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| Vision #1, 1975 (California) |
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| Vision #2, 1976 (Eastern Europe) |
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| Vision #3, 1976 (New York) |
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| Vision #4, 1980 (Word of Mouth) |
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| Vision #4, 1980 (attendees) |
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| Vision #4, 1980 (names of attendees) |
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| Vision #4, 1980 (Record & insert) |
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| Vision #5, 1982 (Artists' photographs) |
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| Vision #5, 1982 (inside box) |
Vision
This
interview between Stephen Perkins and Tom Marioni took place in San Francisco
on July 5, 2006. Vision
was published in 5 issues between 1975-1982. For an interesting article by
Marioni about Vision titled "Vision Magazine:
Idea-Oriented Art in Print (1975–1981)" see: Vision Magazine: Idea-Oriented Art in Print (1975–1981) (East of Borneo) This article also provides a link to a pdf of issue #1.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Stephen Perkins: One of the things that’s a subtext
to Vision is that it’s a
collaboration with Kathan Brown (wife & publisher of Crown Point Press).
Tom Marioni: Yes, she was the publisher and I
was the editor and designer. In the first issue she wrote an article on this
Italian immigrant, Baldasare Forestiere (1879-1946), who built these
underground tunnels. Otherwise the decisions and the design were mine. Except
issue #4 (1980) where we went on the island, that was a collaboration. There
were only five issues, and the fourth one was the artists’ talks on Ponape in
the Pacific Ocean, and that was a collaboration…
SP: ...and collaboratively funded,
because you got an NEA for one part of it and Crown Point...and I assume Crown
Point was connected to some of those artists?
TM: Yeah, a lot of them.
SP: Why Vision, the title?
TM: Well, it sounds a little corny
today, but at the time it seemed like artists have visions, or a vision and it
was designed to present an artist’s work that they designed themselves. They
designed the pages, so it was really like the artist’s own vision, it wasn’t
like I’m interpreting it, or changing it, or anything, so that’s all it was.
SP: But, in a 1986 interview, you talk
about the point that you reached where you realized you could only do
conceptual work, and you weren’t attached to the object, and you talk about
that as almost like a “vision”, and after that point you can’t do anything
else, because you just know what you want to do, and there is no kind of
argument, there’s no question, and you’re certainly showcasing similar artists
in this series and so this was the only linkage I could make to that rather
normative word in a way, for presenting really pretty radical stuff. It’s not
‘vision’ in the traditional sense, it’s almost an undoing of the idea of
‘vision’.
TM: Well, we were still in that conceptual era when I started
that publication. And, so they were mostly conceptual artists, with a few
exceptions. The last issue “artists’ photographs”, I think that they were all
conceptual artists in that issue. There were 50 artists from 16 different
countries. The original idea I had was to do one on different cultures, I was
planning on doing one on Italy, but that turned out to be too difficult, that
was going to be #4. So 4 years went by when we didn’t do one and then we went
to that island to do #4. So then it changed...it had a format, it had that kind
of golden rectangle proportion size to it, so that when it was open it would be
more like a square format. So, in the first one each artist was given two pages
to design themselves and then in the second issue the artists didn’t design
their works because I had to collect it, and traveling in Eastern Europe and
everything. And then the next issue I gave each artist six pages to do and they
designed their works for 6 pages, except for De Maria, it turned out it had to
be eight pages because of the colored paper.
SP: Was that something that just
developed, the idea of having an original artists’ piece or was it something
that you really felt you wanted to have there, in which case why didn’t you
have more?
TM: More artists?
SP: Yes, more pieces. Why just one piece
per periodical?
TM: Well, it sort of had the character of an exhibition
catalogue, where I was illustrating the work in the show, in this case the show
was in the book. And even in the case of the artists’ photographs, I printed
everything just on one side of a loose piece of paper, and a couple of people
at universities actually made exhibitions with the catalogue, or with the book,
which was really a catalogue in that case.
SP: I like the way that the
publications cross over into these different realms and concerns, and it also
seems like an extension of your activities at Richmond Art Center, and after
you had left that you were kind of curating with publications in a way, they’re
like exhibits.
TM: I had started the Museum of
Conceptual Art in 1970 and by 1975 I considered this as part of my MOCA
program, so these were exhibitions were in a way too.
SP: So that would be printed matter
exhibitions—you consciously saw them as functioning like that?
TM: Hmm...mm.
SP: I think that’s one of the interesting
things about all of them, and more literally with the photo one is that it
really can be used as an exhibition. What happened to the original photos, the
original show?
TM: The artists sent the photographs, and in some cases they
were installations, like Vito Acconci’s was 20 8x10” photographs and they were
all put up on the wall in the shape of an airplane and then that was
photographed and reproduced. Robert Barry’s was a projection from a slide
so...they were all different kinds of photographic mediums....some were
Polaroids and so on....and so they sent the photographs and we made an
exhibition in the Crown Point Press gallery and then this was literally the
catalogue for this show.
SP: It's a fascinating show and great people! How was the show received?
TM: We bought an ad for it in Artforum magazine at the time and it didn’t get reviewed anywhere
and even in the local art newspaper for some reason, and then, this was weird,
somebody locally who used to review photography and art both, he was reviewing
for Artforum, and he came over and he
saw the show, and he read the catalogue, and in my catalogue introduction I
refer to photography like another craft, like other craft mediums, something
like that, and that disturbed him so much because this was a show of people who
were not normally photographers, none of them were photographers they were all
conceptual artists. And I asked them to do photographs as artworks and not
photographs as documentation. Christo sent me a picture of his "Running
Fence" and I mailed it back to him....
SP: I think that’s a very interesting project and a very
interesting result, and another thing is that many of those artists were also
sculptors and that’s seems like another thread—these sculptors working with the
printed page in an idea-oriented way, that seems to be another current that
runs through all issues of Vision.
TM: Well, when I started MOCA I sort
of based the idea of it on being a sculpture action museum, which comes a lot
from the influence of Joseph Beuys, where the idea of sculpture being made out
of what he called “curious materials”, which could include political
activities, or sound, or any material, light, or whatever. So, I always
considered that my point of view, and it’s more a California point of view,
like the art being experiential in California, we’re in a body culture and so
on like that. So it just seemed to me that most conceptual artists come from
sculpture rather than painting, and the happenings came more from painting. The
happeners were all painters, except Oldenburg, whereas the action artists, the
performance artists, and the conceptual artists—the different kinds of
conceptual artists mostly came out of sculpture, and not out of painting.
SP: I had never thought of them as
sculptors or their backgrounds, you kind of foreground that and its
interesting...I’d have to go back and look.
TM: In my “Beer, Art and Philosophy”
(2003) book I pretty much talk about that a lot...
SP: I love the book, I love the clear,
matter of fact way that complex things are described. Do you think you
encapsulated what you experienced, what you found in Eastern Europe in the
second issue, did that feel complete, did that feel like a full statement of
the people you had met and the different ways people were working in the
different Eastern European countries?
TM: I was in touch with a lot of those artists because of having
my MOCA space. I was getting stuff in the mail, and discovering artists in
those countries, and so then I made some connections, and I had been invited to
make a show in Warsaw, Belgrade (twice in Belgrade) and then in Prague too. So
I traveled through those countries...
SP:..to show your own work?
TM: ...yeah. And then met artists and
they introduced me to other artists, and so it’s the best way to find out who
the best artists are, is from artists and not from curators. So I learned about
the whole underground art scene, which it was at that time in 1975...but later
something interesting that Carl Andre said to me when I was doing the New York
issue (#3, 1976) he said to me about the Eastern European issue, he said “I bet
if I had gone to Eastern Europe I would have found a lot of minimal artists,”
because I went there and found a lot of conceptual artists. He sort of thought
I should have found some different artists, cause the artists I was finding
were conceptual artists, but that was the most interesting art being done there
because it was political, it was underground...the other art was not
interesting...
SP: Do you keep in contact with any of those Eastern European
artists? Knizak, have you kept in
contact with him, Minister of Culture, or whatever?
TM: Well, he’s the director of the
State Museum know, and he was head of the Art Academy before that. I actually
met him in Berlin, and not in Prague when I was in Prague, and anyway I’m not
really in touch...Rasa Todosijevic, from Belgrade, I got him a gig at the Art
Institute here last spring, and he came and stayed with me, and the same with
Petr Stembera from Prague....
SP: Is he still active?
TM: No, not as far as I know...but I
got the Art Institute to bring him back in the 1980s. Those two artists are the
ones I’m still in contact with, I guess.
SP: The first three issues of Vision come out in a very concentrated space of time, within 2
years, a lot of activity and then sort of eased off until #4 and #5, and that’s
a lot of work in a year and a half to put out 2 really substantial....
TM: Yeah, well it was expensive to do
and we sold them for what seemed a lot at that time, $10 an issue, but they
were like a signed, numbered, limited edition, we only printed a 1000 of each
one. In New York we would send them to, not Printed Matter, but there was
another artists’ bookstore in New York, and it was the best one at the time,
and they never paid us. They would order them and then sell them, and not ever
pay us.
SP: Printed Matter? You’re sure it
wasn’t Printed Matter because they never pay!
TM: No, it wasn’t Printed Matter, but
Printed Matter sold a few but they paid for them. I can’t remember now, Jaap
Reitman that’s what it was, he had a bookstore in Soho. Originally the idea was
that we were going to do 3 a year, well that was real ambitious, so we did 1
one year and 2 the next year. And then it turned out that after the third one
we had a lot of trouble getting the Italian issue done. I was going to do a
Japanese issue too, I was planning to do that and then it was just getting too
expensive, we couldn’t make anything back from it. It wasn’t like a magazine
where we had ads in it either, it was an art journal we called it. So by 1980,
when we did the artists’ conference, I got an NEA grant to do a conference, and
then Kathan got some money, it was the first year she made a profit with the
press, so we combined that to produce it and go on the trip. And then people
went on that trip, the artists were paid for, but then if they wanted to bring
their spouses they had to pay their own way. And there were other people that
went...
SP: Robin White (editor of View, Crown Point Press) and some
curators and the critic (John Perreault)....
TM: We brought the critic....
SP: And then he wrote a piece in
February (Artforum) about it, I
haven’t come across it, was it positive?
TM: Oh, yeah. And then they paid extra
the people (who came on their own), so it ended up not costing us anything to
do that, well I guess it cost Crown Point something, but they had made a profit
that year.
SP: Interesting project, did you feel
that it hit the mark? Did it do
what you wanted it to do, the texts?
TM: The word of mouth...
SP: Was it pretty open in terms of
what they could talk about? They
just had 12 minutes.
TM: 12 minutes, because of the
restrictions of time on an LP record, so 2 on one side, 3 records, 12 people.
And I had invited Joan Jonas, and she said that she couldn’t go because she was
planning on doing a performance in the Guggenheim Museum in 1980. So I invited
Laurie Anderson in her place, and Laurie Anderson wasn’t so big then, she was
up and coming. The same with Marina Abramovic, she was unknown really at that
time. Anyway, so then Laurie Anderson accepted right away and then Joan Jonas
called back, and said that she had changed the date on the Guggenheim so that
she could go. So there was like maybe too many performance artists on that
thing, because it was Brice Marden and a few painters, but there were maybe too
many performance artists, because of Joan Jonas coming back again.
SP: And Cage, he was in from the
start?
TM: Yeah, oh yeah. I had invited two
or three others, Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys, and they couldn’t do it.
SP: Very interesting project, must
have been a very fascinating time just hanging out and seeing how the people
worked together, or didn’t.
TM: It was 3 camps: there were the Europeans, the New Yorkers
and the Californians. At first we were all equal, but then it kind of started
to break down into those groups, that was interesting.
SP: Did that sell well, that issue?
TM: Yeah, but the thing is there’s
still some left. We did a 1000 of each issue and there’s still some left,
actually the Californian one’s probably sold out but all the others there’s a
few left.
SP: I was kind of surprised to see
them on the Crown Point Press website and at quite reasonable prices. But I had also read in a 1975 report of
a San Francisco artists’ meeting which Kathan attended instead of you, because
you were out of town, and she was accused of being elitist because the price of
the magazine was $10 and it gave me a whole new slant on it, because it’s a
very reasonable price now. [ed. Note: Floating Seminar #2, “A Survey of
Alternative Art Spaces in San Francisco,” October, 2, 1975]. And also there was
another comment you made in terms of your experience in Eastern Europe and
looking at the idea of ‘art for the people’ etc., and there was a quote that
you said that I thought was rather interesting “people’s art is the official
position of Eastern Europe and an examination of the work of artists there has
convinced me that now, not only in Eastern Europe, but here as well, the elitist
position is the radical one.” And that whole notion kind of surfaces in
different places. I was wondering if it was something that you were concerned
with at that time, or being accused of?
TM: A funny thing happened, I went to New York and I visited the
artists when I was doing the New York issue, and I went to visit Carl Andre and
he was living with Angela Westwater in her penthouse apartment, and I went to
the door and he came to the door in his overalls in this very posh apartment,
and he’s a Marxist and all that stuff, and I thought that was really funny
and...my position has always been that art is the most excellent of the
culture’s products, the most excellent examples of the products of the culture.
And that can be seen as an elitist thing, it’s not like everybody can do it, or
its for everybody, so that’s elitist!
SP: Well, she gets criticized about
the magazine particularly for that (the price), and now when I look back at it,
obviously it’s not art for the people, it was very serious about what serious
artists are doing, and now I look at it now and not only is it a kind of
exhibition, but it’s a very unique resource for a lot of those artists’ work at
that particular period of time, and particularly work put together for the
printed page, so there’s an integrity to about how its presented, or at least
the thinking about how it’s presented in a printed matter environment. So, now
I think they very much work like mini-exhibits, or definitely there’s a
curatorial model that replaces the typical editorial one.
Looking back, I assume the project is finished?
TM: Yeah.
SP: Do you think it was a success, did
it do what you wanted it to do, has it changed over time when you look back on
it now?
TM: Well, it goes through different
eras, where the politics of the world or the country change. Like one time John
Cage said to me that he was popular every other 10 years, because if you do the
same kind of work, then it goes in and out of fashion, or in and out of the way
people think, because we live in conservative times or liberal times or
whatever. So, the magazine is going to look different in different decades, I
guess.
SP: Were there other magazines at that
time that were models for you, Avalanche,
I think that was around that time?
TM: Yes, Avalanche was important and Der
Lowe, which was the Swiss magazine, that was a little small one and done by
Gerhard Lischka, he’s a friend of mine, he’s in Bern, Switzerland and that was
a really interesting magazine, and he told me that in the late ‘70s, or around
1980, Kunst magazine the German
magazine, had said that Der Lowe and Vision were the two most interesting
publications published in the 1970’s.
SP: Well, it certainly seems to have
slipped below the radar of the very little critical writing, or survey writings
on this period, and as a conceptual art periodical in the States, aside from The Fox and Red Herring which
showcased the texts and the debate, Vision
sticks out as the only one I can think of that is really presenting, and
allowing conceptually based artists to present their work in their own way, in
their own words, rather than having their work reproduced, it’s sort of producing it within the pages.
TM: In London there was a show of art
publications, a big one, and they had the Visions
in that at the Victoria and Albert museum and we went to that. Well, one of the
reasons is that it was published in San Francisco, and San Francisco does not
have much of a literary tradition and it’s hard for the center in the arts to
take anything from California seriously.
SP: That has its good points and bad
points, I guess. But you’ve just had a pretty big show just round the corner at
the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, they’re finally waking up to what you’ve
been doing.
TM: Well yeah...but I’m having a show
at the contemporary art center in Cincinnati, and it opens in August, and the
De Young or the SF Museum of Modern Art here would not take it.
SP: They were offered it?
TM: Yes, but they were offered it
really late, I’ve got to say that, that’s the fault of the Contemporary Art
Center in Cincinnati, they were very slow in getting moving. But both museums
own several of my works and they are loaning some of them to my show in
Cincinnati. I’m respected here as an innovator and all that stuff, but the
people don’t buy my art or collect my art. It’s strange here, the bigger art
collectors here they go to New York, even if they’re buying art by San
Francisco artists, they buy it in New York.
SP: So do you sell your art in New
York, to San Franciscans?
TM: No, I actually don’t sell much art
anywhere, in any case, but that’s because of the kind of art I do, you know I
do art that’s not so accessible.
SP: When you have shows where you have a large amount of work do
you include Vision in that?
TM: That’s going to be in a case with a lot of cards, emphera
and stuff, and some of my catalogues that I designed will be part of the
Cincinnati show, so the Visions will
be in that show.
SP: …’cause it’s a very distinct printed matter activity that
you have been involved with at different points in time.
TM: Yes, it won a design prize, the
first three Visions. In New York they
had the ADI, the designer or something or rather, I don’t remember now, it was
a long time ago, but they gave it an award for best design.
SP: Yes, it’s nice and clean and lets
the work....
TM: No, I interrupted you because when
I get an idea, and if I don’t say it right there and then I can’t remember it a
minute later.
SP: I know the feeling! So you see Vision as a discrete project?
Have you picked up work in that printed matter vein again, have you done
any other projects in that way, have you thought of resurrecting it, or thought
of doing different types of periodicals?
TM: I thought on a couple of occasions
to do it in other mediums, and last year I organized a show for the De Young
museum of artists’ videos and I invited 18 Bay Area artists to do 5 minute
videos and I called it a motion picture because, 18 artists at 5 minutes, it
came to 90 minutes, it’s like the record (Vision
#4) deciding the number you know, and the standard length for a motion picture
is 90 minutes, so I put them all together and I put titles on the beginning,
and we had a weekend showing of it, and it occurred to me at first that if this
really came out good, I could do a DVD and it could be another Vision, it could be an extension, could
start if up again. But there have been a couple of times like that, where I
have thought about making another Vision
journal, in a medium like that but I haven’t. That was just then, like when I
closed my Museum of Conceptual Art in 1984 and it was the end of an era and
painting was back, conceptual art was over with you know, it came, and it went.
and it came back again, but not in the 1980s.
SP: On the cover of Vision #5, you have the photo of
Duchamp, I assume that’s sort of homage to Duchamp or a reference to his boxed
works or play with that.
TM: Oh, that’s a photograph by Man Ray
of Duchamp as Rrose Selavy....
SP: That was something that wasn’t sent to you, that was
something that you selected?
TM: Yeah, I took it, I just used it.
And in the beginning there’s other examples, like there’s Picasso and Dali,
that’s part of the introduction to the journal, and I used Duchamp on the cover
to emphasize the idea that here’s an artists’ photograph, but it was not
photographed by Duchamp, it was photographed by Man Ray, because there’s always
this issue about who’s the artist, who’s the photographer and who pushes the
shutter—is that the photographer, or the person who designs it? Which was
always an issue about conceptual art, whether the artist made it or not, with
their own hands.
SP: ...or did it matter? But it does also reference Duchamp and
how he presented some of his work in boxes as well.
TM: Oh, right yeah, that was inspired by his box. I have the White Box (1967).
SP: And then it also references your identity play with your
alterego for a certain period of time.
TM: Yes, Alan Fish. Also the idea of
the artists’ photographs was I chose to make—when you buy photographic paper it
comes in a box that size and its yellow, like Kodak, so I made it to be like a
box of photographic paper and made it that size.
SP: I like the care with each publication, the care with each
presentation, the final form, and that’s part of the piece. Do keep your eyes
on contemporary periodicals, are there any contemporary ones that you have
noticed, or is that not on your horizon?
TM: Well, I mean I read, well I don’t say that I read them, I
look at them, the New York magazines and two or three from Europe. I’m not
aware of any like more underground ones, except there’s one in Paris called Trouble that a French art critic just
interviewed me for by email, it took 6 months, all about my beer art, it’s a
very long article and it’s going to be in Trouble
magazine, it’s the next issue, it’s finally finished I guess. They’ve had
artists write for it too, Lawrence Weiner’s written for it, and a few other
people, you should look for that.
SP: The critical reception of Vision, did anybody else write about it,
were there any reviews of the periodical?
TM: I don’t remember.
SP: I haven’t come across any, I find
it extraordinary really. I mean here’s a periodical from a very distinct part
of the geography of the art world and....
TM: Around here anyway. San Francisco is kind of provincial in a
lot of ways, and the style here was, I mean the reason I started the Museum of
Conceptual Art—it was still funk art, it was still funny art with angst, you
know, expressive figurative art and stuff like that, and that was the style. So
I was an outsider, the work I was doing wasn’t accepted. I basically started it
and then invited artists, who were other outsiders like me, they didn’t go to
school here or they came from outside, they were from other parts of the
country, or they were from Europe, a lot of people were Europeans, and they
would come to my thing here to, my Wednesday parties.
SP: I see similarities with that sort of social activity, and
that gathering activity, and sort of community in a way, or offering that, as
the same way you used the periodicals, you brought people together in a kind
of, not necessarily in dialogue, but there’s a certain amount of dialogue, and
I think....there’s a sort of curatorial model that you apply to different
situations, and I definitely see that working with the periodicals.
TM: My wife tells me it’s an Italian
thing.
SP: Curating, bringing people
together?
TM: Yeah, yeah...
SP: But it’s a leitmotif for a lot of the areas that your
working with. So that’s one of the interesting things I find about the
periodical because they can function as initiators of community or networking,
or hubs at different times....
TM: Well, it was just an extension of
my work as a curator.
SP: Absolutely, and as a sculptor.
TM: Yeah, sculpture and being a
curator.
SP: I think those are two key things.
So aside from Kunst and Der Lowe those were the only periodicals
that you remember knowing about or might be influenced by when you started Vision?
TM: Oh no, Kunst magazine was just a regular magazine that wrote an article
saying that Vision was along with Der Lowe was the most interesting
publication done in ‘70s.
SP: But Der Lowe was quite an interesting publication.
TM: Oh yes, that was more like Vision.
SP: Did you see Vision as a kind of alternative space like MOCA, which you talk
about as an alternative space, do you think the periodical functioned in the
same way?
TM: I saw it as like an activity of my
museum, and so that the kind of cafe society, is what I called it at first, the
beer with friends kind of thing which was in the downstairs bar, and the
publication, and then I had concerts sometimes, very kind of avant-garde music
people, and sculptors doing performances and some temporary installations, and
some things that were left permanently as part of the permanent collection, so
it was all part of running a museum to me. So, by having the museum, museum’s
have publications, they do restoration, they do conservation, they did all
those kinds of things.
SP: If offered you a frame of reference.
TM: I did it all straight, even though
people thought it was a joke, I was being very serious about it, and fun too. I
didn’t do it if it wasn’t any fun for me.
SP: Yes, I got that feeling! Did you have a lot of documentation
from those activities, you never thought of bringing some of that together
as....
TM: Well, I sold the archives to the
University of California, Berkeley Museum in 1992, and so that sort of wrapped
that up. They have all the Vision
archives too, like the artists’ plans, and designs, and notes and stuff, for
the Vision magazines that they sent
me, all went to the archive too, so they have all that stuff.
SP: The final work, the photographs
for that show, where are they now, could that be remounted?
TM: Those photographs were returned to
the artists after the show, like any show.
SP: I was thinking maybe the show was
sitting somewhere...
TM: Oh yeah, in a big box
somewhere! Yeah, it was a terrific
show.
SP: Absolutely. Tom, I think that’s
basically about it.
TM: I’ve probably got other stuff to
tell you about it but I just, you know its been out of my mind for so many
years.
SP: Well if anything comes up you’ve
got my email. I think it’s a very interesting project, coming from a very
particular part of the art world that’s been totally forgotten, and I think
there’s a number of different things working across it, particularly your role
as a curator, and a sculptor, and applying those models to a printed matter
environment, for me that’s very interesting.
TM: There’s a lot describing about the
different Visions in my beer book,
that you can refer to for some things that we might have forgot about.
SP: In where?
TM: In my beer book.
SP: Yes, there’s a fairly hefty
section on Vision, yes and there’s
reference to artists and people. Well, thanks a lot.
TM: So, and your going to come by this evening?
SP: Yeah, and that’s here? I’ll definitely, I think maybe I’ll
check out the museum and....