BEN VAUTIER, Écrire entre les lignes, ca 2012 [large display for shop]

BEN VAUTIER, Écrire entre les lignes, ca 2012
plastic display for shop counter, 50 pens with 4 different sentences in print
Parker Guitars Vector
published by Parker Pen Company, Newhaven, East Sussex, UK
extremely rare
pristine   
€ 4.800,- + € 32,- Track & Trace registered EU mail

A word, a thought or a slogan like ‘To write between the lines’ is in the art of Ben Vautier a trade mark for many years now. He is known for his performances, installations, his Fluxus shop in Nice and texts on paintings and objects. Writing his texts in white-on-black is his favorite activity. He calls his art Total Art.

Both museums and private entrepreneurs gladly make use of his tongue-in-cheek words. Here Parker Pen Company managed to make a deal with the artist concerning Ben Big Box products. This is definitely a sculpture and not so much a counter display for selling Parker pens.

CLAUDE CLOSKY, Dada DIY, 2012

CLAUDE CLOSKY, Dada DIY, 2012
chain 71 cm / letters 2 cm, box
mixed media
edition 100
published by Galerie de Multiples, Paris, France

Claude Closky is known for making Appropriation art using advertising, fashion and commodity items. Making a fashionable bracelet and at the same time referring to a protest movement like Dada is a kind of double Appropriation art, i.e.  a kind of contamination of Prada and Dada Do It Yourself. See also Jonathan Monk’s ‘Dada Necklace’ (2012) apparently has responded to this multiple.

History of prices:
Galerie de Multiples, Paris, France      €  80,-  October 2012
Galerie de Multiples, Paris, France      € 100,-  January 2013
Artspace, New York, USA                  € 312,- / US$ 400.- April 2013

JONATHAN MONK, Dada Necklace, 2012

JONATHAN MONK, Dada Necklace, 2012
MDF, brass plated steel chain, silver spray paint on cardboard
73 x 37 cm / 9,4 x 10,3 cm, chaîne: 90 cm
edition 100
produced by Galerie de Multiples, Paris, France      

With this piece it seems that Jonathan Monk responded to the Dada bracelet of his French collegue Claude Closky who is known for making Appropriation art using advertising, fashion and commodity items. Closky made a fashionable bracelet ‘Dada DIY’ referring to the protest movement Dada, as well as to a fashion brand like Prada, making his bracelet into a kind of double Appropriation art. Jonathan Monk is known for recycling ideas of established artists and probably in turn decided to make his own necklace out of the four letters with chain, as a triple appropriated art work.

History of prices:
Galerie de Multiples, Paris, France  € 150,-  October 2012

JIM SHAW, Hairdo, 2012

JIM SHAW, Hairdo, 2012
61 x 45,7 cm
lithograph, signed, numbered, edition 100
produced by Baltic, Gateshead, UK         € 436,- / £ 350.-  November 2012

The comic book image ‘Hairdo’ of a 1960s bouffant wig references a passage from Shaw’s proposed prog-rock opera based on his fictional religion Oism, a narrative he has been working on for more than 20 years. The image also refers to a mural ‘The Rinse Cycle’ 2012, in which a group of oversized bouffant hairdo’s hover around a desert landscape they share with the interior view of a washing machine in mid-cycle.

JONATHAN MONK, It’s a Newspaper, 2012

JONATHAN MONK, It’s a Newspaper, 2012
68 x 45 cm
3 newspapers, available in pink, red or blue, 16 pp.
published by Yvon Lambert, Paris, France

“It’s a Newspaper” was first distributed during the opening of “It’s a Circus,” Jonathan Monk’s exhibition at Yvon Lambert in Paris from March 10 – April 8 2012. The newspaper explains the origin of Monk’s project through a series of photographs. For his exhibition at Yvon Lambert Monk presented 23 monochromatic paintings that were installed by a circus troop following a precise choreography dictated by the artist. What happened in the main room of the gallery was documented with 23 photographs to be on show in the second room.

History of prices:
Yvon Lambert, Paris, France € 3,- each, November 2012

LATIFA ECHACKHCH, Untitled, 2012 [screenprint]

LATIFA ECHAKHCH, Untitled, 2012
21 x 29,7 cm
screenprint, 270 grams Zerkall paper
edition 100, here nr 178
signed, numbered on certificate
published by Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany
inv.LEch 000-pr

Reflecting on ideas of absence inherent in migration, French-Moroccan artist Latifa Echakhch – having herself a diverse cultural heritage, living in France and Switzerland – made a sculptural work that to an extent ‘repopulates’ the island over the winter months. With the expertise of the renowned Research Institute Senckenberg, the island’s biotope was mapped. Based on these findings, Echakhch developed a project centering around the transient nature of life on the island and the fluctuation of migrating birds, and fabricated a number of kites in the shape of birds to be attached to the trees. The kites are made from plastic bin-bags, echoing the paradox of a nature reserve in an urban cityscape. The screenprint Untitled, 2012 reminiscences this outdoor event.

DAMIEN HIRST, untitled, 2012 [tea towel]

DAMIEN HIRST, untitled, 2012
print on tea towel
published by Other Criteria, London, UK

Damien Hirst is entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists, who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. No matter how many spot paintings there are on whatever, there will always be more words spilled over them. Always structured on the grid the works on canvas look as if they were generated by machine. Here, indeed, dots are printed on a tea towel.

Other Criteria was founded as a publishing company in 2005 by Damien Hirst, Hugh Allan and Frank Dunphy, with creative directorship from Jason Beard and based in Marylebone, London, UK.

 

History of prices:
Artspace, New York, USA October 2023 € 287,-
eBay-positive_star_japan, October 2023 US$ 174.-
Other Criteria, London, England September 2012 € 18,-

JASPER JOHNS, Red Yellow Blue, 2012 [beach towel]

JASPER JOHNS, Red Yellow Blue, 2012
178 x 153 cm / 60 x 70 inches
beach towel
published by Art Production Fund: Works On Whatever, New York, USA

Jasper Johns’s sense of the distinction between saying and showing produced a memorable declaration: ‘When you begin to work with the idea of suggesting, say, a particular psychological state of affairs, you have eliminated so much from the process of painting that you make an artificial statement which is, I think, not desirable. I think one has to work with everything and accept the kind of statement which results as unavoidable, or as a helpless situation. I think that most art which begins to make a statement fails to make a statement because the methods used are too schematic or too artificial. I think that one wants from painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement.’

History of price:
Art Production Fund: Works On Whatever, New York, USA $ 95.- September 2012 (year of issue)