An Inclusive Litany

11/16/98

In New York City, an auction of conceptual and minimalist art at Christie's exceeded all its sales goals. Bruce Nauman's concrete block with a tape recording of a woman screaming playing inside it fetched $288,000. Four canvases by Sigmar Polke containing only incorrect mathematical equations yielded $882,000. And On Kawara's seven canvases featuring only the dates May 1-7, 1971, sold for $574,000.

Boston performance artist Paul Richard's most recent show featured a room completely empty except for a stack of $20 t-shirts for sale. At a previous show, patrons filed past to watch the artist eating lunch. San Francisco sculptor Joe Mangrum persuaded the city Art Commission to let him disassemble his 1986 Mazda into a pile in the middle of Justin Herman Plaza and call the sculpture "Transmission 98." For this work, Mangrum was paid a $2,000 artist's fee from the city, part of which he used to pay off $1,480 worth of outstanding parking tickets he had accumulated with the car. New York performance artist Bob Powers's recent works include one in which he uttered a single sentence, "No, but I gave you a twenty," thirty times, and another called "Ode to a Buttered Roll": "How do you do it? Sixty cents. So tall, so round, so many poppy seeds. Sixty cents.... One corner deli owner tried to charge 75. Sixty cents." In an interview in the Village Voice, Powers said, "I would be thrilled if I got a $25,000-a-year grant for the rest of my life. I don't want money for any lofty goals. I want it just because I'm lazy and tired."

Finally, art students at Leeds University, accepting school and private grants of about $2,000, created a class project they said was "designed to challenge people's perception of art." By using the money to take a holiday at Spain's Costa del Sol resort, the thirteen students said they successfully raised the issue of whether there was any limit to what could be described as art. Most of the sponsors subsequently demanded refunds. But after the London Daily Telegraph, and other British newspapers reported the story, the students revealed it as a hoax. They had staged the vacation by acquiring tans at salons and taking fake beach snapshots. The point of the artwork, they said, was to demonstrate how easy it is to fool the press. No word on whether the sponsors still want their refunds.