Cambridge School, Weston, Massachusetts Lisson Gallery, London Heiner Friedrich Galerie, Cologne Galleria Toselli, Milan Claire S. Copley, Los Angeles Anna Leonowens Gallery, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax Otis Art Institute Gallery, Los Angeles The Clocktower, New York The Floating Museum, San Francisco

Selected Group Shows: 1967  I am Alive, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California 1968  Mini-­Thing, Lytton Gallery of Visual Arts, Los Angeles 1969  Anti-­Illusion: Procedures/Materials, Whitney Museum, New York Plane und Projekte als Kunst, Kunsthalle, Berne (and Aktionsraum I, Munich and Kunsthaus, Hamburg) 1970  Art in the Mind, Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio 1971  24 Young Los Angeles Artists, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California 1972  Documenta V, Kassel, Germany 1973  3D into 2D: Drawings for Sculpture, New York Cultural Center, New York 1975  University of California, Irvine, 1965–­75, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, California 1976  Biennale, Venice Publications: On Asher: Anti-­Illusion: Procedures/Materials catalog by James Monte and Marcia Tucker (New York) 1969; “Michael Asher: An Environmental Project” by B. Munger, in Studio International (London) October, 1970; “Michael Asher: La Jolla Art Museum” by T. H. Garver, in Artforum (New York) January, 1970; “The Art of Existence: Three Extra-­visual Artists, Works in Process” by Robert Morris, in Artforum (New York) January, 1971; “Michael Asher: The Thing of It Is . . .” by Peter Plagens, in Artforum (New York) April, 1972; 8e Biennale de Paris catalog by J. Cahen-­Salvador, G. Boudaille, J-M. Poinsot, etc. (Paris) 1973.

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I feel it is implicit, yet perhaps not immediately recognized through background information, that those activities which pertain to my art and those activities which pertain to me in general, are determined by one another. —­Michael Asher

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Notes to Rudi Fuchs, director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven: “Notes on Text” (ca. 1978)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these notes after Rudi Fuchs had sent him a draft of his essay for the publication Michael Asher: Exhibitions in Europe 1972–­1977 (Eindhoven: Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, 1980). Fuchs, then the director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, had recently organized Asher’s solo exhibition at the museum and was spearheading a book publication about Asher’s work. Exhibitions in Europe, one of the first substantial publications on Asher’s work, contained two critical essays (by Fuchs and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh) and descriptions of individual works written by Asher himself. These handwritten notes were filed by Asher in conjunction with his project files for the Van Abbemuseum exhibition.

Notes on Text I appreciate having received your text for the catalog. I like, in particular, your view of your relationship to Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and my work done there. This is the first time I have read a director’s view which goes beyond discussing the physical nature of the work and the issues it might embody. After having read your text, I thought it might be helpful if I respond to a few of your ideas: 1)  My work cannot function independently of the cultural frame. It is that frame which gives a work meaning and helps it to be understood. 2)  My work seeks to effect or go beyond the existing limits. I think of limits as givens in a situation and use them in order to effect them. 3)  I often respond to a situation through an analysis of the problems which arise. A reaction cannot make a progressive statement due to indulgence. 4)  Both philosophical and ideological statements are integral to the intent of most of my work. Furthermore, any work of art has political impact once it enters the culture. 5)  I believe my work to be principled, and this can be seen in how effective it is as a statement.

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6)  On a formal level, I have mostly dealt with real space, but at times I have found it necessary to deal with the picture plane and real time in order to communicate my ideas. I don’t feel that “sculptor” characterizes my art activities. 7)  In most of my work, I use givens which are already familiar or perhaps part of the existing conditions. By doing this, it emphasizes the problems I am dealing with and also the viewer’s relationship to the problems, which goes beyond a formal analysis. I am grateful for you having sent me your text. It has given me a lot to consider. I look forward to the other page and a half. I hope you will appreciate my point of view as I appreciate having the opportunity to share it with you. Warmest regards, Michael

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Letter to Jan Butterfield, art critic (December 17, 1979)

Editor’s Notes: This letter was written to art critic Jan Butterfield as part of a discussion around an interview Butterfield had conducted with Asher. Asher filed a photocopy of the handwritten letter in his archive. The interview remains unpublished. In the letter, Asher comments on the term “conceptual,” the role of materiality, and the art object in his practice.

12/17/79 Dear Jan, I finally had several hours to go over the transcripts you sent. I found a few very interesting points. There are some places where I am sure I didn’t say that which was transcribed. At least these places would be antithetical to everything I have been working on. Regardless of this, we only touched upon one quarter of my production and an extremely small number of issues regarding that production. The time needed to further discuss what I have done would mean several days. I don’t know how I could fit those days in without compromising my practice. I don’t even think we would have time to record if you lived in Los Angeles, and we could record a couple of hours every few days. These problems are multiplied by the difficulty I have in front of a tape recorder and the warm-­up time that is needed before I feel comfortable. I would still be happy to send you written material, which is far more complete (in many cases), and says almost exactly what you have recorded. Just give me a call and let me know. To comment on the mistakes in the transcription will take a while, and perhaps could also be done on the phone in a more efficient way than me trying to write. There is one thought I will comment upon now, although it reiterates what I said in the transcription. I dislike any category, and often my work is a response to the category makers. In this case, I would like to emphasize the fact that everything I’ve done, I consider an object. There is a physicality to everything I have concretized. The idea itself has consistently taken on physical proportions. I don’t know of any visual artist whose work is not objectified if it is to be received. The words “non-­object” and “conceptual” were coined by the system and not by artists. These words served as alibis from dominant economics to make a tendency they didn’t understand marketable. Anyway, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you. Warmest regards, Michael 20

Part 2

Correspondence about work for l’art conceptuel, une perspective at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1989–­1990

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these letters to Claude Gintz following an invitation to participate in the exhibition l’art conceptuel, une perspective that Gintz was curating for Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. L’ARC, which Asher mentions in his letter, is the contemporary art department of the museum. This 1989 exhibition was to be one of the first large retrospectives of conceptual art from the 1960s and 1970s. In his realized work for l’art conceptuel, Asher designed and placed advertisements for the exhibition in art historical journals. He then arranged for copies of those journal issues to be placed for sale in the museum’s bookstore during the exhibition. Asher’s catalog statement for l’art conceptuel is included in part 3 of this book.



Letter to Claude Gintz, curator at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (April 5, 1988)

Editor’s Notes: In this letter to Gintz, Asher reflects on history, audience, and site specificity, contrasting the assumptions underlying Gintz’s request with site specificity as it was practiced by Asher. Gintz had initially asked Asher to reproduce his work for Documenta V in Kassel (1972). In that work, Asher had painted the walls, floor, and ceiling of an enclosed room half black and half white, with the boundary dividing the space vertically in the middle. Asher’s letter explains why Gintz’s request to reproduce a past work in the exhibition l’art conceptuel, une perspective was incompatible with Asher’s artistic practice. Asher filed this letter in his project files for the exhibition. A note on top of the first page of this handwritten letter indicates that it was sent to Gintz. At the bottom of the page, a marginal note reads “Copyright the exhibit in Chicago,” in possible reference to Asher’s upcoming exhibition at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, which involved patent numbers for industrial fixtures.

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4/5/88 Dear Claude, Thank you very much for your letter dated March 17, 1988. Your proposal has given me great reason to wonder about how I can stretch a work of art to fit present day conditions. Certainly, contemporary modernist practice would welcome me to the fold and possibly be quite thrilled if I would reconstruct an older artwork. I originally asserted that I did the work you request, specifically for Documenta V and the conditions I saw pertinent to Szeemann’s thesis of his exhibition. I also attempted to problematize some modernist thought that seemed mainstream in 1972. To reconstruct this work would be possible if we could reconstruct the site of modernism sixteen years ago and the actual context of Documenta V. But if we were even able to do this, why and for what purpose would we be doing it? I would like to participate in your exhibition, but for the moment I do not know how it would be possible. I would like to have some time to make a consideration. In the meantime, would you please send me a ground plan of L’ARC Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, and would you please enclose some photos to jog my memory. It was four years ago when I saw L’ARC and then only for about half an hour. Please let me know some of the other artists you hope to ask for this exhibition. It would help me a great deal to know more about the reasons why you want to do a conceptual art show of that work of authors practicing from 1962 to 1972. Thank you very much for your request for my participation. Let’s keep in touch. Warmest regards, Michael Asher

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Letter to Claude Gintz, curator at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (May 3, 1989)

Editor’s Notes: In this letter to Gintz, Asher describes an early proposal for the exhibition l’art conceptuel, une perspective that he would subsequently discard. Much like the ultimately realized work in the exhibition, however, the early proposal outlined in this letter focuses on addressing specific audiences in relation to constructing notions of history and, in the context of the art world, the retrospective exhibition.

Claude Gintz Moulin de Torçay 28170 28170 Châteauneuf-­en-­Thymerais France 5/3/89 Dear Claude, Since we haven’t spoken for a while, and I have not heard from L’ARC, I thought I had better write at the soonest possible time. I am still interested in the same terrain of viewer reception as before, but I view it a little differently. So, enclosed is a rough outline, as a proposal, for your conceptual art retrospective. This proposal directs its attention to the retrospective or overview, and its relationship to some of those viewers who were middle to retirement age at the beginning of the conceptual art movement and now comprise our senior population. Many times a retrospective of a prior art movement can serve as a means of recapturing the past, such as if members of the elder part of our art community and its institutions realize a historical need to introduce the movement’s constituent issues to a younger generation, in order to somehow insure the reproduction of these issues. Furthermore, a retrospective can represent a sense of nostalgia or a long-­ missed rendering of the past, so often used to substantiate what we feel is missing, as well as confirming what we have chosen to believe. Yet, both the quest for reproduction and the quest for nostalgia seem totally inimical to conceptual art practice, whose program included a constant request for radical change and an analysis of how that might be effectively carried out. Simultaneously, the strat­­egies which this practice employed consistently attempted to subvert its very own

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institutionalization. The question that lingers at this moment is: Will this retrospective be experienced and even used as a tool to problematize aesthetic practice just as the practice it represents managed to do? Conceptual art had been generated by and participated in by young artists during the ’60s. Likewise much of conceptual art’s audience was to be primarily its producers. The request for change coupled with a critique of high modernism turned out to be the playing field for an audience of youthful producers. This unstable field not only served as a site for the critique of aesthetic production, but questioned the object status of an artwork, as well as the viewer’s relationship to it. Many of the viewers who had made discursive leaps from the ’50s to the early and late ’60s, had their ideas of what to expect from a work of art problematized by conceptual art. These complications allowed access only to those viewers who were dedicated to the project, and impeded those who had a stake in a prior discourse. Many retrospectives lure a broad generation base, while my project addresses a specific audience who were middle-­aged and now are retirees or seniors. Thereby my contribution to this exhibition is to encourage the audience, once so interested in art practices, [from] contemporary up to the beginning of conceptual art, to once again attempt to engage with this project. The artwork I propose for the retrospective exhibition in spring 1989 is to place announcements for the exhibition in Grauer Panther, Ageing & Society, Gray Panther Network, and several other magazines for seniors and retirees. It will announce the exhibition at L’ARC along with the artists in the exhibition, the location of L’ARC, the dates and times, along with a notice of where to send for the catalog, and cost of catalog, as well as a notice to ask the local library for a copy of this exhibition catalog. I will also want the catalog to go to some senior libraries in different countries, as well as a catalog for two different libraries where each artist resides. The senior publications I have listed have academic contributions as well as artistic contributions from different authors. I need a little help in finding samples of journals in Europe in order to see if they are appropriate. If it is at all possible, can you send me one of each of the following: Open Venster, Leef Tijd, Grauer Panther, Notre Temps, Après-­demain, Temps de Vivre, and any others you may feel are appropriate for this artwork. At the same time, I will find one or two more from the States (I think). I would like to have space purchased in each of the magazines for the month of October and I would like to OK the design for the announcement before it is placed in the journal. Finally, would it be possible to insert a photo or text in the catalog? And would it be possible to do a small installation where the journals are open to the ads?

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I understand via the grapevine that the exhibition has expanded from the original list. Could you please send me a current list of artists and any recent information you think might be helpful to me concerning the exhibition? I realize I run the risk of people thinking that perhaps this work is a joke. I might want to write a small thing so this doesn’t happen. It will probably point to the democracy of the conceptual art practice and the contradiction of who got short-­ circuited in this democracy. It will also point to how the senior citizen represents a sector of society whose [members] must rearrange their thoughts about their community at a time when it is most difficult, and what has to be confronted in doing this. Anyway this might be a possibility. I have to think about its reception. I hope everything is going well. Please extend my regards to Judith. I hope to hear from you soon. Warmest regards, Michael Asher 2262 S Carmelina #6 LA, CA 90064 USA

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Notes on work for Galerie Roger Pailhas, Marseille, 1988 (ca. 1989)

Editor’s Notes: In these notes, Asher reflects on the situation around his work for Galerie Roger Pailhas, a commercial gallery in Marseille, France, in 1988. His work at this gallery consisted of an audiotape and a display of binders with photocopied articles and transcripts from news sources. Both formats contained information about the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) influence in Nicaragua and in the drug trade in the city of Marseille. Asher wrote the text included here by hand in a spiral-­bound notebook that is located in a folder dated 1989, after the exhibition, when the work had already been completed and displayed in the Roger Pailhas Gallery. The election of George Herbert Walker Bush as the President of the United States was an event that had taken place during the exhibition. The other two artists referred to in these notes were Daniel Buren and John Knight. Their work was exhibited in the gallery at that same time with Asher’s. The last paragraph of the notes below may allude to De Quelques Interférences: Interstices, Buren’s work in the exhibition, which included a functional café environment with Buren’s customary stripes wrapped around the edges of the café tables. Le Provençal, which Asher mentions in the second-­to-­last paragraph, is a daily newspaper published in Marseille. The last paragraph in the text is squeezed into the top margin of the last page of the original document, interrupting another point, and without a clear sequence within the text. For the purposes of this transcription, it has been included last. Thematically, this notebook contains extensive reflection by Asher on the parameters of site specificity. In these notes, Asher argues that the relevant aspects of site in his practice range from the immediate exhibition context (including the work of the other exhibiting artists, in this case Knight and Buren) to concurrent international affairs.

•  A work so time-­specific as mine cannot exist outside of the exhibition since it is a response to the other two artists’ practice and connected to the election of Bush in 1988. Meaning production beyond this period is no longer precise, objective, but rather associative or speculative by the viewer. Whereas my practice is not this way. •  This work of mine explores the problems and assumptions a person in the US has about the received representations of Marseille, and the problems of artists from the US representing Marseille when they are citizens of a country whose

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intelligence helped support forces to stop the communist workers in Marseille and are now trying to stop the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Through both interventions they [CIA] have attempted to construct perceptions about Marseille and Nicaragua, which have given them a purpose to intervene and have represented the people as ideological desperados who are involved in seedy activities. •  This work is not time-­specific or site-­specific if: a time can be found when George Bush is running for office again, the CIA is actively covering up its connections to covert activities with legendary or mythic representations of the geographic location they are operating within, a time when a public advocate law firm is unwinding the cover-­up, a time when the US intelligence network is making interventions similar to those in Nicaragua and Marseille, a time when the intelligence service forms a parallel hierarchy to the official government, a time when drugs or other illegal activities are used to support armed combat. •  This work is also specific to: the time and place of two other artists, Buren and Knight, who are not specific in the communication of their work but have in their work a sense that the artwork ought to communicate; or a location which receives each issue of Le Provençal; a place with shoppers and sidewalk cafes where people read and dialogue about that which is important to them; a place with a window onto the sidewalk; a country which has entered into a war in Indochina and after becoming demoralized from an unwinnable war, have opted to next support an unpopular one closer to home; a country where a constitutional challenge [is] a forum where people might want to use this information. •  It is also a response to a private gallery as a proposal or model for meaning production of specific public information, without aestheticizing or mannering the information or presentation for this exhibition, but rather using the problematics proposed and its auto-­critique as the artwork.

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Writings on work for Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1990

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these notes in conjunction with his exhibition at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 1990. For this exhibition, Asher juxtaposed industrial production (highlighted by three structural elements in the exhibition space—­a window sash chain, a radiator cover, and an adjustable sash lock—­and their patent numbers) with American interpretations of Arts and Crafts by figures associated with the University of Chicago in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Asher conducted extensive research into Arts and Crafts in preparation for the exhibition.



Notes on work for Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1990 (1990)

Editor’s Notes: These notes were written by hand on standard notebook paper pages, torn from the notebook, and filed by Asher in the project’s folder. In these notes, which are dated less than two weeks before the exhibition at the Renaissance Society was set to open, Asher reflects on the cultural meanings and uses associated with notions of taste.

1/12/90 Taste is a product of our market economy. Taste begins at home and is propelled in dominant education; now is a representation of class. Taste allows for the accommodation and maintenance of our market economy. Taste can turn and economically subjugate those— [Note: Sentence ends here in original.]

Taste cannot subjugate those who make it and reinforce it, but it can oppress its user. Taste can be used for cultural hegemony.

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Reflection upon work process: “My Own Problems in Doing This Work as It Is Linked to Writing” (1991)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote this text in connection with his exhibition at the Renaissance Society almost a year after the exhibition had concluded and filed it in a folder that he labeled “Reflection upon my work process.” In these handwritten notes, Asher revisits the work he had made for the Renaissance Society in order to reflect on issues and themes that had continuing relevance for his artistic practice. He considers, in particular, models of education and learning through recourse to personal history. The themes of education and learning are further connected by Asher to other key elements of his exhibition at the Renaissance Society: the embedding of labor and industrial production in socioeconomic structures.

2/24/91 My Own Problems in Doing This Work as It Is Linked to Writing The project at the Renaissance Society was extremely hard to do in as much as I want to learn, particularly about the bourgeois character, its history and its relationship to labor. What makes the research so hard is that amidst my desire to learn, I trust little of what I am learning. What is worse is that I am critical of what constitutes the bourgeois, and yet I realize that some of that character I doubt I can elude, as it is a part of my family history. When researching on this and other subjects, I can reach an exciting idea and it will divert everything. If it’s really exciting, chances are I may lose it. So to think things through in writing or making a project, I am not logical since my thoughts reveal themselves in large blocks or clusters. Whatever is between I cannot see very well, but what the connections constitute (I think) are those exciting moments that I’ve lost or refused to trust. Perhaps someday this can be resolved. Perhaps I don’t read since I ruminate so long on the problems of each one of my projects.

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I hate to even mention it, but the connections I make in my artwork feel like intuition when I am making them. It is often, and very much after the fact, that I learn that the logic is quite complete and offers models of production which are alternative to the codes and show this resistance I have to learning. The unfortunate thing is I had the same problem when I was in first grade. This problem has been the cause of some work, which has served to increase my knowledge about what I am doing and has helped me develop. I hope as I learn more, I become more articulate in my work about resistance in culture and in society. I am convinced that some people use their artwork for their personal prosperity. For me, it is my extended education, but first of all it is to make sense to the audience I wish to address.

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Notes for lecture at Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, Paris, 1991: “Response” (1991)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these notes for himself in preparation for a lecture that he gave at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques in Paris in 1991. These notes most likely functioned as talking points for the lecture. They were written (and edited) by hand on pages torn from a spiral-­bound notebook and filed by Asher in their own folder in his archive. In the margin at the top of the first page of this document, Asher wrote: “I will mostly talk about my work today.” This institute was a non-­degree program that sought to foster connections between art and other disciplines. It enrolled artists at the beginning of their careers. Asher was invited to present at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques by Pontus Hultén, the institute’s director, on three occasions (in 1989, 1991, and 1992). In these lecture notes, Asher uses the concept of “response” to analyze what site and situation specificity meant in his practice, touching upon ideas about knowledge, beauty, autonomy, and the role of the artist in society. All of these were key to his artistic practice. How do works of art produce, share, and activate knowledge? How does autonomy enter into an experience of an artwork? How is the viewer mapped into the work? What is the role of the artist in society? What does beauty do? Asher’s consideration of the concept of “taste” in these lecture notes resonates with his writings about taste in connection with his work at the Renaissance Society in “Notes on work for Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1990 (1990),” a text included earlier in this part of the book.

2/91 Response •  Quite often I produce an artwork based upon my response to a given situation. •  The response is framed in the codes of the site. •  The site is the physical or formal elements of the location for the exhibition. •  The site is art practice, particularly those practices I expose. •  It is also the given problems or questions which the site represents.

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•  The site is the message which the location wants to give the spectator about what culture means and who will benefit from the cultural experience. •  The response (or this one way of working) takes the knowledge surrounding the problems and attempts to turn the problems and allows the viewers to animate them as models for questions which are no longer conditioned by the authority of the site, but an alternate model which the spectator can generate. •  My response, which I have chosen to explore these last couple of years, attempts to equalize the relationship of the spectator with the cultural institution. •  A number of different strategies are used, i.e. negation, inversion, humor, etc. These are strategies which often are used for redirection and access. •  The most important thing to say here is that I know my strategies; except when I review my projects, and I [see that I] don’t methodically put them together as it may sound or as I wish could do. [Note: Asher wrote a question mark and drew a box around this point.]

•  I am equalizing the relationship between the viewer and institution through a strange exchange, which takes the knowledge which is provided by culture and reshapes it so it can function in such a way as to allow the viewer to share the discourse and possibly see ways in which cultural knowledge operates. •  I believe that all artwork is autonomous to a greater or lesser extent and, if the audience cannot share in the same cultural knowledge which inhabits the work of art, this production will remain autonomous. •  The only discourse it will then share is with private knowledge and economic forces.

[Note: A marginal note near the passage below reads: “Haacke’s work criticizes the language of power and does not share how that knowledge operates.” ]

Situation of the Artist 1) 

Art is one of the few practices which potentially can express free thinking or liberated thought from some artists, simultaneously with artists that practice expressions of thinking which are totally contingent upon structures of power. •  With the option of expressing thought which is open and seeks new ways of communicating, my question is: What is the purpose of using art to close down communication?

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2)  At a time when so much art production is premised upon irony and private jokes to restrict meaning production in a work of art, how can humor be used to allow the artwork to be forthcoming with information about culture? 3)  In the early ’70s, some artists saw the importance of the audience as not isolated from the position of the artist. In the late ’80s and beginning of this decade, there are practices which see the audience as its context, perhaps through education.

Taste Taste is a market in construction. In a sense, the idea of what is tasteful became fully developed in the US during the age of the Arts and Crafts Movement. It was the ability of capitalism, [which] always looks for new markets, to sell more than just its industrial objects. The idea of taste was partly the expansion of money flow through more abstract ideas such as beauty. In school, as youngsters, in the US we are taught what is beautiful. In actuality, we are not being taught what is beautiful, but we are being taught how to be good consumers that can see economic value in most surplus objects. For those people that want to become artists, we can then learn the rules of beauty so we can make objects of art which will meet these markets. Any work of art which doesn’t meet the criteria of beauty then becomes problematic. Any work of art which develops ideas rather than visual beauty is marginal to the system of capital. Any work of art which doesn’t naturalize beauty creates conflict and interference with driving economic forces. Most of the art we see today participates in this abstract market construction of beauty, which is nothing more than a superficial façade to make sure that economic reproduction is moving along safely. The cost of following the market needs is to devalue meaning in a work of art, which doesn’t support the superficial needs of the market, or devalues a meaning which pierces through the shadow of a work of art to explore the conditions of its production and alienation of its labor. Beauty, then, is in the service of power; a power which doesn’t want us to find out what makes it function nor find out the rules of its game.

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[Reference] Reference in the work of art has some similar characteristics to beauty. If the work of art makes reference to numerous classifications of experience outside of the artwork, it does nothing to let us know what those references mean to knowledge. Reference is a way of marketing knowledge so that it is very quick and thereby very superficial. Reference in the work of art is in the service of devaluing knowledge or turning concepts into short names. Using reference in the work of art leaves the viewer to endlessly associate what the work is about. It thereby gives the viewer an illusion that they have experienced something profound. In this respect, it is a decoy so the viewer will do the artist’s labor for them. It is also a decoy to make it seem like the artist is situated within the work of art when the artist is really just back at the studio making another set of references in another artwork.

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Interview with Hou Hanru (1991)

Editor’s Notes: Asher conducted this interview with Chinese contemporary art curator Hou Hanru in Paris in April 1991. It has not been published previously. The pages reproduced in facsimile here contain the transcribed, typed version of the interview that Hou sent to Asher for review. Asher made edits in this document by hand and filed it in his archive. Because it is likely that the editing was not finished, this document is included in facsimile rather than transcript, maintaining the visibility of Asher’s editing process. Hou Hanru is currently artistic director of MAXXI, Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, in Rome.

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Notes for lecture at Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, Paris, 1992: “A Quick Description of My Work” (ca. 1992)

Editor’s Notes: Asher filed this concise analysis of his artistic practice with notes for one of the lectures he gave at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques in Paris, mostly likely in 1992. It is a handwritten text in which Asher made extensive edits. This institute was a non-­degree program that sought to foster connections between art and other disciplines. It enrolled artists at the beginning of their careers. Asher was invited to present at the institute by Pontus Hultén, the director, on three occasions (1989, 1991, and 1992). Asher wrote “Save” at the top of this page of notes.

A Quick Description of My Work The approach to my practice is contingent upon the given circumstances which frame each exhibition and its context as a place for aesthetic practice (be it anything from the exhibition concept to the physical location). The artwork most often takes the form of a model for aesthetic problems which derive from discrepancies that occur at the moment the preexisting situation is assumed to be, somehow, an appropriate structure to guarantee an uninterrupted flow of legitimacy upon the work of art. And this rubs up against my own hope to comprehend the framework’s purpose or how it operates, in a physical or historical sense, as a site which defines meaning if it were first of all immune to myth. This approach, alone, creates many questions, since all types of values are accorded the work of art due to the structure where it is presented.

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Letter to Mark Francis, cocurator of Carnegie International 1991, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1991–­1992 (October 5, 1992)

Editor’s Notes: Asher’s negotiations with the institutions that commissioned his work often involved conversations about monetary compensation. Unlike most artists, Asher’s work was almost invariably made exclusively for the situation (the exceptions involve a handful of exhibitions in which Asher participated by displaying documentation of previous work, clearly marked as such). In the letter below, Asher is responding to Mark Francis, one of the curators of Carnegie International 1991, who had asked him to write a letter laying out the reasons for asking for a fee, so that Francis could then present it to the director of the Carnegie Museum of Art and make a case for this exception to the museum’s usual practice of not paying a fee to exhibiting artists. Asher had this letter typed and filed it in his archive with other project-­related correspondence. The list of exhibitions that Asher refers to in this letter was not found with the letter in the archive. The museum ultimately paid Asher half of the fee that he had requested.

October 5, 1992 Mr. Mark Francis The Carnegie Museum of Art 4400 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213-­4080 Dear Mark, I got home from a trip to Brussels where I finished my installation for the Palais des Beaux Arts to find your letter of August 18, 1992. I don’t mind reminding you why I ask for a fee for each exhibition, but I don’t want this justification to stand in the way or become more important than the ethical issue that an agreement was made, the first time we met to discuss this project, regarding the fact that I would receive a fee of $4,500 for my installation at the Carnegie International. This was made in good faith and that good faith remains the same whether it is on a piece of paper or it is verbal. I have fulfilled my part of the verbal agreement we made when we first discussed this exhibition.

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I will be as brief as possible in reminding you why I ask for a fee. As you have mentioned in your letter to me, my artwork is site-­specific, meaning that its construction is determined by the material and conceptual qualities of its location. Even if the artwork can physically fit another location, its meaning production would be totally modified since meaning is determined by and based upon problematics I had found at the first location. To allow meaning to alter or be modified in one of my artworks simply destroys that particular installation and trivializes the logic I have put into my practice. By not being transferrable except to the one institution that I have designed the artwork for, I have had to come upon some form which would give me a small compensation for my labor, and this is the fee I request from each institution where I do an artwork. If I did not request this, I would not be able to make artwork any longer. If I were able to sell my installations to the institutions they have been produced for, I would not be asking for a fee or reducing a fee I may have received from the total price. Since I have only been able to sell two installations in twenty-­four years of practice, it is incumbent that I use my fee schedule for each installation. [Note: Asher drew a box in pencil around the next sentence and next two paragraphs of the letter.] My fee now increases $500 each year, which I still feel is reasonable, particularly since I have not received any objections or defaults. I have enclosed a list of exhibitions and have placed an asterisk next to those institutions which have paid me a fee. You will note that I did not ask for a fee if I did not do an installation, or in some commercial galleries where I believed they would be able to get me a commission. Also, there were very few fees asked for in the early years of my practice. If you or your director wish more information, you can contact me. Perhaps it will also be helpful to contact some of those institutions which have paid me if this becomes a question of legitimation. I thank you for seeing this problem through. Sincerely, Michael Asher

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Statement on artistic practice: “Overview” (1994)

Editor’s Notes: In 1994, Asher was invited to submit slides to be considered for a shortlist of artists for an exhibition called Home Show II, organized by the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum. He included the text below to accompany his résumé that he submitted to the organizers. His proposal was not chosen for realization in the exhibition. There is another “Overview” text in Asher’s archive, dated to circa 2000. That later overview, which focuses on pedagogy at least as much as artistic practice, is included in the final part of this book, “Teaching Practice.”

Michael Asher Overview Each one of the artworks I have completed since 1969 has been site-­specific. In my practice, this means that all elements are contingent upon the conditions which comprise the location of the exhibition, from its architectural container to its ideological framework. Since these projects respond to a specific place and quite often a specific time, they cannot be moved or reconstructed elsewhere and still function. In a most general sense, my practice revolves around the demystification of aspects of the artwork’s location which have become naturalized through historical processes. My intent is to reintegrate or make complex a site where meaning has been evacuated, while simultaneously problematize aesthetic procedures and models. This is done in the name of mobilizing an inquiry into art’s symbolic relation with actual needs.

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Notes for lecture at Institut für Gegenwartskunst, Vienna, 1996

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these two sets of notes for a lecture that he gave at the Institut für Gegenwartskunst (now Institut für Kunst-­und Kulturwissenschaften) at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, an art school in Vienna, on October 22, 1996. He was in Vienna to make a work for the Kunstraum, a temporary exhibition space. In that work, he lowered the physical structures that constituted the mezzanine level of the exhibition space to the floor. The exhibition was open from October 31 to December 22, 1996. Both of these handwritten texts are filed in a folder with several other sets of notes. While the documents transcribed below have two different headings, they are adjacent in the folder and share a date. Asher further connected them with page numbering that spans both texts. Both of the texts included here contain clear reflection by Asher on the fundamental, basic tenets that organized his artistic practice. They are notes Asher wrote for himself to speak to art students (instead of study or project notes, for example), and thus they were written in order to convey information about his artistic practice and to communicate with a specific audience.



“Third Draft Lecture Notes, Vienna” (1996)

6/24/96 Third Draft Lecture Notes, Vienna 1)  What is increasingly interesting to me is that, as much as the idea of autonomy for the work of art has been demonstrated [to be] a myth and the context of a work of art guides as well as confers its meaning, it seems to me that the work of art is something more than to be acted upon by its environment to produce meaning. 2)  Thereby in this work, I propose a model for a work of art which is one of the many array of features which frames it as aesthetic production, and propose that the artwork can take the next crucial step in animating the features which have made it a symbolic practice in order to channel its meaning rather than being channeled by the exterior.

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“Kunstraum Lecture Notes” (1996)

6/24/96 Kunstraum Lecture Notes 1)  I don’t consider my artwork auratic as defined or followed through by [Walter] Benjamin. 2) 

As a matter of fact, it rests more upon the potential for the work of art to “meet the viewer halfway” as a series of problems generated by the discourse, and structured as clearly as possible in terms with the hope of arguing or denaturalizing the discourse.

3) 

Although the artworks that I do are not infinitely reproducible (and only twice has one been done more than once), the problems that I am demon­strating can be touched upon in an infinite number of ways, as long as there are questions about these problems within the central part of the discourse, and as long as intellectual discovery is a part of [the] reception of the work of art.

4) 

The artwork I do is explicit about its issues and tries at every turn to not mythify or cloak its problems to gather authorial claims to the aura, which might force the viewer to diverge from their examination of the work and throw the sign upon the author rather than the issues at hand.

5)  I would rather cast authorial doubt on my project since the issues the work pursues are developments through history where many people have been involved in implicitly and explicitly looking at these problems. I am one in a row of individuals whose job is only to structure the problem once again so it can be experienced and examined. Any privatization of public knowledge would be contrary to my effort. Difference 1)  In terms of meaning production as developing from difference—[Note: Sentence ends here in original.] 2)  It seems odd to accept the idea of autonomy and still be able to accept difference, not from a theoretical standpoint, but from a practical one.

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3) 

We might look to conflict as an expression of difference, whether it is at the level of ideas in argumentation, heterogeneity in racial and ethnic mixes or in class and economic conflict which, in each case, difference would not have been expressed if the corresponding ideas or groups of people represented a homogeneous and autonomous group from those which constituted the other (heterogeneous). It is through the forces of similitude that the status quo is reproduced.

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Notes for lecture: “Who Is the Artist Working For?” (1999)

Editor’s Notes: Asher was invited in 1999 to participate in a symposium called “Public/Relations,” organized by the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, to speak about art in public space. He started working on his contribution for the conference, focusing on the working conditions of artistic practice, but ultimately declined the invitation to speak in the conference. Asher nevertheless filed these handwritten notes in his archive.

Who Is the Artist Working For? The artist is working for himself or herself. For me it is difficult to understand my production any other way. Surrounding each work, I am the author for putting together the project’s ideas and its structure. Furthermore, each artwork represents several ideas which I can learn from to further develop my understanding of art production. Each artwork is mobilized around a context which presents a new situation for me. As much as I can explain a fundamental organizing principle for each project, the constituent parts of the context which I find problematic is what drives the structure.

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Notes on public art: “Artworks Can Be Understood as Public” (ca. 2000)

Editor’s Notes: Asher prepared these notes for a conference, “Not for the Museum? On Art in Public Space,” organized by the Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum in Antwerp. Asher’s participation was part of the theme “Preservation and Management and the Rights of the Artist.” It was structured as a conversation with Daniel Buren that was overseen by Koen Brams and Wouter Davidts, rather than a formal presentation, and thus the notes included here were most likely the final version that Asher prepared for his presentation. The participating artists had been asked to bring slides to screen and discuss during the conversation. In these notes, Asher considers the themes of public space and site specificity, responding to questions that Davidts had brought up in a letter to Asher before the conference. In Asher’s archive, the notes transcribed below are followed by several pages of references to artists’ names and projects (including Robert Smithson, Stanley Brouwn, and Lawrence Weiner), presumably referring to works that Asher deemed relevant for the topic and that he intended to discuss during the panel. His reference to the “problem of Salvadorans on Sixth Street” is possibly a reference to modes of occupying public space in a specific area of the city of Los Angeles.

Artworks Can Be Understood as Public [Note: Asher marked asterisks in front of points two, three, five, and six below.]

1) 

When the purchase of these artworks is by tax dollars or made possible by surplus funds due to labor.

2)  When these artworks become a part of cultural knowledge. 3)  When the ideas and the materials which these artworks are made of were from the public. 4)  When the artwork reveals meaning by functioning as a tool which enables the public to view different aspects of a question. 5)  When the work of art offers the viewers insight into areas which don’t represent dominant knowledge and dominant policy. 6)  When the public participates in the fabrication of the artwork (Stanley Brouwn, This way Brouwn).

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A Work of Art Is Not Necessarily Public 1) 

When it is like a statue of a hero, which is usually there to maintain dominant or existing conditions. These conditions are often connected with private interests.

2)  When private interests construct [a] sculpture or monument. 3)  When an artist sells a work to a private collector, few others can experience the work of art. 4)  When developers request artwork to increase land values. 5)  The Houdon sculpture of Washington is in many people’s awareness, but [it] signs for stability and the maintenance of the status quo, which is in the hands of the power elite. Note: Few artworks are entirely private and few are entirely public. In terms of works of art and space, it is thereby best to discuss them in terms of degree, i.e. publicness and privateness.

Public 1)  Where is there a public space? Most spaces supposedly public in the US are bound by private property, contain different types of private advertising, and the decisions of their plans were influenced by the elite in the city. Likewise the rules and laws governing these areas are usually driven by the elite. I.e. Problem of Salvadorans on Sixth Street. [Note: The next two lines and item number two below are marked with an asterisk in

the margin.]



OR the central marketplace, which is a mall OR public radio as opposed to commercial television OR public bandwidths, which are auctioned to private media

2)  Similarly, private institutions get a great amount of support, not only from corporations, but also the moneyed class. Thereby their decisions represent the private interests of the people who support them, i.e. MOCA [The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles] 3)  The public space is perhaps defined by both its accessibility and the amount of different types of uses it can embody, i.e. mixed use.

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There are one hundred thousand billboards in Los Angeles County. All have approximately the same message. Nine out of ten tell us the corporations bidding for our money. They want to separate us from our money. At one level, I see works of art as public when they are supported by the public’s taxes. Works of art also become public when they become part of the public’s awareness. Similarly, many of the ideas behind works of art come from public domain. The money which purchases works of art often comes from the labor of many others. But there are not a lot of works which allow the viewer access to a meaning, which gives the viewers tools to reconfigure something other than already prevailing knowledge. Thereby many or most artwork at the level of meaning support private interests and are thereby private. If we can’t understand the author’s intent or the purpose or the function of a work of art, then it is private. If the work of art doesn’t increase our knowledge of areas of alternate insight which don’t reproduce dominant knowledge, then the work of art is meant to stabilize existing conditions, and it is, thereby, likely to have been produced for private interests. If a work such as A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey [by Robert Smithson] is read indoors but I can apply to my outdoor understanding of landscape, then it is for the out of doors.

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Notes: “Artist/Architect” (ca. 2002–­2005)

Editor’s Notes: The relationship between art and architecture as discourses and material practices is critical to Asher’s work. These notes form one of the few instances in which Asher explicitly reflects on the relationship between architecture and his own artistic practice. While Asher filed the majority of his writings with a specific project or function (such as correspondence), he also had a longstanding practice of writing in notebooks that were associated with a time period rather than a specific project (although he often tore pages from these notebooks and filed them in his project files). The undated text included here was placed by Asher in a three-­ring binder labeled “Notes on Any Subject.” The same binder housed information about Asher’s work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2002 and a lecture at the Getty Research Institute in 2005. That context has been used to date these notes.

Artist/Architect My project employs the architecture which gives it a physical and conceptual context to be read. Thereby it shares certain formal relationships with architecture since that is often its media. But as architecture, which is used to solve problems, my project makes problematic, as well as has an ability to oppose, existing conditions around it. I don’t think architects would do work which questions the site and its institutions. Furthermore, I don’t think architects would do projects that couldn’t be transferred in a system of property, which is the case for all my work. And I don’t think architects would accept nothing or a small fee, unless they were doing promotion for themselves. An architect might do something similar to that which I have done in the past, but as with much historicizing, it produces a marketable object.

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Interview with Ginger Wolfe-­Suarez: “Michael Asher Interview” (2004)

Editor’s Notes: In this interview with Ginger Wolfe-­Suarez, originally conducted for InterReview Journal, Asher discusses his artistic practice in relations to museums, social space, experience, and constructions of value. InterReview Journal was an ephemeral artist-­run journal focused on conceptual art that was published from 2003 to 2008. This interview includes several references to specific works by Asher. The work for the exhibition Made in California: NOW at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from 2000 to 2001 (and continuing with a “second rotation” [Asher’s term] from 2002 to 2003) involved Asher facilitating a structural place for a group of high school students to reinstall one of LACMA’s permanent collection galleries with the support of, although without interference from, the museum’s staff. The exhibition Made in California: NOW, organized by a museum unit called LACMALab, featured commissioned projects by contemporary Californian artists with a specific mandate to address children and teenagers. The Pomona project that Wolfe-­Suarez mentions is Asher’s work for the Gladys K. Montgomery Art Center at Pomona College in 1970. In this work, Asher constructed a new set of interior walls for the gallery spaces, changing the configuration of space, and removed the exterior doors, opening the gallery space to outdoors. Wolfe-­Suarez’s reference to “the George Washington replica” pertains to Asher’s work for the 73rd American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979, for which he moved a statue from the museum’s façade to a period room inside the Art Institute. The statue was an early twentieth-­century (American) bronze cast of the original eighteenth-­century marble statue of George Washington made by French neoclassical sculptor Jean-­Antoine Houdon. For D&S Ausstellung at the Kunstverein in Hamburg in 1989, Asher printed postcards with photographs of trucks used to transport waste from (what was then) West Germany across borders and made them available to viewers in standard rotating postcard display racks. The Nova Scotia book is Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1983), written by Asher in collaboration with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, who also edited the volume. For the exhibition The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1999, Asher had the museum compile a list of works of art that had been deaccessioned from the museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, and produce a catalog listing those works. A sample issue of the catalog was on display in the exhibition and copies were available for museum visitors without charge in the museum’s bookstore. Asher’s work for the exhibition Ex-­tension at Occidental College in 1986 involved tasking students with making the paper for the exhibition catalog. Artistic Practice  

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Ginger Wolfe: In your years of art practice have you noticed over time an internal modification within institutions that has therefore changed the nature of your critical response? Michael Asher: Museums are much more aware of my practice, but this hasn’t altered my approach. Since the onset, my response to an institution in developing a work is quite direct, the way an institution presents itself is something I take as a preexisting way of working, and this is what I respond to. So your question is have they changed? Have they gotten used to this way of working? They still remain very diverse, in other words, some invite me because they feel obliged for me to participate when they feel I obviously belong, but then become reticent with my proposal. On the other hand there are others that have followed me for years and know my work very well, and are very open to anything I propose, even if they are critical of my proposal, which did happen recently. Though they disagree with it, they are still interested in doing a project along those lines, even if it’s inimical to their interests. GW: That feeds into my next question, which is in projects like the one you’ve constructed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Made in California: NOW exhibition, I wondered if you were engaging the role of the curator, which has significantly changed over the past thirty years? MA: One important aspect of it is that it questions the role of the curator, in so far as perhaps the curator misses opportunities to install work in a way which is compelling, because they have their own way, a recognized way of installing . . . and telling a story, some sort of narrative of what they feel is important for the viewers to see, underscoring where they want the major reception to occur and how they want to build up to it. So, I was really hoping that the young people, the students, would perhaps come across something that would become a new convention for the curator, a new way of presentation, one they hadn’t utilized and wouldn’t have thought of utilizing. The students didn’t have a background in art or art history. Their way of presentation and display is just totally different. They hit upon a way which today we might call relational display. It was not relational like some art practices today, but relational from a period between wars. Well. Maybe I should discuss a little more about what this work was about. This work was very much about the process of . . . museum education, which ordinarily comes from the museum to bring significance to the most important parts of their collection. It’s sort of a top down way of getting the public to know the collection as well as support and legitimate that collection and get people involved with those aspects of it; and the student project is more of an attempt to say that through some sort of bottom up process there’s a great deal more that can be revealed this way. There might be learning and more education involved in

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it, and there might be more benefit for everyone all the way around . . . So that’s one of the places that this work begins to seek some sort of reflection that possibly non-­professionals can come across ideas professional artists and curators could have missed about institutional display. There was another part that had to do with the city and a lack of funding, and the overcrowding of classes in our public schools. The work suggests that our public museums could substitute for that lack of funding and bring certain enrichment to students. It was very necessary to allow the students to figure things out on their own. I met with the students, but only for short periods of time, and actually this is another thing I’m interested in this work. There was a facilitator that was between the museum and me and everybody else, and she was most important in carrying out my structure and the student’s ideas. But this work would not have existed without the experimental foresight of LACMALab. Once the students informed themselves about the museum as their own responsibility, then the museum couldn’t go back and say you misunderstood about this, or made an assumption about that, because ultimately they didn’t. Finally, I wanted a work that would present to the museum, and the school system, that students of a certain age have their own motivation and can motivate themselves. In the end, it wasn’t a response to the curators alone. GW: I’m thinking much of your work including the untitled installation at Pomona College in 1970 and the installation at the Art Institute in 1979 (George Washington Replica) subverted interior and exterior space in a formal way. I’m wondering if you could comment on the degree in which you were engaging social space rather than purely formal? MA: I am using formal tools to engage social space. The work at Pomona was an installation where I was very interested in extra-­visual experience. So I was interested in . . . airflow, in the subtlety of where air sort of died, where it moved quickly as well as acoustical variations in space. I built the two triangular spaces like an architectural wind instrument, and in the large chamber you could often hear street sounds louder than in the street. The sounds would be amplified though the small triangular space. There is also an important part socially to it, which is that this is open twenty-­four hours a day. In this way, the aesthetic experience is accessible at any given time. Both works led to an increasing use of having the formal animate social questions. In these two works, one can isolate the issue of access and see that begin to happen but in very different ways. For example, the conflicts which are produced in the presentation of the Houdon open up questions about the conventions of display, and at Pomona College, where the two front doors remain off twenty-­four hours a day so that people could see the installation after work. GW: Were you engaging in a value exchange in these two works? I was thinking that the subversion of exterior and interior space, if you were thinking in terms of an exchange of value?

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MA: Well, they are very different in that sense. The installation at the Art Institute in 1979 is meant to recontextualize the Houdon statue from outside the museum to its period room, which means that, yes, the meaning had shifted. The first thing one can see is its monumentality is lost altogether once it’s in its period room. Similarly, I left the weathering on the statue, thereby disrupting the idea that artwork on the interior ought to be viewed once they are well conserved. Then in terms of the inside/outside question, I hope this installation begins to broach upon the disparities which occur in sign value when they are not aligned conventionally. The installation at the art gallery at Pomona College in 1970 dealt with trying to integrate the interior with exterior phenomenon. In this case, exterior sounds, light, and climate are not subverted, but rather they are modified on the interior. GW: I’m also thinking about another piece from 1989 for D&S Ausstellung, you mentioned a corollary you saw between the exhibition concept’s reference to limitless meaning and the potential for limitless waste, both as agents for the colonization of space. I’m wondering if this fed into a sort of commodity and sign exchange referential to the restrictions between East and West Germany? MA: Limitless meaning refers to a quality in an artwork which initiates associations alone as its function. Its job is to consume an endless stream of thought rather than engaging the public in specific questions. GW: Perhaps you could think a bit more generally about the work. I’m wondering if the transition of space, if those ideas fed into commodity, sign exchange, which in essence fed into your feelings between East and West Germany? MA: Yeah, I know what you’re asking. The dumping of garbage in the East was a very low cost way of occupying the East, and it was also a way in which the West could get rid of what it didn’t want. So it demonstrates in a sense the way the West saw the East in that particular case as just a dumpsite. Today the Germans can no longer afford to devalue the former East. They must bring it up to their own standards. But this work identifies a relationship which seems common between industrialized and developing nations. GW: That sort of feeds into my next thought, which is in retrospect with the passing of time, the falling of the iron curtain and the unification of East and West Germany alters your perception of that work? MA: Not Really. What was once a document of daily activities has now become more of a historical document due to the unification. One has to see it at the point at which it was done.

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GW: Somewhat related there seems to be a direct relationship between your artworks and the catalogs, which are the only living objects. I’m wondering if now the desirability of these catalogs in anyway neutralizes a critical approach of commodity? MA: I would hope that the record of the work within the catalog would remind the reader why they might have reasons to remain aware of commodity practice. The catalogs circulate in such a way where there seems to be enough of them in most cases where the information isn’t [only] in one [person’s] hands. Are you asking me if it’s something that gets fetishized? GW: Yes. Absolutely. Particularly, because they are now so hard to come across. It’s about the desirability . . . MA: Yes. That’s unfortunate, though they still document the work and make the installation public. GW: So you’re saying that the commodity aspect of the catalogs is deflected by the quantity? By the fact that they are in multiples? MA: Well. Yes, and also its content, [and] its price, which can’t approach that of the independent art object. GW: Not anymore. The price has risen significantly. MA: That is something. I heard that a bookstore put the Nova Scotia book at a price almost three times what it was sold for, and it’s hard to believe, but I haven’t heard the price of catalogs. GW: I’m wondering if you position these catalogs as an artistic proposition or if it’s purely documentation? MA: Sometimes they are art objects, but most aren’t. GW: Can you give some examples? MA: Well, the one at the exhibition The Museum as Muse at MoMA in 1999, which contained a list of the museum’s deaccessions, was an artwork, and the one at the Occidental College exhibition named Ex-­tension in 1986, where I produced the paper for the catalog, was also an art object. GW: But in the other catalogs, like for example the one at the Renaissance Society—­

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MA: Those are very different from other exhibitions, which for the most part are records of the exhibition along with historians’ essays. GW: Right. But the fact that they sort of become objects for the work, so when the work itself no longer exists they signify it, for you that doesn’t necessarily indicate an artistic proposition? MA: No. That was never my intention. They can’t possibly substitute for the experience of the work. The reading experience is a completely different one than the aesthetic experience. GW: It’s by default. If at all? MA: Yeah. Even today I wouldn’t know how to avert that. Can I just say one other thing? I also have a lot of faith in the public and their capability. When they see someone who is trying to turn the catalog into an art object, I believe it could be understood that it doesn’t change the artwork or what is written inside. GW: I understand. I’m seeing in researching the larger body of your work some things that seem pertinent. In Hal Foster’s research, in his book The Return of the Real, he mentions that your work has brought about an analysis of the conditions of perception relative to institutions you have engaged. I’m wondering in what ways have these spaces reciprocally shaped the public perception of your work? MA: It’s quite difficult for the public’s experience not to be shaped by the museum. In a number of works, it is this shaping of the public that I hope to underscore. And in so doing, I also hope the public recognizes this situation. I think one of the strategies is to use concrete elements of the museum, and to use those elements in a way to often ideologically question the museum and its operations by the public.

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Letter to Etienne Wynants, curator at Etablissement d’en face, Brussels (November 19, 2006)

Editor’s Notes: In this letter, Asher responds to Belgian art historian and curator Etienne Wynants and artist Olivier Foulon, who had contacted Asher on behalf of Etablissement d’en face, a noncommercial art venue in Brussels. This exhibition space, along with four others, had been invited by Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven to organize an exhibition. Wynants and Foulon approached Asher about the possibility of having Asher reinstall his 1977 exhibition at Van Abbemuseum as part of the contribution by Etablissement d’en face. Asher’s letter articulates his reasons for declining the request in the context of his overall approach to artistic practice. Asher and Wynants continued to explore possibilities for a new work in a different context, but those were ultimately not realized.

Etablissement d’en face projects Rue Antoine Dansaert 161 1000 Brussels, Belgium 11/19/06 Dear Etienne Wynants, Thank you very much for your proposal for me to install my work from 1977 in Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven. In the past, if I reinstalled a work, there has been a purpose. I can’t imagine what can be learned from reinstalling the 1977 work, or what can be revealed this time which wasn’t seen in the first installation. Without a purpose, the reinstallation could appear to be a random decision. At the same time, I don’t wish to appear that I need new exhibitions to be based upon former work. In this context, perhaps you wish to consider having me do a new work for Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven? Thanks again for your request. Sincerely, Michael Asher 2270 S Carmelina Ave LA, California 90064 USA

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Part 3 Public Address: Lectures

Notes for lecture for “Modern Art Museums and Their Spectators” conference at Tate Gallery, London, 1997 (1997)

Editor’s Notes: Asher prepared this lecture for the conference “Modern Art Museums and Their Spectators” at the Tate Gallery in London. He delivered it as part of a roundtable “Artists and the Museum” on December 13, 1997, describing how particular museum curators had facilitated the realization of his work. The three projects described by Asher in this lecture are his works for the 73rd American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979, Le Nouveau Musée in Villeurbanne (a suburb of the city of Lyon) in 1991, and Skulptur Projekte exhibitions organized by the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Münster in 1977, 1987, and 1997. The document below is a typed text that Asher marked in his archive as the version of his lecture that was delivered in the conference. A few handwritten marginal notes by Asher, which were difficult to decipher, as well as his notations on pronunciation and placement for image slides are omitted here. .

I wish to discuss the initial question asked of the artists in this conference: What would I wish from museums for my artwork? My artwork depends on the existing conditions within the museum. I take as my point of departure the fact that each museum represents a belief system which is made actual through its programs, collection, funding, presentations, arrangement of space, access to the community, and other factors which define its function. Generally, I want my work to animate aesthetic problems, which are shaped by the existing particularities of exhibition conditions and my art practice intersecting [those conditions]. In the articulation of such problems, there is no one formula for their transformation from idea to visual status. What are crucial are the circumstances which enable the museum staff and myself to realize a proposal. For this paper, I am presenting accounts of three exhibitions which were particularly difficult because it wasn’t possible to remain at the museum for all of the stages of the production. In so doing, I hope to underscore the significance of the artist/museum collaboration. The first work I would like to describe was conceived for the 73rd American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago for the summer of 1979. I had visited the Art Institute at the end of 1978 and made two proposals which could not be realized for practical reasons. I was particularly interested in the Allerton Building façade along Michigan Avenue, and once back home in Los Angeles, I made a third proposal using my notes about the façade. Public Address: Lectures  

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The building was designed by the architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge for the World’s Columbian Exposition and became the home of the Art Institute in 1893. My final proposal depended on finding background information on the Jean-­Antoine Houdon bronze cast of George Washington located at the center of the façade at the level of the entrance, and also finding out why the decorative characteristics of the cast appeared out of place with the neo-­renaissance façade. Anne Rorimer (who, along with A. James Speyer, was curator of the 73rd American Exhibition) undertook this research, and she learned from the European Decorative Arts Department and the Art Institute library that all the decorative elements used for the façade, except for the Houdon cast, were planned for by the architects. Further, Anne found out that Houdon had traveled to the United States from France in 1785 to study George Washington, including measuring and taking molds of his subject. After returning, he completed the original marble in 1788. This is now at the [Virginia State] Capitol in Richmond, Virginia. The bronze replica acquired by the Art Institute in 1917 was made from one of the casts authorized by the state of Virginia after Houdon’s death. It was installed in 1925 on a black granite pedestal, which was 4 feet 9 inches high and 34 inches wide, and on the center axis of the center arch of the building’s façade. From this information, it became apparent why the late e ­ ighteenth-­century sculpture had little or no reference to the neo-­renaissance façade. I proposed removing the Houdon cast from its base in front of the museum and placing it in the eighteenth-­century European period room, at that time Gallery 219, with paintings and decorative arts. I had the granite pedestal put in storage and a wooden sculpture base the height and color of those in Gallery 219 made for the sculpture to be placed upon. Inside Gallery 219, the Houdon sculpture brought in another set of features which made it appear equally, if not more, “out of place” than it had when out of doors. Its weathered finish conflicted with the well-­guarded and conserved objects of high art indoors, and it represented George Washington, an American hero, in the context of an eighteenth-­century European period room. These connections were developed from the information Anne forwarded to me in Los Angeles, and there was no doubt that her thorough involvement from beginning to end allowed this specific project to be realized. I will go on to the next work. I was also not able to remain at Le Nouveau Musée in Villeurbanne in 1991. Jean-­Louis Maubant, director of Le Nouveau Musée, had invited me some years prior to do a project, and I had visited several times to develop a proposal. Besides the fact that I was unable to stay, there was the problem that in 1991 their exhibition facilities would be closed for interior and exterior renovation.

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It was during my 1990 visit that I made a proposal which responded to the potential problem of an architectural museum upgrade next to residents with low-­to-­ modest yearly incomes, as well as the condition of there being no exhibition space. The idea for this project was rooted in the problems of the third, fourth, and seventh arrondissements of Lyon, where neighborhoods were either in jeopardy of redevelopment or were already greatly transformed at the expense of families whose ancestors originally established their homes and businesses in these areas. Renovation had greatly escalated a justification for future development. I wanted to design an object which could be a reminder for those families who might be facing expulsion. The proposal consisted of the recovery of all the cast iron in the furnaces which were being discarded during the architectural modifications. The cast iron was then shipped to a smelting plant where it was melted down and recast into small rectangular solid objects. These objects measured 10 x 7.5 cm with a gradual taper in thickness from 1.1 cm to 1.5 cm and a text in relief on the top and bottom sides of the object. The text on the bottom read [in French] as follows: THIS OBJECT COMES FROM THE OLD FURNACES OF LE NOUVEAU MUSÉE AT THE BEGINNING OF ITS RENOVATION IN FEBRUARY 1991. IT IS TO BE DISTRIBUTED FOR FREE TO PEOPLE OF LOW INCOME WHO HAVE HOUSING PROBLEMS.

The text on top read as follows: HOUSING IS YOUR RIGHT. DON’T ACCEPT RENOVATION OR DISCRIMINATION. ACTION LYONNAISE POUR L’INSERTION SOCIALE PAR LE LOGEMENT: 78 39 26 38 ASSOCIATION VILLEURBANNAISE POUR LE DROIT AU LOGEMENT: 78 94 95 61

ALPIL and AVDL are two autonomous associations which have successfully defended home dwellers of Lyon and Villeurbanne against expulsion and relocation due to ever-­increasing speculation.

This was one of the few exhibitions where I needed a transportable object fabricated outside of the museum rather than an installation. The work’s point of reception was also outside the museum, since all the objects were distributed by social workers and associations who worked with the problems of housing and discrimination. This time, the entirety of the work’s production would end up being done through fax and mail. Jean-­Louis Maubant delegated the realization of my proposal to [curator] Maryse Hugonnet, and the success of this project was a result of Maryse weaving

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together entirely different types of professions outside of the museum, such as social services and metal fabricators, as well as her attention to every last detail. The last exhibition I wish to discuss is an artwork I proposed for the Skulptur group exhibition in Münster, Germany, during the summer of 1977. I was invited to the outdoor sculpture part of this exhibition, which was curated by Kasper König. My proposal was to have an ordinary trailer relocated weekly in and around the city of Münster. Since the exhibition lasted for nineteen weeks, I decided upon nineteen different locations in both urban and suburban architectural and natural settings, in existing [parking] spaces, or just off the road. The museum was closed on Mondays, so on that day each week the trailer was moved to a new location. Each week, a pad of leaflet announcements in a different color was placed at the front desk of the museum to notify the visitors where they could find the trailer’s current location. One of the ideas in this work is the problem that, on one hand, public sculpture offers the general public a supposed opportunity for an aesthetic experience unrestricted by the walls of an exhibition container. On the other hand, public sculpture represents an object from the discourse of sculpture which occupies public space while having been autonomously produced. On the perimeter of this contradiction is the problem that public sculpture is presented as a sign of cultural progress and spatial stability. The trailer was a common object which remained tied to the museum exhibition since it was defined by placement and context rather than its status as a discrete object. Needless to say, in 1977 I wasn’t aware that there would be Skulptur exhibitions in 1987 and 1997 and that I would be invited to participate in both. Since I have been using situational logic for my work, it stood to reason that if I determined that the conditions which shape public sculpture’s reception had not substantially shifted by 1987 and again by 1997, and if I understood the city, the museum and the exhibition concept to have been modified in form but not function, these conditions would call for a reconstruction of the 1977 contribution to Skulptur. The repetition of precisely the same structure as in 1977, including everything from renting the same make and model trailer, using the same parking places if they were accessible, re-­creating the leaflets, and having photographs document each week’s location, would allow the work to become a yardstick of not only the transformation in the surroundings, but also the changing perception of the term “site specific.”

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Unfortunately, the first repetition was not realized as planned: In the 1987 catalog for the Skulptur exhibition, the reader can see several weeks when the trailer was not positioned as it had been in 1977, three weeks when no photos were taken, and four weeks when the positions and photos coincided with my proposal. In 1997, Ulrike Groos undertook responsibility for the reconstruction of this installation. From a visual standpoint, the positions for the trailer and the documentation hardly varied from 1977. It is just this which puts surrounding variations into relief, including paths, decoration, lighting, landscaping, building use, signage, and even window design, and these visual records begin to animate my concerns. This opportunity and the museum’s cooperation in 1997 allowed for the conceptual frame of the artwork to be read as intended. In conclusion, I would like each museum to realize the extent to which my artworks follow from their existing conditions. Contained in the work is a demonstration of how much its realization is contingent upon the museum apparatus. For me, it is a special stage in the development of a work when a period of autonomous planning gives way to a collaboration in production and presentation of meaning.

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Notes for lectures for student participants in work for Made in California: NOW at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000—2001

Editor’s Notes: Asher worked with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2000 and again in 2002 to make two “rotations” (Asher’s term) of a work that is often informally described as “student reinstallation.” The first rotation was part of LACMA’s exhibition Made in California: NOW from 2000 to 2001. This exhibition, organized by a unit at LACMA called LACMALab, was connected to the large-­scale survey exhibition Made in California. LACMALab’s mission within LACMA was to experiment with modes of museum presentation by commissioning projects from artists. For Made in California: NOW, the museum invited contemporary Californian artists to make works that were specifically aimed at a target audience of children and teenagers. Asher proposed a work that would engage a group of eleventh-­ grade students from the nearby Fairfax High School to reinstall LACMA’s Leona Palmer Gallery, one of the permanent collection galleries that featured nineteenth-­ century European art. The two sets of notes reproduced here were written by Asher for meetings with the high school students who were participating in his work. The two rotations of the LACMA work are also discussed in two further texts in part 5 of this book: excerpts from Asher’s lecture at the Serpentine Gallery in London (2003) and his interview with Anna Harding (2004–­2005).



“Lecture” (2000)

Editor’s Notes: These handwritten notes were most likely made in preparation for one of Asher’s initial meetings with the high school students who participated in the first rotation of his work for the exhibition Made in California: NOW from 2000 to 2001. In the original document, these notes are followed by Asher’s notes about another speaker’s role in the meeting, as well as about timeline and scheduling aspects of the project. The document was filed by him in a folder labeled “Project proposal.” Although written as a set of informal presentation notes, this text communicates key aspects of Asher’s approach to pedagogy and learning. It also presents a particular modality of observation as central to Asher’s artistic practice.

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Lecture By making choices and decisions, you produce meaning rather than take the meaning adults give you and simply reproduce it. One of the ways I learned (and I don’t know who taught me) was to take an object which everyone took for granted and ask myself why it was in the position it was in. An example might be a park bench, made of unpainted metal tubes and fiberglass table and seats, which sat along a pathway. I might ask myself: A)  Why isn’t it in the middle of the grass? B)  Why is it at one end of the pathway rather than the other? C)  How long will it take for the sun to bleach the green tint in the fiberglass? D)  How long will it take for the metal to rust? E)  How many pounds do you need to put on the table so it will sink into the grass? F)  What would it look like if you threw it off the top of a building? G)  If you threw it off the top of a tall building, how could you make it land? H)  How come all the seats are at the same height on public benches? Is it because adults make them for adults without thinking about young people? I)  How come they aren’t much longer so more people can sit at them? Many of these questions, when I looked back, had political or social implications.

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“LACMALab” (2000)

Editor’s Notes: Asher filed these handwritten notes, which contain many revisions in both ink and pencil, in a folder that he labeled “Proposal and letters to students (first talk with students).” Although he kept several drafts of these notes, the text selected for this collection is the version that is paginated in the corner of each sheet of paper. The format of the notes reflects Asher’s frequent use of numbered or otherwise itemized lists, columns, and boxes to arrange ideas and information visually on pages of handwritten material. These notes were most likely meant as speaking aids to address the participating high school students. This intended audience and the occasion—­launching the project—­are reflected in the style and content of the notes. While the notes are not written out into a complete lecture, they are spelled out enough to allow the reader to follow the way in which Asher sought to articulate some of the key questions and themes that he associated with this work. The institution of the museum and its operations, in particular its interface with the public, feature prominently in this text. Asher also includes notes about his own practice, introducing it to the students in relation to site specificity.

LACMALab Discuss: My art practice is rooted in wanting to consider ideas and make objects which went beyond that which was normally accepted by others. There was a joy in learning while demonstrating to others the impossible was within reach. The reinstallation project for the Palmer Gallery turns around central ideas which relate to my artwork. 1)  The first is an interest in collections and presentations of artwork in museums and the way collections are shaped.

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For example, there are many different decisions the museum uses to tell its own story about culture, which could extend from the criteria used in the selection of new acquisitions to the spaces allocated for certain objects deemed significant, as opposed to those objects of less significance.

[Note: Asher presented the text below in the three columns surrounded by hand-drawn boxes.]

Master narrative

Some museums follow the canon of older museums

•  Maybe they want to focus mainly upon late nineteenth-/ early twentiethcentury modernism

Significance and value is contingent upon:

•  Maybe only ancient art •  Maybe a little of everything

1)  The market worth 2)  Historical significance 3)  And sometimes taste of museum 4)  Sign value

[Note: In the original document, number two, immediately below, has a box drawn around it, a question mark in the margins, and it has been crossed out in pencil.]

2)  I am interested in the role of the public in the museum. So I try to ask rather basic questions such as: A)  Why should the public participate in operations which are generally considered museum responsibilities? B)  If the public is able to participate, what are some of the ways their mark can be expressed? C)  If the museum allows for participation, how can this be a meaningful experience which the public can apply to ways of thinking about other practices? 3) 

I am also interested in the different operations the museum utilizes, for instance [from] cataloging, conserving, installing, to storing works of art. It is the staff’s technical abilities and the way they are used which gives us partial insight into the story the museum wants to convey and how they want the viewer to engage [with] the museum’s relationship to art and history. For instance:



If the museum chooses to keep the paint on its early paintings looking fresh as if they came from the artist’s studio in the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth centuries, we know we are being presented with an impossibility or kind of historical illusion. We know this since we know that varnish surfaces over paint fade over time and make the painting darker. On the other hand, if we are able to view older paintings with

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darker tones, by extension we can feel that the museum is attempting to be historically reliable. Thereby, each technical operation which might first seem insignificant can end up directing the viewers to meaning the museum wants to provide.

If I were coming in from high school to re­install the Palmer Gallery, I don’t know if I would be so interested in the story the museum wants to tell. Perhaps not.

But for my own practice, I am interested in what the museum wants to tell me, if for no better reason than I invariably can’t accept it. In terms of producing a work, this is where I can begin.

4)  Other questions about the museum that interest me turn around the museum’s concrete function with the public. At times I can’t help but ask:

A)  Why can’t we take home some of the museum’s treasures?

B)  Are the best museums those with a good library and cafeteria? In other words, a place the public can stay for a day? C)  Are the best museums those with long hours to allow for visits after work? D)  Is a successful museum one which makes knowledge accessible and insures its circulation? 5)  Similarly, I am interested in those questions which pertain to the museum’s abstract function, particularly because this is where the museum leaves its greatest mark. For example: A)  From a political perspective, does the museum use its art to confirm the status quo or the existing powers that be, or does it represent an arena where new ideas can be explored? B)  Should the museum exist to not only represent cultural wealth, but [also] aesthetic objects from communities of poverty as well as communities in between?

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C)  Why do many museums want to inspire awe in the viewer?

So most of my thoughts about the function of the museum to the public return in the form of questions about the institution’s accessibility.

I would like to mention a few more words about my artwork: •  Each installation I produce is quite different. •  The reason for this is that each work is specific to the situation that I have been invited to participate in. •  It is specific to each new situation in as much as the work is constructed from preexisting elements which are part of the exhibition site, such as the architecture and even the concept behind the exhibition. •  These works are so specific, they can’t be transferred and reconstructed at the site of another exhibition, except for the student reinstallation project. •  The project I have proposed for Los Angeles County Museum of Art on the reinstallation of the Palmer Gallery is an example of the specificness I am describing. •  To begin my idea about this work, I coupled the charge of the artist with the mandate of the LACMALab. •  The aspect of the mandate and charge which interested me was that both emphasized the use of the collection as a principal area of investigation. • This link further interested me due to my practice as being one which involves a critical inquiry of museums and art practice. •  This represented one level of specificness that my work addressed while another addressed the context of a group exhibition designed for youths, but able to engage all ages.

[Note: Asher wrote “Call LACMA about their mandate” at the top of this next page of the original document, which was labeled “Extra.”]

Extra •  This work also responds to the idea that young people often mobilize change in different areas—­the most apparent to me being music. •  This project also responds to the tradition of the permanent collection where the displays can appear rather static after viewing the same works in the same order many times.

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•  Finally, this project responds to finding a way for teens to develop critical tools. For without this faculty, we can never fully enjoy culture.

Institutional Critique One path takes the museum and sees it as a metaphor for the way society functions and thereby uses it to examine problems in society, i.e. Andrea Fraser, Marcel Broodthaers. Another path explores the museum and its contradictions or the problems in its representation for the purposes of critique.

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Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA, Made in California: NOW, September 7, 2000–­September 9, 2001, first rotation of reinstallation of the permanent collection by students from Fairfax High School in the Leona Palmer Gallery. Photographer unknown. © Museum Associates/LACMA. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA, Made in California: NOW, September 7, 2000–­September 9, 2001, museum label with information about Michael Asher and his project. Photograph by Michael Asher. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Notes for lecture at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in conjunction with A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968, 2004 (2004/2006)

Editor’s Notes: Asher gave this lecture at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in conjunction with the exhibition A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–­1968 on April 8, 2004. This exhibition included four early object-­based works of Asher’s from the period that he discussed in this lecture. Two of those works had been refabricated for the exhibition. These works, which have no title, are those described by Asher in his lecture as “forty-­five-­degree stretchers and canvas” and “twenty-­three-­foot taper.” The text included here is the latest version of the lecture found in his archive. It includes a small update Asher made by hand in the typed document in 2006, two years after the presentation.

Michael Asher The Museum Contemporary Art, Los Angeles April 8, 2004 A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–­1968 In 1966 and 1967, when the four works of mine were produced that have been included in the exhibition A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–­1968, it had become important to find a way that could place some of the problems I saw in art practice into relief, thereby helping me learn a little about them or even go as far as to produce alternatives. One of the overarching concerns was to find an avenue which would depend less and less upon an arbitrary framework to construct each work, but rather attempt to determine them from preexisting conditions. As a result, architecture was used to trigger these early decisions. By lessening arbitrary decisions in that which went into producing each work, the more difficult it became for me to justify a complex visual solution, thereby resulting in fundamental objects. This, then, became the onset of chipping away at the materiality of the artwork, if for no better reason than to see how necessary the presence of each layer was. Similarly driving these actions was the idea that one development in art history superseded or cancelled out prior ones. I, therefore, saw myself on a path that was trying to understand the function of the object of art through aesthetic innovation.

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So in 1966 and 1967, I was challenging aesthetic conventions from a cottage-­style, two-­bedroom apartment with a mint green interior except for the floors, which were brown linoleum covered in some places with a brown rug. The four works in this exhibition were meant to interact with the surrounding context at first to push the boundaries of form; or at least so I thought. As time went on, this interaction became more a means of capturing meaning, which could then initiate ideas about art in relationship to its context. Aluminum and glass, 1967 Perhaps the object of mine in the exhibition which manages the issues of architectural context most directly is the 18 1⁄4 inch by 18 1⁄4 inch custom-­made aluminum frame with a channel milled into its inside surface to accept a clear sheet of glass. It is direct in so far as the frame’s assembly is not covered, nor is the continuous wall plane, under the frame, which was usually blocked by a mat or paper surface. Both the drywall and the aluminum were connected in as much as they both were derived from flat stock materials, which were then individually cut to fit and then finished by hand. The aluminum and drywall were also similar in that one framed the aesthetic space while the other framed the living space. Hence, the questions at the time were: Would the support and display system be considered as an art object? And if so, could the frame, alone, recontextualize the wall surface within the frame? Heat-­formed Plexiglas, 1966 If the aluminum frame and clear glass signaled its object status through the conventionalized mechanisms used to display and support the work of art, this is precisely what was eliminated in the shallow dome made of fluorescent Plexiglas. The series this comes from was meant to appear as a form, which merged into the wall surface somewhat like a paint blister, thereby leaving the architectural context to blend into the object. The translucent quality of the Plexiglas enables the viewer to see a plausible synthesis of both surfaces. This formal integration was finally completed about a few years later with the use of paint on wall surfaces. This synthesis was also a clue that the aesthetic object might become unnecessary as an independent addition.

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No title, 1966. Heat-­formed Plexiglas (clear). 15⅜ × 14 in. Photographer unknown. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Forty-­five-­degree stretchers and canvas [1966/2004] Rather than having the work of art both separate while superimposing itself upon the interior architectural surface, the canvas with a forty-­five-­degree stretcher bar attempts to produce a dialog with the exterior from its position on the wall. This one modification to the conventional way of preparing a canvas provided a border, which became the configuration of the surface composition. For me, the important aspect of using the stretcher this way was that it didn’t have to lose its function in order to operate within an aesthetic context. Likewise, having this happen with traditional components necessary to painting suggested to me that the artist shouldn’t have to incorporate new art materials to articulate such issues, as had most readymades. The origin of this painting came from a series of shaped canvases I had been working on which were in the form of isometric pyramids. This origin is a little difficult to imagine unless one thinks about constructing a three-­dimensional pyramid that has a 4 foot by 4 foot base; then take a 1 ½ inches thick slice off the bottom and you will end up with two pieces, one being in the shape of this painting, and the other being the rest of the pyramid. In the end, this canvas was more a product of formal innovation, which held greater visual autonomy than most other artworks from this period. Nevertheless, it contained a rejection of the standard right angle used in stretchers and in architecture. Twenty-­three-­foot taper, 1966[–­1967/2004] Another series of works during this period were tapers. The ends were a little different on each, for instance some were radiused while a couple were very thin as they faired into the wall, while another was wedged between a heater, as well as wall and door trim. The tapers were the only series which were covered with a painted finish, except for one taper, which was on un­primed canvas. The painted ones were the same color as the interior paint in my apartment except for the twenty-­three-­foot one in this exhibition, which was white paint on fiberglass and wood. The length of this taper was almost as long as my longest wall. The wall did not go from floor to ceiling for its full length, but was continued atop of headers over the passages at each end. The header was wide enough to accommodate a 6 i­nch plane, which, thereby, determined the width of the taper.

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This is an early example of mine where the art object’s scale was literally determined by the architecture. Due to the length and odd axis, both resulted in the suggestion that the viewer would have to move past the work rather than linger around its static presence. Yet, the limitations of size to define the taper ran counter to the arbitrary determination behind the decision of the angle of the front plane. As a painting, the long white front plane sought its own axis rather than reproducing that of the walls. What did it mean to not reproduce the wall plane? This was to take nothing for granted or to not assume that there could be a forward motion in art making by using old rules, unless somehow they were employed differently than in the past. Many of the objects during this period dealt with the wall as if it were the picture plane, and the works I designed were figures on that ground. Yet, individually they acted as paintings or a hybrid of them. Yet, each time they threw a distortion into traditional use.

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No title, 1966. House paint on tapered wood with radiused top end and bottom end faired into wall. View of work installed in artist’s apartment in Costa Mesa, California, USA. 65½ × 6 in. Photograph by Michael Asher. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA, A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–­1968, March 14–­­August 2, 2004, installation view. Background, three works with no title by Michael Asher: twenty-­three-­foot taper, 1966–­1967/2004; heat-­formed Plexiglas (fluorescent pink), 1966; and aluminum and glass, 1967. Foreground, two works by Douglas Huebler: Bradford Series 2-­66 and Truro Series #3. Photograph by Brian Forrest. © 2018 Estate of Douglas Huebler, courtesy Darcy Huebler/Paula Cooper Gallery, New York/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. © Michael Asher Foundation.

Notes for lecture for “Works in Progress” lecture series at Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2005 (2005)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these notes for a lecture that he gave in the “Works in Progress” series at the Getty Research Institute on May 5, 2005. The series, which ran from 2004 to 2007, was organized by contemporary art historian Miwon Kwon. The featured speakers were scholars, writers, artists, curators, and designers, all of whom were asked to share work currently in progress rather than already finished. In these notes, Asher considers what research means in his practice through a discussion of specific projects: his exhibitions at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in 1990, the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels in 1992, the work for the Bienal de São Paulo in 1998, the work for the Skulptur Projekte exhibitions in Münster in 1977, 1987, and 1997, and the work for the exhibition The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1999. He also considers what a retrospective exhibition of his practice might entail. The retrospective exhibitions planned for the Generali Foundation in Vienna and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) that are discussed in these notes were ultimately not realized. Asher marked the document transcribed here as the final version of his notes prepared for this lecture. The typed original contains a number of handwritten edits by Asher. Those have been incorporated into the text.

Works in Progress Lecture 5/5/05 Getty In a most condensed form, I am going to describe a little about my approach in producing a work of art. I would like first to address the subject of research, which helps to indicate the value of an idea by providing an overview of reference material which, in turn, allows me an early glimpse of the subject’s depth as well as ways of beginning to work through the material. Otherwise, I use research for the accumulation and ordering of information or data, which will become direct content in the completed installation or else used indirectly to develop the work. An instance where the research was transported directly into the work were the quotes concerning different theories about the Arts and Crafts Movement by nine professors at the University of Chicago, which came from books and

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periodicals written at the turn of the century. The exhibition took place in 1990 at the Renaissance Society on the campus of the University of Chicago. Also a part of this installation was a ten-­page bibliography which consisted of references to further articles and publications written by each professor. There were multiple copies of these, making it possible for the viewer to take one from the exhibition. Another instance of research was used in 1992 at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels; only this time, it [the research] allowed me to present the misuse of it [research] by trying to fit William Mulholland and Victor Horta together as two historical figures so as to appear somewhat comparable in their accomplishments. The Palais des Beaux Arts was the last building Victor Horta designed. This made him responsible for the existing configuration that I would be using and, therefore, he became the first part of the puzzle I was going to assemble. At a later point, I came across a photo of the notebook Horta carried while visiting California. In it was a passage where he mentions William Mulholland. Although quite an unlikely juxtaposition, I decided to see if I could merge the two by extracting similarities about them. The logic of having one piece of information determining the next, then the next, through proximity was somewhat parallel to the original decision which brought Horta and the exhibition container together. But by puzzling together dissimilar subjects, while using similar aspects of their histories, contained hope that problems would be revealed that I could not have caught otherwise. At the time, research in form alone had given the work of art an aura of meaningfulness. This work responded to such a perception. Besides library research, there are instances where material had to be gathered firsthand, such as the photographing of different colonias in the Rio Grande Valley for an installation produced for the 1998 São Paulo biennial, as well as a list The Museum of Modern Art compiled for me, which constituted all the museum’s deaccessions from their collection, starting from 1929, which was assembled in order to make a booklet for their exhibition The Museum as Muse in 1999. The need to gather information threads its way through each successive stage of my work, making it possible to organize doubts and present problems. [Note: Handwritten marginal notes in pencil referencing Asher’s work for the Bienal de São Paolo read: “Makeshift housing/shanty/four hundred thousand population/one thousand five hundred colonias.”]

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Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, January 21–­­March 4, 1990, installation view of freestanding wall panels with quotations by University of Chicago professors on front side and US patent numbers on reverse side. Photograph by Tom van Eynde. © Michael Asher Foundation.

Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, January 21–­­March 4, 1990, detail of installation showing radiator cover (US Patent #2,487,287) and holder with copies of ten-­page bibliography of writings by nine University of Chicago professors available for visitors to take during exhibition. Photograph by Tom van Eynde. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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In preparing for a work, there is no one order of how or where I choose to inform myself. Rather, it is important for me to have a space where ideas can be entertained which are alien to my way of thinking and their merits can be evaluated. Lists of questions about the exhibition, its concept, or the institution might be coupled with lists of very obvious to far-­reaching topics which present themselves as proposals. Each of these can easily be crossed out and be returned [to] any time, if needed. Many of these will result in some type of search in order to be expanded upon. There are times when most of this is unnecessary since everything seems to effortlessly fall into place. Then, there are other times when I have an idea but can’t find any spatial/visual means of articulating it. How the work of art becomes formalized is also contingent upon the site’s already existing material conditions, which serve as a guide to how the information will be expressed. For instance, the Renaissance Society installation employed school colors as an aspect of its form, but its content was based upon the debate turning around anti-­modernism at the moment of the school’s inception, and [the debate] had lingered as a subtext ever since. Some of the different theories are represented by professors who taught on campus during this period. Their quotes are on the front side of the display walls, while on the opposite side are patent numbers which represent industrially produced hardware used in the construction of the gallery. This truncated description of how I clarify what I want to produce for an exhibition brings me to a couple of projects I am currently planning. I have been invited to participate in the exhibition Skulptur, which takes place in Münster, Germany, in the summer of 2007. It is dedicated to the presentation of outdoor sculpture placed throughout the city and its parks. Skulptur began in 1977 and has been repeated every ten years since then. I took part in the first exhibition, yet at the same time was unaware of the organizer’s plan to repeat the exhibition and invite new participants, as well as include the artists from the first exhibition. Therefore, the artwork I produced in 1977 was meant for that one situation. My proposal for Skulptur was to have a small vacation trailer be repositioned every week at a new parking place. The door was kept locked and the curtains closed. Each new parking place was adjacent to situations which had an everyday function such as: houses, a church, a mall, the train station, stores, a bus stop, a roadside bench, condominiums, and parking lots in the city and its recreational areas. These were all places where it was, for the most part, not inconceivable for a small vacation trailer to be parked.

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The trailer is recognizable as an art object if a museum visitor picked up one of the paper leaflets at the front desk in the exhibition which described the work and gave its current location. When I was invited to return to Münster to prepare for the 1987 and 1997 exhibitions, both times I experienced a city and its surroundings, which hadn’t changed substantially. The exhibition concept had fundamentally remained as a framework for the presentation of recent innovations in outdoor sculpture. Since each time the similarities seemed to outweigh any differences, it resulted in my decision to reconstruct my original proposal using precisely the same parking places and orientation of the trailer for each position, as well as having the photo documentation taken from the same point of view as the 1977 installation. Likewise, the museum had to go through the same process of finding an identical year, make, and model trailer, then renting it from its owner, for each reconstruction. Part of my original intent was to find an alternative to the art object which seeks individuation in public space that is otherwise designed to be shared amongst its many uses and users. My work for Skulptur was searching for a method where the art object could possibly acknowledge public life rather than public life confirming its presence. I selected the trailer since it could juxtapose itself to many different sites of daily life. As well, the trailer represented a potential escape for a supposed relief from a daily routine. By 1987 and 1997, the exhibition Skulptur became a tourist destination for many of those traveling on to the [Venice] Biennale and Documenta. Perhaps the weekly repositioning of the trailer was perceived as some kind of down-­market doubling of this activity by those visitors using the large summer exhibitions in their itinerary. Since the juxtapositions in this work referred to locations of daily use, a story unfolded which was quite separate from the tourist maps and the artists’ selection of spaces for other outdoor sculpture. By 1997, it hopefully served as a measure of doubt for those outdoor projects that incorporated interactivity as an alternative to the predicament of outdoor sculpture’s individuation. If I repeat the trailer work for 2007, there are a number of uncertainties, particularly from a practical standpoint, which have to be resolved, such as: •  If the same make, model, and year of the trailer can’t be rented or borrowed, does the work end? If so, how should this be expressed?

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•  If the land on which the trailer is positioned will no longer accommodate it, again, does this somehow get represented? Then there are more speculative questions that I am trying to figure out, such as: •  If I decide to produce a different work, what should I use to indicate that this is necessary? •  If I do a new work, what will it mean to align myself with the museum’s interest in presenting new and recent innovation in outdoor sculpture practice? Another exhibition which I am trying to make function, while not using the specificity of former installations, are two retrospectives next year: one at the Generali Foundation in Vienna, and the other at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in Barcelona. I want to be able to demonstrate, through the retrospective, why almost all my work since 1969 can’t be reconstructed in other institutions and in future times without abandoning the contexts which they originally had responded to. Thus, if they were reconstructed, they would be completely different works. Using photo documentation and text is all that is left to describe these former works. The challenge for me is how to use documentation, which is limited in what it can represent, while still being able to demonstrate how these works perform as critical tools. Simultaneously, I would like to try to structure the retrospective so that they read as not attempting to derive legitimation, but more as a space where study can take place. What I hope this paper begins to suggest is that there is not a best way to develop a work of art.

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Part 4 Public Address: Exhibition Statements

Statement on work for Heiner Friedrich Gallery, Cologne, 1973 (1973)

Editor’s Notes: This typed exhibition statement was written for Asher’s exhibition at the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in Cologne, Germany, in 1973. Asher’s work at the gallery consisted of painting the ceiling of the gallery and its office spaces to match the existing paint of the floor for the duration of the exhibition. Asher also patched some cracks and openings where the floor and walls of the gallery met.

Current exposition September 4–­­September 28, 1973: Michael Asher—­Situational Work As Realized, September 1973 Statement Proposals are based upon the existing space selected for work. Prior knowledge of the site is usually needed. Previous works are generally not repeated. Each site constitutes its own elements to consider. Past works have been both constructed and situational works. For example, the California Institute of the Arts (1973) work is situational. Opposing walls were painted the same color but the room’s basic structure remained unaltered. Pomona work (1970) is an example of a constructed work. Walls and ceiling were utilized to alter what existed.

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Statement on work for Los Angeles in the Seventies at The Fort Worth Art Museum, 1977 (1977)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote this statement about his work for the exhibition Los Angeles in the Seventies at The Fort Worth Art Museum (now Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) in 1977. In this work, Asher asked staff members at three adjacent art museums in Fort Worth, Texas (the other two being the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art [now the Amon Carter Museum of American Art] and the Kimbell Art Museum), to park in a particular corner of a parking lot as part of their daily activities. This statement was likely available as a handout to museum visitors during the exhibition. The bound pages of the exhibition’s catalog only noted the dates of Asher’s project. An erratum page inserted into the catalog added the title of the work and a description of the parking procedure requested by Asher. In the exhibition and the catalog insert the work bore the title Sharing Common Ground. This title is covered with a black marker in the version of the handout that Asher filed in his archive. This removal of the title is consistent with Asher’s practice of not assigning titles to his works.

Michael Asher 1977 The Fort Worth Art Museum Sharing Common Ground is a work which sets the stage for a collective activity between the three different art museums in Fort Worth, which have separate identities throughout the community and the art world. The different identities are ideological, if not also economic and social. They are most clearly reflected in each museum’s housing and collections. We can see that in all three museums, however, there exist constants, such as the function of various personnel necessary to implement exhibitions and maintain the collections, the building, and the grounds. If we go one step further, outside the museums, we see another constant: the vehicles driven to and from work and the service vehicles of each museum. Sharing Common Ground uses the constant of personnel and vehicles to signal the contrast between the museums’ separate identities and interests with the similar functions of the personnel at each museum. To underscore the contrast,

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the participation of the personnel at each museum is needed to park their vehicles in the northeast corner of the parking lot between the Will Rogers Memorial Coliseum and The Fort Worth Art Museum from November 14 through November 20. In briefly isolating staff members from their respective institutions at different times during the day, issues about the function of museum personnel are raised for the public along with ideas about relationships among staff of the participating museums. In addition, this work concerns itself with the necessary collaboration of an artist with staff of differing interests to bring about a work of art. The artist would be interested in hearing from both those who participated, as well as those who chose not to participate in the work.

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Statement on work for Museum Haus Lange, Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Krefeld, 1982 (1982)

Editor’s Notes: This statement was written by Asher to accompany his exhibition at Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, Germany, in 1982. In this work, Asher engaged with the architecture of the museum’s exhibition space, a building that had been designed by Ludwig Mies van  der  Rohe as a private residence between 1928 and 1930. Asher’s exhibition at Haus Lange was accompanied by Daniel Buren’s exhibition at Museum Haus Esters, an adjacent building also designed by Mies van der Rohe, likewise used as an exhibition space for contemporary art. This statement was first published in the catalog that accompanied Asher’s and Buren’s exhibitions, Michael Asher: Museum Haus Lange 1982. Plan contre-­plan: eine Arbeit in situ von Daniel Buren. Museum Haus Esters 1982 (Krefeld: Kunstmuseen der Stadt Krefeld, 1982).

The newly constructed walls for this installation at Haus Lange have been determined by superimposing an identical copy of the main floor ground plan upon the original plan. The bottom plan represents the position of the preexisting architecture while the top plan is turned at right angles, or ninety degrees, to the bottom using the centers of the plans as the axis for the shift. The constructed walls follow the top plan and therefore are identical in proportion to those of the preexisting house. When installed outdoors, the newly constructed walls maintain the same floor level as the walls of the original home. The newly constructed walls represent the internal walls, which are used for the exhibition display area, except for the perimeter walls, and also include interior wing walls, which extend from the perimeter walls. By rotating the construction site at a right angle to the original, the new walls extend through Haus Lange and project through existing interior walls, ending beyond the preexisting perimeter walls of the front and back gardens. Outdoors they form pavilion areas, and indoors they form sculptural elements or new living areas. This work subjects formal and abstract elements to a sculptural practice which may be perceived as representational. Whereas representation may be defined by methods such as figuration, this representation is based upon the inter­ relationship with the preexisting architecture from which it is derived. Therefore, the transposed walls for this installation, on first reading, develop their meaning from the specific context of Haus Lange.

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It would appear as if Mies van der Rohe designed Haus Lange by planning its architectural elements on a grid. This makes the right angle turn possible within the framework of this installation. With its shift of axis, this work reflects a familiar condition found within the postmodern discourse where a comparable shift would claim to be a sign of aesthetic achievement in architecture. It is hoped that numerous other questions arise about the way in which structures with identical elements function within the separate discourses of art and architecture. Michael Asher, Venice, California, April 1982

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Museum Haus Lange, Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Krefeld, West Germany, May 16–­­July 14, 1982, view of duplicate walls constructed at ninety-­ degree rotation to existing architecture. Photographer unknown. © Michael Asher Foundation.

Exhibition handout for work for 74th American Exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago, 1982 (1982)

Editor’s Notes: This handout was available to visitors to the 74th American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. The front side of the handout contains a statement by Asher about his work. The reverse side includes a listing of publications in which Nude Seated in a Bathtub (1910) by Marcel Duchamp and Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler (1910) by Pablo Picasso had been reproduced. Both sides of the handout are reproduced here as facsimile pages. A slightly different version of the statement without the bibliography was published in the exhibition’s catalog.

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Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 74th American Exhibition, June 8–­­August 1, 1982, Asher’s viewers in front of Pablo Picasso’s Daniel-­Henry Kahnweiler (1910) in Gallery 226. Photograph by A. Rorimer. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Statement on work for In Context exhibition series at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1983)

Editor’s Notes: Asher’s exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) took the form of a licensing and sublicensing agreement with MOCA for its lobby space. The agreement was marked in the museum’s space by a sign with the inscription “The Michael Asher Lobby” on one of the pillars in the lobby space and a handout in the shape of a small, folded card. The card, which contained the text included here, was placed on the admissions desk in the museum. The work took place during the inauguration of MOCA’s public activities in the facility that came to be known as The Temporary Contemporary. It was subsequently renamed The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in 1996. The capitalization of “Museum” in this text follows formatting of the original publication.

I have proposed to The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles that an agreement be made which will give me a license for the aesthetic control of the lobby area of the Museum. In so doing, the Museum will then sublicense this area making it possible to be rented from me on a monthly basis. As part of the installation, my name will identify the lobby area along with a description of the work. The Museum will have my name appear on all reception cards which refer to the lobby as a place for public assembly or as an area for the display of cultural objects. During the license period, however, maintenance, insurance, and taxes will be at the Museum’s expense, a responsibility generally assumed by the Museum for works that they house. I have requested that they regulate all day-­to-­day functions and operations of the lobby area without my intervention. MA

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The Temporary Contemporary, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA, In Context, November 1983– July 1985, stack of folded business cards with Asher’s statement inside, placed on the admissions desk. Photograph by Michael Asher. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Statement on work for Ex-­tension at Occidental College, Los Angeles, 1986 (1986)

Editor’s Notes: Asher participated in a group exhibition called Ex-­tension at the Weingart Center for the Liberal Arts at Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1986. The exhibition also included works by Kim Abeles, Louise Lawler, and Michelle Stuart. For his work, Asher asked students taking a class with Occidental professor Linda Lyke to make the paper for the printing of the exhibition’s catalog. The statement included here was first published in the catalog.

On-­campus and off-­campus cultural/political configurations determine how this exhibition will operate. The concept of the exhibition, and its curating, presentation, display, catalog, text, and funding have been determined by the existing conditions and given situation available on campus. The participating artists’ critical and cultural limits, as well as a part of the ideological frame, seem to be the off-­campus components for Ex-­tension. Most sources of raw materials are not made evident in exhibition production and reception; they are exempted as the producers of meaning. The artwork I propose is to fabricate handmade paper that has the appearance and function of mechanically reproduced paper stock. The handmade paper intended for the exhibition catalog is made using the Weingart facilities. I thank Linda Lyke along with her students, for the fabrication of this artwork. I would like to thank both Linda Lyke and Stephen Eisenman for their support of my enterprise. Michael Asher May 1986

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Statement on work for l’art conceptuel, une perspective at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1989–­1990 (1989)

Editor’s Notes: The exhibition l’art conceptuel, une perspective, curated by Claude Gintz for the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, was one of the first large historical retrospectives of conceptual art from the 1960s and 1970s. This statement by Asher was first published in French and English in the exhibition’s catalog. During the process of making the work, Asher had reflected on the role of curators, art historians, and exhibition practices in constructing art history in his correspondence with Gintz. Two of those letters to Gintz are included in part 2 of this book.

l’art conceptuel, une perspective is as much a view of conceptual art as it is a perspective of the institutions used for the maintenance and historical reproduction of that practice. What are the forces and conditions driving the historical analysis which are beyond conceptual art practice’s own definition of its historical context and production procedures? Historical objectification ought to be accelerated while there is still a collective experience and memory which can assist in the clarity of an analysis simultaneously, opening up a space to ask fundamental questions regarding history making. To look at this question further, I propose as my contribution to l’art conceptuel, une perspective that separate groups of historians be notified by an announcement of this exhibition in the below journals that a new historical perspective is being mapped onto conceptual art practice. MA • Apollo •  Art History • Daidalos •  The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism •  La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France •  Romagna Arte e Storia • Simiolus Public Address: Exhibition Statements  

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Advertisement by Michael Asher for l’art conceptuel, une perspective at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France, November 22, 1989–­February 18, 1990, as it appears in Art History 12, no. 3 (1989). Courtesy of The National Society for Education in Art and Design. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Part 5 Writing about Individual Projects

Notes on work for La Jolla Museum of Art, 1969 (ca. 1969)

Editor’s Notes: Asher’s work at the La Jolla Museum of Art in 1969 consisted of a room in which levels of sound and light as well as surface textures were manipulated in a way that heightened the spectator’s attention to the qualities of the material environment. The text transcribed here was originally written in present and future tenses, implying that it was written before and during the work’s realization in 1969. Thus this text also aligns with Asher’s thought process during this early moment in his artistic practice. It is filed in Asher’s archive as a carbon copy of a typed document. Asher filed this document with his notes for the Nova Scotia book project (Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979) rather than in the project files associated with the La Jolla work. He began working on the book in 1973, first with German curator Kasper König and then with German art historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. This book includes individual entries on each of Asher’s works (up to 1979) that resulted in material presence in an art institution. The text below, however, does not appear in Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979, although handwritten copyedits, added to the typed document, change the future tense into past tense, perhaps with the book project in mind. Copyediting notations in the margins of the original document demarcate paragraphs three, four, and five, which have been changed to the past tense. The emphasis in the last paragraph is present in the original, although it is unclear if it was indicated by Asher or his copyeditor.

I am doing this exhibition for investigatory purposes. It will give me an opportunity to gather information and to cross-­reference past ideas with new ideas. The work is totally executed in the museum, which seems somewhat unique in the context of previous installations. In the past, a work of art was executed in the studio and then brought to and shown in a museum. This is not to be confused with happenings or environments, in which we forget that the objects used were preconceived and most often executed in a studio before shown in an exhibition. My basic idea dealt with three fields of perception: audio, tactile, and visual sensations. As a vehicle for perceptual experience, air was used for tactile, noise was used for audio, and light was used for visual.

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In order to execute a cohesive work using these three fields of perception, sound, light, and air were used as directly as possible, and at the same time, they are equally balanced as a vague idea. This way, no one object of perception overshadows the other. In this context, the word “direct” seems to mean the easiest or the most comfortable way of sensing or experiencing these three fields of perception. For example, [there was] air flowing through windows or portals, light from outside, and noise from the usage of these two elements or maybe even an outside body of water. But these elements only seemed cohesive when certain formal decisions were imposed upon them. Often, this meant arranging or mixing, for example, incandescent light with outside light, fans with a window, or a noise generator with outside noise. [The] given space was another consideration. Just as each sensation cannot be overshadowed by the other, so seems true with [the] given space. Walls, floor, and ceiling should not distract or cause diversions from the perceptual experience. Due to the unassuming nature of the finished work, it seems the viewer must happen upon it in complete innocence and without preconceived ideas. The demand on the viewer for this innocence and an unrestricted amount of time to perceive seems to be a modest request, but is important for all works of art. Upon experiencing installations such as this one and others similar to it, I have found that they go beyond familiar aesthetic guidelines. Formal decisions are made outside of the familiar boundaries of aesthetics. The experiencer cannot depend upon preconceived or past ideas of aesthetics because they are not in the context of the work. Neither can he depend upon a new and well-­defined meaning to the work. The important thing is to experience what is taking place. Experience will very naturally explain the piece to one. There seems to be no need to impose structural guidelines upon the piece in order to understand it. Simply experience.

La Jolla Museum of Art, La Jolla, California, USA, November 7–­­December 31, 1969. Photographer unknown. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Notes on work for Spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970 (ca. 1969)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these project notes as he was preparing a work for the exhibition Spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1969–­1970). In this exhibition, Asher’s work consisted of a room in which specially installed acoustical insulation modified levels of sound and light to reflect the visitor’s position in the room in relation to the open doorways. Closer proximity to the doorways resulted in greater exposure to light and sound from outside of Asher’s space. The facsimile reproduced here represents a page from one of Asher’s notebooks in which he recorded ideas, took practical notes about the various components of a work (for example, on materials and fabricators, or curators’ telephone numbers), and mapped out preliminary ideas about the installation of material elements. Asher later tore some pages, including this one, from those notebooks and filed them in his project files along with brochures, correspondence, and other more formal elements. This page demonstrates how different types of information and strategies involved in Asher’s practice coexisted in his thought process: from the conceptualization of an idea to its material, tangible parameters, and extending to a speculative framing of the experiential conditions of the realized work.

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Notes on work for the gallery of Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, 1975 (1974, 1976)

Editor’s Notes: In these five texts, Asher reflects on the work he had completed at the gallery of Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County in 1975. Asher’s exhibition at Otis was connected to a short-­term teaching engagement at this art school. In his work for the gallery, Asher had closed the gallery space and used the black felt directory board in the lobby instead. The text, in molded plastic letters on the board read: “IN THE PRESENT EXHIBITION I AM THE ART.” It was placed below an announcement card for Asher’s exhibition. In the text “Otis (Intention),” Asher refers to two projects completed in 1974. His work for the Claire S. Copley Gallery involved removing the wall between the gallery’s exhibition and office spaces, opening up the social operations of the gallery to the visitor. “NSCAD work” is a reference to Asher’s exhibition at the Anna Leonowens Gallery at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, in which Asher modified the lighting of the gallery (by removing sunscreens from the upper parts of glass walls and turning off the gallery lights) and asked that the gallery attendant/school secretary not be present in the gallery space (which also functioned as the building’s lobby). Most of the project notes included here were written almost a year after the work at Otis had taken place. Asher had them typed and placed them in his files for the book project Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979, reflecting his continued engagement with the work and its critical implications. In these notes, Asher describes how the work had been received and connects that reception to the work’s thematic scope as an inquiry into what art ultimately is, and how the role of the artist inflects notions of artistic practice. The cluster from which these texts come from also included others that closely relate to the information that was ultimately included in the book Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979. If more than one version of a given text was found in Asher’s archive, the most final and complete document has been included.

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Otis (Physical description of gallery, excerpts from notations in late 1974) M. Asher 1974 Upon considering the Otis Art Institute Gallery on Wilshire Boulevard, it seems conclusive that it would be impossible to do an artwork there. The walls consist of evenly spaced grooves running vertically. This means that either the curators had an exhibition and forgot to take it down, or this was some romantic idea of objecthood, by the county, permanently installed. This permanent installation makes any other object overwhelmed. Does [Robert] Motherwell accept vertical grooves through his paintings or is he just hard put for an exhibition? The ceiling is hard to use in that the fluorescents light the room not unlike a floor-­standing lamp. The light bulbs are few and far between and their wires are exposed. This provides only a little more light than seventeenth-­century castle candles. The large wood desk in the first room is totally unnecessary, as well as the chairs. Possibly the quality of exhibitions has something to do with the gallery, but beyond this I would not suggest to anyone to do an installation there.

Otis (Intention) M. Asher 2/9/76 This statement has to do with the notion of separation between the artist and the art. It’s saying that there is no separation. The phrasing is very simple and clear to me. I tried to stay away from didacticism and the life/art issue. By saying that I am both the art and the artist of the art, with no separation, what I think I’m saying is that the creation is in the artist’s thoughts, his and no other’s thoughts. Another concern was that some people didn’t understand the statement, although some did. Some people who said they understood the work would discuss it in their own personal terms. They’d question me from their experience, not about me. People wanted to use the “I” in the statement in relation to themselves. Everybody ended up talking to me about themselves as the work. I’ve read material which perhaps peripherally tries to address this issue without stating it. You can take the issue for what it is, but in the Otis work, I’m stating it as a work of art. When I did this, I was aware of its aspects of performance and participation. The Claire Copley work directs perception to the gallery and the person operating the gallery. The NSCAD work directs the visitor’s perception to himself. This work directs perception to the artist; it completes the circle. This thought sequence was very methodical. Time was important in the Otis work only because the exhibition was held in conjunction with teaching. I liked this because the work suggests the necessity for maximum accessibility to the artist, and this was possible because of the community accessibility through the park and the student accessibility through

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the classroom. In general, I like students to have access to my new work. That way you’re not a mystery.

[Note: Drawn in the margin to the left of the paragraph below, there is a question mark.]

If there’s little or no separation between the work and the artist, does this establish equality between the artist as a human being, with subjective thoughts and feelings, and the actual work? I think the problem goes back to how an artist feels about his work and how he feels about himself, and he generally feels differently about these things. Why do I like examining this idea? I don’t really know. It could well be that the proposition—­the lack of separation—­is very true, that the distinction between what the artist thinks of his work and of himself causes the separation.

[Note: In the heading below, the parenthetical description “Reflection” comes from another version of this same text found in the same folder.]

Otis [Reflection] M. Asher 2/9/76 It has been almost a year since I presented the work at Otis Art Institute, and I need more time to understand its meanings, which were, fortunately, different to most people I spoke with about it. People still question me about the presentation. I feel that in any contribution, in or outside a predictable institution, known or not known for containing art, the artist accepts his work as art and leaves the viewer to his own personal choice. But for me, this has always been thought of as a shared experience. I do not have an ultimate notion of what art is; therefore, if I use the written word or something of that sort, it has a particular interest for me. And if the result is a presentation (if for nobody but me) but can be shared and has the potential, I am willing to attach the word “art” to it. To me, these words at Otis seemed clear; but to many people they seemed vague and ambiguous, for they quite often mentioned that the placement in the gallery foyer confused the issues. Perhaps so. Others who knew a large portion of my work felt that in every other work, the understanding was quite clear, but became ambiguous in this work. (Since I have no background in philosophy, psychology, or sociology, I have no immediate reference, but I don’t claim this naïveté to be the issue.) Therefore, I maintain this personal lack of understanding to the way the work was received and will keep addressing myself to the issues brought up. Perhaps the ambiguity arises out of a personally directed statement, which is not in its physical context/placement, but in the fact that it alludes to being subjectively addressed by each viewer, thereby suggesting that the possibility of a subject-­object relationship might actually be subject-­subject for its audience (and the personalized response);

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the expectation of the subject-­object relationship is much clearer than that of subject-­subject. Perhaps the “I” in the text made a transition for the viewer to say “I” from his own experience. I notice today that this work is still difficult to take for those people who have been following my work closely, and I still dialogue with them. But further, this is perhaps because of a closer contact with these individuals. In this dialogue, I feel the presentation was a shared work and in the future more information will come from it. [Note: In the margins of the above text, Asher wrote the following note in pencil: “Doing art for personal interest and the love and desire for doing it.”]

Otis (Insert) M. Asher 2/14/76 Although I have no ultimate notion of what art should be or not be, I still have or maintain subjective thoughts, baggage, in order to do a work, or as an audience for other artists’ work. At Otis, the question of vaguery by the audience may also well have come up, for perhaps a product must come between the artist and viewer, which is a point of perception for the viewer and represents the artist. This point of perception is a device that the artist may come through in order to share his (thoughts). If that particular point of perception is missing between the audience and the artist, leaving the audience to deal directly with what is cooking with the artist, then all that is left is the artist’s desire to share in a very direct way without any intermediary devices. Since the point of perception has actually shifted from the audience to the artist, it perhaps becomes totally subjective for a reciprocal relationship, whether there is dialogue or not, or whether the artist sees the audience or the audience sees the artist. Another thing, which I care to write about briefly, is the notion of personal reward by having finished a work. The reward is more in the sense of getting things together for myself. Not to mention this aspect of exhibitions would be fairly presumptuous. The finished work is a place where I can assess certain feelings and thoughts where otherwise I possibly would not have the opportunity, therefore being similar to the perpetual motion machine. But on the other hand, I don’t know if I can get my art together without first getting my head together. Although at the time this seems like a fairly subjective activity, that perhaps is all that it can be. I can go around about this issue, but perhaps time lends different dimensions to the original subjectivity. At times when most objective thoughts arise about my work, they are connected with those elements on the surface of the finished work. [Note: In the margins of the above text, Asher wrote the following notes in pencil: “not a therapeutic device” and “develop objective notions.”]

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Otis (Insert) MA 3/4/76 I can now fully appreciate how difficult this was to say, and even more, leave it as an inquiry where only I would be fully vulnerable or unguarded. And it was this opening which I could run no further from if it were to represent my work and me.

The gallery of Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California, USA, February 24–­­March 9, 1975, the announcement board in the lobby. Courtesy of the Frank J. Thomas Archives. Photograph by Frank J. Thomas. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Notes on work for Ambiente/Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, 1976: “Outline of Thoughts as They Pertain to Venice” (1976)

Editor’s Notes: When Asher wrote these project notes, he was preparing a work for Ambiente/Arte, one of the exhibitions of the Venice Biennale in 1976. The exhibition was curated by Germano Celant. In the finished work, Asher placed a number of stools, designed by Jørgen Gammelgaard and produced in Italy, in the room allocated to him in the Italian Pavilion at the Giardini, thus creating a flexible environment for social interaction. These notes are written in a spiral-­bound notebook that contains ideas and information about multiple projects Asher was working on in 1976. Asher frequently used a list format to consider ideas for projects. In this case, the list of thoughts brings together social practices, ideological implications, and material conditions.

6/20/76 Outline of Thoughts as They Pertain to Venice 1)  To establish an area where people can meet under what can be considered usual conditions, and an area particularly set aside for meeting within a pavilion which has addressed itself for the presentation of installations for that set [time]. 2)  This intentionally is to use and misuse meeting areas for discussion and relaxation. 3)  My interest is in the context. I consider this a work not having to be viewed or stood in and not having to be overtly experienced.

4)  What constitutes a meeting area?



5)  Do different meeting areas incur (in general) different social interaction?



6)  How can traffic become a part of these areas?

7)  Can a tool, such as a purchase of a coffee, lend itself to some social interaction? Further, how can this transaction be a part of the work? 8)  How can park benches assembled or used for my particular interest relate to those which may already exist for other reasons?

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La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy, Ambiente/Arte, July 18–­­October 16, 1976, view of installation with entry/exit toward patio. Photographer unknown. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Notes on work for Claire S. Copley Gallery, Los Angeles, and Morgan Thomas Gallery, Santa Monica, 1977: “Two Galleries” (1976)

Editor’s Notes: In these notes, Asher discusses his upcoming work for the Claire S. Copley and Morgan Thomas galleries. Both of these women ran their own exhibition spaces in Southern California (one in Los Angeles and the other in Santa Monica), and both had invited Asher to exhibit in their galleries. Instead of making separate works for each, Asher proposed a work that engaged both gallerists in a participatory role. He asked Copley and Thomas to switch their locations and conduct their operations from the other gallerist’s base for a period of three weeks, or the duration of Asher’s exhibition. These notes were written in the process of making the work, several months before the exhibition took place. Asher placed them in his files for the book project Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979, reflecting his continued engagement with the work and its critical implications. He had these notes typed and filed three copies of them. Typically, Asher would continue editing such typed transcripts further by hand. This text contains information about Asher’s thinking and working process: the kinds of questions and scenarios he took into consideration while conceptualizing the work and communicating with the participating gallerists.

11/29/76 Two Galleries This is a work that at this point is very difficult to write about. I don’t understand why I want to do what I want to do. Saturday the 20th of November, 1976, I asked Claire Copley, Los Angeles, if she would consider putting herself and an artist’s work of hers for one month in Morgan Thomas’s gallery in Santa Monica. She asked me numerous questions around the area of what I had in mind, which I will explain after this. She called me back on Wednesday the 24th, explaining to me she would do it, but for her own personal integrity as a dealer could not put an artist in Morgan’s space when they expected to be in hers. She suggested an alternative, which was to put some separate exhibit together. Saturday the 27th, I asked Morgan Thomas if she would consider using Claire’s gallery on La Cienega for one month and do an exhibition there. Once again, a long talk followed with some very fine questions. That very day, she agreed to it contingent on her February schedule, which is now full and would have to be changed around to coincide with Claire’s. Claire told me on Sunday evening that they both had dinner together, discussed the scheduling

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and see it as a problem on Morgan’s part again, but are totally committed to the idea and they seem to be quite excited. What interests me are numerous issues, such as those surrounding [the] artists having [exhibitions] which coincide with [my project]. Do they use them fully, considering the two galleries and the social, political, economic make of these galleries? Or do they do it to show two relationships in their work which could only exist this way? Or do they do it on the basis of getting out as much work as possible for any given time period? What type of perhaps professional jealousies are there surrounding an artist who is sought after by two or more galleries at once? If they exist, can the galleries and artists find a way (if necessary) of dissolving them? What or how does the public give gallery dealers separate identities, which are applicable to exhibition activities? I am interested in having the gallery dealers participate in my work while following what they consider to be their business. Is it possible for me (as an artist) to manipulate two gallery dealers for all three of our interests? I am interested in that the gallery dealers are actively helping me do a part of my work. Without them it would obviously be impossible. How do two gallery dealers handle all the physical logistics of taking over the other’s gallery for a month, including: rent, phone, assistance, moving, living, having perhaps a different clientele, phone exchange, transportation, the expectancy of an individual not seeing the proper dealer at her gallery, light bill, desks, files, changes to suit physical needs for a month, phone calls for other dealer, keys, me, less foot traffic and more privacy in Santa Monica, as opposed to the art street La Cienega and being visible? How do the dealers adapt to their locale and to their colleagues’ place of business? There are so many unknowns. To what extent is the art changed simply by changing galleries? My most fundamental intent was to see if the two participating galleries could change shell or the structure they are now known for, then move back. How will the move back be carried out? And will an inquiry from the public pursue the dealers questioning perhaps why they moved back, and will they stay this time? How will people question my participation in this? Is the notion alone (the move) enough for the work?

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My interest is also in time and perhaps that two women are doing it rather than two men. Would two men work as well? Would a man and a woman work as well? Will this have an impact upon people, hence an effect? Is it not subtle enough to have an effect? How can it come through that neither the art of any one participant is more important than the next, but it is the sum of these which makes the work? What are the implications as far as galleries setting up at different places whenever necessary and perhaps dropping older locations? How can the dealer deal the work when he is a part of it? Can each part of this work not impose itself on the other, but be a part in context with it? The situation is designed so that each part takes care of itself and will accommodate the other part; such as the situation of gallery exchange will accommodate any kind of exhibition and hopefully any type of response. Therefore, the decisions made by the two people cooperating to manifest this idea in theory cannot do an exhibition which would be incongruent with the idea; they can only do exhibitions which they are not pleased with, but even then they will complete my part of the notion.

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Notes on work for Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1977 (1976–­1977)

Editor’s Notes: These notes are associated with Asher’s exhibition at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA), a temporary exhibition space for contemporary art. In addition to Asher, LAICA showed works by artists David Askevold and Richard Long during this time period. Asher’s work consisted of assembling a group of participants in the exhibition space, with no script and minimally defined instructions for their activity or behavior. Asher paid the participants from his portion of the grant that LAICA had received from the National Endowment for the Arts for the exhibition. Asher wrote these rough notes by hand before and during his exhibition at LAICA. Their level of polish reflects their purpose, which was primarily to record the artist’s thoughts about the work. These notes were subsequently transcribed by a typist and filed in one group in the project files for the LAICA work in Asher’s archive. The typed sequence selected here includes dates that situate the individual segments of writing in relation to the artist’s process. The first note in the sequence, dated September 27, 1976, was written during the work’s conceptualization. (The exhibition opened on January 15, 1977 and closed on February 10, 1977.) Another document, dated October 1, 1976, contains two typed pages of early, unrealized ideas for the work. That note has been omitted from this sequence. The rest of the entries describe and discuss the work as it was taking place. In the typed document in Asher’s archive, two sets of notes are dated to late February (2/25/77 and 2/28/77). Those dates are most likely typist’s errors of reading Asher’s “1” ( January) as “2” (February) and have been changed in the transcript below to reflect the sequence and content of the notes. A typed marginal note at the top of the first document reads: “Have the wall[s] lean at just enough angle so they can’t fall during an earthquake tremor.” In the notes dated “1/31/77,” Asher mentions two earlier projects at Otis and Nova Scotia. In his exhibition at the gallery of Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County (1975), Asher had closed off access to the gallery space and inserted a text “IN THE PRESENT EXHIBITION I AM THE ART” in the black felt directory board in the lobby. It was placed below an announcement card for Asher’s exhibition. In his work at the Anna Leonowens Gallery at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1974), Asher had kept the space open to visitors but removed some of its familiar social and material components: he took out the tinted sunscreens from the upper parts of the gallery’s glass walls, turned off the gallery lights, and asked that the gallery attendant/school secretary not be present in the gallery space (which also functioned as the building’s lobby).

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The entry dated “2/1/77” includes a reference to Asher’s work at the Clocktower Gallery, the alternative space operated by the Institute for Art and Urban Resources. In that 1976 work, Asher had removed the doors and windows from all three floors (thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth) of the building that were used as exhibition space. This alteration of the exhibition space allowed for exterior atmospheric conditions, such as street noise, temperature, and other elements of springtime outdoor weather, to enter the interior gallery space. Asher’s work at LAICA was an opportunity to work on ideas about agency, normativity, and the role that institutional and social codes of conduct play in establishing parameters for social situations. These are also themes discussed by the artist in the notes below. Asher’s LAICA work is now easily perceived as a forerunner to the type of art that became known as relational aesthetics in the 1990s, twenty years after this exhibition.

9/27/76 LAICA I have just visited LAICA to get an indication of the interior and exterior area as it exists today. Although [living] in the community, I have not really visited [the space] until this exhibition came to a point of beginning to make final decisions about what to do in a group exhibition with Richard Long and David Askevold. The one thing that is apparent with the interior structure is the half-­finished to more or less finished exhibition areas. None of these [areas] look like an integral portion of the space. The area tentatively assigned to me has open vertical beams, open steel-­ beam ceiling, and concrete floor. The vertical beams have a complete wall, almost the length of LAICA. This leaves three sides [of the wall] exposed [between the vertical beams] in my area and finished on the other sides [in the exhibition areas for David Askevold and Richard Long]. The opposing side of this barrier are wall sections covering windows and their encasement. This area has a storage or construction feeling now, at this point. But the vertical steel beams seem to be the key to how to develop the work. Today my interest is to take the walls stored against the windows and lean them against the beams. They will come straight across. Other Proposals: 1) Library

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2) Chairs and tables with coffee in back and library



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12/30/76 The LAICA work does not have the budget to pay people, the people I want to work with me (an old trap). I expect [that] to pay people for my installation will not be feasible, if it is done by a group of idealists trying to deal with realistic concerns.

1/25/77 Why do participants stop talking about the implications of the exhibit when I arrive for a visit?

1/28/77 Responsibility yields freedom, as such, asking people to participate, and for a given time, is perhaps too open for the participants to feel free. A collective self-­consciousness has to be overcome before people feel comfortable with the work. The money is a loaded issue in many ways. It seems to take the freedom away from participants, particularly artists. Although many other disciplines are paid to collectively participate, art is more difficult due to the individual spirit of art. This is something that can’t be compensated for in any way.

1/29/77 [The] LAICA work is having some of the classical symptoms of the participants’ needs to break existing structure, yet wanting more definition.

1/29/77 If it is aggressive, it is similar to performance and [it is] overt, which is not a familiar element of my work. This is not to scare or impose upon people or break a tradition. That is why, although it may be perceived that the participant/audience can share in the work more than a painting, it is doubtful that they share as much interest in the work or receive as much satisfaction as the artist. Although not looking at it quantitatively, it is for sure that they might individually receive and share in the work in a much different manner. If my art was traditionally using space and addressing it, how did I account for the people moving through it? If my work now addresses people in the space, how do I account for the walls?

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1/31/77 LAICA. It seems that this work, as [with the] Otis and Nova Scotia [works], has dealt with switching the subject/object relationship in an active way, perhaps losing (making a barrier) the proportionate audience, which I would have lost if I had done something that could not be fixed or set. I say active switching because it [the work] is not through.

1/31/77 LAICA. Means of subtle implication such as other works. I feel the work functions in a many-­layered way, as other works [do], once the artist/audience/participants get beyond the initial physical structure.

[Note: In the paragraph below, the typist transcribing the document from Asher’s handwritten notes used a line to indicate an indecipherable word.]

2/1/77 LAICA. The theory of borders and definitions. In putting the object/subject relationship into flux, it addresses the question of a lack of definition between audience and participant. This comes about by challenging this relationship in its definition and allows for a subject/subject relationship at the point where the audience perceives the activity of participant. The analogy of using borders might be seen from a static installation such as the Clocktower [work], where the outside of the work served as much of a _______ as the inside. (Both were as important.) But as human relationships can fluctuate at the point of uncertainty, whereas walls are static. So trying to address the human tension as a personal territory between two entities (participant, audience) is much like addressing the wall as delineating physical territories. The flux, as seen by the participant at LAICA, occurs somewhere at a point in time where he [or she] can most likely identify the audience.

2/7/77 LAICA. The exhibition at LAICA denies a logical definition to which I can apply. It is a host of contradictions. Perhaps these contradictions make the work function. It was put together with a good degree of impulse and at the last moment. The physical structure doesn’t exist until the participants appear for the day (as the other works maintain their physical existence and boundaries when LAICA closes).

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There is a tension, perhaps one of self-­consciousness, for me as the artist and for some participants, as we represent ourselves to the audience. This tension is not usually noticeable as the participants settle and organize their day amongst themselves. I have noticed with two participants, on the same day, wanting to leave or leaving due to a member of the audience and one participant. Neither participant knew they wanted to leave for similar reasons. Perhaps coincidence. Participants cannot explain, either, the reason for enjoying a day with fellow participants and some audience [members]. The audience [members] that participate seem to experience the work as the paid participants [do]. I feel the activity of the participants to be complex, but as I mention, chairs, tables, and couch are quite accessible to the audience upon entry, yet they are functional and seem to deny the work’s existence, therefore are quite simple and need not be used if the paid participant has other notions of how he [or she] is to spend his [or her] time. The audience seems different. Some settle in for several hours, while others walk up to request what is going on, while others work [their way] towards the participants, then shy away or walk past the area as rapidly as possible, only to escape back into whatever they wanted LAICA to provide [for] them. A loaded area seems to be that the audience doesn’t know what the paid participants are perceiving, and the paid participants don’t know what the audience is thinking, except for that part of the audience who joins the participants. The point of cognition by the audience is generally indiscernible, therefore the paid participants retreat into talking amongst themselves or reading or anything else which seems to take their mind off the audience. A couple of paid participants have found it necessary to stop every audience [member] to make them conscious that he or she is a participant and actively point out or draw them near to the area of other participants. But the tension seems to exist as long as the audience does not recognize the participants or vice versa. The violations of each other’s personal space remains a violation until each other’s personal space can be defined, and this usually means a verbal exchange, which always seems to imply that perhaps there exists a significant division or boundary or territory to which the context of art must somehow address itself, and if found not addressing this territory/division/boundary, it becomes a sort of taboo. So, intellectually the work is accepted as such, but perhaps emotionally it conflicts with the intellectual notion. My general impression, once again, is that if people get beyond the taboo, they experience a certain degree of satisfaction without ever having to actually analyze the work. This is where the work functions perhaps in complex ways. But once past the taboo, the work is no longer loaded with the tension, but becomes multilayered. Perhaps this is the passive role of art? To open up certain nerves, and it actually cannot be active if it is always channeling its effort in opening new territory. ([The] audience rarely makes a prejudgment about the work, but many people let me know they were there.)

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The decision to do this work went through many changes until I settled on a work a couple of days before the opening. Mostly, my decisions were based upon impulse. The LAICA structure is generally democratic in the way exhibitions are picked and curated. This tends to make the whole operation cumbersome because ultimately the responsibility for its activities gets shifted to different bases, and quite often these responsibilities seem ill-­defined. This has to do with leaving the paid participants responsible for their daily activities while at LAICA, yet restrictive in the sense that I haven’t left them orders other than a blind trust that they will not abuse the work. With no orders, it is modeled after LAICA to become restrictive for the paid participants in their decision-­making capabilities. Some are not sure as to how responsible they must be towards the work. This lessens their immediate freedom until they become used to the work.

Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, USA, January 15–­­February 10, 1977, viewing west in installation area, showing Michael Asher and participants. Photograph by Robert Smith. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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The evolution of the work started at the other end, with a goal-­oriented work dealing with professionals and trades in the community who would be willing to participate in advising and putting together recommendations for LAICA’s move from Century City. At the same time, a study could be made of the relocation of LAICA for both building and community. Not having enough funds was the major drawback to this work, so I pursued the possibility of a study of fundraising, which was more specific and LAICA seemed to need. This could be implemented by a group studying it at University of California, Los Angeles, business school or a professional fundraiser. But I had to draw a line because, in essence, this was up to LAICA to do, as perhaps the first notion was also. The notion that I used [for the realized work] originally applied to an interest in a rallying point in Los Angeles during the day and the possibility of me putting together my own. I had approximately three openings per day for paid participants. I attempted to use as many men as women during the length of the week. This was OK for the first three weeks, but the last three days I had only two men as opposed to seven women throughout this time. Other than trying to keep it half and half, I had to accept people’s scheduling conflicts around which I based my daily schedule of paid participants. The notion of accepting also lent a lot to the work, as far as uncertainty goes between the audience and paid participant. I can further express this relationship in subject/object that at the point of recognition turns subject/subject. The audience recognizes the paid participant as subject at the point of cognition or perhaps at some further point. The participant seems to experience his [or her] change from object to subject on some mutual or reciprocal grounds. Role relationships seemed also interesting—­such as curator/participant, secretary/participant, artist/participant. I had one of LAICA’s secretaries, Nancy Schulman, work as a participant, myself as a participant, and Tom Jimmerson [exhibition curator] as a participant. The area best suited for the participants seemed to be close to, yet off to the side of, the existing desks for secretary and director of LAICA. Two of the participants spliced and edited a film one day. The work seems to confront both people with one another, or has the open potential to [do so], as well as to confront notions about art—­such as where to draw a line in order to keep it within an art context without falling apart.

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Notes on work for Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1977: “Artist/Participant/Audience” (1977)

Editor’s Notes: Asher filed this page with a diagram and an accompanying note with the project files for his work at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA). In his work for LAICA, Asher arranged for participants (whom he compensated monetarily) to be present in the exhibition space but left it to the participants themselves to define the activity they would engage in. This notebook page is reproduced as a facsimile. The text below the diagram reads, “The work is closing these gaps but not to the point that they no longer can be defined. If they cannot be defined perhaps the art context and, as such, the work is lost.” In this diagram and note, Asher maps out relations between the different subject positions in this work, assigning critical importance to the structural arrangement that the artist’s contribution represented by calling attention to—­but not erasing—­the meaning produced by the categories that are involved, and are evoked by the artist, in the situation.

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Notes on work for 73rd American Exhibition at Art Institute of Chicago, 1979: “Washington” (ca. 1979)

Editor’s Notes: Asher’s project for the 73rd American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979 is one of his most widely known projects. In this work, he arranged for the moving of a statue of George Washington (a bronze, twentieth-­ century American cast of an eighteenth-­century French marble original statue by neoclassical sculptor Jean-­Antoine Houdon) from the museum’s façade to a period room displaying European fine and decorative art. The typed text included here was placed by Asher in his files for the Writings 1973–­1983 on Works 1969–­1979 book project. It provides a concise mapping of the meanings that Asher associated with the statue of George Washington in the context of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the last paragraph of the text, Asher makes reference to some of the works of art in the Art Institute’s collection, specifically naming Georges Seurat’s postimpressionist painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—­1884 (1884/86).

Washington Whether inside or outside, it is a grammatical structure, iconographic, metaphoric, an attribute of architecture. Outside, it identifies certain social ideals which are American, such as pride, innovation, self-­made, progress. Inside, while it lines up with Adams (the street), it refers to its own genre of art making, a time when bronze was cast. Inside and outside, it can be viewed as a sculpture. Outside, it can be viewed as ornament, architectural detailing, façade, addition, etc. Inside, it is a creation of the artist, and is scrutinized for its formal meaning within the context of other artworks. Outside, it might have been thought of as crafted; inside, sculpted. Both inside and outside, it must question the person that placed it, artist or curator. Outside, it is functional, as perhaps a billboard would be functional. Inside, it is functional, perhaps as Grande Jatte, or an oriental bowl (a work of art).

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Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 73rd American Exhibition, June 9–­­August 5, 1979, frontal view of Michigan Avenue main entrance with statue of George Washington by Jean-­Antoine Houdon in original location. Photograph by Michael Asher. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 73rd American Exhibition, June 9–­­August 5, 1979, installation view of Gallery 219 with statue of George Washington by Jean-­Antoine Houdon after removal from Michigan Avenue. Photograph by Rusty Culp, FAAR. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Letter to A. James Speyer, curator of Twentieth-­Century Painting and Sculpture at Art Institute of Chicago (December 12, 1980)

Editor’s Notes: In this letter to A. James Speyer, Asher outlines two proposals for a work for the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection. Speyer was the curator of the Department of Twentieth-­Century Painting and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. This letter was written one year after Asher’s participation in the 73rd American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979. Asher had first mentioned a proposal for the permanent collection of the Art Institute in a letter to Speyer in 1979. The second proposal that he outlines in this letter was ultimately realized for the 74th American Exhibition at the Art Institute in 1982. Asher’s statement for the exhibition handout that was displayed in the Art Institute as part of the finished work in the 74th American Exhibition is included in part 2 in this book. That work was not, however, acquired by the museum for its permanent collection. Although Asher brought up the idea again in letters to Speyer in 1982 and 1985, no work for the permanent collection was produced or purchased. Asher’s engagement with Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” which he discusses in this letter as part of his second proposal, was also evident in a work in his exhibition for the Vocation/Vacation exhibition series at the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre School of Fine Arts in 1981. Asher filed a copy of this typed letter in the correspondence section of his project files for the 74th American Exhibition. An addendum to this letter, written nine months later, is placed immediately after this document.

December 12, 1980 Dear Jim, I hope my response to your letter requesting a work designed for the permanent collection is not too late and, therefore, I hope it is still appropriate to submit a proposal (in this case two). I would like to footnote my proposals by simply mentioning (as perhaps an excuse for the protracted time) that every time I began to work on an idea, it led me to thoughts I had not, remotely, considered, and ultimately I would find myself outlining many new works, which are very, very exciting.

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The first proposal I wish to present deals with another aspect of an object which might be mutated into a monument. My idea was to trade or exchange two homes from across town. Each home would be of equivalent value and would be placed in each other’s community, which would most likely have some similar characteristics as their original communities. Once placed on a new foundation, it hopefully would give the community a different historical perspective and, perhaps, a slightly different feeling regardless of its inherent similarity to its predecessor. The houses in each case hopefully become monuments to the historical events of an exchange which they would be representing. The insertion of the museum, a public institution, into the displacement of private domains hopefully reinforces the event of the exchange of homes and helps authenticate this by foregrounding the home as something special, which would be viewed as a monument. Once the homes are placed on their new foundation and fixed to their original constructed condition, I would want the houses to be sold so [that] there remains public knowledge of the transition, but the homes operate also with their original function in mind. The structure of this work comes from my viewing of homes being trucked through Los Angeles, therefore, it may be purely a Los Angeles phenomenon. For myself, the promise of this work is to try to redefine the first work I ever proposed to the Art Institute. This is a rough draft of the first proposal and hopefully there is enough information to start with. The next proposal I wish to mention, as a possibility, is a response to the article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin. He believes that even a painting by Rembrandt could lose its “aura” (authenticity) due to mechanical reproduction. Perhaps this is possible, but I also feel that the original experience of a painting or sculpture is mediated by the context the receiver finds himself in while intimately viewing the work with other people. In this way, it is the subjects around a work of art which might inadvertently empty the work of its authenticity. My proposal is to choose works of art in a room, one which has been mechanically reproduced the most and one which has been mechanically reproduced the very least. Three-­people groups would stand and view each simultaneously in the room during two half-­hour periods in the day. Perhaps this could happen on a day when there is expected to be a good attendance, such as every Sunday for a year or sequential time periods as specified with the curators. Each year, the work could be set up in a new room. Perhaps the viewers could be either city employees or students. I would like to even out the ratio of men to women, so one group would have two men and one woman while the other would have two women and one man.

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Once again, this is a brief sketch of an idea which can hopefully be understood. Please contact me if more information is needed. I hope everything is going well for you, and I look forward to possibly doing one of these works or another proposal some time in the future. Warmest regards, Michael Asher New phone # (213) 823 6824 Address: 826 ½ Crestmoore Pl Venice, CA 90291

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Addendum to proposal for work for Art Institute of Chicago (1981)

Editor’s Notes: This text further elaborates the proposal that Asher had outlined in his December 12, 1980, letter to A. James Speyer (included before this text), curator of the Department of Twentieth-­Century Painting and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. There are several handwritten and heavily edited drafts of this document in Asher’s archive. The version chosen here is typed and doesn’t contain any handwritten edits, and likely is the latest version present in the archive. In the original heading of this text, Asher wrote the plural “addenda,” which has been changed here to the singular “addendum.” Asher subsequently developed the proposal outlined in this document into his contribution to the 74th American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982, and used parts of this letter in his statement published in the catalog of the 74th American Exhibition. Asher’s statement for the exhibition handout that was displayed in the Art Institute as part of the finished work in the 74th American Exhibition is included in part 4 of this book.

Addendum to Proposal of December 12th, 1980, by Michael Asher to the Art Institute of Chicago (September 1981) Marcel Duchamp articulated the principle that it is the viewer who completes the work of art when he stipulated in a well-­known statement that “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone.” On one level, the participating viewers who are structured into the proposed Art Institute work become concrete models of Duchamp’s observation. With reference to the full cycle of aesthetic production and cultural reception, the participating viewers in the Art Institute work serve to demonstrate the museum visitor’s role at the point of presentation. The participating viewers are paradigmatic of museum visitors, who activate the purpose of the museum’s existence as an institution. The participating viewers do not function independently from the works they are looking at, but are integrally linked with the specified museum objects to which they have been designated. When my work is on view, the museum visitors are thus able to witness the completion of the viewing process, while actively being engaged in this process themselves. The proposed Art Institute work is premised on the modernist dilemma of perceiving original works of art once they have been colored by multiple reproductions

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in the public domain. The most extreme example of this is probably that of the Mona Lisa, with its superimposed external layer of meaning which intervenes between the original painting and the viewer’s first-­hand experience of it—­an unavoidable factor in the process of perceiving works which have been extensively reproduced. Reproduction tends to legitimize a work of art while obscuring pure critical analysis since it has the capacity to create a false understanding of a work or the illusion of knowledge. It thereby produces an invisible barrier between viewers and their direct reading of the work’s actual meaning. Familiarity with a work through the secondhand mediation of reproduction paradoxically serves to distance the museum visitor from the experience of an original work of art. With regard to works in the museum’s collection, this occurs to varying degrees or not at all. The work proposed to the Art Institute deals with the dismantling of these invisible walls of viewing in order to reinvest the object on view with its original meaning. The two groups of participating viewers serve to displace the invisible barrier between the viewer and the work by mirroring the viewing process. Through this displacement, a signification of meaning occurs. The participating viewers not only draw the museum visitors’ attention to two individual works, but also draw their attention to the two separate conditions of viewing art as demonstrated by this proposed work. As the uniqueness of each object in the collection is dependent upon a different arrangement of aesthetic codes, this work purports to confront these codes dialectically as either having been highly reproduced or infrequently reproduced. Thus the work will function differently with each pair of objects viewed. While the work visually draws attention to the making of meaning [and] viewing habits, as well as various aspects of museum methods of presentation, [it] offer[s] other levels of focus for the museum visitor. Traditionally, works of art have been perceived as being separate from the museum visitor, whereas this work specifically deals with that gap between the viewer and the preexisting work. The proposed Art Institute work foregrounds viewing as its content. Reflection on the critical act of viewing underlies its meaning so that the actual viewing of this work becomes its own subject matter. The participating viewers in conjunction with the objects viewed become, as a totality, a unique work of art in and of themselves.

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Writings on work for Vocation/Vacation exhibition series at Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, 1981

Editor’s Notes: These two texts are associated with Asher’s work for his exhibition in the Vocation/Vacation exhibition series at the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre School of Fine Arts in 1981. Asher’s solo exhibition concluded the Vocation/Vacation series, following exhibitions by Garry Kennedy and Hans Haacke. All three artists had been asked by curator Brian L. MacNevin to make work that would reflect on its context at The Banff Centre School of Fine Arts. Rather than a conventional art school, this was a continuing education program for practicing artists situated as part of a popular resort and tourist destination in the Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. For his work, Asher asked six fiber artists in residence to reproduce by hand a segment of the gallery’s industrially made carpet. In the exhibition, the handmade sections were placed on the floor of the gallery, replacing a cut segment of the industrially made carpet that was, in turn, placed on the wall. Matted and framed color photographs of the industrially made and handmade carpet sections flanked the industrially made carpet on the wall. Each color photograph had the name of the carpet square’s maker (the six fiber artists and the industrial carpet manufacturer) in the lower left-­hand corner. Three text panels were displayed on the opposite wall in the gallery, along with audio speakers on the floor. An audio component featured male and female voices reading extracts from rug-­hooking manuals and writings by Walter Benjamin, the German modernist cultural theorist, whose work on mechanical reproduction Asher discussed in several contexts during this time (most prominently, in his proposal for the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1980–­1981 and his work for the 74th American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982).



“Observations” (1981)

Editor’s Notes: Asher placed these handwritten notes about his work for the Vocation/Vacation exhibition series in his project files. They followed a draft for a description of the exhibition in his archive. A version of the description was eventually included in the exhibition’s catalog while the notes transcribed here are previously unpublished. In these notes, Asher discusses some of the thematic concerns associated with the conceptual structure and historical procedures evoked by the work: modernism, fine arts, craft, design, industrial production, and labor.

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Observations One aspect of modernist practice defines a work of fine art as successful when its ability to make meaning is separate yet distinguishable from that of the applied arts. Contemporary applied-­art practice increasingly attempts to define itself with modernist fine-­art practice. In doing so, it mimics formalist fine-­art moves and strategies, such as the necessity of authenticity and origin in a discrete object. Therefore, a striving for uniqueness and invention are common to both discourses in order to imbue the work with the complexities of meaning and presences traditionally found only in high art. This must mean that the complexities of the folk arts or the popular arts have receded or lost their function to some degree in cultural practice, or it means that, in cultural practice, strategies of the applied arts are finding a historical necessity in fine arts. Does this also mean that both discourses are now denying industrial or technical production for the sake of modernist practice, which, in effect, could have only been modernist with the emergence of the industrial revolution? This work at Banff claims also to deny industrial production, if only to foreground its importance through finding its similarity in a fine-­art strategy, which is analogous to a model of the applied arts circumscribed by the conditions of industrial production. As an applied strategy, it hopefully discusses in a small way as to why the folk arts, or even those arts which are from the low art discourse, are not as feasible. [Note: Asher drew lines on either side of this sentence.]

Add: The way in which the symbol and indexical sign are hybridized. [Note: The people listed below are the six fiber artists who produced the handmade carpet tiles for the exhibition.]



1)  Marketta Mäkinen



2)  Barbara Todd



3)  Launa Beuhler



4)  Heather Imrie



5)  François Alacoque



6)  Jane Stafford

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Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada, Vocation/ Vacation, December 3–­­13, 1981. From left to right: framed photograph of the industrial carpet from the floor of the gallery, a section of the same industrial carpet, framed photographs of handmade carpet squares, and, on the floor directly below, the installed handmade carpet squares. Photograph by B. L. MacNevin. © Michael Asher Foundation.

Letter and enclosure to Brian L. MacNevin, curator at Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre: “Preliminary Outline: Conditions of Sale and Reinstallation of Work from Vocation/ Vacation Exhibition in Banff” (June 23, 1982)

Editor’s Notes: This cover letter and proposal by Asher outline the conditions for the possible sale of his work made for an exhibition in the Vocation/Vacation series at the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre School of Fine Arts in 1981. Brian L. MacNevin, the curator of the Walter Phillips Gallery, had contacted Asher by phone about the possible purchase. Asher’s conditions for the purchase were outlined in a proposal sent with a cover letter to MacNevin. The document that Asher filed in his archive is a photocopy of a handwritten text. Asher subsequently received a letter from the Acquisitions Committee of the Walter Phillips Gallery (dated November 15, 1982) that informed Asher of its decision not to purchase the work. The notes transcribed below, while written specifically to address the possible conditions for this work, contain information about the way in which Asher frequently defined the parameters and boundaries between a work of art and its context.

6/23/82 Dear Brian, It was quite a surprise to talk to you the other day. I am glad to hear that things are going fairly well. If the Centre decided to purchase the work, I suggest we make a formal agreement. Enclosed is a set of conditions I find necessary to keep the integrity of the work from [the] Vocation/Vacation exhibition. The price is negotiable, but an index that might help is to know that three years ago I sold an installation for $6,000. I hope that we will be able to get together when you come down this way. Give my best to Nancy. Warmest regards, Michael Asher PS If you have any questions, feel free to call concerning anything on the list.

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Michael Asher Preliminary Outline Conditions of Sale and Reinstallation of Work from Vocation/Vacation Exhibition in Banff 1)  This work was meant to be reinstalled solely in the Walter Phillips Gallery as it existed during the exhibition Vocation/Vacation. No fragment or element may be installed anywhere else, at any time, and the work must comprise all of its original elements when it is reinstalled and on view. 2)  This work cannot be copied or duplicated in any way without the artist’s written authorization. This does not apply to documentation. 3)  If in case the Walter Phillips Gallery is shortened, the work cannot be reinstalled if the length of the gallery becomes shorter than its original width of its December 1981 installation. 4)  If in case a new ceiling is constructed, this should not inhibit and presumably would not inhibit any reinstallation of this work. 5)  If in case the carpet is replaced by another type of flooring, the original carpet must be replaced for each reinstallation.

6)  The work may be installed and dismantled whenever the gallery wishes.

7)  If there are any changes in the elements of the work or the architectural display system that are outside of those which this outline allows for, they must be authorized by the artist before any reinstallation.

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Letter to David Joselit, art historian (June 20, 1988)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote this letter to curator and art historian David Joselit responding to Joselit’s article in Art in America (“Investigating the Ordinary,” Art in America 76, no. 5 [1988]: 148–­155) in which Joselit had compared Asher’s work for the 73rd American Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979 with Jeff Koons’s work installed as part of the Skulptur Projekte in Münster 1987 exhibition, organized by Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte. At the time, Joselit was a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ica), Boston. Asher’s work for the 73rd American Exhibition in 1979 had involved moving a statue of George Washington from the museum’s façade to a period room inside the Art Institute. The statue in question was a twentieth-­century American bronze cast of an eighteenth-­century marble original by French neoclassical sculptor Jean-­ Antoine Houdon. Koons’s work for Skulptur Projekte in 1987 involved removing a locally cherished original bronze statue in Münster and replacing it with a steel cast. Joselit compared the displacements involved in Asher’s and Koons’s works in the context of a broader argument about the critical potential of artistic projects (by Koons, Louise Lawler, Haim Steinbach, and others) that looked at the materials and ideologies associated with the domestic sphere. Asher filed a photocopy of his handwritten letter in his archive. The word “final” at the top of the page indicates that this was the latest version of the document. His mention of “Hoover” is most likely a reference to the vacuum cleaner brand; Koons’s works involving vacuums are among Joselit’s examples in “Investigating the Ordinary.”

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6/20/88 Mr. David Joselit, I am writing in regards to your article “Investigating the Ordinary” in the May 1988 issue of Art in America. I do not understand what your logic turns around when you discuss my artwork at the Art Institute of Chicago in reference to Jeff Koons’s at Münster. From my point of view, these two artworks have a strong similarity in that both were statues, which years after their production were subjected to another aesthetic operation. Beyond this, I see both artworks as operating in areas which are extremely different. Part of my idea was to recontextualize the public monument in order [for it] to be reassessed in a gallery which was historically specific to its production. The statue’s importance from the outside was divested for an entirely different importance inside the museum. Neither importance was ever deflated, nor was that a part of my intent. The setting was anything but semi-­domestic since the George Washington was placed in a museum institution. Jeff Koons’s work is produced specifically for a domestic setting of the affluent or more upscale collectors who wish to flatter themselves for supposedly having an unusual insight and special knowledge of culture. Ultimately, this is condescending to less-­privileged individuals who need the products (and public monument)—­[that] Jeff Koons has enshrined—­as their only sources of a limited liberation. The withdrawing you speak of in your article finds no basis within Jeff Koons’s artwork since he has already produced an object of much greater desire than the original product and [it] operates as an unproblematic substitution. If Jeff Koons produced a critique of the Hoover, it would no longer have a closet status, but his artwork in the middle of the living room is the very object which keeps everything in its place. In this way, all signs and values have been kept the same and even increased as art and home utilities. If these values changed, it would no longer flatter the collector’s consciousness. These two statues’ (one from Münster and the other from the Chicago Art Institute) initial intent for aesthetic production perhaps is best underscored by their current status, and it is here where we see their difference if we have missed it at every other point in their production. The Landesmuseum has purchased the Koons for what is said to be $75,000, and since an edition of three will soon be completed, there is a rumor Caesars Palace is perhaps interested in a purchase. There were no fabrication costs for my work, and I received a $1,500 exhibition fee. The Houdon cast is now in city surplus in Chicago since no one has claimed it as a monument for

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a city building. Once again, its importance as a monument is not deflated since it is up for adaptive reuse, only not through the Sonnabend gallery. It seems from your article that you wish my artwork to operate at the service of legitimizing Jeff Koons’s production, or else strategically framing yourself as author at the hub of numerous types of aesthetic practice to both guide and minimize the terrain in which each artwork operates. Similarities become the order of the day, no matter how far you have to go in distorting the material practice and the conditions which are specific to each artwork. I believe that you, Jeff Koons, and I are not naïve of advertising, so in the future I urge you to reflect in your text as to how you are using and why you are using my name and my practice. Finally, I do not understand why you were soliciting me to do an exhibition at the Boston ICA in your last trip to Los Angeles, but you must have obviously felt this article and the context of my practice not important to discuss. Before we negotiate any further for an exhibition at the Boston ICA, I suggest we discuss these matters, and attempt to clarify some issues around my artwork. Sincerely, Michael Asher

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Proposal for work for Stuart Collection at University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, 1991: “Project Proposal for Stuart Collection” (ca. 1989)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote this proposal for a permanent outdoor sculpture for the Stuart Collection, to be located on the campus of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). It was attached as “Exhibit ‘A’” to his contract with the Stuart Foundation. The sculpture, one of few permanent works by Asher, was completed in 1991. This text has previously been published in Landmarks: Sculpture Commissions for the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego (New York: Rizzoli, 2001).

Project Proposal for Stuart Collection By Michael Asher The outdoor sculpture I propose for the Stuart Collection at the University of California at San Diego, consists of a granite drinking fountain in the form of a commercial indoor water cooler, and similar to those found on numerous school campuses, city buildings, and businesses. It is approximately 44 inches tall, 15 inches wide, 15 inches deep, and constructed of a light-­and dark-­colored granite. The base of the sculpture will contain a refrigeration unit for the water. This project is to be situated on the island which forms a parkway in the center of Myers Drive. This median strip is located between the Political Science Building #412 and Academic Affairs Building #105 within the Matthews Complex. The sculpture will be placed on the path through the parkway at a point equidistant north of the central flagpole, as the Camp Calvin B. Matthews landmark is placed south of the flagpole. A circular pad of cement will be poured for the sculpture which is the same size diameter as that of the landmark’s foundation. The size of the sculpture makes it a similar scale as the Camp Matthews landmark. Its position on the parkway will visually balance the arrangement of all the elements placed there and inherently give the site a certain visual continuity. Yet, the introduction of the sculpture is meant to reveal some clues produced by the landmark which might otherwise be read as representing a closed chapter in UCSD history. In this juxtaposition, the sculpture functions as a model containing numerous cultural references.

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For example, the artwork I propose can be read as a fountain, if only due to its object status outdoors, yet it distributes water rather than circulating it, plus its appearance refers to the industrial designs of objects for institutional use. On another level, it carries the baggage which allows it to be an artwork on modernist terms with its aesthetic dimension having the characteristics of sculptural representation and its integration of appropriation within its production as a formal strategy. But the reference to the modernist paradigm begins to disintegrate as soon as the operation of the sculpture has been realized as having the potential to bring together the viewing subject and the object for something other than transcendent renewal. The sculpture also bears a relationship to a monument in its similarities of material construction and its iconic status, but as a monument, the sculpture lacks the same reference to a specific event. Further, operating as a model to open up this important landmark to a contemporary reading, this project subtly disturbs the relationships that exist between requirements of natural resources and requirements of state policy. Within the terrain of use value, the sculpture represents a distribution point for one of the most essential material requirements (water) for our body without which we could not live. The water cooler describes an area where we can take a break in our daily routine for refreshment and regeneration, as well as social discourse. On the other hand, the landmark chronicles a short history regarding the use and transfer of government land from the military to education in order to meet future requirements in the construction and maintenance of state policy. In communicating this message, we are given a sense that this fundamental shift in land use possibly represents a shift in the state’s concerns for growth of the individual, through education, to prepare for the demands of civilian life. Therefore, within this juxtaposition, the sculpture meets the needs of our bodies’ requirement for natural resources, while the landmark registers the requirements of state policy to meet our future political and economic needs. But neither object on the Myers Drive parkway directly reflects upon portions of its current status which define their existence. The sculpture does not reflect upon the complex networks of pumps and pipes which make it possible to distribute water as a drinking fountain, just as the landmark does not reflect upon the degree to which education is at the service of the military, and so on. Within the disturbance which is created by this juxtaposition is hopefully enough cause for the public to become adequately stimulated to develop these problematic issues and continually ask thoughtful questions about these two very different objects.

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Permanent work for the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA, 1991. Photograph by Philipp Scholz Rittermann. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Proposal for a work (unrealized): “Permanent Collection/Trust Fund” (ca. 1990)

Editor’s Notes: This typed proposal for a work that was meant for a museum’s permanent collection was filed by Asher in connection with materials associated with Asher’s negotiations for gallery representation with a commercial gallery in Los Angeles in 1987 and 1988. The gallery had operated as the Kuhlenschmidt/Simon Gallery and then as Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery. Asher kept a number of drafts of this proposal. The version included here is deemed to be the latest. It is also the only one in which Asher used the copyright symbol. This proposal, which was not realized, is connected to a number of proposals and projects that Asher had worked on between 1978 and 1987 (for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions [LACE], Van Abbemuseum, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles [MOCA]). These proposals share thematic and procedural aspects but retain a specificity of context in relation to the institution that Asher sought to engage. At LACE, Asher had proposed to take over the lease for the space used by LACE, in effect becoming LACE’s landlord. At Van Abbemuseum, in two separate proposals for the permanent collection, Asher had proposed to set up funds for the purchase of works by other artists while also channeling monetary support for Asher. All these situations maintained the visibility of the artist’s involvement. At MOCA, the only one of these proposals that was realized, Asher’s work for the In Context exhibition from 1983 to 1985 took the form of a licensing agreement that inserted Asher into the museum’s lobby space in the facility then known as The Temporary Contemporary at MOCA for a period of approximately eighteen months. In this proposal, Asher continues to explore the critical potential embedded in support structures for artists while explicitly discussing artists, donors, and museums and the influence they exert in the field of cultural production, along with their responsibility for upholding a certain code of ethics toward the public.

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Michael Asher Permanent Collection/Trust Fund The artwork I propose is to begin a self-­sustaining trust fund to support and encourage cultural production, both inside and outside the museum, as well as for exhibition and purchase. The scope of the trust is restricted to giving recognition and material assistance to groups and individuals who do static or non-­static artwork, which takes into consideration the conditions of production and the means of distribution of cultural production. Cultural production is defined as that artwork which is activist in character and has a social function to unambiguously inform its audience about the nature of official culture, so they can adopt a complex understanding and new priorities about policies which may infringe on the public’s welfare. In describing it further, one can say that cultural production avoids the expression of human suffering, as well as the appropriation of minority and Third World cultures. Also, rather than seeking to raise money, cultural production seeks degrees of liberation through community activism. The artwork being proposed for the museum’s permanent collection raises the contradictions which occur when the maintenance of an established order supports radical production outside the system that the museum occupies. It would be against the intent and objective of the trust if the museum used it as a mechanism for co-­option [of] radical practice or an attempted resolution of the inherent contradictions which would otherwise draw practical meaning from concrete examples of radical activism. It will take sensitive planners to implement this fund in their museum. The trust I propose is to be sustained by interest earned on an endowment. It is to be managed by a trustee or a financial institution that specializes in long-­ term growth for organizations such as museums and foundations. The interest for the trust is to be derived from socially responsible investments. The size of the endowment is contingent upon a sum which will generate an adequate amount of interest to meet the trust objectives and purposes, and allow for its operation and support of cultural production several times each year. Once the initial capital is raised, it is to be maintained each successive year by a group of donors who will pledge a sum of as much, or more than, the cost of living to allow for the principal to grow yearly with the rate of inflation. If, for any reason, donations cannot be made to adjust for the endowment’s yearly increases, no capital can be drawn off until the endowment earns enough interest on its own to make up for inflation in that year; thereby, all capital support of cultural production is to be derived from the interest earned from the endowment, which is above and beyond that generated to compensate for inflation.

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In order to both meet the provisions of the trust and allow it to function and meet all legal economic and tax contingencies of the museum, the contract or mechanism to allow this to happen will be drawn up once the museum has finalized the purchase of the artwork. Accordingly, I recommend that the museum’s lawyer or the trustees’ lawyer draw up the contract for the trust with the input of an economist and tax person. I will assist at each stage in drawing up the document, and I will approve the final draft. Since the operation of this artwork is conditional on the trust’s success, I want the contract to express certain guarantees which keep the project from ever becoming a metaphor or a gesture of a fund for the granting of support. In this respect, I want it designed so that principal will always function to bear interest for production and will be permanent and ongoing without being broken. As another safeguard and for continuity of this artwork, it will not be transferable from one museum to the next, unless, for some reason, the museum closes permanently. If such a condition occurs, the fund’s trustees and donors, along with each museum’s personnel in consultation, are to decide if the new museum can carry out the provisions and objectives required by the trust and can guarantee its implementation. Due to this artwork’s capacity to generate its own funds for the production of other works of art, no money shall change hands in its transfer between museums. The new museum is to understand that the trust has the same status of permanency and conditions for transfer and will remain the same, as with the prior museum. The trustee or financial institution is to remain the same throughout the life of the fund. The viewers will have access to this artwork and the way it functions through proper acknowledgement whenever a project is presented and through quarterly reports of its activities. These reports will be much like a four-­to ten-­page prospectus that reflects investment activities, assets and overhead costs, along with a list of those projects having been granted support within the quarter. Along with the list are to be several sentences about the projects which have been given support and their locations. The report will also incorporate a basic description of this trust and its objectives. The brochure is to be designed in accordance with a typical low-­cost business brochure. These reports will be made available to the public for an amount no greater than that to help defray printing expenses. A copy of these reports will be kept in the museum’s library, in both the archives and in a notebook for greater accessibility, so visitors can see some documentation of this artwork. Also, each quarter I would like two copies sent to me or to the persons managing my papers.

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Proper public acknowledgement of the trust ought to be considered an integral part of what will constitute this artwork. Examples of such acknowledgements are to be found in the form of museum title cards when the fund has been responsible for a museum purchase, or appropriate credit on book, film or video productions when they have been sponsored, as well as within the proximity of any exhibition which has received support. Whenever this is impossible, a small announcement in the newspaper is requested. The final name of the trust fund is contingent upon its site and its designation within the museum context. For now, it will have my name and the name of its presentation or display categories in order that the viewing public may understand the linkage between the artwork, the fund and the work being supported. There are questions about this project that will have to be worked out with the museum, such as: What would be the best financial institution to suit our purposes? What are the trust’s restrictions and the legal restrictions of the type of trust that would fit our needs? What will be each party’s responsibility in issuing the trust? What form of trust will best suit the purposes of this project? What are the legal and/ or economic complications which could arise beyond these questions? Can the trust ever be broken? If so, under what conditions? Can the trust be held together indefinitely just as a work in the permanent collection? Hopefully, these questions and any others can be answered once I begin work with the museum. © Michael Asher

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Writings on work for Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1991

Editor’s Notes: These four documents are connected to Asher’s exhibition at the Musée national d’Art moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The first, “Note to Myself,” contains Asher’s project notes as he was preparing the work and thinking through its conceptual and thematic implications. In the second text, “Thoughts about Centre Pompidou Project,” Asher discusses the work in relation to other artistic practices and art historical context. The third text in this sequence contains Asher’s description of the realized work. The final document is a facsimile of a diagram in which Asher maps out some conceptual dimensions of the installation arrangement on the walls of the Musée national d’Art moderne. In his work for the Musée national d’Art moderne, Asher collected all the paper fragments lodged within the books in the psychology section of the Bibliothèque publique d’information, the public reference library at the Centre Georges Pompidou, and exhibited them under glass, documenting their placement in the source book. The size of the glass was determined by the size of the library book in which the fragment of paper was found. The precise location of the paper fragment under glass likewise reflected its original placement on the page of the book. A dot-­matrix print of the source book’s library catalog entry was placed on the wall. There was also a bound book in the exhibition space that provided documentation of the fragments and their original location in the library books. The location of the entry to the exhibition space was moved in order to provide visitors free access to Asher’s exhibition, aligning the exhibition space with the building’s public reference library from which Asher had sourced the paper fragments and bibliographic references for his work.

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“Note to Myself” (1990)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these notes in 1990 as he was preparing for an exhibition at the Musée national d’Art moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris the following year. Written by hand in his characteristic list format in a notebook, they combine practical considerations with thematic questions. They are dated one day after Asher wrote his proposal for a work to the Centre Pompidou, and thus reflect his thinking while he was formulating the work. The reference to “the catalog” in his note number seven most likely relates to an element of his work: a bound book in the exhibition space that provided documentation of the paper fragments that Asher found in the Bibliothèque publique d’information, the public reference library at the Centre Georges Pompidou, and their original location in the library book. The Duchamp reference in the text is to Apolinère Enameled (1916–­1917), an assisted readymade made with a metal sign advertising an industrial paint brand and modified by Duchamp to feature altered text and visual elements combining to form conflicting perspectival lines. Asher’s use of the word “affiche” is likely in its French meaning for “poster” (see the second reference to “affiche” in this text in relation to the Nouveau Réalisme artists).

7/6/90 Note to Myself: [Note: A check mark in the margin precedes the first five items on the list below.]

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

Take photos of Galeries contemporaines. Take (possibly) title page out of booklet. Possibly do away with the beveled mat on the wall. Pick up missing marker when I am home. Erase arrows and put them on back. Possibly put a shelf of booklets with fragments and text near the entry to the exhibition so people can walk through with them.

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7)

This work examines the idea of the found object or affiche and the way it has consistently become isolated into a discrete object, losing practically all of its institution of origin signs before it is qualified to become an aesthetic object (note: Duchamp’s Apolinère doesn’t) (but even this doesn’t let the viewer know of the complex institution and of the knowledge behind it). To construct an autonomous object has been to construct a myth in order to naturalize the object so it may attain commodity status.



The work at Centre Pompidou comes from an institution (the library), which probably, for many artists, played a part in the formation of their knowledge—­and even if the library didn’t, certainly books did.

The library at Centre Pompidou represents the site of knowledge gathering and is instrumental as a model library in cultural and aesthetic production. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, is an area where the consciousness is closely observed, and in France it has a particularly important history. But it is the slip, the lapse or fragment, which often gives the patient a clue as to history of their consciousness and the fulcrum on which to investigate further.

Thereby, the found paper in the book is in some ways a parallel activity as the finding of fragments in consciousness. I say the “activity” because the experiences are quite different, although sometimes the search to find something out—­i.e., the book about culture, psychoanalysis about the self—bear some similarities, although ought not be confused. The construction of the self and the formation of knowledge do impact one another and cannot help but do so.

The large label is in the service of representing the origin of the object or fragment.

The procedure of claiming the piece of paper or object is found in collage, as well as [with] the Nouveau Réalisme affiche artists and those artists dealing with quotation. In the case of this installation, the paper is the quote and the catalog entry is the footnote.

8) Perhaps it is best not to use numbers of pages beside the glass fragment. (Think about using small rub-­on type next to mat board with object on it or else put it on a small mat.) [Note: Asher drew a small diagram within this last

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sentence, showing this idea.]

9)

I can treat the corridor with a green band from the header up to the top of the wall, with green paint, and have the numbers of the books (library numbers, i.e. 153A–­153B) reversed out in that band. This is one of the most logical solutions, but the large type needed to do this makes the catalog type look small.



I would prefer to paint the whole exterior wall with an off-­white paint like the front of some psychology manuals.



10) Have the mats for the fragments match the ivory color of the corridor.

11) If there is a doorway on the edge of the wall with my name inside the exhibit, consider putting my text on that door.

12) Think about doing catalog entries in [the] green of the library. [Note: In the





margin, Asher wrote: “This will take away from colored fragments.”]

13) Paint a map to the rooms on the wall or at entry, or print on handout.

14) If they do not let me have so much space, just use the three small rooms and list the book vertically, like in the library booklet of books on shelves. [Note: Asher drew a small diagram of this display option in the margin, in front of this point.]

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Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, July 10–­­September 15, 1991, detail view of installation, one of sixty-­seven paper fragments under glass accompanied by the library citation for the book where the paper fragment was found. Photograph by Michael Asher. © Michael Asher Foundation.



“Thoughts about Centre Pompidou Project” (1991)

Editor’s Notes: In this document, Asher analyzes his work in progress for the Musée national d’Art moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1991. The exhibition took place July 9 to September 15, 1991. This text was written six months before the exhibition opened, although the work had already been conceptualized and was being prepared for realization. In particular, Asher analyzes his work in relation to other artistic practices (such as Daniel Buren’s), material form, and art historical context (collage and the French Nouveau Réalisme). Asher wrote this text by hand and filed it in a folder that he labeled “Text—­ Thoughts on Exhibition” in the project files associated with his exhibition at the Musée national d’Art moderne.

1/25/91 Thoughts about Centre Pompidou Project At one level, the work at Centre Pompidou responds to the practice of Daniel Buren, in so much as it takes fragmented pieces of paper and disperses them throughout a space while employing an ordering system which allows for their continuity, or at least, to link them with their origin in the production of this artwork. The use of my paper, its design or object status, as [with] Daniel’s, was discovered and originally inhabited a public space where, like an awning on the street, it is very accessible and its authorship is anonymous. This installation also responds to the wall label project by Buren [which is] in the collection of the museum. The project at Centre Pompidou parallels the history of collage, but attempts to utilize the paper fragment as untransformed from its original context, and not necessarily containing any meaning greater than when it was found in a book, in spite of its greater autonomy while on the wall. Yet, I want to underscore their (the papers’) importance as a public expression of how the public utilizes the Centre, which is often lost in its unilateral display of a cultural awareness that is being constructed for the people of France. The artwork of such artists as the Nouveau Réalisme artists incorporates collage technique not only abstracted from its original context, but arbitrarily rearranged on a two-­dimensional plane, and then inscribed into the museum institution in such a way as to become a sign for the authorship of its rearrangement, while abandoning its original function rather than problematizing the course that the paper follows once it becomes tied to aesthetic production. With the knowledge of collage technique, perhaps

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in my project the viewer can begin to understand the urge (or even forces) which seems to oblige the artist to claim elements of popular culture (as well as community production) and transform them into individual property and display them as a sign of individuated labor. The urge, I believe, is in part the task of repackaging for the market posing as the artist’s unique view of the “world.” [Note: In the previous sentence, Asher’s handwriting is difficult to decipher; the word used is likely “community,” but may be “commodity.”]

In a most evident or literal way, this artwork demonstrates a slippage due to the unpredictable superimposition of the paper upon the text and displays that slippage within the visual context. In the experience of psychotherapy, this slippage can serve to unveil the unconscious, leaving the patient without clothes in front of the therapist, and if the experience of slippage in the context of reading a book serves to edit meaning, or even substitute it with a trace external to the production of the book, then does the viewer’s experience of slippage’s operation within aesthetic production have anything to do (other than a formal one) with its function elsewhere? Is the claim of slippage of meaning in an artwork actually “slippage” once it is in an artwork? Or is it nothing more than a formal sign for its actual operation in other studies of meaning? Note: It would seem to me one of the more exciting functions of a museum is to serve as a laboratory where questions such as the above can be proposed rather than housing the industry of cultural legitimation.

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Description of exhibition (ca. 1991)

Editor’s Notes: In this text, Asher describes his realized work at the Musée national d’Art moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1991. In the second paragraph, his description includes references to one of the elements of the work, a bound book that provided documentation of the fragments and their original location in the library books. Bibliothèque publique d’information is a public reference library at Centre Georges Pompidou, and Beaubourg is a nickname often used to refer to Centre Pompidou as a whole. This text has not been published previously. The exhibition’s catalog featured a brief note that was included on the card that was provided for visitors to the exhibition. In that text, Asher only lists the material components of the work and the criteria he used to retrieve and position them in the work. The original document in Asher’s archive is a composite of handwritten text segments that he cut and taped together into long strips of paper, reflecting his process of composing a text, during which he wrote, edited, and rewrote passages, reorganizing themes and ideas into a complete document. Asher’s original includes, in the margin, a hand-­drawn diagram representing his presentation of the elements of the work at Centre Pompidou and other ideas. He wrote the words “perhaps conditional” in the top margin of the original document.

From June 30–­­July 3, 1990, I withdrew all the loose pieces of paper (bookmarks, notes, ads, etc.) found between the pages of each book in the psychoanalysis section of the Bibliothèque publique d’information at Centre Georges Pompidou. Of all the holdings in this section (153.09–­153.4) there were fifty-­seven books which contained sixty-­seven fragments of paper. When each piece of paper was collected, its source and original position was noted and measured to allow for its later presentation in the installation, so as to represent the space it inhabited while in the library. That space is reconstructed by employing an identical page from another book of the same title as the one [in] the library, with the found paper superimposed upon it. Also included within this installation is the library’s catalog entry [for the book] silkscreened on the wall and positioned next to the fragment(s), enabling the viewer to identify the author, title, notes, and shelf number for each book in which a fragment was found.

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There has also been a modification to the exhibition space comprised of a shift of the entry/exit for Galeries contemporaines from adjacent [to] the admission booth to the northeast corner of the gallery, resulting in a passage which duplicates the free access to the library. [Note: Above this last part of this last sentence, Asher wrote in parentheses: “A wall has been opened adjacent to.”]

The choice of the psychoanalysis shelves was primarily structural, in as much as I was looking for a section with the least number of loose papers evident beyond the books’ outer margins. The design of this search approximated the unpredictable way in which notes are so often found within the books’ inner margins. As much as it was a structure which governed my selection of the psychoanalysis shelves, it is possible I would not have proceeded had the search terminated in a subject which was unlikely to aid in the formation of problems about the function of a discourse with [the] fragments of others. One might say that the structure is so conditional as not to be necessary, yet it was a tool which allowed me to apprehend connections which I may have easily missed. This project was motivated at the beginning by a number of thoughts, such as the loss of foreign matter once employed in an artwork, specifically the tendency for the found object to be isolated from its context in order to be transformed into a discrete object or a seemingly unproblematic sign of autonomous production in pursuit of locating agreeable meanings. Other ideas began around the role of the audience, faced with an array of information in the form of cultural presentations at Beaubourg. In this regard, I wanted to know if there might exist a reciprocal expression of the viewer’s participation, which was not contingent upon the architecture or its circulation, but rather animated by a collective need for communication.

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“Installation Relationships to Library Beaubourg” (1991)

Editor’s Notes: In this diagram, Asher maps out some of the conceptual and material dimensions involved in his work at the Musée national d’Art moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1991. Beaubourg is a nickname often used to refer to Centre Georges Pompidou. It is a more fully articulated version of the diagram that Asher drew in the margins of the texts included immediately before this document. This schematic drawing functions as an installation diagram as well as a conceptual mapping of some of the key themes of the work. The notes attached to the diagram focus on locations and technologies of knowledge (the physical space of the library, the library’s computer catalog, and a book on the shelves) along the axis of access and authorization.

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Letter to the Editor of Flash Art International (October 21, 1991)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote this letter to the editor of the art magazine Flash Art International in response to critic Adrian Dannatt’s review of his exhibition at Musée national d’Art moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1991. In this review, Dannatt wrote enthusiastically about Asher’s exhibition. His praise was based on Asher’s treatment of what Dannatt considered to be fictional information (the found scraps of paper and their location in the books in the library). Dannatt’s review was published in Flash Art International, no. 160 (1991): 148. Asher objected to Dannatt’s interpretation of his work. Asher’s letter was not published in Flash Art International, which didn’t generally feature letters to the editor. In Asher’s archive, the letter is filed as a photocopy of a handwritten document. “Beaubourg” is a reference to the location of Asher’s work at Musée national d’Art moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which is located in the Beaubourg area of the city of Paris. In his letter, Asher mentions two other exhibitions of his work in France that had taken place during the same year. These exhibitions took place at Le Nouveau Musée in Villeurbanne and at Le Consortium in Dijon.

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Flash Art 68 Via Carlo Farini 20159 Milan, Italy 10/21/91 To the Editor of Flash Art, Adrian Dannatt, in the review of my Centre Pompidou installation in Flash Art of October 1991, comes to the conclusion that the entire exhibition could be, and most likely is, a fiction. Not only were there books in the exhibition to document the original site of the fragments of paper, but there was evidence on numerous pieces of paper which demonstrated that the fragments actually came from the pages noted in the exhibition. If there was still some question, your reviewer could have read the catalog essay. It was anything but a fiction. To miss this point is to miss the questions the work addresses about the found object and its misuse in modernism, as well as the role of the viewer at Beaubourg, plus my critique of the institution. I hope Flash Art finds the time to write about my project at Le Nouveau Musée, and Le Consortium, as well as a more elaborate discussion of my Beaubourg installation, all from last summer. Michael Asher 2270 S Carmelina Los Angeles, California 90064 USA

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Notes on work for Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997 for Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, 1997

Editor’s Notes: Asher’s work for Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997 followed his participation in both previous Skulptur Projekte exhibitions in 1977 and 1987. After 1997, he would also participate in the 2007 exhibition. For each exhibition, his work consisted of placing a small, rented recreational travel trailer in different locations in and around the city of Münster. The model of the trailer and the weekly locations stayed the same for each “reconstruction” (Asher’s term); if a previously used site was no longer available, the trailer was stored away from public view for that week.

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“Münster Project” (1997)

Editor’s Notes: This text about Asher’s work for the Skulptur Projekte exhibitions in Münster was labeled by Asher as a possible lecture. It is unlikely that it was delivered. He archived notes and several handwritten drafts of this text, but the version included here is the only one he had typed. It includes handwritten pencil edits by Asher, which have been incorporated here. Some paragraphs in this text are marked with pencil lines whose meaning is ambiguous. The text is dated approximately three weeks before the 1997 Skulptur Projekte exhibition opened. Although each of the Skulptur Projekte exhibitions in Münster has its own title, Asher often used the abbreviated Skulptur when referring to the exhibitions. In this account, Asher describes his work in detail before addressing the question of how multiple iterations of the work (for all intents and purposes repeating some key elements) fit into his approach to site specificity.

6/3/97 Münster Project When I first made a proposal for the Skulptur exhibition in 1977, I was searching for a project which would recognize one of the contradictions of public sculpture. Perhaps it could be basically described as follows: On the one hand, public sculpture offers the general public a supposed opportunity for an aesthetic experience unrestricted by the walls of an exhibition container. On the other hand, public outdoor sculpture represents an object from its own discourse which occupies public space, having been autonomously produced and often driven by the assumptions it is a public necessity or a sign of cultural progress and spatial stability. Furthermore, if public sculpture is meant to find its status as permanent, doesn’t that run at cross purposes with a temporary exhibition? In responding to the recognition of this problem, plus the practice of other artists in the project section of the exhibition (Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Richard Serra), I began to formulate a proposal for the 1977 Skulptur exhibition. The proposal included a small trailer which was part of a line of trailers being mass­produced by the Eriba Company. The model was 4.56 meters in length. It being a compact recreational vehicle, it began to sign for a split between alienated labor and alienated leisure, and allowed the trailer to refer back to a similar myth of

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supposed liberation that I saw embodied in the contradiction of public sculpture. The trailer also responded to the idea that a public sculpture, up to that point in time, constituted an object which was anchored to one place and carried either a monumental mass or ideological weight, or both. Much different than most outdoor sculpture of its time, the trailer was chosen due to its sign as a low cultural object of common experience. Although it could not fulfill the traditional criteria of the readymade (even though its context had been transformed for the museum viewer), it became one of my first attempts to suggest that due to the readymade withering away of appropriation’s original strategic importance, it might actually be more radical to revisit the common object within the frame of its intended use. I formulated the artwork in Münster so that the trailer would be parked in nineteen different locations (the number of weeks of the exhibition). The locations began in the city, turned outward to the north, west, east, and south. The last four weeks, it returned to locations in the city. In so doing, the trailer articulated the structure as it unfolded: from [in] the city, next to the University, to a parking lot adjacent to a mall, then in a parking place in front of a car dealer; and once it left the city, the trailer was parked in a wealthy residential area, next to parks, then next to an industrial complex, then next to a canal, to a high-­rise apartment building, a school at the end of a dead-­end street, in an urban shopping mall’s parking lot, [by] a church, a store, a torn-­down building opposite a number of residences, in an empty lot, then back to the city and in a large open parking lot, in a parking lot in front of the train station and, second to last, in front of a bar. Each location represented a different situation where a trailer might be found. The method of placement was intended to create the impression that the trailer was an integral part of its surroundings rather than an entity in itself, which was so common to public sculpture up to this point. Although some sites were less likely than others, each location was different enough to serve as a model of where a viewer might conceivably notice a trailer. Each Monday, when the museum was closed, the trailer was moved to its next location. The curtains in the trailer were closed and the door was locked to emphasize the trailer’s external relationship to each site. Much like other equipment needed solely for the Skulptur exhibition, the trailer was rented for a fee and returned to the rental agency after the exhibition.

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In an attempt to suspend the use of chronological ordering and taste as standards for the placement of sculpture throughout a museum, and to avoid the problem of outdoor public sculpture becoming a separate satellite of the museum, I linked the structure of the trailer project with information sheets which could be picked up at the front desk of the museum and used to guide the viewer to each new location. Due to there being nineteen separate locations, there were nineteen different information sheets printed, each with the same description of the project but [with] a different location at the bottom of the page. Only one week of information sheets was put out at a time, which enabled the exhibition weeks to coincide with the location for that week. By correlating the weeks of the location of the trailer with the exhibition, I was able to demonstrate how the structure of my work was physically opposite the exhibition, insofar as it contained many different sites for one work, which was never anchored to the ground for the duration of the exhibition. Through the use of the information sheet, the trailer project always depended upon the subject of the exhibition rather than the usual category of public outdoor sculpture. Therefore, the trailer had to be defined by its placement and context rather than by its object status. By picking up the information sheet and traveling to several or all locations, it was my hope that the different walks or drives would sharpen the viewer’s relation to this artwork’s spatial and temporal conditions. In 1977, I believed that the trips the viewers made to the trailer project also suggested that the viewers were integrally linked in the co-­production of meaning rather than its consumption. By framing the trailer object within the exhibition theme, it was declared a sculptural object of high art. Through this transformation into sculpture, the work maintained the function and sign of a trailer, enabling it to refer to its different settings throughout the landscape as it would normally do in everyday reality, but simultaneously being a project within the Skulptur exhibition for those visitors who had circulated through the museum. Finally, I chose to have photos taken of each of the nineteen locations, not only for the purposes of documentation, but [also] to be able to demonstrate a public sculpture which could never have an ideal view and could not contain, [in] one photo of a location, more or less significance than the next reproduction. The photos became a record of this work’s limit in time and its impermanence.

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The way in which my Münster project recognized the initial contradiction [that] I saw as inhabiting public outdoor sculpture up to 1977 was by not mapping onto its surroundings the presence of cultural and economic achievement, nor did it allow for the presence of an object with arbitrary meaning from an aesthetic context; neither was the work an autonomously produced object within a collective space; and, finally, it did not function as a cultural endorsement to enhance real estate values, thereby avoiding the impositions of cultural presence upon spaces granted to the community at large. When I first realized the trailer installation in 1977, there was no indication that the Skulptur exhibition would ever be repeated. Therefore, the first time this project was presented, it was not designed to be, necessarily, realized again, for it would first have to have a specific purpose. Therefore, when [I was] invited again, it became increasingly clear that if I came to apprehend that the conditions which shape public sculpture’s reception had not substantially shifted by 1987, and again in 1997, and if I understood the city, the museum and the exhibition to have only changed in form but not in function, the logic I applied to my practice would have to govern my decision as to how I approach my contribution to the following exhibitions. In each case, I only had one choice, and that was to reconstruct the same project I originally realized in 1977 and allow it to become a measure of its own value, as well as supposedly changing times, in 1987 and 1997. So, central to my decision to reconstruct the Münster project was my discovery that there could be numerous changes in art production, as well as in the landscape over the years, but these constitute changes which remain within the domain of formal experience and don’t necessarily affect the fundamental function of surrounding conditions. Strangely enough, the discovery which enables function to be prioritized over form as the fundamental purpose to reconstruct this installation was similar to the way my original project prioritized its discursive function over other practices, which were more contingent upon formal shifts for their meaning. Given my commitment to a site-­specific practice and my consistent mapping of function throughout my observations and the logic I employed, it appeared that there could be only one conclusion, particularly where difference could be demonstrated, and this was to redo the work from 1977.

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In re­thinking the Münster project in 1987, I was quite surprised to realize that the site-­specific approach I was employing seemed to determine [that] I do the same work over again, whereas in other situations it meant never repeating a project. So on one hand, by utilizing a site-­specific practice, there was no guarantee to keep from replicating an earlier work of art, and, on the other, there was no guarantee that this approach could cancel out its shortcomings in the use of more arbitrary practices. [Note: In the original, Asher has circled this last phrase “in the use of more arbitrary practices” in pencil and added a question mark beneath it.]

If the need for the replication of works of art were found to be necessary, such as in my Münster project, it demonstrates the degree [to which] a site-­specific practice is contrary to the modernist paradigm, which valued uniqueness in the work of art as a measure of progress. The degree [to which] this artwork is tied to the physical site and its conditions is probably best represented by the fact that one day it will be impossible for this project to be realized since there might be no more trailers of the type necessary or no more land which in prior times were [parking] locations. As has already been mentioned, there is no singular ideal view for photographing this installation, but if the viewer is searching for change, they will notice in the reproduction of photos between 1977, 1987, and 1997, that, oddly enough, changes can’t be seen in the artwork’s structure with its mobile unit (the trailer)—­except for several times in 1987 when the trailer was misplaced or not photographed from the correct angle, or in 1997 when fewer places have to be used—­but in the objects such as in trees and buildings [that surround the trailer]. The proposal for my present contribution reads as follows: My proposal for Skulptur 1997 involves the reconstruction of the same project realized for this exhibition in 1977 and 1987. Although the most recent installation will include the same temporal structure—­as well as the original caravan model, parking positions, and procedure used to inform the public of the caravan’s location—­it will differ due to the present exhibition’s duration of only fourteen weeks rather than the nineteen weeks in 1977 and the seventeen weeks in 1987. Also, alteration of the landscape in the past twenty years has made access impossible during week numbers three and fourteen. During these two weeks, the caravan will be in storage. Also, as in 1977 and 1987, the weekly repositioning of the caravan and its photographic documentation will be handled by members of the museum staff.

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In terms of meaning, the 1987 and 1997 installations of the project seemed to address the imposition of public sculpture; but at the same time, it [the project] gathered a question about history and how can we consign records of the past to arbitrary or relative observations if we want to seek future discoveries. On one level, this refers to the rigor of reconstruction of the 1977 project, and, on the other, this project operates as a measure or comparative analysis of the different Skulptur exhibitions.

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Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, West Germany, Skulptur Ausstellung in Münster 1977, July 3–­­November 13, 1977, trailer in various locations. Parking position, fourth week, July 25–­­August 1, Alter Steinweg, across from Kiffe-­Pavillon, parking meter no. 275 or 274. Photograph by LWL-­Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum), Münster/Rudolf Wakonigg. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, West Germany, Skulptur Projekte in Münster 1987, June 14–­­October 4, 1987, trailer in various locations. Parking position, fourth week, June 29–­­July 6, Alter Steinweg, across from Kiffe-­Pavillon, parking meter no. 2200. Photograph by LWL-­Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum), Münster/Rudolf Wakonigg. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany, Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997, June 22–­­September 28, 1997, trailer in various locations. Parking position, fourth week, July 14–­­21, Alter Steinweg, across from Kiffe-­Pavillon, parking meter no. 2560. Photograph by Roman Mensing, artdoc.de. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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LWL-­Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Germany, skulptur projekte münster 07, June 17–­­September 30, 2007, trailer in various locations. Parking position, fourth week, July 9–­­15, Alter Steinweg, across from Kiffe-­Pavillon. Photograph by Roman Mensing, artdoc.de. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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“Münster” (1997)

Editor’s Notes: Asher filed this short, handwritten note, dated six days after the opening of Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997, in the context of notes for a possible lecture in his project files for the exhibition. Asher’s contributions to the Skulptur Projekte exhibitions in 1977, 1987, 1997, and 2007 utilized a small, recreational travel trailer parked in locations that changed weekly in and around the city of Münster. In this fragmentary note, Asher reflects on the themes of public space and permanency. The top margin of this document includes a short, indecipherable note by Asher, which has been omitted here.

6/28 Münster Being against the idea of permanency in public space, and understanding that such a space is not mine to make a public experience, I chose the element to be constantly mobile and never fixed. It wasn’t manufactured for the city to accumulate motifs. Perhaps history, or the history I am interested in, has arbitrariness, and thereby co-­option, or avoids a history which can be revised for personal or commercial interests.

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Lecture at Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London, 2003: “Michael Asher, Excerpts from a Lecture, London, June 2003” (2003)

Editor’s Notes: Asher gave this lecture at the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London on June 24, 2003. His lecture was organized by the journal Afterall and Double Agents, a research initiative at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. The “student reinstallation” (Asher’s description) discussed in this lecture is Asher’s work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) that he first developed for the exhibition Made in California: NOW from 2000 to 2001. This exhibition, a component of the large-­scale exhibition Made in California, was organized by LACMALab, a program within LACMA that explored museum presentation by commissioning projects from contemporary artists. For Made in California: NOW, LACMALab invited Californian artists to make works to engage children and teenagers. Asher’s work arranged for students from the nearby Fairfax High School to reinstall a permanent collection gallery at LACMA. Asher worked with LACMA again from 2002 to 2003 for a “second rotation” (Asher’s term) of the work. This rotation included a new group of students who reinstalled a different permanent collection gallery at LACMA. These excerpts from the lecture were first published in Anna Harding, ed., Magic Moments: Collaboration between Artists and Young People (London: Black Dog, 2005), 184–­185. Part 3 of this book includes two sets of notes from 2000 that Asher wrote for meetings with students participating in his work for Made in California: NOW.

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Michael Asher Excerpts from a Lecture, London, June 2003 [The] student reinstallation [at LACMA] employs an experimental method in order to uncover questions I have about the practice of institutional museum critique and arts education at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—­questions such as: Could there be a way of involving young people that would be better than museum-­ controlled and museum-­mediated programs that now exist at LACMA? And could there be a way of advancing display systems that reveal the shortcomings of existing museum conventions? The aspect of experimentation most important to my work is not unpredictability generated by a finite structure, as much as it is a radical shift in dealing with a problem. More specifically, this work proposes an alternative approach to arts education at LACMA that abandons the top-­down model, whose primary function is to legitimize the museum and its collection, in favor of an approach that utilizes museum resources as tools for advancing schooling while urging students to seek their untapped potential. This work proposes that it might be possible to reconsider aspects of display systems by observing the language of nonprofessionals. It is one thing for the staff to benefit from the students’ idealism, but it is much harder for the museum to realize that it might profit by becoming a lab for many different types of experiments. Besides operating experimentally, this artwork also functioned as a critical tool. On one level, it gives young people access to historical objects, and requests that they make judgments which will have a real-­world effect upon reception. On another, it gives museum educators insight into the signs and beliefs of a few young people whose learning is a product entirely of their own motivation. Still another tool stems from the students. Not having an investment in affirming the status of the museum, nor [in] participating in a critical art practice, they begin to touch on assumptions of each. They do this with an authenticity which is hard to overlook. This artwork is meant to generate many other types of experiments in arts education and museum critique.

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Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA, June 29, 2002–­August 12, 2003, second rotation of the reinstallation of the permanent collection by students from Fairfax High School in the Modern and Contemporary Art Council Gallery. Photograph by Michael Asher. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Interview with Anna Harding: “Conversation Between Anna Harding and Michael Asher, December 2004–­March 2005” (2004–­2005)

Editor’s Notes: In this interview, Asher discusses the two “rotations” (Asher’s term) of his work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 2000 to 2001 and 2002 to 2003. The first rotation was developed for an exhibition called Made in California: NOW, organized by a unit at LACMA called LACMALab, as part of the large-­scale survey exhibition Made in California. Aligned with the overall mission of Made in California: NOW, which sought to address children and teenagers, Asher’s work engaged a group of eleventh-­grade students from the nearby Fairfax High School to reinstall one of the permanent collection galleries at LACMA. Another group of students from Fairfax High School was asked to take on a different permanent collection gallery at LACMA in the second rotation of Asher’s work. This interview was first published in Anna Harding, ed., Magic Moments: Collaboration between Artists and Young People (London: Black Dog, 2005), 185–­188. Part 3 of this book includes two sets of notes from 2000 that Asher wrote for meetings with students participating in his work for Made in California: NOW.

Conversation between Anna Harding and Michael Asher, December 2004–­ March 2005 Anna Harding: What was your aim in sharing authorship with young people? Michael Asher: Let me give you a short background and then answer your question. In 1999, LACMALab at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art invited me to participate in the exhibition Made in California: NOW, which took place the following year. My proposal was geared toward youth involvement (in my case high school students) as were all other works in this part of Made in California: NOW. Rather than animating a set of formal conditions, I requested that a group of eleventhgrade students (aged sixteen to seventeen) fulfill a routine museum task. The one I chose was to reinstall the collection in one of the galleries housing the permanent collection. The students had to use all of the already-­existing art objects that the curator had arranged, which represented a version of history the museum wanted to convey to the public. I requested that the students reinstall the artwork so as to express the story they thought would be the most ideal and compelling for public reception. (This was to assume they might want to change it; otherwise they could keep it the same.) The mechanics of gallery presentation would be similar to those followed by the curators.

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LACMALab and the students’ facilitator were the most crucial in making sure the students were able to implement their project based on their own terms. LACMALab made sure that the museum bureaucracy understood what was needed for the students and attempted to ameliorate internal fears. The facilitator was an individual from the community who was an artist, had museum experience, and was knowledgeable in art history. This individual maintained a space where the students could ask the questions they needed and also find their own answers. The concept, along with each alteration, was to be the students’ alone, and not shaped due to the input of others. Therefore, if they happened to receive suggestions, they were under no obligation to follow them. Part of my proposal was dedicated to preserving the students’ autonomy. Another part of the proposal was designed to enable them to make informed decisions about the artwork and the museum. This way, their results could not simply be written off as unknowing. The group began by meeting with the staff of each separate department in order to understand their function. Simultaneously, they were to research on their own the history of the artwork in the gallery. The rest of the time was spent developing ideas. Once they had their final concept and all of its details, the students mocked it up with a scale model. As was expected of curators, the students also had to present their model to the Exhibition Committee. The Exhibition Committee included staff representatives from Conservation, Design-­Graphics, Security, Education, Curatorial, and preparators (technicians). The committee figured out the logistics. This included getting approvals, determining the feasibility of the proposal, deciding which staff would work on each part, setting dates for closing of the gallery and reopening, and anything else that was found to be necessary. The students met with the committee a second time so final plans could be approved. Once the work on the reinstallation began, the students were expected to be in the gallery to answer any last-­minute questions and, if possible, to help the staff. My own participation was limited to designing the proposal and attending the students’ second meeting for the purpose of discussing my proposal as well as my work. I also attended the Exhibition Committee meetings and was available if the students wanted to show me their progress. The only say that the museum had was limited to accepting changes if the work of art was placed in a dangerous manner, if the viewer’s safety was jeopardized, or if the texts meant for reading (such as wall labels) were not legible. The only other restriction on the students was their budget. Hopefully, this description of how my work operated begins to give you a sense that not only did we not share authorship, we performed very different roles in the project, I did not share in their decisions and they didn’t in mine. Sharing authorship would have eliminated the well-­differentiated ways they chose to animate meaning, which seems to be defined not only through the way the students chose to understand their new situation, but also what was important to their collective experience.

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Perhaps just as important as taking on this new problem was that each group became responsible for both positive and negative dimensions of their learning rather than the museum institution or an individual collaborator with greater authority making these judgments for them. If there is only an upside to this model of self-­directed understanding of problems, which is suggested by these first two rotations, then why isn’t it more prevalent in our museums, which often have resources to support it? AH: What could students achieve which you couldn’t? MA: The students entered a situation which required them to organize their own ideas. They began with a list, which identified their own individual interests and at the same time found a way to represent them within a collective of other ideas. Quite fortunately and rather immediately, they were mining an area which was familiar to them and perhaps to sectors of their generation. Each rotation came up with solutions which were quite different from one another as well as quite different from what we see in the professional sphere. If the students had been guided to become consumers of culture, then they would have brought forward solutions we recognize or otherwise might be able to achieve. But by having the reinstallation rooted in the students’ experiences rather than mediated by the institution’s or mine, the questions turned around how meaning was put together and the way the students wanted us to read the collection. This was most clear in the second rotation, particularly in the careful way the students grouped together very different works of art which shared one formal/ visual sign or the way they put together very complicated spatial systems of display which were based upon their experiences of the city street, with its signs and billboards. AH: Why were you excited by this project, and what did you get out of it? MA: There was a real pleasure in developing a structure for young people to have a real-world effect upon the public reception of art. But I had a particular interest in how the students became motivated to teach themselves and ultimately the impact that this newfound ability had on their schooling. This project seemed to bring the best out of everyone involved at the museum, which was a great plus. In the end, I was able to see quite a large potential in an age group who simply had few outlets to express their thoughtful discoveries. AH: Does being an artist give you license to break rules which others are not allowed to break? Is this relevant to the project?

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MA: I don’t know if this question is relevant. The ultimate power resides with the museum. They have the ultimate license to shape cultural thought. If they discover that working with an artist is helpful in this respect, then they will do so. My proposal was an attempt to maintain the museum’s framework for reinstallation while using all the preexisting works in the gallery, thereby employing that which was important to them. Similarly, my work refers to the museum’s mission statement in the area of education. One can see that the proposal agrees with the museum’s structure and philosophy but shifts the responsibility of installing the collection to young people. As a result, their work ends up casting doubt on the conventions of museum display. Ultimately, this work is meant to be a part of a much larger discussion of how well the museum serves its public. AH: What do you feel the young people got from the project, and what evidence could you give of this? MA: You can understand from my proposal [that] I hesitate in becoming an intermediary for the students. Their counselor wrote to LACMALab explaining some of the changes that he noticed after the reinstallation. It’s not just what the students got out of it, the urge is to focus on the students, yet it was a win-­win situation for everyone involved, even if one or two resisted it. AH: How important was it that the young people considered themselves as working on your project versus working on a museum education project? MA: I believe it was clear that the young people were working for themselves. I have reason to believe from some of what they spoke about that I was associated with the implications of this line of inquiry. I don’t know if it would be different or not if they believed themselves to be working on an education department project. AH: What about documentation? MA: This was originally a low priority. It was to avoid the self-­consciousness that comes along with recording apparatus. Also, there was so much to take care of just to make this happen that documentation became difficult. The few times we tried documenting something, it didn’t work out. Suffice to say, most of the documentation is of the reinstallation.

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Notes on work for Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2008 (2008)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote these notes shortly before his exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMOA) opened in 2008. He filed them in a folder called “1/17/08 notes regarding SMMOA” in his archive. In his artwork for the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Asher referenced the museum’s exhibition history by reinstalling all the wall studs that had been used by the museum in its main exhibition space, following their original placements in previous exhibitions since 1998. The gallery space, thus modified, changed radically according to the viewer’s movement in the space, resulting in an individuated viewing experience. Asher wrote a marginal note, “Lissitzky—­Hanover room,” on this document. It is a reference to El Lissitzky’s Kabinett der Abstrakten (1927–­1928), a wall design for a gallery at Provinzialmuseum Hannover that was meant for displaying abstract art. The walls in Lissitzky’s space were constructed with steel slats that were painted white, gray, and black on alternate facets, shifting the overall color of the walls depending on the viewer’s position in the space and activating the viewing experience. Asher used the list format, such as the one employed here, throughout the years. Although he wrote lists during multiple stages of his working process, it had particular relevance during the brainstorming phase of a project. The list here is slightly different because it focuses on observing a nearly finished work rather than formulating initial ideas.

1/17/08 1) The framed stud walls are very sensitive to the body’s motion and [that motion] radically changes within a few feet. They function like a scrim or a lenticular screen. 2) What is most interesting about experiencing them is that these [stud walls] are the objects which are closed off or made inactive so the work of art can have the supposed presence it needs. 3) In the museum, we tend to forget how spaces are laid out in prior exhibitions once a new one opens. 4) What also interests me is that this very same construction inside the walls is inside almost every interior wall in Southern California. This work becomes part of that infrastructure which holds our buildings and homes together.

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5) The movement of the viewer is given over to the static work of art once art is placed on drywall. Its infrastructure is suppressed. 6)

The original wall positions were decided upon rather subjectively. In this work, the former subjectivity is being reconstructed and positioned without the question of taste or optical preferences in mind. It is not being reconstructed for art objects outside of itself.

7)

There is a question I have about minimalism and the visitor’s perception of their relationship to the object and the spaces around them, which goes to the institution: How is this work different when the density is based upon the museum’s history?

8) Why is it necessary to go into the work when the viewer can learn more about it conceptually and experience [it] visually from the outside, where it seems most accessible? 9) On the other hand, one must understand that [wall] framers go through 16 [inches on] center stud walls, continually, every day.

10) But usually signs or a fence goes up to keep the public out.

11) It is curious that some visitors will feel that they have had a transformative experience from a display support of stud framing.

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Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, California, USA, January 26–­­April 12, 2008, detail view of installation. Photograph by Bruce Morr. Courtesy of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. © Michael Asher Foundation.

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Part 6 Teaching Practice

Writings on professional degrees in the arts (1988–­1989)

Editor’s Notes: In 1988, Asher was invited to serve on the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Degree Programs in the Arts. This committee was tasked with rethinking the role of such degrees in the arts for the University of California (UC) system, a group of public universities in the state of California. The committee completed its work in 1990. The handwritten notes transcribed below and the following three letters were written by Asher as part of his participation on this ad hoc committee.



Notes on professional degrees in studio art (ca. 1988)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote the notes included here by hand. His reflection on pedagogy and artistic practice in them includes a side-­by-­side comparison of the art magazine Artforum International and the art historical journal October.

One of the few reasons to have a program in the studio arts is to acquire knowledge about the history of culture and learn its production as a practice for social transformation through the problematizing of representation. I don’t believe a skills education requires a program since it doesn’t require an intellectual dialogue with the social or political, but rather a one-­way understanding of the application of materials with a goal towards technical expertise. This can be done in a community group or at a trade/technical college. The ability to re-­ represent a form comes with acquiring greater and greater technical skill rather than knowledge. A rough analogy to this might be found in engineering, where the individual who chooses to learn fine machining goes to a trade school, while the person learning engineering design goes to an institution where they learn the conceptual tools needed to produce the design of equipment.

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Artforum

October

•  For the most part, is a unidirectional attempt •  Used to generate a dialogue with the reader. to represent art through advertising. •  Is a seamless representation of connoisseurship or quality.

•  Incorporates a critique of representation. •  Defines the contradictions and problematics of an approach which embodies quality.

•  Is a journal which represents the individu ated artists’ skills for market exchange. •  This journal is used in the marketplace to substantiate aesthetic experience. •  Artforum is a journal to guarantee the repro duction of capital through aesthetic production while it operates to perpetuate or inflate the existing system driving aesthetic production.

•  October is an academic journal used to attain knowledge about aesthetic production, both socially and politically.

•  Serves to objectify the artwork to allow for its own efficient and complete exchange and future transfer.

•  Serves to reveal the mechanisms driving culture in order to change the social and political constituents of culture.

•  Artforum rips the artwork from its means of production so it can be perceived as a neutral entity in the market.

•  October develops an understanding of the political and social context a work was produced with in order to understand its meaning production.

•  Meaning production is not analyzed from the artwork. •  Artforum comprises over 50% advertising (not including reviews of commercial galleries).

•  October usually has a total of one or two pages of advertising devoted mostly to magazines used in cultural studies.

•  Artforum is strictly a trade magazine for the arts which have commercial status.

•  October is in a dialogue with the fine arts.

•  Artforum is not designed for learning.

•  October is designed for education.

•  Is slick and glossy so it can present the artwork as only visual pleasure. •  Artforum will not fit a Xerox machine, which makes it inaccessible to those who cannot afford it monthly.

•  Is a small format, fits a Xerox machine and can very easily be used in education and is quite public in its format.

Letter to Julie Gordon, Office of Academic Affairs, Office of the President, University of California (December 6, 1988)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote this letter, after extensive notes and drafts, to the ad hoc committee outlining his initial thoughts on the charge of the committee after attending the first meeting on November 22, 1988. The letter was typed and this copy was filed by Asher in his archive. In this letter, Asher discusses his experiences at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts, a private art school where he taught from 1973 to 2008), the differences between BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) and BA (Bachelor of Arts) degrees, and his thoughts on higher education in art in general. Julie Gordon, to whom the letter is addressed, was the coordinator of Undergraduate Education Issues in the Office of the President of the University of California. “CPEC,” which Asher mentions in this letter, most likely refers to the California Postsecondary Education Commission, a public agency that conducted research into and provided policy advice on the public higher education systems in the state of California. The page numbers of the original document are indicated in the transcript below because Asher refers to this document by page number in a later letter to Julie Gordon, dated December 16, 1988. That letter is included as the next entry in this book.

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Michael Asher 2262 S Carmelina, #6 Los Angeles, CA 90064 December 6, 1988 Ms. Julie Gordon c/o Office of Academic Affairs 359 University Hall Office of the President University of California Berkeley, California 94720 Dear Ms. Gordon, Once again, thank you for the invitation to the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Degree Programs in the Arts on Tuesday, November 22, 1988. It is quite significant that I was asked to participate since part of my relationship to art education comes from the observation of the University of California at Los Angeles [UCLA] campus during my earlier years as an educator. During the past year, I have been working on several projects which are the products of UCLA research facilities. At the same time, I have been preparing a project proposal for the Stuart Collection at UCSD [University of California, San Diego]. I look forward to exploring questions of reorganization and the addition of PhD and professional degrees in the arts and hope that this will be of assistance to the University of California. It was difficult to enter the panel discussion on Tuesday, the 22nd. I did not have a concrete understanding of why the UC system had decided to propose the reorganization. The advice I bring to the Ad Hoc Committee is based not only on my professional experience as an artist, but also upon my experience as an instructor at the California Institute of the Arts [CalArts]. I believe that any single representative of the CalArts Art Department would advise the [Note: Page two begins] University of California differently than the next. Just as this is true, so is it that the CalArts Art Department does not have any one viewpoint towards the making of art. Thereby, the stress in our visual arts program is upon such aspects as: Do the students understand why they are doing that which they are doing? Are the students thoughtful about their artwork, and does the artwork express that thoughtfulness? Are the students equipped for a professional practice?

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The degree programs at California Institute of the Arts are structured around BFA and MFA requirements. Much of the attention that a CalArts education has received can be traced back to the institute’s willingness to take a risk in securing a visual arts faculty whose critical and theoretical involvement constitutes the largest part of their careers outside of the institute. It is the faculty’s separate readings of culture which structure and define the programs. In the School of Art, there are three different divisions: Program in Art, Program in Photography, and Program in Visual Communications. There are also the Schools of Dance, Theatre, Music, and Film/Video, which are part of the institute. If the University of California system is interested in adapting the CalArts model for its professional degree programs in the visual arts, I urge UC to look at the curriculum and speak with alumni, students, faculty, program heads, and the dean. Likewise, I urge UC to look at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Neither institution offers a conventional model of visual arts investigation. At Chouinard Art Institute (which became CalArts in 1971), that which had become so much a part of a curricular direction, the craft of an artwork, was viewed by CalArts as the unproblematic legacy of culture. Seventeen years ago, the CalArts Visual Arts Program abandoned the Chouinard model, with Chouinard’s insistence upon formal and visual coherence, and adopted an emphasis on the artwork and its relationship to the social and political forces within culture. In an effort to explode the legacy which allowed the artwork’s comfortable existence and, further, with a need to engage in a professional discourse outside of education, which had been subjecting most modernist canons to a rigorous reevaluation, all led to a complete restructuring of the CalArts programming. Since the shift in emphasis, students who have received a liberal arts and science education from a [Note: Page three begins] university or college do quite well at California Institute of the Arts. A good example of this is my teaching assistant, who graduated from UC Davis. She not only is the largest contributor to my class, but also knows where to begin an investigation and how to structure and apply thoughts for her production. Students are finding that the mechanisms structuring culture are becoming increasingly complex for the production of meaning in a work of art. If students cannot make the very rich connections with these mechanisms, their work is often quite flat of issues and lacks the potential to be adventuresome. If a greater demand for liberal arts is one of the trends for those studying the visual arts, why is the University of California initiating their undergraduate BFA Degree, which generally requests fewer liberal arts and science credits than a BA? What will make up for these credits?

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If a university system known for its advanced degrees decides to offer a lesser degree, such as a BFA (which is often perceived as a trade degree within the arts and fulfills that function), what are the forces motivating this decision and where do they come from? Are they motivated due to internal dilemmas within the machinery driving art education, or motivated externally by perceived increases in cultural activities? For instance, if driven by internal problems, will a lesser degree than a BA solve those problems of a department when that lesser degree is in the service of maintaining a studio arts program, which is out of step with what is occurring in the art world and, simultaneously, refuses to demand the same intellectual achievements from its students as in other departments in the university? Or, is a BFA being proposed as a way of assisting and integrating those students who have previously been caught in a secondary school system which has already lowered educational standards and which has affected students, regardless of their achievement? For me, there is a much broader or more fundamental question which I feel ought to be addressed, but most likely has no answer: Is it reasonable to think that a student in a studio arts program can receive an adequate education in the UC system or, in fact, any institution on the scale of that system? The very conditions which allow for its operation are also the forces which disallow its destabilization. If the construction and maintenance of equilibrium also drives the distribution of thought, it [Note: Page four begins] is more than likely that forms of reproduction and substantiation of aesthetic experience will be taught at the exclusion of forms of interference. Coming from a small arts college, the question I have to ask myself regularly, even if the most ideal conditions exist, is: Can the studio arts be taught at all? I know how such a question can sound redundant, and certainly is not the charge of this Ad Hoc Committee, but it is central to me as an educator. In all the different teaching situations I have been in, only one aspect is predictable—­students begin to take an intense interest when given a milieu of faculty members who can work closely with one another and respect each other’s professional practice while being deeply engaged in art production. If the Ad Hoc Committee has a charge, which is to assess the reorganization of each degree within a constellation of degrees and the roles they play in the university and community, I sense I missed discussions regarding the future adequacy of those programs, which have proposed degrees and their ability to meet the individual needs of students preparing for careers in the arts, even at the moment. If you have any notes regarding this question and you believe they would be helpful, could you please send them?

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Simultaneous to the exploring of trends in professional studio arts degrees, it might also be helpful to look at trends in the art market from the recent past and projections of future trends. As much as we might want to believe otherwise, the movement in the market may constitute some of the external motivation for postsecondary institutions deciding to add professional degree programs. The recent sales figures on a few works of art would have, ten years ago, been out of the range of anyone’s imagination. The market has generated a new interest in galleries, auctions, museums, and the increased object-­status of an artwork (just to name a few). Just noticing the increased institutions as trends disallows a more complex picture of these institutions; for example, the cutbacks or the leveling off of public funds have hurt most alternative spaces and rerouted NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] grants. In New York, there are very long waiting lists for new artists simply wanting exhibitions in individual galleries. In the last eight years, thirty galleries were opened and thirty were closed in the East Village of New York. Four artists, in their thirties, sell their work for nearly half a million dollars. Many of the new museums have spent, or will be [Note: Page five begins] spending, so much on their [physical] plant that they are not able to collect. One, just recently, could not afford to circulate exhibitions for a little over one year. Museums have also watched while auction houses sold important artwork out of the reach of collecting institutions. Modern art at auction has increased 153% in the last two years. Some artists have watched the market value drop from under their work as the museum or gallery lets their artwork flood the market. Although these conditions are often abstract to the students, and perhaps their careers, they have proven effective in driving most of the trends within the studio arts. To what degree are these conditions a factor in the increased applications in the studio arts and the initiation of new programs? If the reason for the new professional degrees is due to the burgeoning of cultural activities, yet many of those activities are based upon the spectacle of the culture industry, what are we offering students? Should an art market, governed by supply-­ side economics, be a motivating force for our institution’s professional degrees? What are we doing as educators to expose a terrain of activities which can operate outside of (or not at the service of) the currently perceived character of the art market? I hope there are questions from other committee members who can locate trends which are not economically determined.

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Since one aspect of our committee’s agenda is to assess trends in arts education, I would like to mention that I find trends problematic—­it is one thing to isolate trends, but it is dangerous to use them in order to justify the adoption of new programs. Trends in the arts and art education constitute observations having been substantiated by dominant culture. Let us not forget the avant-­garde. Trends do not translate into programs which are productive for our students, nor stimulating for our educators. Furthermore, trends are tools used to regulate and reproduce the system. It is important that the University of California know the trends in arts education so as not to reproduce them. Another charge of the Ad Hoc Committee is to consider the possibility of an arts initiative for an arts center on one of the campuses. Rather than making further assumptions about the UC system and their plans, I would appreciate it if you could forward to me information regarding what areas of the arts the center will encompass? [Note: Page six begins.] I would begin to question the arts center construction if its

priority rested upon being a monument for publicity and restricted during special events to students. Rather than establishing one center, it might be useful to open many small centers throughout the world where UC students would have the opportunity to travel to and further their studies in theatre, dance, music, art, and photography of different cultures. In this way, the centers might serve each campus simultaneously and would guarantee the mixing of students from the California schools in sharing their studies overseas. It would also be very exciting to re-­use already existing architectural structures for these centers and adapt them for research facilities, classes and workshops. Would CPEC recommend funding for such centers? For my participation on the committee, I would greatly appreciate any studies or future projections which you think would be helpful in articulating questions to the committee, such as: projected figures for the growth of both visual and performing arts in the US within the coming ten years, projected figures of private and public funding for the arts for the next ten years, projected figures of job opportunities for college graduates in the major areas of the arts for the next five to ten years, a set of figures which express the length of time MFA graduates practiced in the arts after their degree was granted, figures which express the relative differences in success of the BA and BFA (as well as the MA and MFA) in finding jobs. And does the University of California have any figures which express the continually growing interest in the arts for the next five to ten years? I know this request is a tall order and there is not much time. I greatly appreciate your assistance in pulling this information together. Please send this material to 2262 South Carmelina, #6, Los Angeles, California 90064. (Telephone number when not at the school is (213) 207-­2600. Please make a correction on the Committee Member List of my school number: (805) 255-­1050.)

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I know this letter tends to wander from the precise charge of the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Degree Programs in the Arts, but it represents my concerns within education. This letter is also meant to let you understand my position and create a context for my questions to the committee. If you have any thoughts which may assist me, please let me know. Finally, I hope this letter will add some thoughts to the University of California Degree and Program reorganization project. I will base my questions to the committee on some of the content of this letter and the projections I receive from you. Thanking you in advance for this material and, once again, thank you for the invitation to the Ad Hoc Committee. Sincerely, Michael Asher

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Letter to Julie Gordon, Office of Academic Affairs, Office of the President, University of California (December 16, 1988)

Editor’s Notes: Asher sent these notes, introduced by a cover letter, to Julie Gordon as a follow-­up to his initial December 6, 1988 letter (see the previous text in this book) discussing the ad hoc committee’s charge. In the cover letter below, Asher makes references to that earlier letter, including the page numbers from that previous letter. Those page numbers are indicated in the December  6, 1988 letter transcript for the reader’s reference. In the notes included here, Asher continues to discuss studio art education in university and art school settings. Both the cover letter and the accompanying enclosure are included below. Asher’s archive includes several drafts for this document; the version that was typed was selected for this publication. Adele Shank, a playwright and professor of theater at UC San Diego, served as the chair of the ad hoc committee.

Michael Asher 2262 S Carmelina, #6 Los Angeles, California 90064 December 16, 1988 Ms. Julie Gordon c/o Office of Academic Affairs 359 University Hall Office of the President University of California Berkeley, California 94720 Dear Ms. Gordon, It was a pleasure speaking with you on the telephone this past Wednesday. Enclosed are my questions, which represent four areas of my thoughts about the thrust of professional studio arts degrees offered by UC and their relationship with trends in the arts and arts education. Please share my December 6, 1988, letter with Adele Shank. The questions I am sending to the two of you might best be understood by looking at both my prior letter and the enclosed questions at the same time. In reviewing my prior letter, I feel the important parts are as follows:

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•  Page two, paragraph two dealing with the CalArts faculty and their relationship   to the institute, as well as how this determines CalArts programming. •  Page two, last paragraph, dealing with the history of CalArts. •  Page three, the second two paragraphs, dealing with students’ needs for a liberal   arts education if they are to prepare for careers in the arts. •  Page three, the last paragraph, the fundamental question. •  Page four, the last paragraph, along with the second paragraph on page five   dealing with further questions regarding the professional degree programs   and the economic focus during such programs. If there is any difficulty understanding my questions, please feel free to call me. At the beginning of the week, I will be at (213) 207-­2600 or, towards the end of the week, I can be reached at (805) 255-­1050 (during Christmas vacation, please use the “213” number). The core of my questions turn around why the University has decided upon offering a professional studio arts degree when they are possibly offering a far more adequate degree (the BA/MA) for the preparation of advanced investigation and careers in the arts? Further, if UC is to prepare students for professional careers, why has the University failed to recognize the direction of contemporary practices which have become aligned with scholarly or intellectual pursuits? Another fundamental question I have is: What are we setting these students up for in the future? Also, I would like to reiterate that making recommendations for these new programs, based upon trends, is totally inimical to education and, in some circumstances, allows lifestyle to be the driving force of intellectual studies. I have questioned some of my colleagues on what they sense are the trends in professional studio programs and what they have experienced while lecturing or doing portfolio days with other universities and colleges. I have also asked similar questions of our admissions people. The observations I have found the most compelling have been integrated into the questions in this letter. I hope you find these questions of some use. I am looking forward to receiving the questions which have been generated by other members of the Ad Hoc Committee. Once again, please feel free to call or write if you wish me to clarify any of the issues in my two letters. Have a wonderful holiday. Sincerely, Michael Asher Teaching Practice  

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1) Much of what we are calling contemporary art has developed around a need to understand the humanities, expand upon them, or to intervene using discursive aspects or practices within the humanities. Some of these artworks either appear or claim to have been informed by politics, psychoanalytic theory, literary criticism, urban planning, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and semiotics, etc. Thereby, we see these separate discourses being addressed in the artworks of artists such as Daniel Buren, Lothar Baumgarten, Victor Burgin, Allan Sekula, Mary Kelly, Hans Haacke, Dennis Anderson, Vito Acconci, Marcel Broodthaers, ACT UP, Connie Hatch, Martha Rosler, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Stephen Prina, Dan Graham, John Knight, Silvia Kolbowski, Jenny Holzer, Robert Smithson, Jeff Wall, Joseph Kosuth, not to mention independent filmmakers and scholarly investigations of the critical apparatus. So, my basic question to UC would be, why do they feel they must stress skills or technique classes for their professional arts degree when every indication would suggest that a BFA or MFA degree ought to be defined as liberal arts requirements added onto what is expected for a BA or MA? I know how crazy this must seem to UC, but I think to grasp a theoretical and critical analysis of contemporary culture, and the mechanisms which drive its complexities, are becoming, if they do not already comprise, the fundamental tools behind most art production. UC has the potential to be in the foreground of professional arts education if they allowed for a portion of the skills stressed to be translated into serious studies in the humanities. I believe this change would secure UC a thoughtful student, prepared to adapt to different ideas, as well as having the tools or methods to apply these ideas. As an extension of the previous idea, I could also suggest to those campuses which are proposing interdisciplinary degrees that students ought to complete this degree with studies within an art school program and the humanities. An example of this might be an interdisciplinary arrangement with a student taking dance and linguistics, or a student taking sculpture and social anthropology. Perhaps these opportunities already exist. 2)

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It has been my distinct impression, as an instructor during the past sixteen years and as a professional artist for the past twenty-­two years, that the possibility of graduates of an MFA program in the studio arts have decreased opportunities in their field to gain an income, such as in becoming a post­secondary art instructor, or through a gallery and museum exhibition, or having a chance for funding from grants.



This past year, at California Institute of the Arts, there were over one hundred applicants for each visiting artist position, and all the artists on each short list were highly qualified to teach at our institution. Seven years ago, we had approximately fifty applicants for a similar opening. This competitive field does not allow much room for young artists to become part of our faculty.



The long waiting lists in New York for artists simply wanting a commercial gallery exhibition, and with the only real guarantee for those artists to stay with the gallery is to sell the complete exhibition, leaves little specter of hope for those artists who choose to explore rather than meet market requests. Galleries in other cities, such as Los Angeles, are beginning to take on similar characteristics as those in New York.

Samuel Lipman points out, in his reflections upon the role of the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] during the 1980s (The New Criterion, September 1988), that the greatest amount of endowment funding has been given to glamorous, big budget projects (such as blockbuster exhibitions, which will have a large attendance) rather than funding which is in the service of supporting quality or serious activity within artistic production. This also having been the case within most regional funding agencies, younger artists can no longer count on this type of support to bridge the gap between graduation and a mature practice unless these institutions modify their current policies.

With the narrowing of opportunities which ought to have supported young artists holding a professional degree in the studio arts, how will the projected professional degree programs avoid becoming both an addition to the already existing desperation of new graduates who have found it impossible to gain employment or funding in the field they have become members of, as well as adding to the mounting resentment of graduates having to delay exploration in their chosen field until they can support themselves? Within the context of these two prior questions, what are the expectations of a graduate holding an MFA degree in the studio arts before they are to have an income from their professional practice?

3)

The Whitney Program and CalArts have experienced relative successes in the education of young people to become professionals. Both institutions are similar in that they have been working to make a commitment in hiring faculties in the studio arts whose critical and theoretical involvement in practice constitutes the largest part of their careers as professionals outside of the institution. Each one of the institutes’ programs is defined by the faculty’s reading of culture, rather than being

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guided by equipment or specific skills. Also common to these two schools are the independent study programs from foundation to sixth-­year students. At CalArts, students are urged to meet individually with two faculty members. These meetings are in addition to seminar meetings. The individual meetings begin with an independent study contract outlining the terrain which the student wishes to concentrate on with the instructor for one semester. Both CalArts and the Whitney Program have very active visitors’ programs comprising artists and critics. These people also do workshops and studio criticism with individual students. At the Whitney Program, many visitors are also seminar leaders. Last year, CalArts had approximately two visitors per week. Along with the tremendous importance placed upon independent study as a learning tool within a milieu of faculty working closely together, it would be a sheer oversight to underestimate the amount of motivation and achieve ment which is generated by all students having studios on campus, allowing them to work and share their ideas about their studies twenty ­four hours per day. The UC system is a totally different entity than a small arts college, but the professional degrees represent the same accomplishment and aims. How would UC characterize the differences in education from these different institutions, and do they play dissimilar roles at a professional level? What does UC perceive to be the pluses and minuses between the professional studio arts degree program and their liberal arts or BA and MA program for those students entering a career in the arts?

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If all students do not have a studio on campus, have other arrangements been made for a place where they can gather and analyze why they are doing what they are doing?

4)

Most of the UC system [schools], with the exclusion of UCSD, premise their studio arts programs upon the teaching of technique for different medias. A high regard is placed on the necessary skills that are involved in crafting an object or constructing a picture plane.



If we view art production in the past twenty years, we see there has been a major shift away from the assumption that materials inherently carry ideas to issues and ideas of the producing subject as the driver of mate- rials. For example, if an artist has ideas which would best be expressed by photography, out of necessity that producer learns the skill of photography. Thereby, the producer is no longer subject to the existing limits of materials and can begin to make formal decisions based upon an understanding of culture and apply that understanding to the appropriate material to provide for meaningful production.

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If the UC system expects graduates in the studio arts (not applied arts) to participate in the art discourse, the University will most likely find it essential to transform this one aspect of an arts education, which has been fundamental to them for so many years.

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Letter to Adele Shank, Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Degree Programs in the Arts, University of California, San Diego (June 1, 1989)

Editor’s Notes: Asher wrote this letter to the chair of the ad hoc committee, Adele Shank, a playwright and professor of theater at University of California, San Diego, toward the conclusion of the committee’s activities. In other letters to Shank (not published here but found in Asher’s archive along with other ad hoc committee materials), Asher had commented on the value of the ad hoc committee’s work, noting, in a letter dated February 20, 1989, that “[the work on the committee was] a rare opportunity for me to reflect upon aspects of education other than those dealing with the problems of art theory and practice in the classroom” and, in another letter dated March 9, 1990, that “[serving on the committee] was quite an honor, but more importantly, [one that] gave me an opportunity to further develop my ideas of arts programming and curriculum.” Asher filed a copy of this handwritten letter in his archive, with a note “I gave Adele a Xerox of this on 6/2/89” written in the top margin of the first page. In this letter, Asher discusses art’s relationship to other academic disciplines and the distinctive qualities of artistic practice as research.

6/1/89 Dear Adele, Thank you for sending me the draft copy of recommendations from the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Degree Programs in the Arts. I have read it and would like to write down a few observations that struck me in reading the first part (unfortunately the only writing instrument I have at my disposal is a pen). Possibly there is another way to describe the making of art rather than it having an equivalency with research, and the artist’s project as equivalent with the scientist’s on campus. It might be useful to articulate how profoundly different the study of the arts is in relationship to all other studies on campus. It might also be useful to mention that these studies virtually allow for a strident approach to scholarship, which is exclusively in the domain of analyzing the complexities of culture. And, ultimately, it is the engine which will be driving cultural production. It is the difference of art making to any other studies which will allow the art department to have strength and become respected by colleagues and administrators.

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The strength derived out of the articulation of difference will also provide each art department with its own autonomy, so as to lessen the risk of coming into budget conflicts from other schools. Most importantly, it ought to leave each department in total control while designing the program’s own curriculum, and permit that design to be contingent [upon] and consistent with the department’s philosophy and not in relationship to another school. In the future, programming and curriculum ought to become increasingly dissimilar to other schools so as to permit the art department to establish the same level of intellectual recognition in education, as have other schools on the campus community. Another purpose for such an articulation of difference and intellectual achievement [is that it] ought to be very helpful for those programs in the arts which have, perhaps, not been able to understand the necessity for fine scholarship in the arts. Perhaps a suggestion of scholastic difference ought to occur in the Ad Hoc Committee’s recommendations, but, in the final analysis, it is up to each department and each program on the separate campuses to express what that difference is and why it is important in the context of scholarship. Very briefly, I would like to add that perhaps UC eventually might risk greater misunderstandings regarding the function and operation of aesthetic production through the description of similarities to the scientific method. In particular, the responsibility of the author to their production is decreased since the terms of judging a project are based upon success and failure. The commitment of the audience is often also reduced. By making this equivalence, it may not allow for the complexities which one would hope to be expressed by the author. The most significant difference I can think of in the visual arts is that this type of aesthetic production has the capacity (and some would say its job) to expose issues and problematize them, while it remains the job of science to resolve problems. The methodology which is brought to scientific research is often based upon models of cause and effect, while any adequate model of analysis in aesthetic production will necessarily have a dialectical dimension. [Note: The last page of the original letter is cut off immediately after the last line, and thus the document does not include a closing statement or signature.]

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Notes on Post Studio Art class (ca. 1990)

Editor’s Notes: In these notes, Asher describes his Post Studio Art class at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in the fall semester of 1988 and spring semester of 1989. This legendary seminar had a structure that did not restrict the duration of any given class meeting to a preset number of hours, leading to extensive critique sessions focused on the work of one student at a time. Asher taught his own section of the seminar at CalArts as full-­time faculty from 1976 to 2008. Asher wrote these previously unpublished notes by hand in a spiral-­bound notebook that also contained materials for potential projects in Grenoble, France and in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The timeframe of the semesters that he writes about, however, suggests a connection to his concurrent work on the ad hoc committee on professional degree programs in the arts for the University of California system. Asher’s mention of “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Even” as a reading might refer to Marcel Duchamp’s notes on Duchamp’s artwork The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915–­1923). The notes were edited by Richard Hamilton and published as The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (New York: G. Wittenborn, 1960).

In the Post Studio Art class of fall 1988, I proposed that an artwork reveal itself, step by step, through an analysis of its contradictions, and it was these contradictions which gave an understanding of how each project operates in relation to both its intent and its reception. Strangely enough, the students really found the workings of this proposal agreeable, particularly due to its clarity and its ability to be utilized in understanding some assumptions and contradictions of an artwork before entering a critique situation. During the fall 1988 semester, the class read “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus” by [Louis] Althusser. I felt this reading would give the students a complex idea of what informed the more rudimentary analysis which I proposed to them. The class also read “Beuys: The Twilight of the Idol” by Benjamin Buchloh and “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.” I was particularly pleased with the way the slower students made progress, and the way in which students worked together in class during the fall of 1988. I feel that the success I had in the fall of 1988 had a lot to do with students’ decisions to take the Post Studio class in the spring of 1989. It was primarily composed of graduate students from film, photography, and art. This class was a special

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class in many respects, comprising some of the most thoughtful and well-­informed students I have worked with while teaching. One of the main characteristics of this group of people was [that] they expected art to communicate as a critical examination of culture and the circulation of knowledge which cultural practice draws upon. One outgrowth of such an examination for a group of students was the development of ideas concerning cultural practice and the need to find a way for the work of art to meet the viewer halfway, thereby possibly presenting information which would allow the receiver to view aspects of culture with some complexity. These artworks were made to be presented in many different situations and not produced, necessarily, for a gallery or museum. As one way of integrating the undergrads, [we] set their presentations so they would have the most amount of time to present their work. The readings started with an attempt to begin to understand what conservatives wanted out of education and art funding, and view some of the more basic ways these were connected. For purposes of discussion, I gave the class both “Politics in Academe” by Howard Risatti and “The NEA [National Endowment for the Arts]: Looking Back and Looking Ahead” by Samuel Lipman. A number of weeks went by before “Beuys: The Twilight of the Idols” was read (as in the prior semester), “Joseph Beuys, or the Last of the Proletarians” [by Thierry de Duve] and “Reproducing Nature: The Museum of Natural History as Nonsite” by Ann Reynolds. The fall of 1988 and spring of 1989 Post Studio classes certainly represent two of the most fulfilling, exciting classes of my teaching career, and certainly the spring class marks a sophisticated level which ought not be so difficult to achieve in the future. If education is to be developed out of such a class as my spring class, it will not be done until major changes in institute policy can take effect which will allow for this type of an education. Yet, unfortunately, I feel it will be impossible until the administration is committed to an advanced level of education which upholds the highest standards possible and one which is not jeopardized by quantitative solutions to qualitative problems.

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Letter to Jonathan Liss, recent art school graduate: “My Teaching Approach” (July 1, 1998)

Editor’s Notes: Asher outlines his teaching philosophy and describes his Post Studio Art class at the California Institute of the Arts in this letter. It was written as a reply to a recent art school graduate who had written to Asher to ask about Asher’s approach to teaching. The title “My Teaching Approach” was written by Asher on the manila folder in which he placed this correspondence. He wrote the name of the addressee, “Jonathan Liss,” at the top of this document. Although Asher filed his letter (a photocopy of the handwritten document) in the context of the files on his own students, Liss had not been a student of Asher’s.

7/1/98 Dear Jonathan, I wish to thank you very much for the letter you sent to me last February. The Post Studio Art class, which I teach at CalArts, turns around class members’ works of art. I lead the discussions to different areas where I want students to participate and develop an examination of the work being presented. Some areas to begin focusing on are as follows: the ways the work operates, which is either similar or unlike the presenter’s description; how does the work read next to practices which may have informed it; and how does it read in terms of sign exchange? Likewise, rather than following a specific critical methodology, I prefer to employ comparative analysis to guide each line of inquiry. To help clarify certain ideas, I introduce essays or go over practices which embody a similar logic as those works we are talking about. Each inquiry and where it leads is dependent upon what is revealed during discussions. Thereby, it isn’t unusual to turn away from the presentation sequence for a while. There are other times when lectures or conferences intersect with what we are dealing with, so we [the class] try to participate. The above approach casts a wide net at its initial stage but is geared to become increasingly specific. By using this approach, I am able to connect a network of areas for observations which were not available at the onset of the discussion. Finally, with this approach, the direction of the discussion and the areas we discuss can be viewed for their intrinsic value.

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Since readings become necessary through the development of class discussions, I don’t design a reading list ahead of time. If there is an overarching principle, on one hand, it would be predicated on advancing the use of theory and practice so one is contingent upon the other when describing the parameters of an examination, and, on the other hand, it would be the shaping of a classroom situation where students must work together and help each other develop their own ideas and interests with critical tools. Thanks again for your letter, and I appreciate your thoughts. Sincerely, Michael Asher

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Statement on teaching philosophy: “Overview” (ca. 2000)

Editor’s Notes: Asher included this teaching philosophy in his professional résumé, which covered his education, teaching experience, selected exhibitions, publications, grants, fellowships, and awards. There is another “Overview” text in Asher’s archive, dated to 1994, in which Asher focuses on artistic practice. That “Overview” is included in part 2 of this book.

Overview A good part of my art practice stemmed from a concern over the privatization of knowledge and its stratification. A particular model of this expressed itself in college, when information was simplified and tools for critical understanding were withheld. Just as my art was rooted in questions about the circulation of knowledge, so was my decision to develop a situation which allowed enough time to demonstrate the purpose of critical thought and how it operates in art practice, and its limitations when not employed. This approach prioritizes the function of meaning and necessitates that the students become aware of its use in driving production and directing a reading of their work. One of the significant highlights of this method is that it has encouraged the production of artwork which serves as a critical tool to advance an inquiry of its own logic or to further historical, theoretical, or ideological discovery.

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Conversation with Stephan Pascher on teaching (2005)

Editor’s Notes: In this previously unpublished interview, conducted with Stephan Pascher, an artist, writer, and educator, who had been a student of Asher’s at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Asher discusses his approach to teaching practice at CalArts, the art school in which he taught for more than thirty years. This document is based on the second part of the typed transcript that Asher filed in his archive. (The first part of the interview, which focuses on the history of both CalArts and the Post Studio Art class, has been omitted.) Pascher sent this rough draft to Asher to review and edit. Asher made some handwritten notes in the draft that have been incorporated in this document. The version published here, however, doesn’t reflect a full editing process which would have been Asher’s usual practice. Minor copyedits have been made in the text for the purpose of clarity.

Part Two Stephan Pascher: Could you be more specific about how French theory, semiotics, changed or informed your ideas about teaching? Michael Asher: This is the weird thing about it. I myself picked up semiotics, or French theory, in bits and pieces. It wasn’t really a hard study of let’s say [Ferdinand de] Saussure, and [Roland] Barthes, etc. As [Benjamin] Buchloh has pointed out, he was always surprised that I had this background, and he asked me one day if I knew any of these people who I had obviously, he thought, been influenced by, and I said I didn’t know any of them. So I can’t quite tell you. I knew bits and pieces, and I could respond to bits and pieces about Saussure and classic semiology and Barthes that I had picked up, but about other people that he was talking about, I really knew nothing. And he could never quite put together how I got to this sort of poststructural moment in my work without knowing. I don’t know how it came about. SP: Maybe that says more about him. What his expectations might be for how someone comes to something. MA: I thought a lot about that. I think, in part, it does. You can’t do anything without immersing yourself into it, and practicing it precisely as you read it, and applying it. I think there are sort of different critical methods in certain areas in culture that you come to regardless; that you get perhaps constituted in, or you’re predisposed to, and you pick up one way or the other, and you might not pick up rigorously, but you

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pick it up. And if it fits your view of things, or your sense of economy about the way things should operate, you use it. It’s not attributed to any authority figure. That’s the best I can explain it. SP: Semiotic writing is so technically precise, it’s hard to imagine it could be reduced to something like, “ideas in the air at the time.” MA: I agree. I know exactly what you mean. When one reads Saussure, one thing leads to the next, [and then] to the next. It’s extremely logical, particularly Saussure, and there’s certainly an organizing principle about how to read something. SP: That’s if you’re trained in that kind of reading, how to read, how to organize knowledge accordingly. MA: I’ve always felt a little funny in my inability to describe it. I might have read it through other authors who were applying it. SP: It would have been easy to see a “natural” relationship between a theory of knowledge based on relations, context, contextual meaning and a practice such as yours, which deals with context. The translation of the idea that meaning is produced contextually, to institutions, and the kinds of meanings that are produced there. MA: I know exactly what you’re saying. And I think he (Buchloh) had, and that he mapped his way of learning onto me. I wish I could have described to him where this came from or how this got there. SP: I’ve always thought that your practice and how you think about teaching were very closely connected. I’m wondering how semiotics figures in your teaching method, maybe how you expect a student to read the work, or something like that. If there’s a way to think about how those theoretical models apply to teaching. MA: Once again, I’m not sure I distilled it and said, “OK, if I can find contextual relations here, and this will bring some sort of critical discipline to the foreground,” that there’s a method to that. I don’t know how and if I, literally, applied that to teaching. I don’t think I did. What I think happened was something more like—­I think this begins very early on and it’s very personal—­that there are two components that come together; that education really doesn’t take hold until the student has a chance to grasp it themselves. I can never think things through or work things out from a top-­down suggestion, for instance. I had to find some reason on my own to need it, and then, I had to seek it out myself. Or remember maybe what an instructor said and try to put two and two together. So the class becomes for me a place where

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the students can operate on their own responsibility, and bring together ideas, and look at one another’s problems, and work at sort of a peer level. That would have been ideal for me as a youth, to begin to work that way, and if an instructor had been around to have set us on the proper course, but with the group in mind, and progress in mind, and some sort of sharing in mind. I’m saying something very general. The other problem was that there were time slots for everything. The way I think and the way I work things through, not necessarily that it’s slow, but if you’re going to do something thorough, it needs a lot of time, and the institutional time slots to do a class had never worked for me—­in high school, in college, at any time whatsoever. I had to find ways in college of seeking out other students outside of class and working with them. The length of time for class is probably just a remnant of this way of thinking. Those are the two components. But you’re probably more interested in the more specific approach or methods. Those to me are sort of a mix of methods. They’re still driven by the need for student responsibility, and how can you inject that into the classroom space and have that happen? So the method starts out trying to hear the student out, but at a certain point, somehow—­and this is different in each class—­it sort of reverts to suggesting in different ways some sort of a critical way of handling the material that the students are handling, the student practices they’re presenting. And it just focuses on different types of critical methods, tools, without suggesting what the work should be, because that’s once again the students’ job. [Note: A handwritten note by Asher in the margin by this paragraph says: “Can this be cut down, wordy.”]

SP: Is there any way to say what those critical tools are? MA: When I have to go back and describe them, I have to go back to the simplest and most fundamental place where they came from, and that’s logic. And it’s just amazing how much, for instance, comparative analysis can work—­whether it’s in the work of art, and this is just one of a number of things, or whether it’s just the students and their notes—­to say: “this works like this, but this is similar, or this works like this, and this is different, and so forth and so on.” And if comparative analysis finds its way to the practice, it’s even more so, because then we see spatially, visually, a problem being literally acted out. That’s just a very simple example. But if one goes right back to logic, what it suggests to me, and why I think this fundamental thing has been brought into the classroom, is that the students quite often don’t follow a vigorous logic, and if they only did that, they would probably have a work of art which had a more critical dimension to it. I don’t know what method you call this. But within the critical logic, we find very specific critical tools that can be used once we’re there. I think the basis of any sort of critical analysis is going to be logic. And what I tell students is once you fall away from logic, then basically your argument has little merit because it just has holes in it. Nobody is going to necessarily follow it. It has less and less credibility or reliability.

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SP: I wonder if this brings us back to what we were discussing about the influence of conceptual art, and this is very general, but if there is some kind of generalized frame inherited from conceptualism, and I’m thinking not only about the use of language, though that is a symptom, but in particular the interest in organization, systems, how you define the parameters. A sort of [Sol] LeWitt method, where the structures are already there, and by using an external structure, other things could come out, would emerge. MA: I think that’s really correct, and what’s important to understand is that the structures are readymades. SP: Whenever I’ve been asked to describe your class I would often say that there were two important things in terms of models and methods, one was the legal system and the other was psychoanalysis—­the legal form of argument which is based on logic; and with psychoanalysis, in particular, the back-­and-­forth that goes on between patient and analyst, and I’m speaking in a strictly technical sense, the specific methods psychoanalysts are trained in. MA: What I just described to you about logic, what’s fascinating in a discussion, is that sometimes in a discussion we do get to the point of motivation. What the student talks about is not necessarily their motivation, but what the class can often tell, from the way they’ve talked about it, what they’ve proposed, are little fragments of their motivation. Why I bring up motivation, if there is any psychoanalytic dimension to it, it would be at that level. SP: I see exactly what you mean. Too often intention and motivation are conflated but they’re in fact different, if subtly different. MA: They are subtly different. You know, the class at that point is sort of the psychoanalyst waiting to weave every little piece together. That’s where the class has to learn to be very, very careful, and be even more precise. SP: Yes, what do you really want, or why do you want to say this? MA: I really don’t like getting in there too much. If the student has laid the groundwork for that, if it has something to do with what they’re doing and why they’re not directly correlating what they really want to do with what they’ve done, then, I think it can be discussed. SP: I was thinking of the more formal aspects of psychoanalytic practice and why I brought it up. It’s actually something I took from listening to one of the Alan Watts lectures that used to play on Pacifica Radio. There’s a particular lecture, and it may

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be from 1958, where Watts is reading a paper by Jay Haley, who comes from the Bateson School and Frame Analysis, which looks at the psychoanalytic frame from a sociological point of view. It’s amazing. He describes the “art of psychoanalysis” as having something to do with the game of “getting the one up.” MA: I have heard Alan Watts talking about that. SP: He discusses all the ploys that a psychoanalyst learns in his training and uses in playing this game with the patient. And this reminded me of something like what goes on in the critique, where you might use certain ploys or tactics to break down, open up, expose something at another level. MA: It’s true. I think the teacher that says that they don’t is probably very . . . [Note: End of sentence is inaudible.]

SP: I don’t know in your case if you could be more specific about how you do that. Lawyers learn the same thing, even how to tear a witness to pieces—­and I’m not saying that’s what you do—­but how to undo a person’s story. I think there is an element of that. I don’t know if you’ve heard the same Alan Watts thing that I did, but he discusses all the ploys; and at the end of the lecture, he describes a remarkable thing, how one day the patient arrives, perhaps after a long period of analysis, and the analyst begins with this play, but the patient doesn’t respond. What he’s discussing is the end of analysis, and it’s not on the analyst’s terms, but rather the patient’s. There’s a point in the treatment where the ploys no longer work, and it has nothing to do with the analyst’s incompetence. The patient simply refuses to go on playing. He doesn’t need it anymore. He simply doesn’t care what the analyst thinks. When I heard this, the analog to your class was striking. Again, I’m talking about the formal aspect, not what we were discussing earlier regarding the distinction between intention and motivation. MA: I see what you’re saying. I am really sensitive to this thing about motivation. At the formal level, I could see where even my lack of saying something could make it seem like—­[Note: Sentence ends here in original.] SP: That’s one of the ploys Watts is talking about. MA: The students do get nervous, I’ve been told over the years, when I don’t say anything. This person who had sat in on my class said, “you know, you didn’t say anything for three hours.” Really, I can’t imagine, that’s a little extreme. Things must have been going OK. SP: As you mentioned earlier, it’s their responsibility.

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MA: It’s a little like if the discussion gets way off the point, I might be able to bring it back in, or weave together some points that have been made and want to explore them a bit more. Quite often it’s a historical question, like when a student feels they are doing something innovative, and I might ask “what is so innovative about this,” or does it have roots somewhere else, in some other way of thinking or somebody else’s practice? It’s funny. The students have one responsibility. I have a totally different responsibility. In doing these sorts of things I’m acting out my sort of responsibility to the class. I want the students to be a cohesive whole separate from myself, but then again, it’s really a contradiction because I like the idea of discussing problems with them. The actions I take hopefully . . . I have this position, which is a different responsibility, but I’m trying to figure things out with them. It’s a funny situation to be in. SP: It works very differently one-­on-­one in someone’s studio. MA: Definitely. SP: Do you think you’ve been consistent over the years? I mean, has Post Studio evolved, have there been changes in how you’ve approached critique? MA: I think at the beginning I was put in there with the idea that I was the authority figure, and I was given that impression, but I simply couldn’t work like that. So I think I probably experimented with different ways of working, but I felt most comfortable working with students trying to figure out problems. And I think that’s been going on for a long time. At times, in different classes, I’ve had a more authorial role. But it doesn’t work that well for me. I don’t really get to be as productive in a classroom when I’m that way. I sort of frame myself as having limits within that authority, I don’t get to be as expansive or as experimental as I want to. I don’t get to say, “well what I just said two minutes ago really doesn’t hold up now because you said this or you said that,” it really doesn’t work that way. Or I can’t say, “let me retrace my steps about what I was saying or thinking—­” SP: You’d be undermining your own authority. Did the length of the class grow? MA: It did over the years. It was obvious that I was trying to shoehorn people in at the beginning. I couldn’t tell when somebody was really finished, and I thought, if it’s their responsibility, they ought to finish themselves rather than there being a time limit. So if one person took one hour and another took three hours that was fine. But that’s something they have to decide upon. SP: It’s an incredible luxury. At every other institution that I’ve been involved with or heard about, it’s very limited; you are given time slots by the institutional frame.

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And to have to conduct a critique in a short amount of time requires another kind of technique. You have to get to the most important points right away, because you’re looking at your watch the whole time knowing you have to move on in a half hour. It’s very difficult. MA: That’s really rigorous. It’s very hard. SP: It’s also hard for students to exceed those time limits. When they come to your class for the first time, they’re probably not used to that openness. For the students to be able to continue productively for so long is a challenge. [Note: Inaudible response by Asher.]

SP: It’s a really uncomfortable feeling when you look across at students and you find they’re hanging on your every word. MA: I really love it in Post Studio when it gets to the point where the students can correct me. It’s working then. It’s everything I want. SP: That point in the analysis where they just don’t care. I’ve always been fascinated by that moment where something changes all of a sudden, and you don’t care. MA: It’s terrific. If they feel they’re in a position where they’re correcting their peers, but I’m just there too, and they can correct me. They’re working on their own. SP: They’re thinking for themselves. Sometimes I think students are not conditioned to think for themselves, that they’re conditioned somehow to believe there are answers out there in the world, if they would just do it this way. MA: You know it begins with grammar school all the way through college. That if they get this form of education, they’re less likely to experience something like what you’re talking about. SP: That’s why it can be a shock to come into Post Studio for the first time. I realize the luxury of having these endless critiques, and in other situations you are forced into a different posture as the instructor. MA: I’ve sat in on Benjamin Buchloh’s class, and he just moves everyone along like a performer. He’s constantly asking students questions, so he’s trying to have contact with them and not try to say everything himself. But then again, he was always the one to correct them.

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SP: It’s one thing to ask questions, and another thing to ask questions when you don’t have the answers already. I want to return to the role of theory. You had said that you thought French theory offered students a methodology, something through which they could understand better the things they were doing. MA: I think so. I’m not sure that it did, but I would have imagined it did. Once again, it offered them a very clear logic, something that was very precise they could follow very clearly. SP: We sort of answered it before, that it was not the case that you incorporated a particular theory directly into a particular teaching scheme, or argued a particular theoretical model in relation to production. And I know you would never do that. MA: No. SP: We had said that one of the more radical contributions of CalArts was the introduction of theoretical texts into art education. MA: That’s when the art program became sort of advanced in thinking, the way the rest of the school was thought to be. I know that John Baldessari read a lot of theory, but I don’t know how he applied it or if he did. SP: It’s not that radical a proposal that art students would be reading. MA: No, but there is a younger generation that begins to think that maybe you can teach by using specific theory. SP: Do you think that someplace like the Whitney Program has adopted that as a model? MA: Yes. Perhaps Mary Kelly is a good example of somebody that might have done that. For instance, in reviews she’ll say “so and so says,” like “[Jacques] Lacan says x, y, and z, and in this work you can see that happening.” SP: I think there might have been some of that at CalArts too. I recently saw a former student give a lecture about a work in which he employed all this theoretical jargon in a really elaborate description of his methodology, and then at the end of the talk, almost as an aside, he finally came to what for me, was really the most interesting detail, the thing he actually modeled his installation on, the mapping of one physical space onto another. And for me, that was the beginning of the argument not the end.

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MA: He put the effect before the cause. SP: You’ve brought up Mary Kelly and I’ve brought up the Whitney Program. I’ve always felt that there were real differences between what went on at CalArts and the approach of the Whitney Program, which to my mind, always starts from the text. MA: I’m even hesitant that a work of art can be made from theory. A theory is a form of speculation. And the work of art is experienced not in the terms of speculation. So right then and there, just on the basic surface of it, you have a totally different experience. SP: I remember a group of students really interested in speculative models. MA: I think that knowledge can drive a work, but I don’t think you can ever make a work that is a model of theory. SP: It would be an illustration. On the other hand you do think theoretical texts can be used to inform an attitude, or a way of thinking about certain relationships. Maybe they’re more useful for discussion than actual formation of work. MA: I think if they can motivate or animate thought, that’s all that’s needed. Even logic helps the mind go through problems, and go through thoughts, and go through ideas, to see what is rational, reasonable, makes sense and what doesn’t. So theory also introduces one to ideas or ways of thinking. And those ways of thinking can inform the work, but the work simply can’t be a model of theory. SP: It’s like comparing how one gets to the work with analyzing that work after the fact. MA: If someone can say why they’re drawn to a theoretical model, maybe that’s more important than the model in and of itself. Because the model only condenses it at the end into something they can talk about. SP: Maybe you find sometimes people use the model as a cover-­up, like “that’s what I’m really doing.” I was thinking about what you said about logic, and how rational a structure logic is, and how that flies in the face of the thinking about art as an irrational activity. MA: I know. I think it’s really important. That idea that art is irrational, illogical, ends up becoming a part of what makes it so undemocratic. It’s that not everybody always has so much access to the illogical and irrational, or can really understand what it’s about.

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SP: What do you mean have access? MA: Well, why shouldn’t the viewer be able to follow a work through and comprehend it, rather than have to start looking for these illogical or irrational moments and say “oh, those are poetic, or self-­expression, or this, that or the other thing,” which brings the sign of the work, of course, back to the author, rather than leaves it within culture. SP: But those are precisely the terms in which the general public is taught to appreciate art. Not only the romantic idea of the Author, but more generally, the irrational aspects of a work. MA: Yes, and I think that’s where a work of art tends to find its way into a class of people that can afford it. SP: Because you have to pay more for the irrational? MA: Yes, they have to pay for the extra play. SP: Maybe that’s why conceptual art never had any value. The more rational it looked, the less anyone would value it. Also, why would you pay for the everyday? Reproducing structures that existed everywhere else but the art world. People want art as an escape. MA: Exactly. SP: I think of LeWitt’s work and about how rational it looks, but then something else is happening. Like there’s a sort of conceit of a rational structure. MA: I think, finally, in those large colorful geometric shapes. SP: I’m thinking of much earlier work. MA: Yes, when you finally see that stuff, you realize that it was a conceit. SP: He was interested in the tension between those structures and what was actually happening. Maybe he was positing another way to get to some irrational basis for art, but not through the traditional ways. MA: I know exactly what you’re talking about. If I think once again of those large geometric shapes, they end up doing precisely that. They’ve abandoned the structure, you can’t find the structure, but they allude to a structure, they allude to something that has some sort of [rational] quality, but they never are rational in themselves.

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SP: You find that in the very earliest work. MA: I see what you’re saying. SP: The cube work for example. They all look formulaic, but maybe they take you somewhere else. It’s not the classic irrational move that people think art should be making, but it made some other kind of irrational move available. I think he says as much in some of the early writing. MA: It’s a real interesting problem. SP: You don’t even have to look at the later colorful geometric things. You can find it early on. MA: I think you might be right. SP: It’s interesting, your idea that the students need a logical way of talking about what they do, when so much traditional art teaching is based on the notion that you can’t teach art, that it’s based on self-­expression, or feeling, etc., that you could never reduce things to an analytic argument. It’s still true to this day, especially as it’s so reactionary. MA: I’m afraid you’re right. After all this time. SP: In terms of education in general—­the end of the liberal model of education. MA: You know, last Saturday I walked into my bank and had to do a wire transfer to Brussels. I spoke with the manager, who is responsible for millions and millions of dollars each week, that it goes through properly, that it goes to the right place. She has to be very clear about it. I was giving her the address, and the city was Brussels, and she asked what country Brussels was in. I tried not to flinch, and then she said, “how do you spell Belgium?” I tell you, I walked out thinking “that is where my money is?” I can’t believe it. What does that mean, that she knows nothing about world history? It comes down to exactly what you were referring to, this idea of specialization has gone so far. SP: I was thinking that one of the most inspiring things about CalArts was that it proposed the possibility of art education as a nonspecialized form of education— ­and this might be the most radical thing about it. That it could be a model of general education. Not in the sense of liberal arts education reform. But that art could be the key to a generalized education. Something like an application of all these things we’ve been talking about, not just to the work of art, but to the world. And in the end, that’s probably the most radical proposition that CalArts offered.

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MA: I think it is an important one, one that’s wrestled with. SP: And they’re now dismantling the idea. MA: Yes, they say, “let’s prepare the students for a professional career,” and I’m the one who says, “let’s use the classroom for experimentation, let’s go through different ideas, let’s see the process, let’s see the mistakes,” where other instructors say “no, no.” SP: Prepare them for a career. MA: So you can see, just in those little things, sort of this tension going on. And I’m saying “OK, what I’m asking for should also take place after education is over with too. You should be able to be adventuresome, you should be able to experiment.” It’s sort of the market forces which disallow that, but regardless, you should be allowed to do that. SP: It’s funny because that’s what the market thinks it’s paying for. MA: But in fact they’re paying for a very cleaned up version, highly finished, highly produced and so on. The illusion of it all. SP: The sign for creativity, the sign for imagination, the sign for experimentation. MA: It’s very true. SP: It’s complicated. There must be so much pressure at a school like CalArts for professionalism from the administration, the economic pressures that produce that. MA: I think there’s a great deal of pressure on the school. Even the accreditation boards put the pressure on, and that pressure is also a finishing pressure. They want to see models of professionalism going on in each of the schools too. So you get it from all sides. And finally you have a student who really doesn’t get a very well-­rounded education, or it points to that. SP: What you’re saying is that they get the opposite of what is actually encouraged. Because they call for, certain disciplinary requirements that are supposed to assure that the students get a well-­rounded education, but at the same time they’re calling for hyper-­specialization, which means more craft, more proven qualities, so the student never really gets the general education. It seems paradoxical. MA: It does.

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SP: Maybe you see a change in students. That they’re looking for authority, looking to be taught how to be an artist. That art education has become this thing where students are looking for specific instruction in how to become an artist. MA: I certainly see that in some of my students, but some are enlightened and they’re there to get a grip on some of the questions and problems. SP: It must be difficult how, given the times, you can sustain a school without succumbing to these pressures. The same question could be posed to practice: How to sustain a practice that resists such pressures? And how is a recent grad, who is just starting out, able to conduct such a practice, that is, get any play? MA: Yes, if you know that the only way you can enter the art world is through a very finished work of art, that you have to learn everything to the extent that you can make this very finished work of art, and you’re accepted with that very finished work of art, what are you going to be doing for the rest of your life? Probably mutations of this very finished work of art. SP: You’re not going to experiment too much. These are some of the greatest challenges in trying to teach art today. Or at least teach a sort of critical attitude, asking certain questions through the work of art. Who is going to engage those? MA: And you can see some of the students think, “maybe I should learn about criticality because it’s the reviews that are going to discuss criticality, and I should be able to discuss with a reviewer what is critical about my work.” Something as simplistic and awful as that. SP: But have you read recent criticism? MA: It’s horrific. SP: It’s part of the same problem. What are the criteria for criticism? MA: Reviews are at a new low. They’ve never been particularly good. SP: It’s rare to come across any decent writing. MA: It’s all part of the same stew.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Abeles, Kim, 112 Acconci, Vito, 214 act up, 214 Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Degree Programs in the Arts, 203–219 Afterall, 192 Ageing & Society, 24 Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, 49 Alacoque, François, 151 Althusser, Louis, 220 Aluminum and glass, work described by Asher as, 80 Ambiente/Arte, 128, 129 Amon Carter Museum of American Art. See Amon Carter Museum of Western Art Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 100–101 Anaheim Union High School District, 15 Anderson, Dennis, 214 Andre, Carl, 181 Anna Leonowens Gallery, 122, 123, 133, 136 Apolinère Enameled (Duchamp), 167, 168 Apollo, 113 Aprè-emain, 24 Architecture, 56, 79–80, 82–83, 102–103, 142, 175 art conceptuel, une perspective, l’, 21–25, 113–115, 114 Artforum International, 203–204 Art History (journal), 113–115 Art in America, 156–158 Art Institute of Chicago proposal for the permanent collection of, 3, 145–149, 150

work for 74th American Exhibition at, 106–109, 145, 148, 150 work for 73rd American Exhibition at, 57, 59–60, 65–66, 142–145, 156–157 Art of the Indian Southwest, 15 Arts and Crafts (movement), 28, 33, 88–89 Askevold, David, 133, 134 Bachelor of Arts (ba ) degree, 205, 207–208, 210, 213, 214 Bachelor of Fine Arts (bfa ) degree, 205, 207–208, 210, 214 Baldessari, John, 232 Banff Centre School of Fine Arts. See Walter Phillips Gallery Banff National Park, 150 Barthes, Roland, 225 Baumgarten, Lothar, 214 Beaubourg. See Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou Benjamin, Walter, 50, 145, 146, 150 Beuhler, Launa, 151 Beuys, Joseph, 181 Bibliothèque publique d’information. See Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou Bienal de São Paulo, 88, 89 Brams, Koen, 53 Brand, Jan, 10, 11 Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, The Duchamp, 220 Hamilton, 220 Broodthaers, Marcel, 76, 214 Brouwn, Stanley, 53 Buchloh, Benjamin H. D., 18, 225, 226, 231

on Asher, 43–44 as coauthor and editor of Writings 1973–1983 on Works 1969–1979, 3, 9, 57, 117 and Post Studio Art readings, 220, 221 Buren, Daniel, 26–27, 39–40, 53, 102, 172, 214 Burgin, Victor, 214 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 26, 27 Butterfield, Jan, 18 Caesars Palace, 157 California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), 213. See also Post Studio Art degree programs at, 207 faculty at, 215 independent studies at, 216 1973 work at, 99 teaching at, 1–2, 15, 205–207 teaching Post Studio Art at, 220–223, 225–237 visiting artists at, 215–216 California Postsecondary Education Commission (cpec ), 205, 210 Cambridge School, 42 Carnegie International 1991, 46–47 Carnegie Museum of Art, 46–47 Celant, Germano, 128 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, 192 Centre Georges Pompidou. See Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou Changing Channels: Art and Television 1963–1987, 13 Chouinard Art Institute, 207 cia. See United States Central Intelligence Agency Claire S. Copley Gallery, 122, 123, 130–132 Clocktower Gallery, 134, 136 Commodity, 60–61 Conceptual art, 1, 18, 21, 22, 23–­25, 113–115, 228, 234 Consortium, Le (Dijon, France), 178–179

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Contemporary Artists (book), 15–17 Copley, Claire, 130–132. See also Claire S. Copley Gallery Craft, 150–151 D&S Ausstellung, 57, 60 Daidalos, 113 Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (Picasso), 106–109 Dannatt, Adrian, 178–179 Davidts, Wouter, 53 De Duve, Thierry, 221 De Quelques Interférences: Interstices (Buren), 26 Documenta, 95 Documenta 5, 16, 21, 22 Duchamp, Marcel, 41, 106–108, 148, 167, 220 Education. See also Post Studio Art advancing notions of taste in, 28 and audiences for art, 33 models of learning and, 70–76 in museums, 58, 193, 195–198 and October, 204 and professional degrees in the arts, 205–219 reflecting on personal history of, 29–30 and teaching philosophy, 224 and work for the Stuart Collection, 160 Eisenman, Stephen, 112 Etablissement d’en face, 63 Ex-tension (exhibition), 57, 61, 112 Fairfax High School, 70, 192, 195 Flash Art International, 178–179 Fort Worth Art Museum, 100–101 Forty-five-degree stretchers and canvas, work described by Asher as, 82 Foster, Hal, 62 Foulon, Olivier, 63 Francis, Mark, 46 Fraser, Andrea, 76 French theory, 225–226, 232–233 Fuchs, Rudi, 18

Galerie Roger Pailhas, 26 Gammelgaard, Jørgen, 128 Garden Grove School District, 15 Geffen Contemporary, The, 110 Generali Foundation, 88, 96 George Washington (statue), 54, 57, 59–60, 66, 142, 143, 144, 156, 157 Getty Research Institute, 56, 88 Gintz, Claude, 21–25, 113 Gladys K. Montgomery Art Center, Pomona College, 57, 59–60, 99 Gordon, Julie, 205–217 Graham, Dan, 214 Grauer Panther, 24 Gray Panther Network, 24 Groos, Ulrike, 69 Haacke, Hans, 150 Haley, Jay, 214 Hamilton, Richard, 220 Harding, Anna, 70, 192, 195–198 Hatch, Connie, 214 Heat-­formed Plexiglas, work described by Asher as, 80 Heiner Friedrich Galerie, 99 History, 40, 48, 113, 186, 191, 203 Holzer, Jenny, 214 Home Show II, 48 Horta, Victor, 88 Hou Hanru, 35–44 Houdon, Jean-­Antoine, 54, 57, 59–60, 66, 142, 156–157 Huebler, Douglas Bradford Series 2-66, 86 Truro Series #3, 86 Hugonnet, Maryse, 67–68 Hultén, Pontus, 31, 45 Humanities, in professional arts education, 214 Imrie, Heather, 151 In Context (exhibition series), 9, 110–111, 162

Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, 31–34, 45 Institute for Art and Urban Resources, 134 Institute of Contemporary Art (ica ), Boston, 156, 158 Institut für Gegenwartskunst, 49–51 Institut für Kunst-­und Kulturwissenschaften. See Institut für Gegenwartskunst Institutional critique, 1, 76, 179, 193 InterReview Journal, 57–62 Jimmerson, Tom, 139 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 15 Joselit, David, 156–158 Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 113 Kabinett der Abstrakten (Lissitzky), 199 Kelly, Mary, 214, 232, 233 Kennedy, Garry, 150 Kimbell Art Museum, 100–101 Knight, John, 26–27, 214 Knowledge acquisition of, in professional arts education, 203–204 in Asher’s practice, 3–4 circulation of, 4, 221, 224 cultural, 32, 34, 42, 53, 55 library as a site of, 168, 176–177 museums and accessibility of, 74 privatization of, 50, 224 public, 3, 50, 53, 146 and the work of art, 233 Kolbowski, Silvia, 214 König, Kasper, 3, 9, 68, 117 Koons, Jeff, 156–158 Kosuth, Joseph, 214 Krefelder Kunstmuseen. See Museum Haus Esters; Museum Haus Lange Kuhlenschmidt/Simon Gallery, 162 Kunstraum (Vienna), 49, 50–51 Kunstverein (Hamburg), 57 Kwon, Miwon, 88

Index  

241

Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum, Lacan, Jacques, 232 53 lacma. See Los Angeles County Museum Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 102–­103 of Art Minimal Future?, A, 79–­87, 86 lacmaLab, 57, 70, 72, 75, 192, 195–­196, Minimalism, 43–­44, 200 198 Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. See laica. See Los Angeles Institute of Fort Worth Art Museum Contemporary Art “Modern Art Museums and Their SpectaLa Jolla Museum of Art, 117–­119, 119 tors” (conference), 65 Lawler, Louise, 112, 156 Modernism, 22, 43, 207 Leef Tijd, 24 aesthetic dimension of, 160 LeWitt, Sol, 228, 234–­235 critique of, 24, 40 Licht, Jennifer, 121 in fine art, 150–­151 Lipman, Samuel, 215, 221 misuse of the found object in, 179 Liss, Jonathan, 222–­223 and site specificity, 185 Lissitzky, El, 199 viewing art and, 148–­149 Long, Richard, 133, 134 Mona Lisa (Leonardo), 149 Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Monument, 60, 146, 157–­158, 160 (lace ), 162 Morgan Thomas Gallery, 130–­132 Los Angeles County Museum of Art Motherwell, Robert, 122 (lacma ), 15 Mulholland, William, 89 work for Made in California: now at, 58, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 70, 75 21–­25, 113–­115, 114 work involving student reinstallation at, Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre 56, 192, 193, 194, 195–­198 Georges Pompidou, 166–­177, 170, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art 178–­179 (laica ), 133–­141, 138 Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo Los Angeles in the Seventies, 100–­101 (maxxi ), 35 lwl-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, 65, 156, 157, 180 Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Lyke, Linda, 112 (macba ), 88, 96 Museum as Muse, The, 4, 57, 61, 88, 89 MacNevin, Brian L., 150, 154 Museum Haus Esters, 102 Made in California, 70, 192, 195 Museum Haus Lange, 102–­105, 104 Made in California: now, 57, 58, 69–78, 77, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig 78, 192, 195–­198 Wien (mumok ), 13 Mäkinen, Marketta, 151 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Master of Fine Arts (mfa ) degree, 210, 214, Angeles (moca ), The, 9, 54, 79–87, 215 110–­111, 162. See also Geffen ContemMaubant, Jean-­Louis, 66–­67 porary, The; Temporary ContempoMichael Asher: Exhibitions in Europe rary, The 1972–1977 (book), 18 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 57, 88, Michael Asher Foundation, 2, 5, 6 89 Michalka, Matthias, 13

242

Index

Portland Center for the Visual Arts, 13 Museums alternatives to education in, 193, 195–­198 Postmodernism, 43 Post Studio Art (class), 1–2, 4, 220–221, functions of, 36, 74–75, 107–108, 172–173 222–223, 225–237 galleries compared with, 37–39 Prina, Stephen, 214 institutional critique and, 76, 193 Provençal, Le (Marseille), 26, 27 operations of, 73–74 Provinzialmuseum Hannover, 199 permanent collections of, 72, 163–165 Psychoanalysis, 168, 173, 174–175, 228–229 as public institutions, 146 Public art, 53–55, 68, 95–96, 157, 160, response to Asher’s practice by, 58–59 181–186 as shaping the public’s experience, 62 “Public/Relations” (symposium), 52 viewers’ role in, 148–149 working with, 65–69 Readymade, 41, 82, 182, 228 Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmensz van National Endowment for the Arts (nea ), Rijn), 146 15, 133, 209, 215, 221 Renaissance Society at the University of Naylor, Colin, 15 Chicago, 21, 28, 29, 61, 88–94, 90, 92 Netherlands Architecture Institute, 52 Research, 88–89, 94–96 “Not for the Museum? On Art in Public Retrospective exhibition, 21, 23–24, 96, 113 Space” (conference), 53–55 Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, 113 No title, 1966 (Asher), 81 Reynolds, Ann, 221 No title, 1966 (Asher), 85 Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery, 162 Notre Temps, 24 Nouveau Musée, Le (Villeurbanne, France), Risatti, Howard, 221 Roger Pailhas Gallery. See Galerie Roger 36, 65, 66–68, 178–179 Pailhas Nouveau Réalisme, 167, 168, 172 Romagna Arte e Storia, 113 Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 9, Rorimer, Anne, 66 15. See also Anna Leonowens Gallery Rosler, Martha, 214 Nude Seated in a Bathtub (Duchamp), 106–108 Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, 48 Occidental College, 57, 61, 112 Santa Monica Museum of Art, 199–200, 201 October, 203–204 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 225–226 Open Venster, 24 Schulman, Nancy, 139 Orange Coast College, 15 Sekula, Allan, 214 Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, Semiotics, 225–226 gallery of, 15, 122–127, 127, 133, 136 Serpentine Gallery, 70, 192 P-­Orridge, Genesis, 15 Serra, Richard, 181 Pacifica Radio, 228 Seurat, Georges, 142 Palais des Beaux Arts (Brussels), 46, 88–89 74th American Exhibition, 106–109, 109, 145, Pascher, Stephan, 4, 225–237 149, 150 Picasso, Pablo, 106–109 73rd American Exhibition, 57, 65–66, 142, Pomona College. See Gladys K. Montgom143, 144, 145, 156 ery Art Center, Pomona College

Index  

243

Shank, Adele, 212, 218 Sharing Common Ground, 100 Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, 66 Simiolus, 113 Site specificity in artistic practice, 1 in Asher’s practice, 21–­22, 26–­27, 31–­32, 45, 47, 48, 68–­69, 75, 94, 99, 155, 181–­186 context in, 36 and exhibition catalogs, 10 Situationism, 36 Skulptur Ausstellung in Münster 1977, 65, 88, 180, 187, 191 compared with other Skulptur exhibitions, 69, 184–186 description of work for, 68, 94 and public sculpture, 68, 181–­184 Skulptur Projekte in Münster 1987, 65, 88, 180, 188, 191 compared with other Skulptur exhibitions, 68–­69, 95, 184–­186 Koons’s work in, 156–­157 Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997, 65, 88, 180, 181, 189, 191 compared with other Skulptur exhibitions, 68–­69, 95, 184–­186 skulptur projekte münster 07, 94, 95–96, 180, 190, 191 Smith, Valerie, 10, 11 Smithson, Robert, 53, 55, 214 Sonnabend Gallery, 158 Sonsbeek 93, 10, 11 Spaces (exhibition), 120–­121 Speyer, A. James, 3, 66, 145–­149 Stafford, Jane, 151 Steinbach, Haim, 156 Stuart, Michelle, 112 Stuart Collection, 1, 159–161, 161, 206 Stuart Foundation, 159 Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884, A (Seurat), 142 Szeemann, Harald, 22

244

Index

Taste, 28, 33, 38, 73, 183 Tate Gallery, 65 Teaching, 220–221, 224, 225–­237 Temporary Contemporary, The, 9, 110–111, 111, 162 Temps de Vivre, 24 This way Brouwn (Brouwn), 53 Thomas, Morgan, 130–132. See also Morgan Thomas Gallery Todd, Barbara, 151 Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey, A (Smithson), 55 Twenty-three-foot taper, work described by Asher as, 82 United States Central Intelligence Agency (cia ), 26, 27 University of California (uc ), Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Degree Programs in the Arts, 203–219 University of California, Davis, 207 University of California, Irvine, 15 University of California, Los Angeles (ucla ), 139, 206 University of California, San Diego (ucsd ), 1, 159–161, 206, 212, 216, 218 University of Chicago, 88–89 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 15 Van Abbemuseum, 18, 63, 162 Venice Biennale, 95. See also Ambiente/Arte Via Los Angeles, 13 Vocation/Vacation, 145, 150–­155, 152 Wall, Jeff, 214 Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, 145, 150, 154–155 Watts, Alan, 228–229 Weiner, Lawrence, 53 West Coast Industries, 15 Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte. See lwl Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Whitney Independent Study Program, 207, 215–­216, 232, 233 Wodiczko, Krzysztof, 214 Wolfe, Ginger. See Wolfe-­Suarez, Ginger Wolfe-­Suarez, Ginger, 57–62 “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, The.” See Benjamin, Walter “Works in Progress” (lecture series), 88–96 Writings 1973–1983 on Works 1969–1979, 5, 57, 117 price charged for, 61 project notes for, 3, 9, 122, 130, 142 Wynants, Etienne, 63

Index  

245