Art by Telephone at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago staged a quiet revolution in exhibition-making by inviting thirty-seven artists from Europe and the US to phone in artworks, rather than deliver finished objects. What resulted was an exhibition built from spoken instructions, some exacting, others deliberately indeterminate. The process was simple: artists shared their ideas over the telephone with curator David H. Katzive, and then museum staff executed the works based on the oral instructions. After six weeks, all of the works exhibited in Art by Telephone were either destroyed or disposed of by the museum.
The catalogue took the form of a 12-inch vinyl LP, with liner notes. and audio recordings from the artists. It is an evocative reminder that art is transmitted, interpreted, and continually reconstituted through the fragile architectures of communication.
Robert Smithson was among the contributors. He phoned through instructions for the event sculpture Concrete Pour, where liquid concrete was poured from a Ready Mixer down a ravine at a site where trucks already came to discard their unused concrete. The sculpture merged into daily construction practice. This, though, was Smithson’s second idea. His first was to present a live work with parrots, and writing to the founding director of the MCA, Jan van der Marck, in September 1969 he observed: “since most people answer the telephone by saying ‘hello,’ I should like to build a work around that word.”
Editor
Jan van der Marck
Designer
Sherman Mutchnick
Contributors
Jan van der Marck, Siah Armajani, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Iain Baxter, Mel Bochner, George Brecht, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Robert H. Cumming, Francoise Dallegret, Jan Dibbets, John Giorno, Robert Grosvenor, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Dick Higgins, Davi Det Hompson, Robert Huot, Alani Jacquet, Ed Kienholz, Joseph Kosuth, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Guenther Uecker, Stan Van Der Beek, Bernar Venet, Frank Lincoln Viner, Wolf Vostell, William Wegman, William T. Wiley
Specifications
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1969
33-1/3 RPM vinyl LP record housed in offset-printed black-and-white gatefold album cover
Height: 12 in. (30.5 cm)
Edition size unknown
English
Out of Print
Condition
This rare original has some markings on the external sleeve, as well as wear and tear from the record being taken out of the sleeve, and a note to Nancy Holt from the Detroit Institute of Arts stuck on its inside.
Art by Telephone at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago staged a quiet revolution in exhibition-making by inviting thirty-seven artists from Europe and the US to phone in artworks, rather than deliver finished objects. What resulted was an exhibition built from spoken instructions, some exacting, others deliberately indeterminate. The process was simple: artists shared their ideas over the telephone with curator David H. Katzive, and then museum staff executed the works based on the oral instructions. After six weeks, all of the works exhibited in Art by Telephone were either destroyed or disposed of by the museum.
The catalogue took the form of a 12-inch vinyl LP, with liner notes. and audio recordings from the artists. It is an evocative reminder that art is transmitted, interpreted, and continually reconstituted through the fragile architectures of communication.
Robert Smithson was among the contributors. He phoned through instructions for the event sculpture Concrete Pour, where liquid concrete was poured from a Ready Mixer down a ravine at a site where trucks already came to discard their unused concrete. The sculpture merged into daily construction practice. This, though, was Smithson’s second idea. His first was to present a live work with parrots, and writing to the founding director of the MCA, Jan van der Marck, in September 1969 he observed: “since most people answer the telephone by saying ‘hello,’ I should like to build a work around that word.”
Editor
Jan van der Marck
Designer
Sherman Mutchnick
Contributors
Jan van der Marck, Siah Armajani, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Iain Baxter, Mel Bochner, George Brecht, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Robert H. Cumming, Francoise Dallegret, Jan Dibbets, John Giorno, Robert Grosvenor, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Dick Higgins, Davi Det Hompson, Robert Huot, Alani Jacquet, Ed Kienholz, Joseph Kosuth, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Guenther Uecker, Stan Van Der Beek, Bernar Venet, Frank Lincoln Viner, Wolf Vostell, William Wegman, William T. Wiley
Specifications
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1969
33-1/3 RPM vinyl LP record housed in offset-printed black-and-white gatefold album cover
Height: 12 in. (30.5 cm)
Edition size unknown
English
Out of Print
Condition
This rare original has some markings on the external sleeve, as well as wear and tear from the record being taken out of the sleeve, and a note to Nancy Holt from the Detroit Institute of Arts stuck on its inside.
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