Saturday, July 28, 2012

Surveys of Artists' Periodicals: Books

                             

Aarons, E. Philip and Andrew Roth (eds). In Numbers: Series Publications by Artists Since 1955. France: Jrp/Ringier & PPP Editions, NY, 2009


Allen, Gwen. Artist's Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art. Cambridge:MIT Press, 2011 

Boivent, Marie. La Revue D'Artiste: Enjeux et Specificites d'une Pratique Artistique, Rennes, France: Editions Incertain Sens, 2015


Boivent, Marie and Stephen Perkins (eds). The Territories of Artists' Periodicals. Rennes, Franceand De Pere, USA: Editions Provisoires and Plagiarist Press, 2015

Gibson, Ann. Issues in Abstract Expressionism: The Artist-Run PeriodicalsAnn Arbor:
UMI Research Press, 1990

Held, Jr., John. Bay Area Dada. San Francisco/New York: Snowman
Publications, 1998
Penezcky, Geza. Assembling Magazines. Budapest: Arnyekkotok Foundation, 2007.

Pernezcky, Geza. The Magazine Network. (Hungarian version) Budapest, Kiadja: Hettoronly Konyvkiado, 1991

Pernezcky, Geza. The Magazine Network.  Trans. by Tibor Szendrei.  
Koln: Soft Geometry, 1993


Exhibition Catalogues
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Boivent, Marie, ed. One Page Magazines. Journal du Cabinet du Livre D'Artiste (#28, 2013), Universite Rennes, France, 2013 [includes one page insert by Joseph Ernst, One Page Magazine, March 2013]
Boivent, Marie, ed. Revues d'Artistes: Une Selection. Rennes/Paris: Co-édition Arcade, Lendroit Galerie et Editions Provisoires, 2008


Coracle Press, The Artist Publisher: A Survey by Coracle Press. London:
Crafts Council Gallery, 1986
Dittmar, Rolf and Jurgen O. Olbrich. Art Journaux: Die Kunst der Zeitschrift. Kassel: Kasseler Kunstverein und die Herausgeber und Kunstler, 2000
Olbrich, Jurgen O. International Artists-Magazines. Nurnberg: Art Nurnberg, 1991
 Perkins, Stephen, ed. Assembling Magazines: International Networking Collaborations. Iowa City: Plagiarist Press, 1996
Saper, Craig. Networking Artists & Poets: Assemblings from the Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Rosenwald Gallery Van Pelt-Dietrich Libary, 1997


Saturday, July 21, 2012

Of Piss @N' Pus & Dancing with Wolves

Of Piss @N' Pus, #5, 2002 

Of Piss @N' Pus, #5, 2002 (inside cover) 

Of Piss @N' Pus, #5, 2002 (inside pages)
Of Piss @ND Pus, #7, 2002

Of Piss @ND Pus, #7, 2002 (inside pages)
Of Piss @N' Pus, #9, 2002

Of Piss @N' Pus, #9, 2002 (inside pages) 
Of Piss @N' Pus, #11, 2002
Of Piss @N' Pus, #11, 2002 (inside pages)
Of Piss @N' Pus, #11, 2002 (inside pages)
Of Piss @N' Pus, #12, 2002

Of Piss @N' Pus, #12, 2002

Dancing with Wolves, #1, 2012

Dancing with Wolves, #1, 2012 (inside cover)

Dancing with Wolves, #1 2012 (inside pages)

Of Piss @N' Pus

(& Dancing with Wolves)


___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Twenty-five years ago, when the Nazis fled from Belgium, my native country, after four years of military occupation, I saw people burning in the streets all over the country whatever had been German: books, magazines, records, films... Buildings which had been occupied, or built, by the Germans were dynamited. The Belgians wanted to erase forever whatever had been part of the Deutschland Kultur. (Toche, 1969)1
It's not easy being Jean Toche—at almost eighty he's still waging war against the hypocrisy and stupidity of our national and political culture. Since the early '90s, from his secure location in Staten Island, he's been sending out bold, loud and outraged handbills that contain his responses and suggestions for making things better, and how to keep the bozos away from the levers of power. An exposer of fraudsters, poseurs, politicians, hypocrites, government agencies and the art world, Toche started with single sheets of text that were mailed out to around 50 people at a time, then he centralized this activity in his artists' periodical Of Piss @N' Pus (2002).2 Each of the periodical's 12 monthly issues contain individually signed and designed handbills from a specific month. Using quotes from mainstream media sources (New York Times & Wall Street Journal), Toche combines these with his own texts to critique, challenge and ridicule a wide range of political and cultural events. These are serious and often outrageous attacks on the body politic but they always contain a hint of humor. Toche does not exclude himself from these critiques either. Each page is printed on different colored papers, often with assorted pre-printed designs and he creates different typographic layouts for each page. Bound together by a removable plastic binder these original page works are presented in an economical, and modest format that is in elegant contrast to the extravagance of Toche's critiques and the challenges he aims at bombastic politicians and their ilk.
At the same time as Toche started this periodical he was encouraged by Jon Hendricks, a former artistic partner, to experiment with digital technology. He acquired a new printer that enabled him to print works up to 10 feet long and a digital camera and software with which he began to create, and manipulate, an archive of self-portraits. It is from this latter collection that he chooses the self-portraits in his now standard practice of combining digitally manipulated self-portraits with his own and mass media texts. From 2002 up until quite recently he was printing his works in sizes that varied from 6 - 10 feet long. Recent issues with the wholesale supplier of this photographic paper has necessitated him working in a reduced format of 11" x 8". Once again in order to streamline distribution of these works he has adopted a folder format to distribute small groups of works. One of the first of these publications I received from Toche was in May 2012 and it was titled Dancing with the Wolves, Vol. #1. Other similar mailings have not included the periodical title, which suggests that Dancing with the Wolves might have been a one-off periodical.

Toche also has something of a history of intervening in situations in order to get his voice and opinion heard. As one of the founding members, with Jon Hendricks of the Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG, 1969-76), they communicated their views by writing letters & sending handbills of protest to their adversaries, and sometimes they created actions to draw particular attention to an issue.3 One celebrated event was the "blood bath" action that took place on November 10, 1969, in the foyer of the Museum of Modern Art, in which Hendricks, Toche, Johnson and Silvianna4 staged a fight in which the bags of blood hidden under their clothes burst and splattered the participants. The text that was left at the scene demanded the resignation of all the Rockefellers from the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art because of their involvement with the 'war machine.'

Four years later the museums would get their revenge. On February 28, 1974, Toche, under the auspices of the 'Ad Hoc Artists' Movement for Freedom,' sent a handbill to assorted museums, newspapers and individuals in New York City in which he demanded a number of things, including the kidnapping of museum "trustees, directors, administrators, curators, & benefactors," and for them to be held as war hostages until a People's Court could be convened to "...deal specifically with the cultural crimes of the ruling class..." Toche, with solidarity from the arts community, fought the kidnap charges for more than a year before the government dropped all its charges.

Toche was 12 years old when he witnessed the events he describes at the beginning of this text, and the powerful image of Belgium's WWII anti-Nazi purge and the frenzied eradication of all Deutschland Kultur provided a vivid experience of the power of culture and the culture of power. Since his arrival in the US in 1965, Toche has waged his own war against a culture he despises, and that's our culture of political corruption, inequality and discrimination, to name but a few. However, one thing can be stated with certainty—Toche's fight will be a fight to the end!5


Stephen Perkins, 2012


Footnotes
1. Jean Toche, ltr. (Oct. 9, 1969) concerning the 7th Annual Avant Garde Festival, in GAAG: 1969-1976, Printed Matter: New York, 1978, unpaginated: Introduction.

2. Various issues of Of Piss @N' Pus have different dates: #1-5: 2003, #7-12: 2002. Despite these different dates the publication was published monthly during 2002. Confirmation of these dates can be found in Kristine Stile's exhibition catalogue "Jean Toche: Impressions from the Rogue Bush Imperial Presidency," presented at Duke University's John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, Duke University Center for International Studies, 2009. In footnote #5, page 14 she states that she received the periodicals by mail from Toche and they were all postdated 2002.

3. Other collaborators and members of GAAG, were Virginia Poe (Toche), and Poppy Johnson.

4. Silvianna was an artist/filmmaker and participated in this action only, (in GAAG: 1969-1976).

5. Printed Matter in New York has recently reprinted their invaluable 1978 sourcebook about GAAG, titled: GAAG: The Guerrilla Art Action Group, 1969 - 1976 : A Selection, Jon Hendricks & Jean Toche, New York, NY: Printed Matter Inc., 2011.  Printed Matter also has some of Toche's publications for sale as well as copies of Of Piss @N' Pus #2 for $3.  http://www.printedmatter.org/

An update: Jean Toche was found dead in his home by the police on Monday, July 9th, 2018, he was born in Breuge, Belgium in 1932.


Friday, July 20, 2012

Stampzine

Call for works for Stampzine #6, 2000 


Stampzine #1, 1995

Stampzine #1, 1995 (inside pages)

Stampzine #2, 1996
Stampzine #2, 1996 (inside pages)
Stampzine #2, 1996 (inside pages)

Stampzine #3, 1997

Stampzine #3, 1997 (inside pages)

Stampzine (l-r):#5, 1999, #6, 2000, #4, 1998 

Stampzine (l-r):#6, 2000, #5, 1999, #4, 1998

Stampzine (insides pages from above three issues)

Stampzine

This interview with Bill Gaglione, editor of Stampzine, took place in San Francisco in 1995. Six issues of Stampzine were published between 1995-2000.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Stephen Perkins: One thing that I am really interested in is assembling magazines and you did a Vile assembling, was that the first one you'd done?

Bill Gaglione: I think so...

SP: You adopted the assembling technique because it was the best way of working...

BG: I had just got back from Europe and I was in Eastern countries and I saw what was going on, they were doing those type of magazines, I was aware of that, but I saw a lot of it, and I said wow! Again it was the money factor, who had to money to publish? So it was a nice way to put a publication together.

SP: So you connect assemblings with the former Eastern bloc countries?

BG: Most of the publications that I saw there were assembling type publications, so I was really influenced by that. In 1970 we toured Eastern Europe.

SP: Which magazines?

BG: Off hand I can't remember, they were so obscure. Pawel Petasz type magazines or rubber stamp magazines. Galantai in Budapest, he showed me a lot of stuff. Again when I got back I said I wanted to do an issue of Vile, but I don't want to go through the hassle of getting the grant, actually Anna did most of that. And I wanted to do color and it was strictly rubber stamps and it was a weird size. I got to give credit 'cause I had to cut each page 300 times and then stamp it 300 times. It's a really nice issue, it's thick, it's huge, I think 185 artists sent pages. Another aspect of assemblings was that I liked the collating, because I used to call all my friends and it's a nice social way to get together, instead of just sitting there drinking and getting stoned, which we did, but we worked and it was fun. Especially that one, it took us all day, I had about 50 people. My friend was a teacher at a school and we laid these tables out and we walked around and we had food and drink, it was really fun. So that aspect was really nice also, plus it's inexpensive, because basically you design the cover and your course is basically putting it together and mailing it out, and you have to do that anyway. Plus you can do color, limited edition, also that's another reason why I liked this concept.

SP: In the sense of?

BG: That it's limited. Once it goes, it goes. Also, whoever contributed got a free issue that was a nice way of distributing that book.


SP: So had you contributed to assemblings before?

BG: Oh yea, Kostelanetz, a lot of stuff in Europe, all through my sort of quote "mail art career." I've liked them the best 'cause I always used rubber stamps, it's a real home made feel, real artsy fartsy.

I've got to hand it to Kostelanetz 'cause he really did a lot of them. Then I did a magazine called Stamp Art in the '80s. It was the same thing, they were all hand stamped, that was my only requirement, I told people you can do anything you want but each page has to be hand stamped at least once, and the rest you could do anything you want.

Now you might find the cover interesting [picking up a copy of Stamp Art]. This is the first four color stamp ever made, and it was basically a photograph and we got the separations made our of rubber instead of... So we did five issues there, Vile and then they called us stamp art. Eventually I will mail you a copy. So that's the only two assembling-type magazines that I did and I'm thinking about doing another in the '90s. I'm helping a woman called Patricia to do one now, she's doing an assembling-type where you mail in 50 copies, so I have been involved with that.