RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER, Blp, 2012
20 x 15 x 5 inches / ca 66 x 50 cm
print on cotton canvas bag, zipper, inner pocket with extra zipper
edition unknown
published by Whitney Museum, New York, USA
mint condition
rare
€ 495,- plus € 24,- Track & Trace registered mail
inv.RArt Tassen-pr
Apart from being a bag this edition with a matte printed surface may be hung as a piece in itself. For its production it was being taken care of to give the black ‘Blp’ a matte rubberlike thickening layer giving the bag a sculptural outlook.
Richard Artschwager (1923 – 2013) first created his blps (pronounced as “blips”) in the late 1960s. These installed black pill shaped forms or marks were meant to inspire focused looking and draw our attention to places and things around us that often go unnoticed.
Artschwager’s blp began in 1963, in one of his notebooks is written that he was looking for a ‘very hard, dense, heavy after-image’ (notebook 12/23/1963). From 1968 and for years afterwards, the blp would appear on power plants and museum walls. Tamed to paper, the blp continued to have a life of its own. It was occasionally fuzzy and often rubbery.
This remarkable canvas Blp-bag was produced during the artist’s life time.