The Secret Museum - patrizio peterlini

The Secret Museum
The Secret Museum
Edited by
Patrizio Peterlini
General text by
Sandro Ricaldone
with essays by
Alain Arias-Misson
Jean-François Bory
Boris Brollo
Philip Corner
Jean Dupuy
Rubén Figaredo
John Furnival
Geoff Hendricks
Jack Hirshman
Hubert Klocker
Alison Knowles
Ben Patterson
Alain Satié
& interviews by Laura Zanetti to
Lawrece Ferlinghetti
and Jack Hirschman
2014
Preface
Negli anni Settanta avevo scelto come dimora e base culturale, anche oggettiva, la città di Asolo.(1)
In quel tempo Asolo era famosa anche per un mercatino dell’usato
e dell’antiquariato presso il quale si trovavano ancora materiali sottovalutati come libri d’epoca, documenti, vecchi dischi e altro. È in
una bancherella di questo mercatino che un giorno vidi un pacchetto
di libri e una cartella contenente alcuni fogli. La cartella aveva una
etichetta con su scritto “Curiosità Futuriste”. Inutile dire che istintivamente acquistai quel materiale, ancora odiato negli anni Settanta. Non mi resi conto subito dell’importanza storica del materiale
contenuto.
Ho ritenuto ora opportuno pubblicare in questo libro tre di quei documenti.
Il primo è una pagina, forse di un diario, intitolata “Il Carattere” che
mi sembra abbia molte analogie con lo spirito che ha attraversato le
avanguardie da Cage in poi.
Le altre due sono delle lettere che costituiscono dei documenti reali
della situazione economico-culturale in cui Depuro si trovava verso
la metà degli anni Trenta, specialmente in occasione del suo sfortunato viaggio negli Stati Uniti. E qui dovremmo essere attorno al
1935, data della mia nascita.
Il lettore si domanderà ora perché si parli qui, in una presentazione
di un piccolo Museo Segreto, della vita di Depero e delle sue avversità. Il motivo, per me, è molto semplice e sta nel fatto che vedo nei
movimenti e in molti degli artisti figuranti nel Museo Segreto come
dei nuovi Depero. Vale a dire che non sono ancora riconosciuti dalla
cultura ufficiale e da chi la rappresenta.
5
Character
In order to paint, draw and sculpt with character and style, one must first of all have a
mind and soul marked by character and style. One needs (as I see it) mental maturity
and a clear sensibility — faculties of will and awareness which are whole and entire.
Something that surpasses the commonplace — gifts that immediately signal the born
and gifted artist — which set him apart from the simple professional (a dilettante) or
the run-of-the-mill picture painter.
I speak of the artist who engages with the subject he loves and surrounds it with particular passion — who renders it in terms of his own specific notions of style — who
fills it with his own emotional and psychological characteristics — who imbues his
work with his personal temperament, and raises it as though it were his child, leading
it step by step to maturity, in accord with his own personality, and to the moment when
it makes itself original, unmistakable, in the likeness of its author and charged with its
author’s character.
11
Per concludere, devo dire di essere molto fiero delle scelte fatte
negli anni Settanta che questo libro cerca di sottolineare e che il
Museo Segreto cerca di rappresentare. Museo che cerca, inoltre,
di presentare, anche se in modo parziale, alcuni libri e alcune edizioni dell’Archivio, che superano le centinaia, e che rappresentano un
mondo tutto da scoprire. Per cui confido che la mia attività culturale
possa un giorno essere riconosciuta, come tardi è stata riconosciuta
l’opera di Depero e del Futurismo italiano.
Mi scuso vivamente con gli artisti che non sono degnamente rappresentati in questo libro ma è stato fatto il massimo di quello che
le situazioni economico-culturali attuali, non favorevoli, hanno consentito.
Francesco Conz
____________________
(1)
- Asolo is a Veneto hill town with a noble memory of a venerable
past. Its moderate climate and crystalline air, no less than its highly
defensible position with a view in every direction of the plains below,
made it an attractive site on wich to settle in as early as prehistoric
times, and Venetic peoples who later descended from the north and
east were likewise to recognize and exploit its virtues.
(…)
As time went by, Asolo continued to make the acquaitance of some
of the Western world’s most elevated spirits. Palladio lived and worked here, Canova was born not far away in the town of Possano,
wich hostes his temple and collecction of his plaster models. Other
guests and residente were Giosuè Carducci and Gianfranco Malipiero, Robert Browning and Eleonora Duse, whose villa is amblazoned
with verses by Gabriele D’Annunzio, her admirer and frequent visitor. Arnold Schoenberg and Henry James, Hugo von Hofmannsthal,
John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Freya Stark. Asolo was also a
favorite luncheon retreat and watering spot for Max Ernst and Peggy
Guggenheim.
(…)
7
Why, to make things more explicit, should Asolo’s romantic perch
have been a breeding round and second home for the thoughts of a
master of a theater of “orgies and mysteries”, played out with animal blood and entrails and directed toward a rearrousal of archaic,
Dyonysian sexuality? That’s well beyond the pale of whatever mild
Freemasonry may once have hidden away in the town’s patrician
houses or skirted expression in its public meeting placet. And, yes,
John Cage was Schoenberg’s student, but those of Cage’s studente
who, like Al Hansen, might find their art in running naked in a circe in
a glade in the nearby woods, or, like Joe Jones, in settino tiny motor
sto flail the skins and stinge of captive drums and violino on a frame
constructed on a vendor’s tricycle had clearly bid farewell to whatever line of muses may have spawned the twelve-tone scale. Or will
any reminiscence of Eleonora Duse help us grasp a diva, Charlotte
Moorman, who attired in concert dress might dangle in harness from
a belltower and proceed in that position to play her cello?
Da Asolo: A preface by Henry Martin pubblicato in Winterreise.
From Asolo to New York and vice versa 1974 – Edizioni F. Conz,
Verona, 2007
10
Rome, 5.3.935.XIII°
Dearest Marinetti,
I’m sorry not to have been able to say goodbye before my departure.
Many thanks for the letters for Buronzo and Velani, with regrets that up until now
they have led to no result.
Let’s place our hopes in the future.
Surely I find myself in a terrible situation.
To avoid all possibility of fresh misunderstandings, I hereby give you a written account of the sums received in Genoa from Signor De Filippis:
Lire 500 — (five hundred) monetary prize awarded to me by Rome.
“ 800 — prize from the poetry competition —
“ 500 — for the purchase of a tapestry on the part of Signor De Filippis —
Total 1800 (one thousand eight hundred Lire)
To the attention of the Bursar! For photographs of my works: Lire 220 (two hundred
and twenty)
Not a penny more — not a penny less
Faithfully yours,
Fortunato Depero
6
W Il Futurismo
I sent you 100 Lire — Here I include another 50. This too will be useful for something.
Marinetti is back — But I assure you that soon we’ll be greeting them all — Never
again would I have thought to find myself so thoroughly ignored in such a difficult
moment — But I’ll prevail, all the same.
I have written to Sommagrotta and Lunelli, telling them of my painful situation. Pay a
visit to Sommagrotta, asking if he and Lunelli together can manage something simply
to help me get the sequester lifted — don’t let them know I’ve found some money
here — explain to him that at this particular time Lunelli should not fail to make
himself useful.
Visit him, and let me know —
You’ll see that I’ll get everything straightened out —
I kiss you with great abandon, pained at not being close to you. I’ll make up for lost
time. I’m thinking about your overcoat, which I’ll buy for you next week — Still a bit
more patience — my saintly, blessed, most ardently adored.
Infinite kisses, kisses, kisses —
(On the left, vertically): Kisses, Kisses, Kisses, Kisses, Kisses
(On the right, vertically): Take care — Many, many, many kisses again.
8
9
Panorama of Lessinia
12
Introduction
In the summer of 1999, St. Francis of the Church of the Exquisite
Panic withdrew to the wooded slopes between Vajo dell’Anguilla and
Vajo dei Falconi (the valleys of the eel and the falcons) for one of his
habitual retreats in silence and meditation.
In the course of his stay he asked himself how best he might with all
his being take part in the Passion of Art, and in its mystery of love
and suffering.
In the course of his itinerant meditation, the solution appeared before
him in the form of a modest country cottage which he found to be
imbued with a spirit of beauty, completeness and natural harmony
that he felt to be the seal of his calling.
Francesco was thus enabled to found in that hermitage the personal
and secret museum he had so much and so long desired, and to
shape it in the light of that image of absolute utopia for which his
heart and life had so deeply and so dearly yearned.
It’s to be hoped that pious spirits will not be shocked by the comparison drawn between the creation of Francesco Conz’s Secret Casamuseo and the founding of the hermitage at St. Francis of Assisi’s Sanctuary of La Verna. A hermitage is a place of arduous access where
one or more individuals can voluntarily withdraw from the concerns of
the secular world in order to lead a life of prayer and asceticism, and
no other terms suffice if we’re truly to understand the extraordinary
story of the founding of the Secret Casamuseo. The living of a life of
austerity, the perception of such a choice as a virtue, and the constant search for a dimension of greater spirituality, even if in terms
of a secular culture of art, are all to be seen as essential elements of
the life lived, and the options pursued, by this proud possessor from
the Veneto. Francesco Conz is likewise in no way a stranger to the
thought that the numerous restrictions he has imposed upon himself
13
Panorama of Lessinia
can have led him to a greater freedom in many spheres of life, no less
than to a greater capacity for clarity of thought.
His absolute and unbinding faith in the aesthetic principles which
he in fact pursues has often led Francesco Conz to exclude himself
from the major circuits of the art world, no less than to a number of
clamorous disputes with museum directors, critics., artists, and other
personalities who populate the world of art for reasons entirely of
self-celebration.
The founding of his own private museum has, to a certain degree,
pacified his hope of seeing his collection housed in an institution entirely dedicated to it.
What motivates Francesco Conz is surely not ambition alone, which
is something that he shares with all collectors. As amply argued in
the essay by Sandro Ricaldone, the fundamental reference points for
Francesco Conz are to be found in the ideas of thinkers such and Emerson and Thoreau, who saw a life of retirement in a place as close as
possible to nature as the source of salvation form the corruption put
in act by society. Their concept., indeed, was not very far from the
notion of ascetic isolation to which we referred at the start. Moreover,
religion is present at a number of levels in the notion of art that Fran-
14
cesco Conz has developed. It’s hardly by chance that he speaks of
his “conversion on the road to Damascus” when he talks about those
first encounters with Fluxus and Actionism which were to lead him to
a radical revision of the aesthetic notions. It’s likewise not by chance
that Francesco Conz constantly compares the artists with whom he’s
involve to the saints of a secular church of art. In this context, one
must also ascribe a new and highly important value to the enormous
fetish collection which is partly housed in the Secret Casamuseo, and
which essentially consists of the remains of performances, or artists’
shoes and articles of clothing, of materials used for the realization of
editions. All of these discarded objects, once collected, have been
painstakingly subjected to a minutiose operation of cataloguing and
authentication which has produced a series of documents which have
all been duly stamped or signed by the artists involved in the making
of them. Substantially they have been subjected to a true and proper
process of recognizance that effectively transforms them into relics.
The practice of performance on the part of the neo-avantgardes has
produced a moment of rupture and profound crisis in the art system.
the fact that what remains, the discard produced during a perfor-
15
mance, cannot alone support the aesthetic discourse brought into
play by the artist has not escaped Francesco Conz, who has given
himself, heart and soul, throughout his life to the task of healing that
wound. Whereas a traditional work of art, a painting, a sculpture, can
be enjoyed as a thing in itself, or can be understood to make manifest
an intrinsic formal aesthetic value, the reliquary object has need of a
system of sanctification.
The relic (the fetish) is frequently useless, ugly, and sometimes even
obscene (as is also true of a large part of religious relics) and cannot
autonomously account for the complexity of the aesthetic concept
expressed in a performance. A vast production of theory is necessary.
The object per se cannot be a work of art without the support of the
rigorous construction of a system of knowledge.
It is surely this more intimate aspect which has guided the construction
of the Secret Casamuseo, as a true and proper intermedia sanctuary.
The need, that’s to say, to create an homogenous and organic system
of knowledge that’s inherent to the evolution of the neo-avantgardes.
The constitution, that’s to say, of a true and proper doctrine.
The Secret Museum, from this point of view, can therefore be read
as a great work of exegesis that gives a home to all the movements
collected by Francesco Conz, exploring their connections, seeking
out their sources, and thus revealing the profound pedagogical impulse that lies beneath the very idea of the creation of the Secret
Museum.
16
Panorama of Lessinia
17
Road to the Secret Museum
18
Toward the Secret Casamuseo
I - Nature and secret
From the plain the road rises abruptly along hairpin curves and beechwood stands. On the opposite side of the valley grey cliffs lean over
dizzying precipices. A little before the pastures of the high mountain
plateau, a rustic house, shaded by a giant pear tree, embraces the
Secret Museum. The ascent, slowed by the steep climb, the views
of the natural landscapes and human settlements, reveal little by
little the meaning of this collection, which does not reside solely in
the works which have been gathered there but also emanates from
the circumstances of the place, privileged by its relative isolation,
and thus participates in the destiny of a landscape and of a cultural
event, insofar as the landscape is embedded in a culture just as the
culture is expressed through it. This place of privilege is a Venetian
Pre-Alpine region: Lessinia.
Situated on the north-western flank of Veneto, above Verona, a part
of which grazes the north of the Trentino Alto Adige, Lessinia can
be seen as a trapezoid of some eight hundred square kilometers,
stretched over five valleys which fan out on its western flank toward the Adige and on its eastern flank the Chiampo. While lower
Lessinia is characterized by softly sloping hills which dominate the
alluvial valley basin and its spreading vineyards, the upper plateau
is surmounted by a mountainous chain with vast pasture lands and
beech woods along the steepest slopes, with singular rocky formations known as “sphinxes” or “cities of stone” and other remarkable
karstic phenomena.
The area, inhabited since the Paleolithic era but hardly touched by
Roman colonization of the deep valley, is historically tied to timber
and stone quarries, aside from the mountain-climbing and cheese
production which still characterize it in the summer season.
19
This phenomenon is linked to the settlement of a Bavarian-Tyrolean
colony, starting in the thirteenth century in the highest reaches of
the upper plateau (the location of the Thirteen Communes, which
include Ebrezzo, where an ancient farmstead houses the “Secret Museum”) which for centuries enjoyed relative independence thanks to
its difficult access. The Cimbre (from whose name is derived the term
of tzimberer, woodcutter), who peopled it in ancient times have left
behind a clear linguistic substratum of Germanic origin (actually a
Bavarian dialect), analyzed by scholars such as Johannes Andreas
Schmeller and Bruno Schweizer, which has begun to disappear today,
as well as a characteristic, spontaneous architecture in stone (using
the typical Prun stone): its various architectural elements, such as
the capitals and little columns, are sculpted in high relief and were
erected against the peril of beings who roamed the streets—in the
imagination of the inhabitants. While of a marked religious popular
inclination, Lessinia is no less rich in the invention of fantastic characters with names like Fade, Strie, Orchi, Anguane (beautiful girls
who at night washed people’s clothes, and hung them up between
the mountains), as well as the poisonous Basilisks and the Sealagan
Laute (the Blessed People), shining creatures with hollow bodies and
shaped of bark, who on the day of the dead came down the slopes
lighting their way with a flaming human arm held like a torch.
The isolated life led on these mountain heights for centuries, tied to
family and the village dimension has perpetuated a tradition of independence, and given rise to an elementary if meaningful form of
direct democracy regarding matters of collective interest, such as the
assignment to families of plots of common land intended for agricultural cultivation or of wooded lots for winter fuel.
The decision to locate a museum in a site so removed from the essentially urban cultural circuits, in yet unspoiled natural surroundings,
was at least in part rooted in the influence of thinkers like Emerson
and Thoreau—quite unusual in our country.
Lacking the radical experimentation of Thoreau—who isolated himself
for two years, two months and two days in a pine timber cabin on the
shores of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts—holding a deep
awareness of the importance of nature and solitude in the search for
an authentic inner equilibrium. “In order to truly live in solitude, a
man needs to withdraw from his own room as much as from society”,
noted Emerson in his essay, Nature, published in 1836, and that is
only possible in the natural environment. Immersion in nature, a sort
of divine entity which includes all things, is revealed through the direct and free contemplation of man, for Emerson’s aim was to enable
the subject to recognize that all thought of multiplicity is dissolved in
the tranquil sense of unity, making it possible for one “to look at the
world with new eyes”. Hence an emersonian or thoreauesque component in the formation of an art collection is not by chance. It is a col-
20
Courtyard of the Secret Museum
21
lection wholly situated in the territory of the avant-garde and largely
consisting of American work--the subject of this volume--a component that fully justifies the designation of the “secret museum”. Consider in comparison the interior dialogue with which the “Secretum”
of Petrarch is interwoven, composed in a similar local situation, with
the implicit provocation that resides in the irreconcilable contrast of
its terms. All this is encompassed in the designation --- the “Secret
Museum”.
The impact of the transcendentalist legacy is manifested not only in
the relationship with nature but also in an openness toward art and
social relations. On the intellectual plane, the Oversoul corresponds
to the totalizing total dimension of nature, as well as to the intersub-
Entrance of the Secret Museum
22
Secret Museum: studiolo
jective dimension in which reside “the unity of the intelligence, the
instincts and the feelings of mankind..a treasure already available in
all the potential of the human subject”, which self-reliance, “the reliance of our present self on our future self”, calls to us for our own
enrichment.
The on-going evolution of nature itself provides a powerful stimulus
for the permanent self-education of the individual; it enables man
to resist “retrospectivity” (the barrier of concepts and words which
interfere with a direct awareness of reality and in particular of the
given of ordinary and everyday life) and conformism, and thus leads
the way to an “open” theory of consciousness in which, together with
the Aristotelian and Kantian categories, surprise and humor find their
place.
In Emersonian transcendentalism, writes Beniamino Soressi, “an authentic philosophy of innovation, of the beyond and of discovery, is
delineated” which affirms, necessarily, the need to express “latent
convictions”, even the most insignificant, of our “discarded thoughts”.
For that very reason –beyond the influence of Pragmatism and John
Dewey’s concept of “art as experience”—this philosophy is embodied
in the impatient stream of the literary and artistic avant-garde (first
linked to America when Walt Whitman defined Emerson as “the explorer who has guided all of us” , and further illustrated in the more
recent work of the Beat Generation).
23
“Society is fatal”, and “the head must be
held up” in solitude while the hands do
their work, said Emerson. “Union is perfect only when associates are isolated.”
This conviction is vigorously borne out
by the “Secret Museum”, and when you
consider it carefully, it also constitutes
the specific basis of the concert of artists
whose works make up this collection, and
are further echoed in the shaping of Fluxus as “a group and not a group” or, on the
other hand, in the Lettrist understanding
of a paradisiacal society as one in which
individuals are “all gods and all masters”.
II - Mirabilia and fetish
After the place and the ideality associated
with it, the genealogy of the “Secret Museum” needs to be highlighted. The modalities of the Museum’s arrangements of
works and interior recall, in some manner, the first mediaeval collections, the
“studies” in which Italian gentlemen exhibited rare objects, the wunderkammer
which were precursors of today’s museum
institution. These wunderkammer, found
throughout the Germanic world, had as
common denominator in the collection of
“mirabilia”, of whatever sort these might
be, whether of a mechanical or natural origin, as well as precious or simply unusual
Museo Segreto: installazione di Dupuy in C
objects. Exceptionality, curiosity and astonishment were the only criteria guiding
the collector. To suggest that these stood
in relation to the Museum as alchemy did to chemistry would not be
a superficial comparison. The principle of marvel which guided their
choice of artifacts is from another point of view an “eternal” emotion,
and precisely in terms of the “collection” which is our concern here,
may be found in that archive of news clippings (partially reproduced
in a volume) which the American Charles Fort (a true precursor of
ufology) assembled at the beginning of the XX century. The multiple
collections of Ukraine eggs with Seminole dress, put together, partly
24
Cucina
Secret Museum: view of the kitchen
with false claims, by another American, Harry Smith—musicologist,
beatnik and painter, who compiled the fundamental Anthology of
American Folk Music- is another possible example. But this level of
omnivorous and seemingly unmethodical collecting, while stupefying,
may be found anywhere in the world. Bambocciata, a novel by Konstantin Vaghinov published in 1931 describes a collector of caramel
papers, a professor of physics who founded a “Society for the Collection of Bagatelles”, boxes, minutiae of all sorts.
25
The world of the figurative arts is a different matter. From Arcimbaldo, whose patron, Rudolf II was also the owner of a wunderkammer,
to Magnasco, and the painters of caprices (whose prototype were the
Monsu’ Desiderio) on to the Symbolists, the Surrealists, the magical
Realists, the “mirabile” element has constituted a substantial chapter
of the history of art.
Similar observations could be made with respect to some of the typical techniques of XX century art such as collage, the objet trouvé, environmental installations, narrative art and related arts. The element
of marvel is not always present in these genres however, and if it is,
it is not always programmed as such. In any case, The Large Glass of
Duchamp, the suitcases of George Maciunas or the boxes of Joseph
Cornell express a true affinity with the Wunderkammern. Regarding
the “suitcases” and the “kits” of Maciunas, it would not be an exaggeration to say that they are “portable”Wunderkammern.
Some of the most famous works produced in the last decades do,
however, seem to have as their sole aim to stupefy through provocation, and it is not irrelevant to evoke the Wunderkammern in their
regard. This is probably true for the poubelles of Arman, plexiglass
containers filled with garbage, as well> as the redundant business
ventures of Ben which ended up at the Beaubourg, or the tableaux
pièges of Daniel Spoerri, with their dishes and food left over from a
dinner, or the artist’s cars (some of which were assembled in perfor-
Secret Museum: detail of a display window
26
Secret Museum: view of the guests room
mances in the meadows in front of the “Secret Museum”) that Francesco Conz collected over the years. Or at the far boundary, a chamber of marvels might be said to encircle an entire city through the
psycho-geographic drift of the proto-situationists, awe and astonishment aroused by the rapid passage from one area to the other.
Other correspondences are suggested when, for example, models of
classification are appropriated from scientific disciplines; such as the
shrines in which Claudio Costa enclosed samples of the colors of human skin, or the little boxes in which Eleanor Antin placed test tubes
with the blood of poets.
New correlations are always possible since not only artistic provocation is at play, but also theater, poetry and even ordinary conversation, even dreams, may all be represented in the model of the Wunderkammer. True, one might lose one’s way following the thread
of this analogy, but after all, do not heterogeneity, complexity and
artifice constitute the very essence of the Wunderkammer?
27
III - Passion and/or possession
Far more complex is the advent of the museum, from its first sixteenth century manifestation to the creation of the British Museum
(in 1759) and, above all, with the pre- and post-revolutionary debate
in France which led, in 1793, to the opening of the Louvre. Starting
with the declaration of Jean-Louis David who believed that the museum should not be a vain collection of frivolous objects, serving solely
to satisfy idle curiosity. On the contrary, it should be an authoritative
school in accordance with the recent theoretical proposal of Boris
Groys, for whom “the museum has taken the place of the church after
man, through secularization, has “understood himself as thing”, and
as always occurs in such cases, “has begun to “sacralize things”, with
the consequence that “in modernity only those things should be collected which once were thought of as non-art “. The “Secret Museum”
takes on both these polarities: from a first point of view, didactic or
anti-didactic, it proposes itself—with the ironic provocation of its hidden dimension—as the model of a Museum of contents so far ignored,
not so much with respect to some of the artists represented, but in
its over-arching vision characterizing an era rich in signs for the future; from a different view-point, it constitutes a contradiction of the
sacred vestments of the institution, illustrating an everyday dimension, in the emersonian dress of the “household”. This collection is
not arranged in accordance with the usual museum criteria of period,
Secret Museum: detail of a display window
28
school or category. Neither the excellence nor the historical value of
the individual works is privileged here, rather an identity is created
within which works, multiples, photographic documents and fetish
are all interwoven, an identity in constant redefinition, open, for example, to new interventions by Ben Patterson on the shelf above the
kitchen sink, studding it with kitsch souvenirs, or by Jean Dupuy tracing out his phrases on the beams, or by Roland Sabatier and Alain
Satié inaugurating a super-temporal work over the fireplace.
The subject of the collection calls in turn for reflection on the figure
which constitutes its very motor--starting in nineteenth century literature where the subject first emerges forcefully; or even earlier,
in the work of Horace Walpole (1717 -1797) who wears the cap not
only of the author and inventor of “gothic romance”, but also of the
collector and the scholar, as well as discoverer of a subtle variant of
the collector’s quest.
Having purchased a house of no particular distinction in Twickenham, near London, Walpole undertook to transform it into a castle, of
gothic appearance where he put together one of the most important
art collections in all of England, indeed one of the most bizarre and
diverse in the world: Strawberry Hill. On the biographical level, the
relation between collectionism and literature is quite close in Walpole,
and Strawberry Hill must be considered the prototype of an eclectic
and unconventional collectionism –at the far boundaries of bric-àbrac, however precious it may be—and today, the initial perplexity
Secret Museum: detail of a display window
29
having passed, Walpole has become the
very paradigm of the audacious and unbiased collector.
Regarding his house and his collection,
Walpole left in A Description of the Villa of
Mr. Horace Walpole (1784) an inventory
that represents one of the first exemplars
of a true and proper art catalogue. But
beyond this, Walpole attributed to collectionism (and not only) a term which,
while long used parsimoniously and indeed having long remained almost unknown even in cultivated circles, today
has taken on the role of indicating, somewhere between reason and randomness,
the not-always linear developments which
lead to unexpected discoveries, including
those—if only in the initial stage- of Francesco Conz himself: serendipity. Walpole
took the term from a “silly fable” in which
it is narrated how three young princes of
Serendippo (the ancient name of Sri Lanka) discover “through chance and by wisdom” things which they had not sought
in the first place. The famous sociologist
Robert K. Merton and his collaborator
Elinor Barber have devoted a study to the
history and the implications of this term,
from Walpole to our times, in a work that
remained long unpublished and has only
recently been translated in Italy in Viaggi
ed avventure della Serendipity, published
by Il Mulino Publishers in Bologna, 2002.
Although Merton and Barber do not cite
it in their exhaustive study, the plot of
the last novel published in the Comédie
Humaine of Honoré de Balzac, Le cousin
Pons (1847) describes an incident in which serendipidity plays a role,
narrating the case of an (initially) inept art collector who frequents the
stalls of second-hand dealers and manages to put together a number
of very valuable paintings. It is clear however (which no doubt justifies its exclusion from any sociological study) that the protagonist of
the novel assumes not so much the physiognomy of the fortunate
discoverer as the traits of the self-taught man, able, thanks to a connoisseur’s eye and ideas picked up in the field, to outdo the experts
with all their academic training. The novel is highly significant for
30
Secret Museum: installation of Geoffrey Hendricks
other reasons, especially in the way it introduces art through a plot in
which ingenuous and disinterested passion is interwoven with greed.
His rich relatives, who before they learned of his fortune had ignored
him, then succeeded in stripping the heir, whom Pons believed he had
left his treasure to, of everything, through trickery.
The psychology of the collector and his peculiar ethic were brought
to a fine pitch by Huysmans in A rebours (1884) through the claustrophobic withdrawal of Des Esseintes who, after having devoted his
youthful years to vice, sought refuge in the refined and highly artificial
31
world of his own household--located, it should be noted, in absolute
isolation in the countryside—with inexplicable repugnancies and prostrations brought on by his faculty of smell, to the point (in the episode
of the missed voyage to London, rendered superfluous in his eyes by
the physical sensations he experienced upon preparing for his departure) of emblematically substituting the “Pegasus of fantasy” for the
disillusionment of real experience. But the aspirations of the collector,
his home, the rhythms of discoveries and transactions, the pleasure
of possessing and of being able to show something exclusive, as well
as the various aspects of his psychology, had already been illustrated
a few years earlier by the narrator and theoretician of Realism, a
scholar of alphabets and caricatural prints, an expert and collector of
ceramics, Champfleury in “this world”, Jean-Fleury Husson in reality
(1821-1889), in Le violon de Faïence (1877). Based on real events,
a story is told of a mature collector who discovers an extremely rare
ceramic violin, the perfection of which makes it playable. A young
neophyte is present at this discovery, who takes offense at not having
succeeded in acquiring the instrument himself, but is promised by the
collector that the violin will be his on the latter’s death.
What is thrown into relief here is not only the expertise and the passion of the older man—founded on Champfleury’s knowledge—but
the growth of the collector’s mania in the younger man, which allows
autobiographical traces to shine through. Through these various examples, it becomes clear how, in the period of the 19th century, the
personality of the collector is broadly illuminated, even before the
appearance of Walter Benjamin or Pomian. Another nineteenth century novel, La maison d’un artiste (1881) by Edmond de Goncourt,
describes the influence which literature may exercise upon artistic
fashion, in this particular case upon “la japonaiserie”. If a century
ago, when the practice was less extensive, summits of originality
were within closer reach, the essential characteristics of collectionism—restlessness, the anxiety of new discoveries, the will to create a whole which bears the mark of one’s own personality—remain
unchanged. Wider dissemination of the practice in recent decades
however has rendered more problematic the aspects of research and
of enjoyment, and substantially accentuated the inferior traits of the
paroxysmal and often of the crudely lucrative.
32
IV - The Archivist and the Alchemist
In a similar context, the experience of Francesco Conz is characterized
by a particular valence. Already his years of apprenticeship, during
which he lived abroad, “following the beatnik spirit” which was breathed
at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the next decade, and his
highly disparate activities (window-dresser at Liberty’s in London, valet
of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris, cook on a Monegasque
yacht and cameraman assistant at Hamburg television) illustrate his
unconventional personality. And if his earliest collector’s experience
took place, as he himself recalls (cf the interview by Judith Hoffberg in
Umbrella, December 1999) in what was after all the domestic circles
of Italian art directly influenced by American Pop Art, soon his habit of
travelling and his linguistic gifts enabled him to meet people who would
be decisive in the direction of his further itinerary.
“In 1972, he says in the above interview, I happened to visit a little
contemporary art fair in Berlin where I met the American Fluxus artist Joe Jones , who was in Germany in a program for foreign artists,
the DAAD directed by René Block. Then I met Gunther Brus, Hermann
Nitsch and Gerhard Rühm who introduced me to Viennese Actionism
and the Wiener Gruppe, and then to Pierre Molinier in Bordeaux. I began to understand that I was fundamentally interested in a different
area of activity where many very diverse things were coming together,
from literature to poetry, from the visual arts to performances to happenings or actions as they were called in the Sixties.”
Thus he embarked upon a path where he played not only what might
be termed a privileged role as collector, but also one of art traveler (the
recent publication, Winterreise from Asolo to New York and ViceVersa
bears witness to the trip to the United States with Hermann Nitsch and
Günther Brus in 1973, and their meeting with the New York avantgarde and John Cage), organizer of events, publisher, gallerist, archivist without boundaries, doctor honoris cause, photographer, Saint of
the First National Church of Exquisite Panic, conservator of relics (or of
fetishes if you will) , artist and promoter of the trends with which he
has identified. In light of this active co-participation, he is distinguished
from the typical collector of “live art”, who has also, historically, played
a determining role in the dissemination of “non-conformist art” (cf Pomian, Dalle sacre reliquie all’arte moderna, Milan 2004. His commitment
to activities in a number of different locales, especially between Verona
and Asolo, often in circumstances of absolute precarity (?), has suffered
no pause, not even in the face of the accident which has diminished his
physical independence, throwing himself most recently into the creation
of the anti-museum of Erbezzo, the Secret Museum which we have been
inquiring into, a summertime refuge and a polemical gesture toward an
art world which has not recognized his “saints” and which has lost its
raison d’être in marketing strategies and speculation.
33
V - A plural avant-garde
The object of this collection, as has already been partially indicated,
consists of the works of the artists involved in the leading groups of
the latter half of the twentieth century, the “neo-avant-gardes” which
the radical critique of scholars such as Peter Burger has attacked, for
example in Theorie der Avant-garde (1974)-in which he asserts that
this avant-garde is characterized by an inauthentic repetition and simple re-appropriation of models established in the first decades of the
last century, and even by a real attempt at mystification. This position
is shared, among others, by a flag bearer of the first avant-garde like
Raoul Haussmann who, in Am anfang war DADA (1972) attributes to
the new movements not only substantial plagiarism but a loss of the
utopian spirit. In reality the situation cannot be properly understood
in these terms. If on the one hand it is undeniable that the opening
up of certain fields of investigation and the earliest experimentation
of given techniques were carried out by the historical avantgarde
(especially Futurism and Dada), it is also true that the groups which
arose after the second post-war era projected their research through
new instruments (such as the technology used by Sound Poetry and
by Video Art) as well as new theoretical approaches, exploring entirely novel areas or following new paths and broader applications in
already explored territory—such as typographic or phonetic poetry or
performances.
The installation of the “Secret Museum” makes that quite clear in the
way it frames this second wave, beyond the various categories that
compose it, in a complex articulation, even though not unified, a sort
of undergrowth whose various ramifications exhibit multiple interlacing and tangential coincidences. Not only and not mainly because,
just as occurred for certain expressions of the historical avantgarde
which also presented more clear-cut and distinct identities, the attribution of individual works to one or another current can be very difficult for the external observer, so that more and more often, artists
or critical classifications are invoked as defining authorities, but since
certain common elements, such as the rejection of stylistic links, or
an openness to new technologies, and the tendency toward intermedia, established an effective koiné.
From various points of view, the achievements of Lettrism, Concrete
Poetry and Visual Poetry presented obvious affinities. A close relationship is evident between Lettrism itself and Sound Poetry. Nor is
the case of Performance Art—Fluxus Events, Happenings, Actions—
very different, even though the conceptual distinctions appear to be
more pronounced.
With regard to its internal structure and its relationship with the art
system, Lettrism, founded by Isidore Isou in 1946, may be seen as
the most striking in its autonomy, moving from recognition of the let34
Secret Museum: display window and armoire in the guests room
35
ter as the primary poetic, musical and visual articulation to invest an
entire complex of artistic disciplines , while resisting any attempt at
absorption by any other movement, and acutely punctilious in its verification, among the various expressive forms, of the validity (hence
the priority) of its own inventive procedures condensed in an artistic
approach capable of bringing about a full transformation of culture
and society.
In comparison with Lettrism, with which they share the initial impetus
of a renewal of poetic language (as as well as certain “technical” solutions) , Sound Poetry as well as Visual Poetry may be seen as more
sectoral, since the former is focused on the broadening of vocal expression, further explored through electro-acoustic techniques, and
the latter through a more in-depth research consisting in an analysis
of the relationship of word and image, and more generally of the
mechanisms of communication.
Within Visual Poetry are included other poetic approaches which derive from various sources, and which tend to be grouped under this
umbrella term, but nonetheless have an autonomy of their own:
Concrete Poetry, centered on the visual (or, as it might be called in
accordance with the poundian teaching, an ideogrammatic) configuration of the text; Visual Writing, based on an exploration of the various valences of the traces of writing; Technological Poetry, the pivot
of which is the deconstruction of the communication models of mass
media, and there are still other tendencies. Nonetheless, the underlying idea is sufficiently shared among these various groups to justify
the generic term.
While it certainly has shared features with Concrete Poetry, in light
of the works of some of its proponents and of a marked bias toward
typographic design, and with Visual Poetry (through the collateral
phenomenon of Mail Art launched by Ray Johnson), Fluxus—which
Dick Higgins has defined as an “attitude”, a “way of doing things, a
tradition, a way of living and dying”—is differentiated from the other
movements through the attention it pays to the dimension of chance,
through its repudiation of any theoretical reflection on the language
of art, and through its tendency toward the concrete exploration of
the gestures of the everyday world and of things, in its aspiration to
achieve “a mass produced art amusement” without refraining however from taking radical political positions. If Visual Poetry has undertaken to reformulate the procedures of the old avantgarde, such
as collage and re-contextualization, adapting these to new standards
of communication, Fluxus appears rather to draw from the former, in
homage to certain of its adepts, something similar to the Japanese
haiku or the apologists of Zen: Duchamp elucidated for some, Duchamp illuminated for others.
With all due caution, the similarities and dissimilarities of both in the
performance field need to be examined. Whatever has been writ-
36
ten of Fluxus’ visual works, as much may be said of its conspicuous
presence in given activities. Fluxus has played a central role in the
performance sphere and, together with the Happening, expresses its
basic spirit here. Among its precedents, Futurist events in theaters
might be mentioned, with artists and poets impervious to the often
violent reactions of the public, as well as synthetic theater, which also
had its roots in Futurism. To a certain extent, it might be said that
a minimalist interpretation has been especially congenial to Fluxus,
whereas the involvement and merger of the event with the public has
been closer to the dynamic of Happenings. This would explain the frequent differentiation in announcements of “Happenings and Fluxus”
events, but still it is a precarious distinction, which appears to be related more to “schools” of practice than to intrinsic features of either.
In the context of the presentation of such events, while the “literary
cabaret” of the exponents of the Wiener Gruppe shows a substantial
contiguity with Happenings, Viennese Actionism is mainly differenti-
Ladislav Novak
Antique oriental furniture with interventions
cm. 110 x 100 x 30 - 1998
37
ated through its ritual character, even though a certain form of ritual
does appear in Fluxus as well. The difference resides, once again, in
the “ideological” premises, although not solely, since the intention to
liberate instincts and pulsations from the morbid incrustations of Society is manifested in paroxystic and aggressive forms (often through
self-aggression), and its accomplishment is understood as a relic, as
the material memory of blood and the body.
A counterpoint to the plural and interwoven nature of the new avantgarde, in which—schematically—Fluxus might represent the “Bauhaus” aspect and Viennese Actionism the Expressionist (even if Dick
Higgins has said that Fluxus also has an “expressionist” component,
as seen in Paik, Beuys and Vostell), is evident in the criss-crossing of
the paths followed by the various artists. Emmett Williams is an exponent of Concrete Poetry (to which he contributed an essential anthology published by the Something Else Press) and at the same time
is one of the proponents of Fluxus. Ben is Fluxus but has stated his
respect for Isou and Lettrism (and in fact has shown with the Lettrists
if sporadically). Daniel Spoerri who founded “material” (1958) a review of concrete poetry, invented Eat Art (1960), took part in the
founding of Nouveau Réalisme and is also linked to Fluxus. Henri
Chopin is a concrete and sound poet. Filliou created Action Poetry
and is a member of Fluxus, while Isou with his hypergraphic novel
(1950) did Visual Poetry ad litteram. Lemaître in turn launched the
séance de cinéma (1952) that is very similar to Happenings. Kaprow
developed the concept of Happenings , Al Hansen and Wolf Vostell are
both Fluxus and Happenings. Ferlinghetti is a monstre sacré of the
Beat generation, but he conjugates the verb “fluxing” in the present
indicative.
This plural nature of the avantgarde in the second half of the twentieth century has been fully reflected in the “Secret Museum”. The
arrangement of the museum has nothing to do with chronology or
artistic currents but frantically shuffles the cards of history in order to
highlight, beyond classification and without diminishing individuality,
the networking of stimuli which gave life to an intensely creative moment, which would be inexplicable today if one were to discount it,
and which designates specifically the map of the “Republic of Genius”
(La Republique Géniale) the expression coined by Robert Filliou, ideally constituted by those who were its protagonists.
38
Günter Brus at the museum working on his portrait, 2002
39
Alain Satié at the Secret Museum begining the supertemporal work, 1999
Lettrist presence at the Museum
I went to Verona in September 1999, along with my companion Woodie Roehmer, to participate in a book signing for
an edition of silk screens that Franceso Conz had undertaken and produced there in 1989: it was a replica of part of
my series of Entassements (Piles) that I had done between
1964 and 1967. This edition was printed in 50 copies.
As is customary with Francesco, why do things simply if
they can be complicated: the signing event was held at the
home of a rich Italian import/export merchant who was not
there; the day was memorable and those present must still
remember it, because we kept up a rhythm of a signature,
a drink, a photo – at least that is how it seemed, but I
really have no recollection of either the order of events
or the quantities consumed.
At first I was annoyed by these snapshots, then after reflecting on the state of my past and present situation,
I had to admit to being behind in appreciating what was
after all a normal form of media exposure: I have really
40
made only a few photographs, a few films, and it is only
recently that I started taking some photos to document
my art openings; so there were few things that could one
day help take stock of a career, to sum it up. I was in
a media void, but I didn’t care, because for me the work
is all that counts; the work has its own autonomous life
– it represents me and informs in my stead. The creator
merely invents the principle that leads to the work, whose
success establishes the creative purity of its author; if
it promotes a new concept, the work stands on its own, penetrating history where it demands its proper place. Over
time, the work and the authors blend together in a unique
image engraved in the collective memory. So in the end I
agreed to pose in order to nourish this memory. An artist
must take charge of the means of his media exposure: it
is true that clever but accurate use of the media can help
attract attention to the work. Francesco Conz sensitized
me to the possibility and even the necessity of using the
media.
Francesco Conz has patiently gathered original works, multiples, silk screens, photographs of artists at events,
documents, films: this accumulated collection makes him the
Woodie Roehmer at the Secret Museum drawing on supertemporal work, 2000
41
Alison Knowles at the Secret Museum drawing on supertemporal work, 2000
master of a part of contemporary memory. And this memory,
these witnesses to a moment in the past or present will
tomorrow become the substance of the collective memory.
The documents and the accumulated photographs will help
establish the genealogy of current avant-garde movements,
especially of Lettrism. These documents are references to
the past and the present: the memory of creations and the
memory of the artist’s flowering – or fading. Francesco
Conz understood early on how interesting an artistic database could be, through making it available to all. This
necessity should have been a priority of cultural institutions in every country. What Conz dreamed of doing, what
he was able to do for contemporary avant-garde movements,
is something the cultural institutions have not yet thought about.
This current preservation of the artist and of his art
becomes valuable when we consider that there is only one
certified photograph of Arthur Rimbaud – most of them are
doubtful – which is continuously repeated from book to
book, like a leitmotif. A Conz from that period would have
taken hundreds of photos of Rimbaud, and edited a few li-
42
nes: he would have done as Conz does today, safeguarding
the reality of the poet and his surroundings, so we could
have it today.
Beyond his special publications, Conz has been able to
arouse a trend relating to seeing the esthetic concepts
in objects of all sorts. These pieces of object art have
expanded his collection to a significant degree, and each
artist has his place. By penetrating the central concept
of each artist, he has been able to provoke them into sufficient esthetic energy to lead to their creating new works: this energy is targeted in such a way that the works
produced are faithful to each artist’s personality, and
indeed they would have already been created but were always pushed into the background until Francesco Conz teased it out of them.
It is in this frame of mind that we went down to the surroundings of Verona in order to visit the Museum in the
Mountain, which is the name that Francesco has given to
his building: here, a museum-like order and presentation
rule – unlike the controlled chaos of his warehouses,
which are also like a museum because the collection is so
Philippe Broutin at Secret Museum working on a project for editions Conz, 2009
43
rich. As with all the great museums, you only see a small
part of the whole collection.
Getting to the museum: my recollection is of a long snaking road up a mountainside to a large farm made up of
two equal-sized buildings. The left side was occupied by
a farmer and his family with all the customary rural elements: farm machinery, household pets and farm animals.
The air was pure but also perfumed by the countryside. It
was a peaceful countryside in changing and multicolored
hues. The absence of modernity in the place could make one
think of the American farms in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, while the part that Conz inhabited benefited
from renovations. The whole place was perched on a green
hill.
The interior of the Museum was newly remodeled but simple:
a profusion of canvasses, sculptures, drawings, and framed
photographs in all the rooms, including the kitchen and
bathroom. My impression at that time was of a preponderance of works by the artists in the Fluxus group. In spite of
several silk screen editions by Isou, Lemaître, Sabatier
and Satié, at that time it seemed Conz had not taken the
full measure of Lettrism. At present he is throwing himself body and soul into a wild chase to catch up by multi-
Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Francesco Conz: delivery of the Ferlinghetti fetish, 2000
44
Takako Saito signing the armoire in the guests room, 2000
plying the opportunities to do things and to have things
done. It must be admitted that the Lettrist artists have
been guilty of a certain reticence, certainly due more to
the geographical distance from Verona than to any lack
of a desire to participate: the proposal to the group to
make art works of pianos dates from 1989 and yet was only
completed in 2007.
We gladly accepted Francesco’s request to leave a souvenir
of our visit to the Museum in the form of a commemorative
composition. I undertook the creation of a supertemporal
work, one that would be open to all for limitless time.
On the cover of a chimney duct over a fireplace hearth, I
laid out a blank surface where I drew the beginning of
a hypergraphic fresco spreading out toward infinity, but
limited in space. Woodie Roehmer similarly worked in her
characteristic style, taking advantage of some surface irregularities in the renovation of the plaster to conceive
a work that played with their shapes. Both pieces were
signed and dated. Having seen a recent photograph I have
noted with pleasure that a few artists have joined the
game by putting their own mark on the supertemporal space;
they may or may not be conscious of how the work will go
45
beyond time to take its true place, and will not find its
definitive form until society attains an earthly paradise.
It does not matter to me whether the participation of artists in the work proceeds from an understanding of what
a supertemporal action is; a passing artist can strive to
fill the empty space in the frame by the simple fact that
there is still room for her and she is happy with it, without even knowing about the principles of supertemporal
art. The work can no longer be controlled; it no longer
belongs to me; it is available to the public and to future generations who must amplify it and if possible, in
an ideal world, put their own art works there and only in
new forms. The supertemporal work must exist for a long
time, for as long as Francesco and his successors will
allow their guests to participate in it. A throw of the
dice will never abolish chance; Francesco thus consciously
brought the artist and the work together by juxtaposing a
photographic portrait taken during a meal in Paris.
In another way, this time in hypergraphic style, Woodie
Roehmer and I shared an artistic collaboration in the decoration of a wardrobe: Woodie on one of the sides, me on
the front. It was a wardrobe that had seen better days,
but its artistic refurbishing gave it a second youth and
a future life. It is true that since then (as noticed in
recent photographs) our drawings have come to share the
space with some famous signatures, notably Ferlinghetti,
Robert Delford Brown, Bob Patterson, Kittenish, etc. Then
in the fireplace hearth, which is no longer in use – resting on the floor was a portrait of John Kennedy, woven in
the style of tapestries, standing in front of an American
flag and a view of the Capitol building – in this hearth a
passing Lettrist artist did a work – maybe Sabatier, but
the minimalist style reduced to a few linear phrases prevents a more precise identification.
Since September 1999, I imagine that Francesco Conz, charged with his new ambitions, has worked to increase the
presence of Lettrist artists in his museum: I am not intruding and I am not asking for anything, but I can see
the Isou homage piano in the place of honor in his living
room.
Eventually, Francesco Conz insisted on taking us to his
warehouses, not just one, but several, and each one with a
specialty. It is like rediscovering Ali Baba’s cave, like
recovering the Holy Grail, and not Joseph of Arimathea’s
46
but the esthetic Grail, the one whose choice of works,
in their abundance and quality, keeps one awake at night
and makes museum conservators dream out loud: art works,
hundreds of art works, whole rolls of silk screen series,
art pianos – including a piano by Jacques Spacagna done in
1989, as well as pianos by Paik, Moorman, Higgins, Kaprow,
etc. – and sculptures of all sizes, books, documents, and
so forth.
However, a publisher is not important merely for the way
he manages his craft, but also for his legend, which is
doubtless just the way he goes beyond his daily routine to
defend the creations of his time and the evolution of his
contemporaries. He does this by gathering his knowledge,
his explicit powers of analysis, and his professional actions centered on innovation, and putting them forth in
the service of all.
With his exhibitions, with his numerous editions of books
and his editions of silk screens, Francesco Conz builds
his legend. His importance is growing not only because he
demonstrates what he has understood of the immensity of
current artistic fields, but also by the remarkable quality
of his Lettrist editions.
Alain Satié, September 2008
Maria and Milan Knízák, Luigi Bonotto and Francesco Conz, 2009
47
Alain Arias Misson at the Secret Museum working on “Poemobile”, 2000
48
Testimonial
The first time I visited Francesco Conz up on the mountain
at « Maria’s » it had already had a magical quality- the
hill dropped so sharply behind the house it seemed impossible to stand up straight! That was just a taste of
course (and the ancient and legendary Maria made us all
a wonderful stew if I remember well!), whereas the visit
to the CASA MUSEO was the full feast.
Francesco had invited me and my girl friend, Fiore, to
come up to the CASAMUSEO so that I to create a work there.
He had told us that my old friend (and admired poet-artist) Jean Dupuy would be there making his own wonderful
invention. With his usual generousl hospitality and relentless enthusiasm, after wining and dining us, Francesco said, ok, Alain, now make me a great work tomorrow!
Needless to say I spent a restless night gazing out the
window over the moonlit valley wondering what I might do.
With brilliant poet Jean on the one hand and the archfiend, Stimulator and Generator of myth and magic, on the
other, something had to be done! There was something of
Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner when Francesco fixed you with
his beady eye and bushy chin and never let you go until
the tale was told, the oeuvre done—and of Dali’!
Yes, while this may surprise some who know and love Francesco as I do, and you are many! I definitely do see in
Francesco Conz that same fantastic, irresistible WILL to
live on a poetic and mythical plane which Dali’ made his
home. No doubt this is where the Casa is really located..
Never willing to lapse into the ordinary, always sputtering over like a single airplane motor in order to get
aloft into the upper airy reaches, Francesco has refused,
against all odds and often before the shock and disbelief
of friends and art professionals, with a quasi super-human
will to live only in the upper realm wherein gods and angels and artists and poets (hopefully) tread the ethereal
tread.
By dawn I had decided to make a two-stage work: First I
would assemble light bulbs on the old car he had found
for me (I swear Francesco would find a pink elephant if
you needed one for an art invention ):a couple of hundred
light bulbs; the low- (very low) tech problem was finding a
49
way to fasten the light bulbs to the car. With the help of
Francesco’s endlessly inventive factotum …………….we managed
to get light bulbs and wiring and for two days, with the
help of said uncanny Facototum, an occasional stroll past
and critical commentary from Francesco and even a helping
hand from Jean, as well as the latter’s suggestion that we
tie my girlfriend up and have a bit of fun (which I resisted) playing Saint Sebastian with her (!?). Everytime
a lightbulb went up on the surface of the car, I wrote
a different compound word involving the affix “mobile” on
the car surface, linking it to the next bulb (this was my
POEMOBILE) so that in the end, the network of text variations covered the car like a cobweb.
Since it was not actually possible to electrify these
bulbs (unlike my later Poemobilius Angelicus with its
3000 light bulbs and computer-generator which Francesco’s
project inspired),the second stage of the work was to make
several photographs of the car, enlarge these photos to
picture size and insert tiny electric lights in the canvas
at every spot where there was a bulb in the photograph—
so that the reproduction fulfilled the suggestion of the
original..more real than the real car.
Every time one visits Francesco one ends up making something for him even if it just to sign some altered object.
After all, what would be the point of visiting if not to
make poetry? At his Casamuseo on the Magic Mountain this
was particularly true. The fantastic intensity of the alchemist that Francesco is has an endearing and exciting
quality, and in the end, again like Dali, it is he himself
who is becoming a legendary, even mythical figure. If all
the stories each of us who know and love him were told it
would fill a volume and portray the myth.
Guarda, Francesco, qui c’é un altro progetto per te! In
2009!
Alain Arias-Misson
50
Panama Dec. 31 2008
Jean Dupuy at the SEcret Museum working on “Video Ergo Sum”, 2000
51
Eût-il fallu que je le susse
pour que je l’epatate? Et patatì et patatate …
I borrowed a hat from Francesco Conz (CONZNOC for palindromists), one hat from among the 433 that he owns.
We have a lot in common --> for instance the same head
circumference.
Conz is Machiavellian, just like Znoc – while I am an Auvergnian --> our relations are very lively!
F.C. invited me with Olga Adorno and our son Augustin to
spend three winters, that is 18 months in 1989, 90 and 91
in Verona. He offered us an apartment on Lake Garda and
gave me a studio in his building.
Besides, his alter ego – the very wild and intelligent
Alberto Pofili was there to help me in every way.
But what a family!
Francesco, inspired by George Maciunas, founder of Fluxus
(1962 – 1978) works as a family man.
He took the Fluxus family and invited them one after the
other, first to Asolo and then to Verona to make publications and occasionally original works.
Most of the time, the occasion was created by Conz himself
because he is above all an instigator.
Furthermore, he surrounds the artists and their works with
extensive photographic documentation.
Conznoc is a photographer, oh yes! -->
Go visit his museum (essentially made up of photos) which
is situated at 700 meters elevation and three quarters of
an hour from Verona.
There, you will see, among other things, some inscriptions
painted in color in the bathroom, some anagrams here and
there, and even on the kitchen ceiling, this phrase with
a neologism --> “If the girls were going to astonish him
/ they would have had to know him.”
Finally, Mister Conz is a fetishist -->
Today he owns 4.33 tonnes of photos
and 43.3 tonnes of publications
and 433 tonnes of signed scraps of paper.
All this is arranged in an immense warehouse in the country.
Jean Dupuy
52
53
From Lettrism to Viennese Actionism by
way of Fluxus and the new trajectories of
poetry. Ten windows onto the movements
and the research in the Secret Museum.
I - Lettrism
Conz’s encounter with Lettrism took place in 1985 at the Milanopoesia Festival. Isou was invited to do a performance at the Rotonda
at Via Besana. “At the foot of the enormous stage”, recalls AnneCatherine Caron, “he began by improvising a criticism of Sound Poetry, very slowly removing his tie, then, one after the other, all the
rest of his clothes, until he was left standing only in his underpants.
While the spectators thought that he was about to leave the stage,
Isou, continuing with his verbal critique, began putting his clothes
back on again, one by one. With the public applauding, an elegant
man, dressed in white, ran toward the founder of Lettrism, and taking the microphone, after having embraced him, in order to make
clear to the audience the importance of Isou, presented him as “the
father of phonetic poetry.” That man was Francesco Conz, who had
already introduced himself as an avant-garde publisher and collector from Verona.
At that time the Lettrist movement already had a long history behind it. Created in 1946 by Isou (Isidore Isou Goldstein), who had
arrived in Paris from Romania at the end of the Second World War,
it had its roots in an acute theoretical reflection on the evolution of
poetry from antiquity to the first half of the 1900’s. The analysis of
the young poet, set forth in his “Introduction à une Nouvelle Poésie
et une Nouvelle Musique” (1947) shed light on the gradual stripping away of anecdotic elements from poetic composition until it
reached, with Mallarmé and Valéry, the core of the “sound image”
and then, with Tzara and Breton, the emptying of the word of its
significance. To complete this “stage of chiseling,” the word itself
had to be broken in order to free the letter: the fundamental lyrical
and phonetic unit, whose graphic component, a sign which is neither
figurative nor abstract, would then make it possible to overcome
the opposition which existed between the two currents, and thus
open a new field of experimentation. The movement was launched
through a shrewd strategy of provocation (such as the interruption
Maurice LEMAITRE
Sur Isou ! - 1988
Painting on a Isidore Isou silkscreen on cloth - 150 x 110 cm
55
of a play by Tzara) and consolidated through recitals of phonetic
poetry which Gabriel Pomerand , the first of Isou’s allies, held at
the Tabou, one of the most fashionable caves of Saint Germain des
Prés. From that moment on, the activity of the young Lettrists grew
more and more frantic: in 1949 Isou published the first volume of
his Traité d’économie nucléaire, in which he identifies those outside
the productive economic system, in particular young people, as the
only dynamic force capable of subverting the status quo. He thus
demonstrated that the innovation which he proposed in the framework of artistic disciplines was not an end in itself but was integrated
into a more ambitious project, no less than founding society anew
as a whole, revolving about a creative method which would gradually become more and more focused.
1950 was the inaugural year of the “metagraphic” novel (Les journaux des Dieux by Isou, and Saint Ghetto des prêts by Pomerand)
in which prose absorbs calligraphic elements, ideographics, riddles
etc. (Lemaître would claim, in contrast to Pop Art, to have been
the first to have introduced cartoons in his Canailles). The following year it was the turn of film to be taken over by the Lettrist cyclone. Isou produced his monumental Traité de bave et d’éternité in
which, in order to liberate the word from its servitude to the image
by means of a so-called “disassociated montage,” he separated the
sound track, which he had recorded at a discussion in a cinema club,
from the action projected on the screen (an endless stroll down
Saint Germain des Prés boulevard). In Traité, the film alternates
its live takes with discarded fragments of incongruous documents
perhaps assembled backwards, sometimes disfigured by scratches,
slashes, spots, following an aggressive method (chiseling, an active
and conscious method of decomposition) which would be adopted
by Lemaître and accentuated in his Le film est déjà commencé?,
also from 1951.
In 1956 a theory of the imaginary (or infinitesimal) esthetic was
produced, founded on mathematical suggestions, which attributed
to the elements of the work the task of evoking other, non-existent,
hence purely imaginary elements. Four years later the idea of visual
art as an art of space, as comes from Lessing, was disrupted by the
proposal of a “supertemporal” frame, an empty support, susceptible
of gradually being populated by a potentially infinite number of interventions by artists and lovers of the arts.
In the following decades, Isidore Isou developed his creative system,
which he had been thinking about since the late 1940s, and which
he worked on continuously until its publication in 2003, under the
title La Créatique ou la Novatique. His approach, based on the central value of innovation, as opposed to the prior conceptions based
on beauty, freedom or charity, represented a leap forward, similar to
what Descartes did in his time with the Discours de le Méthode. His
56
Isidore ISOU
Initiation à la Haute Volupté - 1960
Silkscreen on cloth - 160 x 140 cm - 21 signed and numbered copies
Edition F. Conz, 1989
original proposals covered all the fields of human knowledge from
philosophy to theology, from science to technical fields.
In the field of art, in particular, in 1991 he unveiled his ultimate esthetic contribution at a show at the Galerie de Paris: excoordisme
plastique, which is a deeper version of imaginary art. This time it
involved finding or inventing new associations among the infinitesimal elements, considered in light of both their extension and their
interaction.
Beyond the individual theoretical texts or the works—some frankly
anticipatory, such as the “Unimaginable sculpture” (1964) closed
inside a box, by Maurice Lemaître—what has been of particular importance in the Lettrist movement, was not only the germination of
new artistic approaches, such as affichisme or Sound Poetry—but
also the coincidence of its projects with other artists and trends
(such as American underground films and happenings).
57
Pierre GARNIER
Horizon - 1997
Pannello + caratteri in legno - 100 x 80 cm
II - The trajectory of poetry: Concrete Poetry
If Isou took as his starting point the graphic-phonetic unit, Concrete Poetry, the other basic node of the Secret Museum, starts with
the full development of the graphic component of poetry. Scattered
among various focal points geographically distant from one another
(Brazil, more precisely Sao Paulo, Switzerland and Sweden), taking its name from an explicit reference to Concrete Art as theorized
by Theo van Doesburg in 1930, which was given fresh impetus after the war by Max Bill, Concrete Poetry in reality was stimulated
by diverse cultural tendencies. In Brazil the founding of the review
Noigandres took place in 1952 on the heels of the “Grupo Ruptura”
exhibition (Cordeiro, Kejer, Lauand, Lima, Sacilotto) inspired by the
exhibition of Bill at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1951, but as may be
gathered from the name of the review itself (which appropriated an
enigmatic expression cited by Ezra Pound in a verse of Canto XX,
“Noigandres, eh noigandres, Now what the DEFFIL can that mean!”).
Above all, however, the experimentation of the editors, Augusto and
Haroldo De Campos and Decio Pignatari is linked to the American
poet and to his “ideogrammatic method”. The three from San Paolo
were concerned with the “prismatic subdivision of the idea” as proposed by Mallarmé, with the spacio-temporal interpenetration of the
writing of Joyce, with the “physiognomic” typography of Cummings,
as well as the work of their fellow-countrymen Oswaldo de Andrade
and João Cabral, the tonal music of Weber and Eisenstein’s theories
of film montage. This was a highly complex field of ascendancies
for a transition intended to mark an era, with the closing of the
cycle of verse as a formal rhythmic unity, following the sign-post
of Apollinaire’s declaration: “Il faut que notre intelligence s’habitue
à comprendre synthético-idéographiquement au lieu de analyticodiscursivement”. Thus the word is caught up in what are properly its
more visual aspects, linked to form, color, dimension and symmetry,
all of which condense and transform its semantic message.
Similar results were being reached in Europe at almost the same
time by Eugen Gomringer, more closely bound to the figure of Max
Bill (whose secretary he was for some years at the Hochschule für
Gestaltung of Ulm) and, through him, to Bauhaus and Constructivist
precedents. Gomringer, who is represented in the Secret Museum
together with Augusto De Campos with his “Poemobiles”, published
his constellations in 1953, which achieved a linguistic concentration similar to that of slogans, proposed not as a simple cycle of
composition but as a new poetic form. His seminal document “from
verse to constellation: aim and form of a new poetry” outlines a
shift towards formal simplicity, reduction and universal accessibility. “The constellation”, he wrote, “is a compositional system and at
the same time an area of play. The poet determines the field and
59
the forces at play and suggests its possibilities. The reader, the new
reader, grasps the idea of play, and enters into it. But the author
specifies the aspect in which resides its “concrete” being based on
the fact that the constellation is something instilled in the world. The
constellation is not per se a poem written about this or that—it is
an invitation.” The debt to Mallarmé’s famous passage in “Un Coup
de Dès” (“Nothing will have taken place except perhaps a constellation.) is acknowledged.
In a third, contemporary proposal for a concrete poetry, advanced
by Oyvind Fahlström (Swedish but educated in Brazil) in his “Manifesto for Concrete Poetry of 1953, the term “concrete” refers principally not to the structure of the composition but to the verbal material, conceived almost as a physical object. “To squeeze the material
of language is what may be defined as ‘concrete’, wrote the artist,
formulating an explicit analogy to musical experimentation, based
on noises and sounds extracted from the real world, which Pierre
Schaeffer had been carrying out in France for some years.
Since those years, concrete poetry has undergone worldwide dissemination. Among the many poets who have worked in this area,
aside from the precursor Belloli, who had already participated in
the Futurist experience, the names of Max Bill (author of important
studies on esthetics and a dominant figure of the Stuttgart Group),
Franz Mon, Heinz Gappmayr, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jiri Kolar, Arrigo
Lora Totino, Adriano Spatola, John Furnival, Hans-Jörg Mayer stand
out, to mention only a few. With respect to the thread of reasoning
we are following that guides us through the Secret Museum, the
principal focus remains however on the Darmstädter Kreis (1957 –
1959) formed by Carl Bremer, Daniel Spoerri and Emmett Williams.
While Gomringer would attribute to the first the credit of having
broadened the idea of the “constellation”, Spoerri and Williams—
as has already been noted—would become important figures in the
network of contacts through which Fluxus activities would spread.
For that matter, in Darmstadt, during the same period, the presence
of Nam June Paik is recorded, who in 1957 frequented the Internationale Sommerkurs für Neue Musik where he met Stockhausen and
Cage. Another approach reflected in the Secret Museum is the Spatialism of Pierre and Ilse Garnier, which from its foundation in 1963
with his “Manifeste pour une Poésie Nouvelle, Visuelle et Phonétique” undertook “to isolate language, to modify and to subvert it”
through processes revolving first about the relation of words, the
relations with each other, next about syllables, punctuation, figures,
geometrical relations, making of them a “lyrical, linguistic object”.
Se la Poesia Concreta aveva portato in primo piano la parola, la
singola parola, evidenziandone la concretezza, la sostanzialità ed
aprendo la strada ad un ripensamento della poesia che ha nella
riduzione e nella semplficazione le sue forze propulsive, con lo Spa-
60
zialismo queste possibilità esplodono e si irradiano nello spazio della
composizione grafico-visiva che viene ad essere l’essenza stessa
della poesia. In questo modo ogni parola diviene soprattutto segno:
segno grafico, segno pittorico, segno astratto. Ogni parola è una
pittura astratta. In questo senso lo spazio occupato dale lettere e le
geometrie che esse disegnano sulla superficie sono da considerare
parte fondante della poesia stessa.
Dick HIGGINS
Labyrinth - 1989
Silkscreen on cloth; 240 x 240 cm - 50 signed and numbered copies
Edition F. Conz, 1989
61
The Holy Staff of Antioch
This is a genuine branch from the Tree of Knowledge in Paradise on wich the serpent sat when offering Eve the apple (a Golden Delicious as verified on the Staff itself with a label miraculously
impregnated at the spot where it was plucked).
Taken by Adam at his axpulsion from Paradise
this holy relic has descended through a complex
and only partially recovered provenance to its
present owner St. Francesco Conz, with a list of
some prior owners and photodocumentation of its
latest proof of miraculous powers viz. The apparition of the Holy Virgin of Unwanted Miracles
before an aging Cimbrian shepherd (il poverino
Stefano McC.).
Verified as an authentic relic by dispensation of
the provisional Fluxus Institute of Ecclesiastica.
Verona 5 may, 2002
Partial Provenance
Adam, Moses, Castor and Pollux, Atilla the Hun,
the blessed Onan of Algiers, Ug the stammering
Monk of Weirmouth, Edward the Confessor, Cangrande II, Joan of Arc, Queen Elisabeth I, William Shakespeare, Catherine the Great, Molière,
Goethe, Napoleon I, Maria Theresa of Austria,
William Wordsworth, Fortunato Depero, Mussolini, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stali, Charlie Chaplin,
Marylin Monroe, J.F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul II,
George W. Bush, Bill Gates, Osamar bin Laden,
Carolee Schneemann, “Popsy” the blind abbess
of San Fermo, Stefano the shepherd, Francesco
Conz.
The Miracle of the Rampant Pi-Pi: in the order
of the six photo-apparitions
1- Alone in a wood (like Dante before him) shepherd Stefano noticis a blinding light in the sky
2- Stefano reacts to the beatific vision of the Madonna of Unwanted Miracles
3- He makes his wish to her
4- His zip-fly miraculously descends as Stefano
conveys his tank
5- Stefano reacts to the unwanted wish
6- Accepting his fate Stefano conteplates how he
will explain the miraculous change to his
favorite little lamb
Steve McCAFERY
The Holy Staff of Antioch - 1983
Mixed media - 115 x 98
III - The trajectory of poetry: Sound Poetry
Like Concrete Poetry, Sound Poetry also includes numerous precedents in the era (and preceding it) of the historical avantgarde (the
Dada sound poem, or poetry without words”, the trans-rational, or
beyondsense language of the Russian Futurists, and the syntacticgrammatical remodeling ushered in with Italian Futurism’s words in
freedom”.) Its definition, as a field of experimentation more than
an organized movement, took place in the fervid atmosphere of
the art proposals of Paris of the 1950’s where, as has already been
seen, the Lettrists were active, both orthodox and dissidents, with
Altagor, creator in 1947 of Métapoésie (“a music of the articulated
timbres of the vocal apparatus..a language-sensation, an undefined
development of phonic combinations and structures..a pure motor
psychology”) and Arthur Petronio. The latter was already active in
the inter-war period, and in 1953 became the promoter of Verbophonie, a “polyphonic-symphonic recitation” influenced by an “instrumentalist” poetics based upon the intrinsic musicality of vowels
and consonants , theorized in 1899 by René Ghil in his “Méthode
Evolutive instrumentiste d’une poésie rationnelle”, and also founded
on the experiments of Jean-Louis Brau, fellow-worker of Debord and
Wolman in the Internationale Lettriste, which in its endeavor to
eliminate “the terms poetry, music, phonetics, word” proposed to
use the expression Instrumentation Verbale.
In an article in 1961 in Cinquième Saison, the magazine published
by Henri Chopin, Petronio wrote: “The plasticity of words in their
acoustic representation, the imperative approach of their timbral reality, their vibratory character, their onomatopoeic roots, their morphology, their semantics, will constitute for the verbophonic poet
the indispensable materials for the construction of the poem, for its
architecture.”
While the itinerary of Petronio seen in the Secret Museum through
several works still ties him to the historical avantgarde, to figures
such as Henri Barzun and to Kandinsky, among the principal experiments which may be attributed to the constitutive stage of sound
poetry the megapneumies might also be included, the expression
used for the “art du grand souffle” practiced by G. Wolman starting
in 1950 when he was still actively engaged in the Lettrist movement,
with the aim of going beyond the letter, of disintegrating it; as well
as the cri-rhythmes—a synthesis between the cry (“an unarticulated
sound which does not necessarily imply an outburst of the voice”)
and rhythm (“which does not necessarily imply cadences”) of François Dufrêne, who at that time (1953) had already left the orbit of
Isou. The drive to “create a poetic composition beyond writing, directly in the microphone” emerged with his cri-rhythmes—“a voluntary production of pure, asyllabic, unpremeditated phonemes with
63
esthetic intention and of maximum automatism”. It would be precisely the use of this new device which gave authors such as Henri
Chopin, Brion Gysin and Bernard Heidsieck new possibilities for the
analysis of sounds (vocal or recorded in the most diverse contexts),
and further, which would allow—through assembling and amplification, superimposition, reverberation and variations of speed—a
broader and more multi-form compositional articulation in contrast
with the prior methods of live recitation.
Henri Chopin, thanks to his creative activities and to his publishing
endeavours (he headed the review Cinquième Saison and OU) as
well as through his historical reconstructions (with the publication
of Poésie Sonore Internationale, 1979) played a key role in the field
of sound poetry. “Chopin - writes Sten Hansen - was not the first
to use the microphone as a poet’s instrument, but was surely the
first to realize the basically different potential which he discovered
in each individual poet and the first to clarify this on the theoretical plane.” Hansen further remarks how the process through which
Chopin extended his understanding of the instrument may be followed throughout his work, and how these increasing skills contributed to an ever-greater poetic depth and density. Starting with the
earliest works (Pêche de nuit, espace et Gestes, Sol-Air) in which
“the word remains the point of departure of the poetic procedure,
thanks to the technique of recording more sounds superimposed
one upon the other, a new dimension is reached where the vocal
sound gives way to a “purer audible unit”, essentially composed of
bodily sounds (Mes Bronches, Le Bruit du Sang etc.). As will be seen
below, the presence of Chopin plays a central role in Conz’s collection, as does the work of Bernard Heidsieck, another major figure
of Sound Poetry, who began his own experimentation in this field
approximately 1955, with the declared ambition of taking poetry off
ALTAGOR
Métaphone - 1965
Original musical tool - 99 x 55 x 22 cm
64
the written page. “The ferment of the season must break through,
all barriers be overcome, in order to reach finally the fullness of
song of the voice’s scope. And to seize hold of the word in flight.”)
Starting in 1959 he began to record his poèmes-partition with a microphone, which he also defined as poésie-action, followed in 1966
by his biopsies and in 1969 by his passepartout. “Heidsieck, in his
work, is the poet most estranged from himself”, wrote Henri Chopin;
“The world is before him, he takes it, plays with it, directs it.” In his
work he incorporates the sound panorama of the everyday, street
noises, school playgrounds, cries plucked out of a street demonstration, all of which are accompanied by “a stupefying voice..a language of ellipses,..of breakages, of exclamations, of cuts” by means
of which he interprets repetitive texts like Vaduz (1975), one of his
most famous compositions which sets loose all the populations of
the world which, on their planetary scale, surround the microcapital
(a sort of ante-litteram non-place) of Lichtenstein: “there are gypsies around Vaduz/all around Vaduz there are Ukrainians/all around
Vaduz are Montenegrins.” Or he immerses you in the life of a neighborhood, as in Le Carrefour de la Chaussée d’Antin” (1972)- “a film
without images from the reasoned recording of this inexhaustible
Henri CHOPIN
Monsieur post-scriptum - 1977
Mixed media on paper - 49 x 63 cm
65
Parisian microcosmos” (Bobillot) in which he makes use of publicity
advertisements, shop signs, the cries of street vendors, the names
of products on sale, all mixed in with personal comments and quotations from Aron, Baudrillard, Debord, Veneigem—or again, of a New
York street as in Canal Street, in 1976.
A number of other authors have made important contributions in
the field of Sound Poetry like the Flemish poet, Paul De Vree, editor
of the review De Tafelronde (founded in 1953), or the American expatriate, Brion Gysin, with his laboratory of verbal permutations, or
the Englishman, Bob Cobbing, Arrigo Lora Totino, who propagated,
with the help of the hydromegaphone an echoing device invented
by Piero Fogliati—his liquid poetry. Carlfriedrich Claus, philosopherpoet isolated in East Germany and prevented from publishing or
showing by the Communist regime, nonetheless produced one of
the earliest bodies of sound poetry experimentation- the Klang-Gebilden or sound-figures in the early fifties. Dom Sylvester Houédard,
an English Benedictine monk, created koan-like typographic poems,
and was a major theorist of sound and concrete poetry in the anglosaxon world, linking up people in the visual poetry movement worldwide.
In America Dick Higgins (a founding member of Fluxus and publisher of the important avantgarde Something Else Press) foregrounded
the sound component in several of his pieces, noticeably the playful
sibilant meanderings of his “GlassAssass” and “Danger Music 25” in
which the poet screams for an extended period of time at the top of
his voice. John Giorno too should be mentioned as the inventor and
practitioner of performance poetry and the extension of vocalized
material into radiophonic media. In 1998 he launched the DIAL-APOEM project which connected the avantgarde to a wide telecommunicational audience. Jerome Rothberg represent the confluence
of the Dada legacy of the sound-poem with an ethnopoetic … Along
with Dennis Tedlock he launched the study and practice of ethnopoetics. While not an avantgarde movement as such, it marks an important extension of formal and stylistic affinities into a comparison
with different ethnocultural practices (such aspects as multimedia,
simultaneity and nonsense that can be noted not only in a contemporary European and American avantgarde but in such orally based
cultures as the Hopi, Haida, and Zuni peoples). Mention should also
be made of Franz Mon, Ladislav Novak, and groups of the 1960’s
such as the Swedish Fylkingen (Bengt Emil Johnson, Lars Gunnar
Bodin, Sten Hansen and others).
In Canada the Four Horsemen (Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton,
Steve McCaffery and bp Nichol) developed a ludic, hybrid performative poetics of sound, theatrics and performance art inspired by
a neo-Dadaism. Bill Bisset (publisher of the radical Blewointment
magazine) explored innovative work in both sound and concrete
66
poetry. Largely ethnocultural in his approaches Bisset worked to
adapt indigenous North American chants to a contemporary audience as well as important explorations in abstract typewriter poems
and verbi-visual collages. The first true proponent of a Canadian
sound poetry however is Claude Gauvreau. A member of the Automatiste group centered in Montréal and devoted to developing an
indigenous Quebec surrealism not limited by the tenets of Breton
(that insisted on a pictorial base to the image) he developed his own
non-semantic texts employing a radical new image: the “exploratory image.” Constructed from the shards of recognizable words and
non-semantic sounds and letter-groups.
Artur PETRONIO
Ludion n° 17 - 1968
Mixed media on paper - 28.5 x 20 cm
67
Lamberto PIGNOTTI
TI PREGO !.. - 1964
Primed canvas - 101 x 83 cm
IV - Trajectory of poetry: Visual Poetry
Like Concrete Poetry and Sound Poetry, Visual Poetry quickly took
off throughout the world, benefiting somewhat later in its development from the Mail Art network. With respect to the other phenomena mentioned above, however, its actual birth has had to be
disentangled in the last few years.
La Poesia Visiva, così definita a iniziare dai primi anni Sessanta,
nasce quasi contemporaneamente in due città italiane alla fine degli
anni Cinquanta. A Genova, grazie alle sperimentazioni di Luigi Tola
e del suo gruppo studio (Zivieri, Miles e altri) nascono le “poesie
murali” e contemporaneamente si sviluppa la ricerca “verbovisuale”
di Martino Oberto che riunisce attorno alla sua rivista Ana eccetera
Ugo Carrega, Corrado D’Ottavi, Lino Matti e altri. A Napoli, invece, è
attorno alla figura di Luca (Luigi Castelano) e alla sua rivista Documento Sud che fioriscono le esperienze di Luciano Caruso, Mario
Diacono e Stelio Maria Martini. Poco dopo viene la “Poesia Tecnologica” del gruppo fiorentino: Lamberto Pignotti, Eugenio Miccini, Lucia
Marcucci, etc. Sono queste le tre principali esperienze che in seguito
sono state raggruppate con il nome di Poesia Visiva.
On the one hand, the use of a pre-fabricated image, extracted from
the context of advertising or from the popular print media achieved
the objective of desacralizing the poetic universe, on the other hand
the textual component “altering the codes of communication, leads
to an authentic semiological guerilla” (Accame). From this perspective, Lamberto Pignotti defined Poesia Visiva as a complex process,
founded upon three components: the first is of a symbolic nature
“consisting in the attempt to reconquer or to requalify esthetically
the enormous symbolic material extorted from poetry and art by
mass communications”; the second is one of sociological pertinence,
carried out through the adjustment to an audience which today
“participates in a new convention of codification and of reception of
messages”, the latter conveying an ideology in which “the sign of
the utilitarian meaning of messages as vehicled by mass media is
reversed”.
However, side by side with the technological tendency, essentially
antithetical to it, yet taking part in the same exhibitions, an alternative trajectory manifested itself in Italy linked to the dimension of
writing. These experiments were carried out by Martino and Anna
Oberto through their review Ana etcetera (1959-1971), in which
strands of philosophical and linguistic research were interwoven in
this version of artistic experimentation, with special focus on the
concepts of montage and graphic analysis. In Martino Oberto’s work,
whose beginnings were in the pictorial field, the endeavor to arrive
at a synthesis between semantic and graphic aspects, to ascertain
a form of thought through writing, would remain through the years,
69
stimulating a process in which “it is the sign per se which conveys
the signified, either when it is word, or when it is not” (Accame).
Corrado D’Ottavi took his point of departure from the research done
in Ana etcetera, as well as Ugo Carrega who went on to found Tool,
a bulletin of “symbiotic writing” through which the analysis of the
constitutive elements of the poetic process is systematically applied,
in order to bring about their interactions. The identification of these
factors in the structure of the proposition, and in the various aspects
of sound, typography, signs, formal and chromatic elements, visual
aspects, are largely placed at the center of the poetic operation,
clearing the path toward more complex and conscious communicative modalities, which to some extent are capable of being programmed. Other poets such as Vincenzo Accame (historian of the
movement) worked with Tool , as well as Rolando Mignani, Rodolfo
Vitone, Liliana Landi. Still other Italian authors were Mario Diacono
(who with Emilio Villa created the .review EX), Luciano Caruso, Vincenzo Ferrari and William Xerra.
The most dynamic group in Italy was Lotta Poetica, collected about
the review founded by Sarenco, the first international group in Italy,
with Italians Sarenco and Eugenio Miccini, French Julien Blaine and
Jean-François Bory, Belgian Paul De Vree and American Alain AriasMisson. Rebaptized Logomotives (al quale aderì anche Franco Verdi)
and driven by Sarenco, this group had far-flung activities throughout
Italy and, unlike the other, more specifically Italian groups, well beyond its borders. Because of its international character, it cannot be
characterized solely by one or the other of the Italian tendencies.
Numerous artists were involved in the broader field of visual poetry
throughout the world. Many of them published their work in Paul De
Vree’s influential review, De Tafelronde, in Belgium, thanks to his
generous and inclusive spirit. His own visual poems were eccentric,
outside the mainstream, and unmistakeably his, with their handdrawn or typographical images and letters and strong political bias.
Ivo Vroom, with his magazine Labris, was another Belgian poet actively associated with Paul De Vree , and Luc Fierens, younger than
the others, later became a central proponent of Mail Art.
Before coming to Antwerp in 1969 and working with Paul De Vree,
the Belgo-American Arias-Misson was one of the principal protagonists of experimental poetry in Spain in the early sixties, showing as
a Spaniard, along with his friend, the eminent philosopher Ignacio
Gomez de Liaño, theorist and early practioner of the new poetic
forms, and Julio Campal. During this period Arias-Misson developed
his “Public Poems” in collaboration with Ignacio Gomez de Liaño,
which provided a mytho-poeïc grammar of the city, moving mansized linguistic symbols through the streets, with masks, soundeffects and various materials, highly differentiated from Kaprow and
Hansen’s Happenings (earlier) and Performances (later) because of
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their strong basis in text and their public dimension. He did the first
translations of a highly significant figure of Catalan culture, the poet
and avantgarde man of theatre, Joan Brossa, for American and Belgian reviews, and introduced him to Concrete Poetry in 1963. Joan
Brossa, who was the poet of the Dau al Set group (Pons, Tapies,
Artigas...) became famous for his object-poems (poemes-objects in
which object and text intersect) -although he worked independently
of the actual movement—applying a linguistic wit embued with theatrical magic and malice to his objects unparalleled in the movement,
which earned him the representation of Spain at the Venice Biennale of 1999. His poetic monuments enliven the city of Barcelona
today. Other significant figures of the Spanish experimental poetry
were Julio Campal, who imported concepts of concrete poetry from
Argentina to Madrid, and Fernando Millan, responsible for an early,
important anthology, La escritura en libertad, and Enrique Uribe.
In Czechoslovakia, Josef Hirsal and Bohumila Grogerova founded
the group BOJ-JOB, ma la loro esperienza fu ben presto bloccata
dal regime che li condannò per letteratura sovversiva distruggendo
Eugenio MICCINI
ROMANZO D’AMORE- 1965
Collage - 48 x 58 cm
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l’antologia Poesia che i due poeti avevano curato. Jiri Kolar, one of
the foremost artists worldwide of poetic innovation, first identified
with Concrete Poetry in some of the earliest texts in the forties, and
moved toward visual poetry in 1961 with his use of letters and punctuation signs in the form of images of major figures of modern art.
His disciple Karel Trinkewitz, closely involved (and imprisoned) with
the Prague velvet revolution and signatory of the Charter of 77, was
a dynamic practioner of visual poetry with his highly dramatic textual objects (planes, motorcycle, bill-boards); Jiri Valoch, with his
environmental and photographic text-associations, and Ladislav Novak, also a pioneer of sound poetry, were other essential authors.
In Germany, in a spirit close to Filliou, Timm Ulrichs involved his
own person in visual poetry exhibitions, and Klaus Groh did streetevents. Klaus-Peter Dencker, younger than the others and appearing in the mid-seventies, developed a highly precise, technical form
of visual texts and produced a basic reference-work in Germany
on visual poetry. Perhaps the single outstanding figure of German
visual poetry was Carlfriedrich Claus. In relative isolation in East
Germany, prohibited by the Communist regime from publishing or
showing his work, nonetheless his works were “smuggled” into public view through various books, publications and exhibitions in the
GDR of major artists and novelists who held his work in very high
regard. On the other hand, Claus was able to get his work out to
many shows and reviews of visual poetry in the early fifties and
early sixties in the West. He developed a unique method of work
which he called his Sprachblätter or “Speech-sheets”, in which he
wrote/drew with his right hand and his left hand on both sides of
small translucent sheets. An electro-nervous, trance-like impulse of
the hands drifting across the paper produced at once handwritten
phrases and images evolving out of this writing in which image and
writing achieved a seamless unity, the goal rarely attained of visual
poetry. These “visual texts” constituted an active dialectic in which
logic and affect, analysis and metaphor enacted a “shamanic” feedback to the psyche of the poet—and of the reader/viewer willing to
participate in this highly complex reading.
In France, among exponents of the movement, the figure of JeanFrançois Bory is prominent, an author closely linked to Conz, who
placed the book as such at the center of his work, conceived of as
an instrument of research “in a space always open and at the same
time always closed”. But poetry is everywhere in his objects, a sort
of ready-made assembled with letters and volumes, typewriters and
toy soldiers, transfigured by a golden patina, in landscapes through
which emerge the same inscriptions as in his photographs. Julien
Blaine, his accomplice in the principal French review of experimental poetry, Approches (1966-1969 fonded by Jean-François Bory),
went on to explore a “semiotic poetry” in search of a “graphic form
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Jean-François BORY
L’eternité - 1965
Mixed media - 48 x 58 cm
which not only comprises the play of our alphabet, but also a specific ideography for each and every poetic composition”. Beyond his
“elementary poetry”, his fundamental role doubtless resided in the
review Doc(k)s (fonded by Blaine in 1976) in which he published
hundreds of experimental poets whom he sought out from around
the world.
Ian Hamilton Finlay was a major figure of anglo-saxon poetry, who
worked very early in concrete poetry in the fifties, but achieved a
major visual-poetic work unlike any other, embodied in a great garden, Little Sparta: here landscape and word, object and idea, fuse
in what no doubt will remain as one of the most delightful poetic
gardens in the world.. Tom Phillips, one of the best-known artists of
visual poetry in the international art world, worked largely outside
the visual poetry movement (like Carlfriedrich Claus, Jiri Kolar and
Joan Brossa) but has also been widely recognized within it. His book,
A Humament, published in 1980 by Thames & Hudson, consisting
of fragments of texts written inside cartoon-like bubbles in the 600
mini-texts he developed out of W.H. Mallock’s A Human Document,
is deservedly famous. His poetic research appears in some ways to
join that of another important English poet, John Furnival, whose
Babel-Towers of words are widely known, and who co-published the
most significant early poetic review in the UK, Openings, with Dom
Sylverster Houédard.
In South America, socially turbulent in the seventies with the emergence rise of fascist regimes, visual poetry was rooted in political
73
action. The outstanding poets were the Uruguayan, Clemente Padin,
who did public street poems and eventually was imprisoned for his
troubles by the generals; Edgardo Antonio Vigo, who published Diagonal Cero in Buenos Aires, had a very broad influence in South
America and became a major proponent of Mail Art later. Samuel
Feijoo who published Signos in Cuba, the aim of which was to poetically assemble signs from every horizon of the earth, and G. Deisler
were also salient figures of the new poetry.
Visual poetry developed also in Japan in the sixties, and the two major proponents and dominant visual poets, Seiichi Niikuni (close to
Pierre Garnier and with the same delicacy and refinement of work)
and Kitasono Katué, the former publishing ASA and the second,
VOU, maintained strong communication and exchange, through
their reviews and exhibitions with the poets described under the international section. Niikuni was more formalist and typographic, developing as it were an ingenious visual-poetry continuity and transformation of traditional Japanese poetry; Katué was iconoclastic and
extremely contemporary, even today, with his crushed newspaper
and their stick-arms and legs and their juxtaposition with photographs. His most brilliant Japanese disciple was Takahashi Shohachiro, who published and showed his exquisite textual constructions very widely in Europe.
The United States has been left to the last, because oddly, visual
poetry (or for that matter concrete poetry) was never widely represented there. It is as if the United States, having dominated the
sphere of the visual arts since the late fifties, was simply not open
to the extreme break in continuity of visual poetry as a literary
art; i.e. was more conservative in this regard—and that in spite
of the important (and isolated) precedents of e.e. cummings and
Ezra Pound. Expatriates, however, did play an important role. The
American concrete poet (widely known as a Fluxus artist as well),
who published the best-known anthology of concrete poetry with
Something Else Press in 1967—Emmett Williams—was an expatriate
in Germany much of his life and perfectly fluent in German. AriasMisson, a New Yorker and an American novelist fluent in Spanish
first published his poetic work as a Spaniard when he settled in
Spain in 1963 (and assembled the first anthology of concrete poetry
in the United States in 1966 for a Chicago editor), then as a Belgian
when he moved to Antwerp (his father was Belgian) and only in the
seventies and eighties in Italy as an American—playing a game of
identity. A third essential figure of visual poetry (which he did not
participate in formally however), also an American novelist, was Brion Gysin, who inspired Borroughs with his cut-ups, and was also an
expatriate - in Paris. Richard Kostelanetz, eminent cultural historian
of the avantgardes, first created an unusual mathematical poetry,
then the first holistic poetic experiments; his “verbal fictions” were
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also well-known. Sono comunque da ricordare artisti come Dick,
Higgins, Jackson MacLow e Rrobert Lax (più conosciuto per la sua
minimalpoetry)che, seppur in modo non continuativo, hanno sperimentato anche in questo ambito di ricerca.
Luigi TOLA
BABELE DI LINGUE- 2009
Collage - 24,5 x 35 cm - Special work for the Secret Museum
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Lawrence FERLINGHETTI
Il Papa niente - 2000
85 signed and numbered copies
Photo by Françoise Janicot silkscreened on
Fabriano paper over-worked by Ferlinghetti; 40 x 30 cm
V - The trajectory of poetry: Beat poetry and protest
The works of two poets well-known for their “linear” verse, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti and Jack Hirschmann, also represented in the collection
of the “secret museum” , are particularly striking in the context of
visual poetry, in light of their ideal connection with the latter. Here
again, in spite of the differences of the means used, their fundamental cultural concordance with the majority of the artists present is
undeniable, whether Americans, Europeans of other. Furthermore,
both these poets are closely linked. Each, to a greater or lesser degree, took part in the Beat Generation, and both of them, however
different their origins, followed the literary itinerary of the Californian scene, and in particular of San Francisco.
Along with the Beat Generation, Ferlinghetti had deep and substantial ties, whether as poet-friend or as the first publisher of Howl
(the notorious poem of Allen Ginsberg was the fourth volume in the
pocket series he published), with a large part of the new literature,
which, when he felt it necessary, he made known through his bookstore, City Lights, which he opened in 1953 with Peter D. Martin.
Hirschmann, a communist, while in close touch with all the beat
poets, was also a critic of their spirit that he felt to be impregnated
with bourgeois concerns. These differences need to be understood
but not exaggerated. Even the most classic Beats gave strong support to radical political issues, and Ferlinghetti was a supporter of
Castro to the extent of going to Cuba as a member of the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee. For Hirschmann, who had different views regarding political commitment than the beat poets in general, behavioral
expression of the bohemian kind was a superficial and “bourgeois”
phenomenon—and he paid homage to the native role played by Walt
Whitman and Ezra Pound. Of course this is not so significant, unless the sphere of influence of European thinkers of the time is not
taken into consideration. Hirschmann was a prime disseminator of
this culture in the United States (Artaud, Pasoline, Celan and among
others, Rocco Scotellaro). For his part, Ferlinghetti—who was living in France where he met Rexroth who asked him to come to San
Francisco—was a translator of Jacques Prévert and the influence this
poet exercised on him was such that Fernanda Pivano has called him
“the Prévert of America”.
It is strikingly clear that these components left traces in the collateral works of the poets. In Hirschmann an expressive tension is
felt, a kind of informal fury which communicates the same sense of
agony in the contemporary world as found in Arcanes, which was
composed starting in the seventies. Ferlinghetti who was also an
art critic—paradoxically, in his visual expression, which he has devoted much energy for some years, appears more political in its
captions than in himself. His canvases, which identified him with
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the Bay Area Figurative Movement, exhibit a form of figuration close
to Art Brut, and are focused on politically engaged themes and on
episodes of everyday life, which the author has defined as an attempt to scrape away the surface of the human face. His collages
often exhibit markedly anticlerical features that invoke a vibrant
polemic against authoritarianism (and this is an authentic link with
the poetry of Prévert). Finally, thanks to his collaboration with Francesco Conz, with whom in 2000 he co edited Il erbo fluxarem, he
established contact with the Fluxus experience which shows certain
affinities (a common, interest in Zen, opposition to war, a style of
improvisation)but also larger differences. Risulta evidente che ciò a
cui è interessato Conz non è la pura poesia lineare di cui Hirshman
e Ferlinghetti sono oggi i maggiori esponenti americani, ma il loro
operare in più ambiti: poesia, pittura, reading, che li avvicina al concetto di multimedia coniato da Higgins.
Conz incontra per la prima volta Hirshman e Ferlinghetti a Firenze
nel ???? dove si era recato accompagnato da Decio Pignatari. In
seguito a questo incontro nasce la collaborazione con l’Archivio che
porterà i due poeti americani a soggiornare più volte a Verona per
realizzare alcune opere ed edizioni. Rinviamo alle due interviste contenute in appendice per un approfondimento delle ragioni profonde
che sottostanno a questo strano connubio.
Jack HIRSCHMAN, 2002
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George BRECHT
Deck - 1966
64 plasticized playing cards in white plastic box, 9.5 x 7 x 2.5 cm
VI - Fluxus - Geoffrey Hendricks
Fluxus might well be seen as the centerpiece or wellspring of Francesco Conz’s archive. The genesis of Conz’s collection, in 1973, grew
out of his meeting the Fluxus artist Joe Jones in Berlin the year
before and bringing him to Asolo. Joe described the exciting work
and activities of George Maciunas and other artists, which led to
Francesco’s trip to New York, in the Spring of 1974, together with
Beate and Hermann Nitsch and Günter Brus, artists he met soon
after meeting Joe Jones. When in New York they visited John Cage
together with Geoffrey and his brother Jon Hendricks. Francesco,
Beate, Hermann and Günter were also introduced to: George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Shigeko Kubota, Charlotte Moorman, Carolee
Schneemann, Jonas Mekas, Al Hansen and others. Francesco then
made a trip to Vermont with Charlotte to meet Dick Higgins, Alison
Knowles, Ann Noël and Emmett Williams. He made arrangements
with each artist to come to Italy to create new work and bring material to develop his archive.
That summer activities began in earnest. Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman came to perform and realize projects, as did Alison
Knowles, Dick Higgins, Geoff Hendricks and Al Hansen. They would
arrive at the small Cittadella railroad station, walk the short distance
up Viale Stazione to the factory, meet Francesco in his office, and
later continue on up to Asolo. Peter Moore came with his photo archive and made prints for the collection, followed by other photog79
raphers in successive years. Mario Parolin, the factory photographer,
was an invaluable resource for everyone.
Francesco Conz, was aware of the extensive archive of Happenings
and Fluxus that Hanns Sohm had created, the basis of the Happening & Fluxus exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in 1970, now in
the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, and he knew of the smaller but focused
Fluxus collection of Jean Brown, now in the Getty Museum. Knowledge of this led Francesco to the realization that the most important
contribution he could make, and what interested him most, was to
work directly with the artists, photograph their actions and events,
collect relics from their performances (that have become his fetish
collection) and produce special portfolios and editions of the work in
order to make it more accessible. From his beginning with Fluxus,
Happenings, and Viennese Actionism, Francesco went on to discover
the wealth of other related movements and groups that collectively
make up his extraordinary archive and collection.
What is Fluxus? A question often asked of George Maciunas who
would say, “Go look it up in the dictionary.” George collaged one
manifesto with a cut up dictionary definition interfaced with his comments working with the multiple meanings of the word: “to purge
the world of dead art,” “promote a revolutionary flood and tide in
art,” “promote non-art reality,” “fuse the cadres of cultural, social
and political revolutionaries”. But he has also spoken of what Fluxus
is in more down to earth terms, calling it “art-amusement,” comparing it to vaudeville and gags, not high art, and of it being concrete
Bob WATTS
Pork Chop Table - 1974
Woden table - 195 x 121x 52 cm
80
and monomorphic. Joe Jones when asked, “What is Fluxus?” would
reply “George Maciunas.” Emmett Williams titled his great collective
portrait of George, Mr. Fluxus. Maciunas and Fluxus are intimately
connected. Added to the mix Harry Ruhé has described Fluxus as
“the most radical and experimental art movement of the sixties.”
George Maciunas has spoken of John Cage as being like the Apostle
Paul spreading a new kind of thinking about the creative process,
bringing his ideas from America to Europe and Asia, explaining that
-- when one charts Cage’s travels, one can see the spread of ideas
about experimentation, chance, Aleatoric Music, the I Ching, and
engaging new structures of composition.
John Cage was teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina,
in the late 40’s and early 50’s. In 1952 he put on a proto-happening production, Theater Piece #1, with Merce Cunningham, Robert
Rauschenberg, Charles Olson, M. C. Richards and David Tudor. Later
that summer Tudor performed Cage’s 4’33” in Woodstock, New York.
It was a radical work, a manifesto about both music and silence.
At this time the Gutai were also beginning their first experiments
with performance and chance procedures in Japan. Ray Johnson,
the founder of the New York Correspondence School and Buddha
University and considered the father of Mail Art, was also at Black
Mountain from 1945 to 1948. He then moved to New York, and was
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an integral part of the experimental art community.
John Cage began teaching at the New School for Social Research
in New York in 1956. From 1957 to 1959 Cage had Allan Kaprow,
George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, Al Hansen and others as students. Their interactions and creative work generated
programs of new music, performance and Happenings around New
York in the late 50’s. George Brecht self-published his essay on
Chance Imagery in 1957 and developed the concept of the Event
score. Kaprow created his first Happening in 1958, and in 1959
put on Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts, at the Reuben Gallery,
where George Brecht’s exhibition Toward EVENTS: an arrangement,
followed. Dick Higgins explored ideas of Intermedia, and in 1964
founded the Something Else Press. Jackson Mac Low was a radical
poet who explored sound and structuring techniques, at times with
found texts. Al Hansen put on Happenings and organized programs
with the others, becoming the New York Audio Visual Group for Research and Experiment in the Fine Arts. Also in 1958 John Cage had
a 25 year retrospective of his music at Town Hall in New York with
Merce Cunningham conducting.
In 1960 Richard Maxfield took over John Cage’s class at the New
School and it was in his class that George Maciunas met La Monte
Young, who at the end of that year and in 1961 organized a series
of concerts of new music with Yoko Ono at her loft on Chambers
Street. All of this connected George with the artists and scores that
he would later publish and graphically design as An Anthology compiled by La Monte Young and Jackson Mac Low. In 1961 Maciunas
organized a series: musica antiqua et nova, at the AG Gallery that
he started on Madison Avenue. The last performance of the series,
on July 30th, was a Ray Johnson Nothing. Maciunas later that year
traveled to Wiesbaden with the scores for La Monte Young’s An Anthology together with other scores he had collected and they were
performed at the Museum in Wiesbaden in a series of 14 concerts
with the title Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik
Originally George had intentions to produce a magazine called Fluxus, but then in organizing a series of 14 concerts at the Museum
in Wiesbaden together with Emmett Williams, Ben Patterson, Wolf
Vostell, Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, and others in
September 1962 he
After Maciunas returned to New York in 1963 Fluxus activities continued with a Flux shop on Canal Street and a concert at Carnegie Recital Hall in June 1964. Connections with the Japanese Mieko
Shiomi, Takako Saito, Shigeko Kubota, Takahashi Kosugi, and Yasunao Tone were made. In the 70’s Fluxus activity in Banquets and
ceremonies were enacted in a parody: Maciunas went from organizing Fluxus Festivals of new music to Flux food, planning Flux Banquets, newspapers (V TRE) Sports: Flux Olympiads, a Flux Mass, a
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Alison KNOWLES
Identical Lunch / New Years Eve 1974 with Ay-O - 1974 (Sopra)
Identical Lunch / Vermont 1974 - 1974 (Sotto)
Silkscreen on paper; 38 x 48 cm each
83
Flux Divorce, and a Flux Wedding. In the Cabaret following the Flux
Wedding George and Billie performed Black and White, a coming
out of his transvestite desires, at a time that was clearly towards
the end of his life. When George died in 1978, the group organized
a Flux Funeral.
Maciunas’ commitment to and interest in graphic design, and drive to
publish had him creating Flux Boxes and Flux Kits that have become
signature items incorporating material connected with Fluxus. Each
published edition characterized by Maciunas’ extraordinary style of
graphic design. Mention should also be made of George Maciunas’
charts that in an extraordinarily dedicated way exemplify his intent
with organizing knowledge and information, while charting various
aspects of history and the avant-garde. He kept total control of the
design of all presented material, giving Fluxus objects, broadsides
and publications a very distinct style especially evident in all Fluxboxes and Fluxkits.
It is known that George Brecht developed the concept of the Event
score that has become a classic Fluxus form. Many are assembled in
his Flux-box Water Yam. Yoko Ono was composing short instruction
pieces that she published in Grapefruit. Dick Higgins published all
the scores that he had composed over one year in Jefferson’s Birthday/Postface, and Mieko Shiomi, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles,
Bob Watts and many others have all composed scores. However,
George was Fluxus – the driving force, and creator of the visual image of Fluxus. In his outreach to artists of kindred interests from
around the world, as with Ray Johnson and the New York Correspondence School and Buddha University, there exists an openness
and exchange of information, seeing ways of connecting people to
each other. Both George and Ray, perhaps especially Ray, likely anticipated what now exists on the World Wide Web. As they traveled
both connected with others with kindred ideas; and the work they
performed together in turn ignited ideas with others.
In 1974 Francesco Conz purchased George Maciunas’ FLUXSYRINGE,
a giant syringe with 64 needles. When Gilbert and Lila Silverman
embarked on their great Fluxus collection in 1977 (a collection that
is now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York) Francesco made
a present of this object to the Silverman’s, a welcoming to another
collector of Fluxus.
In 1973 (the year Francesco started his collection) Robert Filliou
celebrated the 1,000,010th Birthday of Art at the Neue Galerie,
Aachen with a large playful cake. In the year 2010 let’s celebrate
the 1,000,037th Birthday of Art and reflect on the openness and
play that Fluxus and the Eternal Network have given us, and on the
concept of Permanent Creation.
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Larry MILLER
George F. Maciunas - 1995
Handwritten text by Larry Miller on poster - 42 x 30 cm
Verona. Train Station. Francesco, Fabio & I came to the train station today
twice for the pleasure of meeting Eric in his terrible Blue Fiat. Francesco is
working on his ability to Relax like an American. He loves the way Americans
are so slow and easy going. Even more, however, he identifies with Lithuanian
Authority Figures.Francesco is anice fellow after all is said and done. He will
start his own Church. La Chiesa Conz. To amuse him, we will Bow occasionally. L. Miller
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VII - Wiener Gruppe
In the Fifties, after the tragic period that followed the annexation
by the Third Reich and the involvement of the country in the World
War II, Austrian art was characterized by an attempt to reestablish
contact with the world international scene. In the gray world of occupied Vienna and of the cold war, its society was “intolerant and
closed to experimental approaches”, remarks Hubert Klocker. According to Gerhard Rühm, “the situation was truly difficult in Austria
after the war. Modern art had been cleansed and it was very difficult
to get any information regarding the pre-war period”.
The few artists and poets interested in experimentation met at the
Art Club, located since 1951 in the American Bar designed by Adolf
Loos in 1907 at 10 Kärtner Durchgang. It was In this diverse milieu
and in that same year that the Hundsgruppe, inspired by surrealism,
was created; and one of its members was the young Arnulf Rainer.
In 1952 the poet Hans Hartmann (h.c. hartmann) met the young
musician Gerhard Rühm (who, years later, would establish a lasting
friendship with Francesco Conz), who would join up from 1953 to
1955 with Konrad Bayer, Oswald Wiener and Friedrich Achleitner to
form the Wiener Dichtergruppe. During the next decade (the final
episode, the staging of the Kinderoper by Bayer and Rühm, dates
from 1964), the young authors whom the national press labeled
as “existentialists” gave birth to a wide-ranging exploration of the
esthetic sphere. In 1951, for the inauguration of “cave canem” ‘(the
first group show of the Hundsgruppe in which informal works appeared for the first time) Rühm staged a “geräuschsymphonie” with
pianist Hans Kann, a noise composition recorded on tape. Again in
1952 Rühm presented, in the context of a personal exhibition of
Rainer at the Café Ladtmann, his Ein-Ton-Musik, a piece articulated
about a single note and a “demonstration of silence”. Artmann, in
April of 1953, made a public manifesto entitled Acht-Punkt-Proklamation des poetischen Actes, whereby he defined the poetic act as
a form of work “which refuses to be created through any secondary
medium such as language, music or writing”, an affirmation which
constituted a theoretical precedent of real significance for the later
developments of the Wiener Aktionismus. Artmann, in the following
summer, set up a “soirée aux amants funèbres”, a sort of processional ceremony,, interrupted by the police, in which the participants, dressed in black and their faces painted white, crossed the
city, accompanied by the melancholic music of a flute, while burning
incense and pausing at various sites (Stephanplatz, Uraniabrucke,
Illusionsbahn, among others) where they listened to a reading in
the original of works by Baudelaire, Poe, Nerval, Trakl and Gomez
de la Serna. In 1954 Wiener wrote his “cool manifesto” (the original
text has been lost”), the “principal approach of which was to con86
sider sensations as actions and so to postulate approximately the
identity of style and reality” (Wiener) and to affirm “the essentiality
of the banal” (Rühm).
Rühm began making concrete poetry in 1954, followed by Wiener
and Achleitner, and with Artmann he explored the poetry of dialect as a storehouse of sound materials and exhibited his visual
poetry in the Würthle Gallery of Vienna, directed by the sculptor
Fritz Wotruba. The group began to give readings in which musical
and movie fragments were interposed; these quickly evolved into
the more complex forms of the Literarisches Kabarett, “an evening during which -- recalls Rühm — we wanted to illustrate all
the emotions that can be shown on stage, in other words tension,
destruction, reorganization, through ballet, performances, musical
interludes and word play. During a second edition (April 15 1959),
while Konrad Bayer and Oswald Wiener held an absurd dialogue,
with phrases drawn from a book on closed bordellos and an essay
by Sartre, Rühm and Achleitner entered the room on a motorcycle
and proceeded to destroy a grand piano, a gesture clearly related
to the “Piano activities”, the composer Philip Corner later realized at
the Wiesbaden Fluxus festival in 1962 to the smashings of pianos by
mexican artist Raffael Ortiz.
Gerhard RUHM
Automatische Zeichnungen - 1976/85
Wooden box covered in black cloth with silkscreened cover containing
60 silkscreened drawings on Fabriano paper of various sizes in 3 portfolios: 1 portfolio, 63 x 45 cm, contains a colophon, a text and 15 prints;
1 portfolio, 42 x 30 cm, contains 30 prints;
1 portfolio, 30 x 21 cm, contains 15 prints; 67 x 48 x 8 cm
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Otto MUEHL
Portrait of Francesco Conz - 1985
Acrilic on cardboard - 100 x 85 cm
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VIII - Viennese Aktionismus
Like Happening, Wiener Aktionismus has its roots in the abstract
expressionist and material-focused painting of the 1950s. The works
of the New York School painters, in particular the drippings of Jackson Pollock are seen as the epitome of that development. In specific
terms Austrian cultural precedents also exist, which may be derived
from a rereading of artists from the early twentieth century, such as
Schiele, Kokoschka, Oppenheimer and the text-analytical works of
the Wiener Gruppe in the 1950s.
With respect to the latter, the roots of which are essentially literary,
Actionism is differentiated not only by its sources in the spheres
of painting and sculpture but also its extremely expressionist, performative and ritualistic components. Whereas the Literarisches
Kabarett of the Wiener Gruppe in 1958 displayed an ironic and deconstructive spirit, playing out the cards of humor and of the incongruous, Actionism—placing the body at the center—achieved a
fusion between author, process and object. The art the Actionists
produced possessed a cognitive and transformational dynamic and
activated the critical potential of social taboos through an exasperated arousal of sensuality. Thus the body substituted the canvas,
blood, food and excrements became the painting material—destruction was juxtaposed to composition. Beyond all aesthetic parameters, the “actions” aimed at initiating a process of liberation from
repressive cultural conventions through trauma and the ensuing
stimulation of the unconscious. For example, the intention behind
Nitsch’s Orgien-Mysterien Theater [Orgy Mystery Theater] is to trigger the experience of salvation and to create subjective awareness
through the demonstration of sacrifice and symbolic dismemberment, both stressing the notion of “catharsis.”
The first collective action Die Blutorgel [Blood Organ] took place
in 1962, when Adolf Frohner, Hermann Nitsch and Otto Muehl had
themselves walled into Muehl’s studio for three days. A manifesto
was published in collaboration with the psychoanalyst Josef Dvorak,
who at that time was a sort of mentor for the artists. This event was
followed by the Fest des psychophysischen Naturalismus [Festival of
Psychophysical Naturalism] by Muehl and Nitsch in 1963. Nitsch for
the first time disemboweled and crucified a lamb, thereby laying the
foundations for his Orgien-Mysterien Theater. In a mimeographed
document of the event, he wrote: “I enter into a state of physical and mental excitement through these actions, until I reach an
extreme tension. I spray, spatter and smear the surroundings with
blood and roll about in blotches of color. I stretch out fully dressed
on a bed. Viscera, the ripped-off udders of a cow are poured under
the sheet, along with hair and warm water (serum). I hang a dead
lamb from the ceiling, swinging it about the room and smash its
89
head with a hook.” Police interrupted the action just before Muehl could hurl a sideboard filled with cans of paint, marmalade and
crockery from the third-floor window into the street in continuation
of the destructive process.
In the course of his activities which stretched over a long period of
time, close to fifty years, Nitsch has continued to base his work in a
later romantic concept of the gesamtkunstwerk which, according to
a remark by the Austrian art historian Hubert Klocker “is structured
like a large collage of the myths of our culture. It is made accessible
or experienceable in a manner that is neither illustrative nor literary,
but rather a direct, empirical experience of the reality of the OrgienMysterien-Theater organized with the utmost synaesthetic-formal
stringency.”
In contrast to Nitsch’s mystical and Dionysian rhetoric, Muehl’s
main concern in his performances called Materialaktionen [Material
Actions] lay in the subversion of laws and rules that, according to
the artist, no longer corresponded to reality: “Free access to true
creative conduct constitutes the ethical purpose of my approach:
sadism, aggression, perversion, thirst for recognition, avarice, charlatanism, obscenity, the aesthetic of shit are the exemplary means
in the struggle against conformism, stupidity and materialism.” And
it is in this direction in which the idea of “chaotic and improvised action as positive self-liberation” (Klocker) prevails that he proceeded,
starting with Versumpfung eines weiblichen Körpers [Degradation of
a female body], 1963, to a linked set of actions, some of which (like
Leda and the Swan or Cosinus Alpha, 1965) were documented in the
experimental films of the Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren.
These manifestations of an emancipatory art were further extended
and finally attained an intensely political dimension when the ZCCK,
an ironic and anarchist political initiative, was founded and culminated in the establishment of a commune in 1972 that was based on
the principles of free sexuality and collective ownership.
The transition of Günter Brus’s work from painting to performance
took place in a gradual process from 1962 to ’65. For him the act of
“self-painting,” as demonstrated in Selbstbemalung II [Self-painting
II], was an outgrowth of painting itself. “The two-dimensional image has lost its role as sole expressive means. It has returned to
its roots, to the wall, to the object, to the living being, the human body. Using my body as an expressive instrument, I create
an event, which is documented by a photo camera as it evolves
into an experience spectators can share. The space, my body and
all the objects in this space are transformed. Everything is covered
in white, everything becomes a flat image: office room, museum,
cafe, operating theater, cell, toilet, slaughter room.” A black line establishes a counter-weight to the nullifying role played by the white
painted body. The line divides the body of the artist, interpretable
90
as an emblematic gesture of self-aggression or, in the words of the
artist, of “self-mutilation,” of a “suicide committed without reason,”
which is gradually manifested in the actions through the presence
of an arsenal of knives, forks and shaving blades. These objects appear in some of his very first actions. In 1965, Brus carried out his
first action Wiener Spaziergang [Vienna Walk] in public space when
he walked—his head and clothes painted white, a black line running
from head to toe dividing his body into two halves, resembling a
sutured wound—through Vienna’s city center and was immediately
arrested by the police. Again in 1965, the artist realized the action
Transfusion in collaboration with his wife, and exclusively for the
camera. In contrast to his earlier performances, this work is a colorful and potentially narrative action with references to birth; although
essentially self-destructive it pulsated with an erotic charge.
In April of 1966, Brus and Muehl began a series of actions they described as a synthesis of Muehl’s Materialaktionen and Brus’s “selfmutilations.” The best known among these were Totalaktionen [Total Actions], by means of which the artists aimed at achieving a
“direct encounter between the subconscious and the reality of the
material,” was Vietnam Party for which the public had been encouraged to wear “bloody ketchup bandages” or “Viet-Cong costumes”
as well as to bring food “suitable for an artistic depiction of torture
and brutality.” (Schwanberg).
Hermann NITSCH
Missale Romanum -1987
Mixed media - 52,2 x 32 cm
91
The political connotation of this particular action was reiterated in
Kunst und Revolution at the University of Vienna in 1968, where
Brus and Muehl performed together with Oswald Wiener, Peter Weibel and others. In this action Brus pushed his provocative performative gestures to the extreme by drinking his own urine, dripping
feces on himself, and shitting while singing the Austrian national
anthem. This action led to his indictment forcing him to flee to Berlin
in order to escape imprisonment.
In the work of Rudolf Schwarzkogler, who realized his first Aktion action Hochzeit [Wedding] in 1965, the use of photography as a vehicle for transforming performative gestures into strong iconographic
images—the importance of which all the actionists were extremely
aware of— reached an initial highpoint in the early years of Vienna
Actionism.
His close friend and model Heinz Cibulka wrote: “The image for him
becomes a stage for the concepts of his actions,” an observation
endorsed by the semi-private character of the events the artist created. Symbols of masochistic acts were staged in Schwarzkoglers
photographic mise-en-scènes, which gave rise to the false legend of
his death by self-castration. Unlike Nitsch’s Orgy-Mystery-Theater,
the aim of his performative gestures did not appear to be to achieve
a cathartic effect but—as Andrea Cortellessa has emphasized—to
prefigure a path of healing. “It is not the celebration of the wound,
his wound—but rather the mournful ceremony of healing. It is an
allegory of hygiene and in general of regime (understood as the
norm of personal conduct, elevated to a religious type of ritual).
Schwarzkogler’s fascination with the color white is not merely related to its function as a neutral background, but rather the white
of the gauze is a dreamlike cauterization of the organic, a neurotic
sign of purity […] Schwarzkogler’s parable illustrates caption-like
the death impulse contained in every radical neoclassicism, as well
as the sadomasochist potential of the seductive rhetoric of health,
healing, of cure.”
With the publication of images in Happening, Fluxus, Pop Art, Nouveau Realisme edited by Jürgen Becker and Wolf Vostell in 1965,
documenting images from Nitsch’s and Muehl’s actions and their
subsequent participation in DIAS (Destruction in Art Symposium)
organized by Gustav Metzger in London 1966, nothing stood in the
path of the worldwide acceptance of the Vienna Actionists. After being suppressed in their own country and forced into long spells of
exile in Germany, this important development in Austrian art was
finally seen as an integral chapter in the history of the neo-avantgardes alongside the Japanese Guttai Group and movements in
South and Central America as well as a broad variety of processoriented and performative positions in the transatlantic exchange.
92
Günter BRUS
Romeo e Giulia inc. - 2002
Pen on paper; 29 x 21 cm - Special drawing for the Secret Museum
93
Juan HIDALGO
Flor y hombre - 1969
12 photographs - 40 x 30 cm each
94
IX - Unto Zaj what is Zaj’s - Rubén Figaredo
The Zaj group was founded in Madrid in 1964 by Juan Hidalgo,
Ramón Barce, and Walter Marchetti: two Spaniards and an Italian.
The group created a genuine stir on the otherwise lackluster Spanish
artistic scene, and quickly attracted the collaboration of artists such
as José Luís Castillejo, Tomás Marco, Miguel Ángel Coria, and a host
of others. In 1967, Barce left the group, and Esther Ferrer joined it.
The group has since that time been known as having consisted of
that trio: Esther Ferrer, Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti.
Despite a lack of money and the absence of both public and private
tools of promotion, Zaj was launched—the phrase has seldom been
more apt—on November 19, 1964. The founding event, which remained unannounced until after having taken place, consisted of a
procession in which three objects were carried along an itinerary
that matched the path—as keenly identified by Ángel Gonzalez—
which the anarchist Buenaventura Durruti had taken across Madrid
while leading his column of militiamen to the counterattack he captained in the Casa del Campo area in the course of the Battle of
Madrid. It was there, on November 19, 1936, at the age of forty,
that he received the fatal gunshot wound—sniper fire, according to
contemporary anarchists, but caused in fact by a comrade-in-arms’
machine pistol that went off by mistake—from which he died on the
following day.
On November 21, 1964, Juan Hidalgo, Walter Marchetti and Ramón
Barce performed the first Zaj concert at the Colegio Mayor Menéndez Pelayo.
After exploring a series of strictly musical considerations such as
concrete music, seriality, and electronic sound production, Hidalgo
and Marchetti gradually turned toward the use of musical instruments as symbols, rather than as sources of sounds. They distanced
from “musical action” in favor of action, pure and simple, and thus
freed themselves from the strictures of a language which was still
quite new and far from understood by the majority its hypothetical
audience, and which might therefore run the risk of wasting away
among esoteric cliques of omnivorous initiates, and of falling into
endless cycles of purely mechanical repetition.
The audiences that attended the Zaj events and happenings were
introduced, to their great surprise, to Spain’s first forms of a “new
action-music” that related to the international Fluxus movement
while nonetheless pursuing its own, independent path.
The works produced by Zaj aimed to eliminate the conventional separations between the various arts: music mixed with theater, chance
techniques with provocation, and all with an air of experimentation.
The audience was seen and treated as an accomplice, and came to
be initiated into Zaj’s continual acts of rebellion even while remain-
95
ing without full understanding of the marvelous lunacies by which
the group was guided.
The format of “not just sound” threw open an enormous field of intriguing possibilities and interactions. To the extent that art is a mirror of society, this was an era in which art was necessarily absurd,
given the absurdity of the various circumstances that conditioned
the discourse of most of its creative minds.
The rejection of the sacralization of the work of art was one of Zaj’s
most fundamental axioms, and the group likewise looked askance
at the conventional circuits for the distribution of works of art. They
may not, perhaps, have been interested in provocation and transgression per se, but such effects could hardly have been avoided in
the sleepy, provincial atmosphere which at the time was typical of
Spain: a timorous, rural country where novelty of any kind inevitably felt the condemnation and consequent harassment of Franco’s
dictatorship. So, their talent went into happenings that left the authorities gape, and they were finally accused of criminal activities
after a public scandal in the wake of a soirée in February, 1967, at
Madrid’s Teatro Beatriz.
Zaj embraced a number of different influences, from various aesthetic directions: Duchamp, Cage, Satie, Futurism. The group’s activities were open to participation from people in all fields (writers,
musicians, poets), and these activities were accordingly heterogeneous: concerts, events, mail art, book presentations. A Zaj concert consisted of a series of short actions or “Etceteras,” and in no
way resembled traditional concerts. These “Etceteras” were based
on gestures, written phrases, silences, and the exhibition of decontextualized objects (purses, tables, chairs, glasses).
Zaj’s most active phase was in the period from 1964 to 1972. Their
actions and events took place on trains and at universities, no less
than out on the streets or in plazas, and on in theaters and art galleries. While often received with jeers and indignation on the part
of the general public in Spain, these performances also aroused
considerable interest abroad. The group toured throughout Europe
in 1966 and 1968, with venues in Paris, London, Frankfurt, Cologne
and Düsseldorf, among others. The tour with which their activities
culminated was a series of concerts that began in Lisbon in 1972,
and which traveled in 1973, at the invitation of John Cage, to the
United States and Canada. The group is also to be credited with
lending a new vitality to avant-garde writing in Spain: one remembers Juan Hidalgo’s Viaje a Argel (“Journey to Arge”) of 1967, José
Luís Castillejo’s La caída del avión en el terreno baldío (“Airplane
Crash onto Fallow Land”) again of 1967, and Walter Marchetti’s Apocrate seduto sul Loto (“Apocrates Seated on the Lotus”) of 1968.
As remarked in the course of a symposium at Fundacion Coleccion
Thyssen-Bornemisza in 2004:
96
Esther FERRER
El libro del sexo, serie La Caìda - 1971/1973
Mixed media - 40 x 40 cm
The integration or the arts—or what’s at least to be seen as
their rapprochement—leads necessarily to group work in its effort to paint in time and compose in space, or whatever else.
So collectives like Fluxus in the United States, the Torcuato Di
Tella Institute in Buenos Aires, and Juan Hidalgo’s Zaj group in
Spain, among others, came into existence. There were also the
countless happenings, scattered—or concentrated, depending
on your point of view—all around the world in the 1960s. And
let’s not forget the lamentable destruction of musical instru97
ments, the pianos disentrailed or splintered apart with axes
(as with Philip Corner’s “Piano Activities,” performed in Wiesbaden in 1962 at the inaugural series of Fluxus concerts) or
the smashed violin of Maciunas’ score “Solo for Violin, ”again of
l962. There were no such things as firmly established borders
or distinctions between the arts, and there were also moments
of street theater that involved the presence of wall posters, unplanned noises, texts, dance, music, decorations, and anything
else that occurred to the persons involved. (1)
Tomás Marco, an attentive observer of some of the group’s very first
activities, as well as a participant in some of its actions, likewise
remarks:
Hidalgo, on returning to Madrid in 1964, after creating “Open
Music” in Barcelona, founded Zaj in collaboration with Walter
Marchetti and Ramón Barce. Others artists too, both musicians
and not, were later to join forces with Zaj. The development of
the group was rapid, from non-conventional concerts, but with
sound materials based on notions of open music, to texts, performances in streets and plazas, concerts of entirely non-sound
works, and the publication of books. All this made Zaj an artistic phenomenon of foremost importance in Spain. Dick Higgins
declared that Zaj was the most important cultural fact to occur
in Spain in the period after the Spanish Civil War. Whether or
not Zaj has created music in the narrower sense of the term is
of no importance. Moreover, its connections with Dada, Fluxus
and other similar sensibilities are by no means superficial, even
though it must be seen as an independent phenomenon with a
strong personality of its own. Zaj has probably created a new
art that exits from the narrow confines of music. That would be
very important, but in any event it must be recognized that Zaj
has exerted a decisive influence on any number of works that
couldn’t be said strictly to reflect its modes of thought or the
structures it typically employs. (2)
And Dick Higgins, one of the best-known Fluxus artists, commented
in 1967:
There is no official history of the Zaj Group. The general spirit
of the works with which the group is identified is unhistorical,
fresh and even the question of who actually belongs to the
group is never allowed to intrude. Those who once worked with
the group are described as “no longer working with us,” rather
than not Zaj. The word “Zaj” itself is without meaning, except
as it becomes identified with the group. For some Zaj manifestations, the word has been spelled in an alternate way—“Zej”
or “Zoj” for instance. Let it suffice to say, by way of historical remarks, that Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti were two
founders of the group, some time around 1964 at Madrid. (3)
98
Walter MARCHETTI
Bird of paradise: hunting in the city - 1996
Installation
99
For Javier Maderuelo:
Zaj is in fact the only group with a body of ideas, an esthetic,
and a coherent formal concept to have flourished in Spain. [….]
Zaj’s weapons were imagination, humor, philosophy, spontaneity, elegance, Zen, joy and a profound contempt for stupidity
[….] In the 1960s Zaj was an authentic avantgarde, a group
that planted a bomb in its every concert or action, in every
book it printed.” (4)
Today, in spite of the passage of a good deal of time, Zaj’s freshness
still communicates a stimulating taste of primordial creativity that
makes many more recent trends in art—despite their insistence on
the always new—seem antiquated.
Archive Conz has collaborated with Zaj ever since the early 1970s.
Francesco Conz’ close friendship with the artists of the group was to
lead, in 1977, to an Archive Conz portfolio of Walter Marchetti’s Visible Music from Apocrates Seated on the Lotus, and later, in 1983, to
a series of large silkscreens on cloth: re-editions of historical works
by José Luis Castillejo, José Cortes, Eugenio De Vincente, Esther
Ferrer, Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti. These editions were also
the nucleus, in 2009, of a major exhibition at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, accompanied by the catalogue ZAJ Coleccion
Archivio Conz, with texts by Ruben Figaredo and Eduardo Navarro.
The exhibition also presented a large collection of rare documents
(especially historical photographs) which the Archive preserves,
flanked by the works, letters, projects and fetishes produced in the
course of decades of collaboration. One most particularly recalls the
series of pianos: those by Castillejo, Ferrer and Marchetti were realized especially for this occasion, whereas Hidalgo’s three pianos
were commissioned for the Archive in 1988.
Note:
(1) - Hoffman, W. (director) et. al. “El mundo suena: El Modelo Musical de la Pintura
Abstracta”. The acts of the symposium of the same title. Arnaldo, J. (ed.), Fundación
Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid, 2004, p. 61.
(2) - Marco, Tomás, Pensamiento musical y siglo XX. Fundación Autor-SGAE, Madrid,
2002, pp. 170-171.
(3) - Higgins, Dick, A Zaj Sampler (Works by the Zaj group of Madrid). A Great Bear
Pamphlet, Something Else Press, New York, 1967, unnumbered pages.
(4) -Maderuelo, Javier, Una música par los 80s. Garsi, Madrid, pp. 15-16.
100
Traslado a pie de tres objetos, primer acto Zaj
Madrid, November 19, 1964
Photograph 7 x 8,5 cm
101
Dimitrje Basevic MANGELOS
Untitled - 1991
Silkscreen on cloth - 140 x 110 cm - 50 signed and numbered copies
Certified with signatures of all members of Gorgona
Edition F. Conz, 1991
102
IX - Gorgona - Boris Brollo
The Gorgona group was founded in the Croatian city of Zagreb,
and was active there from 1959 to 1966. Clearly it came into being
at a difficult moment of history: the Soviet Union and the United
States were in the midst of the cold war, and Croatia, as part of the
Yugoslav Federation, belonged to the Soviet block. Gorgona’s birth
took place in anonymity, just as the figure of an anonymous woman
appears on the “Gorgona Passport” that the group created for its
members. (This image was also used on the label of the tubes of
paint that Josip Vaništa produced in 1961.) Reference to the classical myth of Gorgona, the Medusa with snakes for hair and a gaze
that turned the person who met into stone, sees the snakes as the
various members of the group, and a petrifying gaze as the common trait of their work as artists. The members of the group were:
Radoslav Putar and Matko Meštrović, art critics; Ivan Kožarić, sculptor; Miljenko Horvat, architect; Julije Knifer, Marijan Jevšovar, Đuro
Seder, Josip Vaništa and Dimitrije Bašičević (Mangelos), painters.
Vaništa wrote in 1961: “Gorgona art is unconcerned with the ‘work’
as such, or with any other ‘result.’ [….] It defines itself as the sum
of all its possible interpretations.” Or, again, “Gorgona: l’art comme
mode d’existence.” This attitude, however, is neither nihilistic not
Dada, and should be seen as cultural in addition to behavioral. As
such it also holds the notion of art as a space in which freedom is
possible. The official painting of the whole Soviet block, after all,
was Socialist Realism, and Yugoslavia also promoted the work of
the so-called naifs. So, Gorgona’s activities were necessarily private and clandestine. Đuro Seder was in fact to abandon the group,
polemically, and to criticize its spirit of renunciation. He himself, on
the other hand, in the words of Maria Gattin, wanted only to “throw
himself into the impetus of painterly expression, simply in hopes of
drawing a breath of fresh air.” It’s obvious that the modes of praxis
on the part of the members of a group of socially dissident artists
are likely to grow mysterious and ritualistic, and one sees with Gorgona that the artists’ works assume the characteristics of projects.
Exchanges of letters and ideas among the members of the group
were vitally important, the language they employed was necessarily
cryptic, and all of this bore influence on the mental stance and the
styles of behavior that the group adopted. At the theoretical level,
Gorgona found its guidelines in: 1) the book as a work of art; 2)
the use of language as one of the mediums of art; 3) the use of the
mails as an artistic praxis; 4) behavior as an aesthetic genre. The
group can therefore be compared to Fluxus, as well as to various
other neo-Dada and neo-Bauhaus movements whose goals were
more social than aesthetic. Its relationship, however, with the other
artists at work in Yugoslavia was far from the best, even though
103
Putar Radoslav and Matko Meštrović (the critics who belonged to
the group) were in many ways open to the world of their post-constructivist colleagues.
The Artists
The Gorgona group has never been strictly defined, but these were
its founding members: Josip Vaništa, painter and theoretician, was
the “dark” spirit of the group. He’s to be credited with the invention of “Gorgona Black” at much the same time that Yves Klein was
seeking a patent for “International Klein Blue.” Vaništa’s work as a
painter is characterized by its use of the notion of negation: a black
line traverses his white or silver-gray canvases; or a white line cuts
across black canvases. In later life he began to paint metaphysical
landscapes, always with a band of light along the line of the horizon.
Julije Knifer, the Gorgona artist most widely known abroad, found
his signature style in the use of a geometric form to which he referred as a “meander.” This cold, simple form can be seen to have
symbolized the immobility of Yugoslavian art.
Marijan Jevšovar was the author of abstract-expressionist paintings
based on stratifications of veils of color, finally resulting in a series
of cancellations that made his canvases an infinite exercise of subtractions of the pictorial subject, and as well a game of concealment
with respect to the traditional “retinal” values of painting.
Dimitrje Bašičević (Mangelos), Director of the Gallery of Peasant Art
and an exhibition curator at Zagreb’s Gallery of Modern Art, held
a degree in literature from the University of Vienna and created
works that consisted of a drastic reduction of history and geography
books: he painted them black, leaving behind no more than uncertain traces of letters that spell out the consonants mngls, which he
saw as mystical cipher. Mangelos also painted maps of the world in
black, or in gold, as expressions of a pessimistic, mystical Weltanschauung.
Ivan Kožarić was the most fanciful member of the group: he was
interested in social sculpture and his projects were concerned with
sections of Mount Sljeme, which stands above Zagreb, or with sections of the Seine, in Paris, of which he executed segments in gilded
plaster. His work took shape in time, and in terms of always further
stratifications of ideas. On the occasion of a one-man show in the
1990s, he therefore transferred the entirety of his studio into the
museum that hosted the exhibition: he saw this as a way of emphasizing the complexity and scope of his thoughts.
Đuro Seder created paintings by covering his canvases in black, with
the exception of small squares of emergent light, nearly as though
making reference to frames of cinema film. On leaving the Gorgona
group, he gave free play to expressionistic phantasies, again against
104
GORGONA GROUP
a black background and in aggressively handled primary colors.
Miljenko Horvat, an architect, was to emigrate and to find recognition first in Paris and later in Canada. He nonetheless maintained
epistolatory contact with the members of the group, writing letters
veined with nostalgia as well as with the tones of humour noir which
were typical of Gorgona. His works deployed collage technique and
gave life to strange maps of destroyed cities, viewed from above.
The titles of the works consist of the dates on which they were made
and thus seem reminiscent of the ways in which architectural studies are filed.
Radoslav Putar and Matko Meštrović contributed to the theory of
the Gorgona group, but then withdrew into the sanctuary of postconstructivism. They were largely responsible for the relationships
that Gorgona maintained with the rest of the art world of that time,
at first by way of Gorgona’s “anti-magazine,” and later by way of
the international “Tendencia” exhibitions. It was thanks to them that
Piero Manzoni, Victor Vasarely, François Morellet and Dieter Roth
took part in Gorgona’s activities, and that Enzo Mari, Gianni Colombo and Getullio Alviani found the various “Tendencia” exhibitions to
offer a route of exchange between Italy and Yugoslavia.
105
Gorgona and Its Surroundings
Various forces in Gorgona’s immediate neighborhood remained in
dialog with the group. Despite being rooted in a world of coherent
ideas, Gorgona’s tenets on the nothingness of art—its uselessness,
its dark humor, the needs to cancel it out—were felt to be obscure
and inaccessible, since they remained beyond the pale of being in
any way reorganized into a “conceptual” art praxis. They thus gave
rise to various and more or less radical artistic conjectures, no less
than to the jealousies and envies which are typical of the world of
art. The Yugoslavia of this particular period recognized three great
schools: Ljiubiana architecture, Belgrade graphic art, and the Zagreb School of Art, which also harbored a strong naïf element. It
wasn’t, after all, by accident that Mangelos became the director of
the Museum of Peasant Art, or that Matija Skurjeni, a naïf painter,
did a portrait, in 1961, that depicts the members of the group as
they struggle to free themselves from the clutch of a giant woman
who holds them captive in a spider’s web. Another Yugoslavian artist, Ivo Gattin, well known for his radical stances and ideas, offered
the group a proposal for one of the issues of its “anti-magazine”:
a issue with its pages glued together so as to lead the “reader” in
the act of opening it, with the aid of a pair of scissors, to create an
abstract-expressionist work of his or her own. Lucio Fontana learned
of Gorgona from Piero Manzoni, and likewise offered to do a special
issue of the anti-magazine; a letter to Vaništa from Edward Frey
brought the group the praise and congratulations of Marcel Duchamp; Harold Pinter wrote a text for and about Gorgona.
The Gorgona Anti-Magazine
“The book as a work of art” was one of Gorgona’s basic ideas, and
the group’s magazine was therefore conceived as an work in its own
right, and not as simple container of theoretical texts. Each issue
was a special, unified project on the part of one of the artists of
the group, and thus a rebuttal of the very idea of a magazine as a
various container of texts, photos and ideas. The international relationships established by way of Ivan Piceli, a close friend of Matko
Meštrović, also allowed the development of projects for international
issues of the anti-magazine. Piero Manzoni sent the group three
“control tables”: one that consisted of a series of fingerprints; another overflowing with letters of the alphabet; a third that consisted
of one of his “infinite lines,” passing without interruption from one
page to the next. Dieter Roth sent a series of textures, each with
hand-made interventions; Victor Vasarely submitted a text and a
drawing which were reproduced as engravings; Julije Knifer distributed one of his snake-like black “meanders” throughout the pages
of the anti-magazine. Josip Vaništa printed the very same photo of
an empty vitrine on every page of one of the issues, exressing the
106
notion that things are meaningless. The Gorgona archives include
correspondence and unrealized projects from other authors as well:
Ivan Cizmek, Lucio Fontana, Ivo Gattin, Ivan Kožarić, Mangelos,
Piero Manzoni, Enzo Mari and Đuro Seder.
Gorgona in Italy
The Gorgona Group a made a visit to Italy, arriving directly from Zagreb, at the end of February 1991. Franceso Conz and Maria Gattin
accompanied the members of the group to Como, where the artists
were given the use of a high-quality printing facility, still operated as
a family business, for the realization of a series of signed and dated
silk-screens on cloth. The group then went to Brunnenburg Castle in
Dorf Tirol, not far from Merano, where starting on March 5 they held
a workshop in which they realized fifteen series of works in various
techniques on paper and cardboard for Archive Conz. The group was
hosted by Mary De Rachewiltz, the daughter of Ezra Pound, and the
workshop was considered a homage to Pound, who after his release
from St. Elizabeth’s hospital had lived for a while at Brunnenburg
before taking up residence in Venice. The participants in the workshop were Julije Knifer, Josip Vaništa, Ivan Kožarić, Đuro Seder, and
Marijan Jevšovar.
The Archive Conz reproductions of the works of Dimitrije Bašičević
Mangelos, already deceased at the time, were signed by the other
artists, thus certifying their authenticity.
Another important presence in Italy was the exhibition Gorgona
Gorgonesco Gorgonico, curated by Maria Gattin and co-ordinated
by Boris Brollo at Villa Pisani, in Stra, and in the recently restored,
neoclassical spaces of the old Dolo slaughter house, both in the near
vicinity of Venice, and both as collateral manifestations of the Venice
Biennale of 1997. The Biennale catalogue also published a series of
thoughts and declarations on the part of the artists themselves, on
the one hand clarifying their motivations and individual contributions, and on the other revealing the international dimension of the
group and its relationship to the other artists’ collectives that were
active in Europe at the time. Juliet magazine also published an essay in which Maria Gattin retraced the history of the group and described its guiding impulses.
107
FULL SUN
(with Francesco Conz)
By Jean-François Bory
The summer of 2001 was exceptional for Francesco Conz. An
expansive, splendid and marvelous summer full of storytelling, laughing and making golden typewriters.
But first a glance backwards. There was another summer,
a long time ago, when I first met Francesco Conz. We had
perhaps seen each other before, but it was at the Villa
Colleoni in Illasi, in the neighborhood of Verona, that we
first got acquainted.
It was very hot, it was an August in the middle of the
1980’s and all of us (all: that is, Francesco Conz, me,
Sarenco, Eugenio Miccini, his wife, Franco Verdi, Julien
Blaine, Poor Old Arias-Misson, Antonella Montevesi – hellish! –, Diego Strasser and a good half-dozen others), all
of us were sitting around a huge glass table that had been
placed in the garden where we would eat, drink (mostly),
shout, tell stories and sooner or later, get serious. Bottle after bottle of chilled white wine magically arrived
at the garden table from the kitchen, so chilled that one
of them arrived frozen. Francesco got a terrible gash in
his arm trying to open it. But the next evening, happily,
he came back with his arm in a cast and a sling and the
party went on…
It was around that time, on evenings like that, in those
moments of grace, that we discovered a true respect and
friendship for each other.
Francesco Conz is one of these very rare collectors who
does not collect on speculation. He is hard, with a sure
taste and very specific choices, and up to now he has never
made a mistake in his artistic decisions.
One could say that Conz is a person who doesn’t decide to
collect a particular artist on a whim.
As for me, I never ask! I think that is a flaw for an artist. But I am like that and that’s all.
So it was not until 7 or 8 years later that we established
our collector-artist relationship.
And it was yet another summer when he invited me to Verona
and I did several typewriters and especially a piano. Conz
has a large collection of artist pianos. It was 1993 and
again it was very hot. At his place, in the shade, with
the valuable help of Jacques Donguy, on some suffocating
afternoons I made some golden typerwriters, and of course
108
Jean-François Bory and Francesco Conz, Verona 1999
a piano (in a warehouse).
Then came the summer of 2001 when we went to his museumhome in the mountains. This museum-home – which contains
only a small part of Francesco’s collection – is located in a village called Capella Fasani. Going somewhere
with Francesco is a veritable Odyssey, because for him
a straight line is never the shortest route. The more I
know him, the more I realize that for my collector friend
a trip from one place to another had to follow life! The
road is longer, but more marvelous.
Thus having left Verona early in the morning in a car
with Donguy and Agostino loaded in, we didn’t get to the
museum-home until nightfall. That allowed me to discover
a marvelous region along the way: the Lessini mountains,
originally populated by the Cimbri, of Germanic origin. I
learned as we drove. Because the mountain road was long,
with curves, curves, curves….of course! It was the mountains. After driving a long time, I recall that we stopped
to be refreshed with an excellent white wine, in a little
café run by a certain Morandini family, in Contrada S.
Pietro, if I remember it right. Francesco, who knew everyone, had something nice to say to each one. I don’t
really know how (my memories are a mess, you search and
search and you find what you can)! Along the way, somehow
(as in a Rabelais novel, probably) we were joined by a
woman named Elide and a stocky little fellow named Gianni.
109
How did all these people fit into Conz’ car? Were there two
cars for a while? I was already in an advanced state of
inebriation and I prefer recalling a single car overloaded
with people. Because surely our only stop had been at the
Morandini family café. Earlier there had been a visit to
a cheese farm where enormous wheels of Parmesan floated in
swimming pools (or something like that; I had already had
my fill of the famous white wine). In any case I recall
very clearly that Francesco had been as ecstatic as I was
over these wheels of Parmesan: he wanted to buy an entire
wheel, but finally got just a large and delicious piece.
Where could a wheel of cheese have fit into the car?
Finally we arrived at the museum-house and I discovered
to my delight that Francesco had had my golden piano installed on the second floor landing where it was nicely
displayed in the place of honor.
Francesco was a fine cook, he is a remarkable host and is
very cultured and I love that and the evening was probably
going to be lots of fun.
However, worn out by this long day of Rabelaisian travels,
I collapsed onto my bed and did not wake up until the next
morning.
Thus followed some wild days where, assisted by Donguy,
Agostino and this Gianni, we made lots of golden typewriters outdoors. Francesco sometimes helped, and other days
took naps.
We did a lot of our work under a big tree in front of the
house. The shade was nice. In the distance the dazzling
light from the mountain turned blue toward the horizon.
But sometimes the air stank of toluene from the spray cans
of gold paint.
The days passed, similar and different, and we were all
happy.
One evening, after a debate, Francesco flew into a rage and
in a business-like spirit assured me that he would not buy
all these golden typewriters, and that he was ready to
destroy all of them on the spot! And I knew he was telling the truth.
Yes, that is how the days went by, excited or calm, silent
and laborious or interspersed with jokes and jabs.
Thus we spent a week, then two weeks, in Francesco’s museum-home: in friendship, work, and Art.
Like a whole life in miniature!
110
MUSEUM HOUSE
Special poem dedicated to the Secret Museum
Thwack !---that‘s the
word for the gesture,
the act of slapping
paint on three attached
wooden theater or
movie-house seats,
not in a house or a
theater but outside
in front of one of the
wildest places for art
in the world, known
as the Casa-Museo or
Museum House for the
archive of Francisco
Conz, who is the great
impresario of the international Fluxus movement of the arts--- the
House located in the
countryside known as
Erbezzo, upon a hilly
ridge, on the road
named Cappella Fasani
This house This act of
painting and then writing
Cyrrilic words on the seats
OKHO KNIGA DEPEBO
KENTABP MAMbO DA
This event of action and
presence, of gesture and
rhythm whose movement
is where the artist as poet
as musician all in one becomes delightful defiance
or deliverance of the self
from the ego of the false
self, in actions that define
the all-powerful being-hereness of being-there and tying
one up and into human play
or friendship and connection,
always and ever counter to
the authoritative mood. And
111
Francesco there, urging his
beloved sidekick-paparazzo
Augustino to snap foto after
foto of myself in the act as
I thwacked the paint on the
seats, braiding also the bright
colors, Francesco enjoying
yes especially always enjoying
he does when I write Russian
words into my painted works,
who fancied himself sort of
a bolshy in Kerensky’s time
just before Lenin returned
(more a Russian futurist than
a Marinetti sort), and could
we down that vodka when the
work was done and it’d be part
of that extraordinary museum
dedicated to the situational Now,
the only ecstasy,
the only rhythm,
the only universe
that really counts,
yes, because now that I recall that
day outside Museum House
before the hospital
the train
the tragedy
that’s put my brother Francesco
in a wheelchair
for the rest of his life,
I see the House filled with works
by the likes of Herman Nitsch,
Nam June Paik, John Cage and
countless others of Fluxus ilk---the rooms as galleries up to their
ceilings in grand works of art
collected featured and added to
the world’s store of beauty by that
former artisan who took the grand
leap one day into the modernity that
one may decry,
try to flee,
dream of escaping
but which---for the brief time
sanyone of us has on this spinning
112
earth---demands that we recognize
for the---when it comes down to it--only and lonely
singularly solitary
uniquely revealing
joyously inspiring
thing we both own and are owned by:
our call to each other,
even our cries
for each other,
and our songs
for each other
in the key of
modernity’s friendship
now-most and never-not
melodiously
fluxial and flowing as
panda rei
with Being’s immensity.
Jack Hirschman
Jack HIRSCHMAN
A bolshekom and a Vikunist - 2002
Artist’s book - 25 x 19 cm
113
An anecdoted topography
of a collection
Ground floor
Pag. 114: View of entrance
Pags 116-117: View of entrance
Pags 118-119: View of kitchen
Pags 120-121: View of toilette
115
Allan KAPROW
Banjo Player - 1957
Mixed media - 210 x 74 x 80 cm
Yoshi WADA
Horn - 1974
Original musical tool - ?? x ?? cm
A
s one comes through the door into the entrance hall of the Secret
Museum one is instantly presented with the breadth and dimension
of the collection. Immediately to the right against a background
of photographs, is a major early sculpture of Allan Kaprow, Banjo Player, 1957. To the left over a granite sink, is an installation
by Ben Patterson “Kreuzweg Conz: Kinder, Küche, Kirche, Kitsch,
Kunst,” 1999. Directly ahead by the stairs is a recent sculpture of
Milan Knizak, Golden Teeth. Hanging from the ceiling is one of Yoshi
Wada’s horns made from plumbing pipes, and under the stairs is an
Identical Lunch silkscreen print by Alison Knowles from 1974.
On the walls, half hidden by Kaprow’s work, is a photographic print
on canvas with brush strokes by Gunther Brus, in which the artist
appears in the nude, kneeling on the floor, his body spattered with
blood beneath the carcass of a slaughtered animal, during a phase
of a performance carried out in 1974 by Hermann Nitsch—another
leader of Wiener Aktionismus in Naples.
On the other side of the room, on a granite washbasin, sits an installation of Ben Patterson “Kreuzweg Conz: Kinder, Küche,Kirche,
Kitsch, Kunst” in bronze letters, 1999 (Conz’s Way of the Cross: his
Children,Gourmet Cooking, Bigotry, Kitsch and the Passion for Art)
in which the American artist and composer who is counted among
the earliest adepts of Fluxus but who long remained outside the art
123
Herbert FINE
Untitled - 1967
Mixed media - 35 x 45 x 4 cm
scene “in order to be able to live a normal life”, wittily assembled
a small but complex installation in the playful register of Fluxus.
This assemblage incorporates elements such as children’s toys, food
wrappings, rosaries, Venetian souvenirs in the worst possible taste,
thus creating a bold and surprising ensemble.
At the bottom of the ramp which rises to the first floor, a shrine
stands (“Fetish”) in which Francesco has inserted a history book on
the figure of General Grant and on the first stage of the Civil War and
the padded envelope in which Alison Knowles sent it, along with the
letter by Alison explaining that this was the last book her husband
Dick Higgins was reading on the day of his death in Quebec City. It is
also to this continent of history and the ritual side of Fluxus referred
to above, that “Homage to deceased Fluxus Personalities” may be
attributed, (2002), consisting of a set of cards with the names of
Maciunas, Vostell, Beuys, Joe Jones, Bob Watts and others attached
to a little cord hanging from the hand railing along the stairs: a photograph accompanies this set which shows Geoffrey Hendricks in his
famous performance in Wiesbaden with this contrivance tied to the
Günter BRUS
Unerhörte musik - 2001
Digital print on cloth with felt-pen interventions - 70 x 50 cm
124
Alison KNOWELES
Fetish - 1997
Mixed media - 41 x 58 x 6,5 cm
Dear Francesco
How are you doing? I hear from Judith Hofberg about her
wonderful visit with you and Takako.
I would like you to have this book as a gift from me for
your fetish collection. It is the book Dick was reading when he died.
Isn’t it perfect! the conquest of a great general in the civil war.
Take care
Alison
The last week of September I will be in Vancouver at the Western
Front and the Belkin gallery. You know it well.
I recentely returned from China – the island of Taipei where
they gave me a new name.
Alison Knowles
128
Emmett WILLIAMS
Some little people - 1989
Acrilic on canvas - 110 cm diameter
artist’s ankles, raised up when he stood on his head with his legs
in the air, or more simply (as in the photograph) when he sat on a
raised platform or pedestal.
Below Hendricks’ work are three wooden chairs taken from an old
movie theatre painted in an informalist fury, and through the streaks
of dripping paint large isolated letters emerge. It is a work by Jack
Hirschman, the San Francisco poet, and political radical, who was
fired by UCLA in Los Angeles (where he was Jim Morrison’s teacher
among others) for his opposition to the Vietnam War. His response
was to became a member of the Communist Labor Party. It reflects
on the visual level, the tension present in his 1972 poetry collection,
129
“Arcanes”, a monumental work where he focuses on social and kabbalistic themes, and on eros and the sacred.
On entering the kitchen from the entrance hall through the first door
on the left, immediately to your right is one of George Maciunas’s
great charts, his Diagram of Historical Development of Fluxus and
other 4 Dimensional, Aural, Optic, Olifactory, Epithelial and Tactile
Art Forms (incomplete), 1973. It is an oversized offset sheet, putting
Fluxus in relation to other parallel developments. Astrit SchmidtBurkhardt in her Maciunas’ LEARNING MACHINES From Art History
to a Chronology of Fluxus, (2003) presents this chart in relation to
the other charts of Maciunas.
Also on the kitchen walls and ceiling are numerous photographs with
dedications: Kaprow with Jerome Rothenberg, the “ethnopoet” and
multi-disciplinary scholar of North American culture; Ilse and Pierre
Ben VAUTIER
Il bello è dall’altra parte - 1996
Wooden box - 42 x 32 x 16 cm
130
Garnier, the French poets who
created Spatialism (an autonomous variant of concrete poetry,
with the aim of introducing a
“spatial dimension” in the “linguistic object”, so that “the various word-cells are arranged by
necessity in a space”) in memory of a visit by Conz to Saisseval
in 1998. Next, a photograph of
the bald head of Japanese Gutaï
artist Shozo Shimamoto, studded with writings, including the
name of Francesco Conz; Anna
Banana,
Canadian
protagonist of Mail Art, Arrigo Lora Totino, inventor of “liquid poetry”
and an important historian of
concrete and sound poetry (to
whom publication of the review
“Futura” is owed, a collection of
recordings which have become a
primary reference in the field),
Ay-O, the Japanese Fluxus artist, famous for his tactile boxes
and working with rainbows. On
the canvas above the fireplace is
a “peinture supertemporelle” (a
work available for interventions,
over time, by other artists)
which was initiated in 1999 by
the lettrists Alain Satié and Roland Sabatier. Nearby are works
by Woody Roehmer (another lettrist), Alain Arias-Misson (the
American visual poet), Robert
Delford Brown, the creator of
the First National Church of the
Exquisite Panic, Inc., which elevated Francesco Conz to the
honors of its altar. On a ceiling
beam Jean Dupuy, pioneer in the
use of new technological media
in art, and part of Experiments
in Art and Technology, seduced
by the playful spirit of Fluxus,
Eric DIETMANN
La terre, qui est restée - 1962
Collage - 92 x 40 cm
131
has written one of his famous puns (Eût-il fallu que je le susse pour
que je l’épatâte? Et patati et patatâte..). While Philip Corner, Fluxus
composer and artist, has glued, perpendicular and parallel to the
ceiling, two rows of white plastic cups, an aerial piece of reality. Labeling objects:“Piece of Reality” is an ongoing activity of Corner. Another Sabatier and Satié work is a lettrist ready-made, a moustache
placed upon a kitsch tapestry portrait of John Kennedy, reproduced
on a doormat with the American flag and White House in the background. The work is titled “Il a chaud au cul”, making a clear reference to the wordplay in Marcel Duchamp’s addition of L.H.O.O.Q. to
132
Roland SABATIER Alain SATIE
Il a chaud au cul - 2000
Tapestry with original interventions - 54 x 104 cm
a reproduction of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.
Serge III, the Nice Fluxus artist, has one of his iconic works here:
a manifesto of the Paris Commune mounted on a table with superimposed strands of barbed wire. Another Dupuy, is a little portable
television set on top of the refrigerator, where he has written on
the screen an ironic “Video ergo sum”. Eric Dietman, a Swedish
artist close to Fluxus, living in Paris, has a small historical work
(“La terre qui est restée”, 1969): a montage with his characteristic
“sparadraps” (bandages), a portrait of Queen Elizabeth clipped from
a newspaper and a bag of earth, which gives the work its title.
133
A large canvas by Emmett Wiliams hangs to the right of the door,
filled with his little people in bright primary colors dancing in concentric circles, (“Some little people”, 1989). It is a beautiful painting.
Even the small bathroom is crowded with works. There is a portrait
of Francesco Conz by Bob Watts, made with neon tubes. Other neon
pieces by Watts include signatures of famous artists. On the back
wall are three panels by Pierre Garnier (the simplest of which is especially interesting: the word HORIZON, white, in relief on a black
background, is crossed by a red line which represents the word
graphically, with the O displaced upwards and to the right suggesting sun or moon. Photographs here include one of Geoff Hendricks
on a mountain in Norway. It is an image from Between Two Points/
Far Due Poli, his first project with Francesco Conz.
“A love novel” by Eugenio Miccini (1965) brings us to Visual Poetry,
with its collage of images clipped from popular magazines and texts
from newspapers in an assemblage of an ironically melodramatic
story, in which female faces are seen, at first saddened, perplexed,
and finally contemptuous in a sort of photo-romance: “I saw you
with another woman”, “I won’t say another word”, “I shall keep on
looking for true love”. On the second floor Arthur Petronio, with “Ludion” no. 15” (1966)—and Quotidienne Pentecôte, 1960, introduces
us to Sound Poetry. His work, beginning in the 30’s and entitled
“Verbophonie”, constituted an independent strand of this development, in which aspects of voice, instrumental harmony and visual
representation are merged.
134
Bob WATTS
Portrait of Francesco Conz - 1983
Shaped neon - 46 x 30,5 x 15 cm
Arthur KÖPCKE
Traitment - 1974
Mixed media - 42 x 30 cm
136
Ben PATTERSON
Take two and call me in the morning - 1996
Mixed media - 62 x 40 cm
137
A PANEL FOR FRANCESCO’S
SECRET MUSEUM
What is there about a mountain, about going up into the
hills, that is so special and integral to our projects
with Francesco? It has been a constant running through
more than three decades of collaborations. First there
was Asolo, the little hill town where we went from Cittadella to create, dream, and make art, as well as eat,
drink and talk for hours. For my first project in Asolo, on
my first day there, Francesco took me to a small hill with
the Stations of the Cross and olive trees at the top where
I performed a meditative ritual for a full moon. From Verona we would drive up into the hills to Maria’s old farmhouse for meals that always turned into special events and
which Francesco always photographed. I performed a memorial piece for my late partner Brian Buczak at the top of
the knoll behind Maria’s. Francesco also planned events
for Brunnenburg, the castle where Ezra Pound’s resided in
Sud Tyrol, in Italy’s eastern alps. The symbolic ascent
of the mountain, the mountain as site of a transformative
moment, fills history and mythology, and is evoked in the
Secret Museum. Our Olympus.
The first time I visited the Secret Museum was June 22,
2003, the beginning of summer. Francesco’s accident had
happened just five months earlier, and my partner Sur and
I very much wanted to see him. So on June 17, immediately
after the opening of the Venice Biennale, we traveled on
to Verona.
After a visit to the hospital where Francesco was being
cared for — a very special moment — Agostino, Francesco’s
assistant, drove us up to the Secret Museum and showed us
through the building with considerable pride. He together
with others had worked hard on the installation, directed by Francesco from his hospital bed, creating a great
visual document of his interaction with all of us. Many
familiar pieces, as well as photos of events from the distant past that had faded from my memory, were there. They
recalled some extraordinary moments. The following day we
were on the plane back to New York.
In spite of Francesco’s accident it was clear that the Archive’s projects were to continue with even greater focus
138
Geoff HENDRICKS
Bronzi di Raice panel - 2004
Installation; 188 x 160 x 5 cm
139
and more determination than ever. The following year we
returned to Verona to complete the Bronzi di Riace project*. I arrived in Verona on March 5, 2004, and Sur joined
me four days later. The day after my arrival Agostino took
me to visit Francesco, who by then was at a hospital in
Verona, just across the river from his home in Vicolo Quadrelli. That day was a full moon, which I saw as a good
omen for the new project. On March 7, Agostino and Mario
took me up to the Secret Museum to see the changes and
additions made over the past year. Francesco also wanted
me to look at two large wooden panels there. Could I do
something with them? As we went from room to room through
the old farmhouse, Agostino opened the shutters to let in
light revealing installation changes and additions. Yes,
it was a great visual document of Francesco’s interaction
with all of us.
A few days before we were to leave, with the Bronzi di Riace project almost finished, Francesco reminded me again of
the two wooden panels at the farmhouse. What could I com-
Geoff HENDRICKS
Flower paltte- 1964
Mixed media; 53 x 43 cm
140
plete in a day to complement the sculpture? Transforming
both panels was clearly too much, but one panel should be
possible, and was certainly enough. So on March 18, four
days before our return flight, Gianni drove me up to Erbezzo, armed with my paints and brushes, the colors I had
used on the sculpture, a slide projector and slides of the
figures that Sur and I had taken eight years earlier. Henry
Martin, Berty Skuber, Sur and others came up separately.
They all went off for lunch and left me alone to paint. It
was imperative to get the work finished that afternoon. It
called for focus and concentration. When they came back
from lunch one figure had been roughed in. They returned to
Verona. Gianni stayed to drive me back when I was finished.
I got to work on the second figure. The “Mystery car” photo
blowups of Bob Watts, my old colleague at Rutgers, hung
next to where I was painting the panel. Bob felt there
were psychic forces on the curve in the road by his house
and he photographed passing cars to try and capture what
he perceived was there. I enjoyed having him as companion
while I worked. As dusk approached I had finished.
Geoff HENDRICKS
Flux Divorce Box - 1973
Mixed media; 51 x 37 x 10,5 cm
141
March 21 was the beginning of spring and a new moon. I
returned to the Secret Museum with a fetish panel I had
made at Francesco’s request. It was a board with ephemera,
the colors, my palette, some notes and references to the
sculpture and the wooden panel. It became a document for
his collection of realizing that mad fast dream in Erbezzo
and the sculpture in Verona. I also brought along a watercolor of a new moon, and attached to the panel together
with a bundle of sticks, a faggot, which I hung between
the two figures.
Returning in August 2009 I was able to see the panel again,
and on reflection decided to add two more watercolors as
well as other objects. Francesco told me to check with the
farmer next door to see what he had that I could use. I
found an old chopper blade that I hung from the hand of
the figure on the right and I attached a broom by the figure
on the left in counterpoint to the faggot. Below each figure I placed a birdcage since there is also a cage in the
sculpture. I hung a watercolor in each and added stones to
one and firewood to the other. I put an old scythe across
the bottom and leaned a pick-axe against the right side of
the panel. That done I decided it was finished and in celebration did a headstand in front of the panel for Franceso, Agostino and the photographer, Francesco Grigolini.
The headstand pillow with my hangtag “FLUXUS IN FLUX” and
bells I left there with the other objects. On the other
wooden panel Alison had painted a Fluxus Cosmogony. It was
the perfect companion, and the two of us side by side reflect our longstanding friendship and the kinds of dialogs
taking place between works in that old farmhouse.
*See GH From Sea to Sky, Recasting the Riace Bronzes,
2005
142
Geoff HENDRICKS
Headstand in front of his Bronzi di Riace panel - August 12, 2009
143
TESTIMONIAL
The situation of the Casemuseo is special. It is located
high up on an italian hillside and overlooks rolling hills
and farmlands from the high windows. It is a tribute to
Francesco Conz that the collectionthere is so beautifully
sitated and the works themselves so personal. It testifies to his close connection to the artists he invited to
contribute to the museum that is a house/home as well.
The homage to Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik are immediately evdent as one climbs the stairs to second floor.
Huge photos of these artists adorn the hall and stairway.
The affection Francesco felt for Charlotte as artist and
performer is beautifully documented and rare to find since
it represents the field of performance art rather than art
produced for commerce. Traveling up the steps one reaches
Francesco’s bedroom. It is here that I am honored to have
my cloth panel installed just to the right of the bed. I
imagine
this cyanotype and silkscreen print may from time to time
enter the dreams of this great friend of mine and our
major Fluxus collector and archivist.
respectfully submitted Dec.29 2008 by Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles, 2008
144
Alison KNOWLES
Fluxus Cosmógony - 2008
Mixed media on canavs - 188x 160 cm
145
First floor
Pag. 146: View of stairs
Pags 147-148: View of corridor
Pags 149-150: View of living room
Pags 151-152: View of living room
Pags 153-154: View of Francesco Conz bed room
147
Milan KNÍZÁK
Aktual - 1965
Mixed media - 175 x 95 cm
156
Jean François BORY
Musique de guerre - 1965
Mixed media - 175 x 95 cm
A
long the stairway to the first floor are photographs of performances by Charlotte Moorman, including one with the TV Cello built for
her by Nam June Paik. There is also one of her wooden cutout cello
multiples. In the hall, a great silhouette is seen on the right framed
against a black background (“Aktual”, 1965) by Milan Knizak, a
Czech artist known for his “Broken Music” which he made first in
1963. These are reconfigured fragments of various Long Playing records glued together, scratched, deformed, drilled through, in order
to produce new sounds which he has played like a DJ. Although
earlier imprisoned, Knizak became president of the Academy of Fine
Arts after the “velvet revolution”, and then Director of the National
Art Gallery of Prague. The schematic profile of a person, white on
one side and red on the other, is inscribed with the slogan “To live
otherwise, the revolution of thoughts”, an emblematic work which
might be seen as a manifesto of the Aktual group with whom he
was associated in the Sixties before joining Fluxus. Next, a piece
by Jean-François Bory entitled “Musique de Guerre” (1993), a piano
covered with a golden varnish (as with his typewriter sculptures)
upon which he has densely glued, over the keyboard, the music
stand and the upper shelf, a little army of toy soldiers attacking a
pile of magnetic letters. Overlooking Bory’s work, which is only one
of a vast collection of pianos Conz has put together over the years
157
Emmett WILLIAMS
Stained Glass Windows for the Fluxus Cathedral - 1988
Stained glass windows - 143 x 83,5 cm each
(the last section, the “Lettrist Pianos”, was exhibited at the Academy
of Fine Arts in Verona last year). Bernard Heidsieck who is probably
the major exponent, along with Henri Chopin, of Sound Poetry, has
two large sheets linked to the Canal Street cycle (1974-76) that
consist of fifty passages about an electric device which the artist
found in a job lot store on Canal Street. Handwritten words dealing
with communication, integrated circuits, newspaper clippings and
fragments of magnetic tape are traces (or echoes) of articulated
verbal textures which Heidsieck has elaborated on with the new
tools he gradually acquired, such as microphone, video and computer, without however being tied down by these media, and with
the declared purpose of “rendering the text public, to get it off the
page in order to re-transmit it through Actions, Readings and Performances, in accordance with the two characteristic components of
the period: “technology and/or mass communications”.
Along the hall leading to Conz’s room, we find another collection of
Emmett Williams’s “little people”, who, after having danced their
permutations on the top of a mountain in Japan, on wooden wheels
cut by native artisans in Kenya, and been in a Fluxus Festival in Ko-
158
rea, now dance upon a series of stained glass windows designed for
an eventual “Fluxus Cathedral”, that were first exhibited in Henry
Martin’s 1992 exhibition Fluxers in the Museo d”Arte Moderne in
Bolzano. They are together with the “21 Proposals for the Stained
Glass Windows of the Fluxus Cathedral”, lithographs done for Conz
Editions in 1991.
George Brecht, author of some of the most famous Fluxus “events”,
like “Drip Music (Drip Event)”, 1959-62. The score reads, “For single or
multiple performance. A source of dripping water and an empty vessel
are arranged so that the water falls into the vessel. Second version:
Dripping. ”), is the author of the granite slab on which—confirming
the essential nature of his inspiration—the word “Void” is crossed out
(1990). The artist has devoted a large series of works to this theme,
varying the materials and the configurations of the supports used,
among them, in an edition of single pieces made by Conz between
1990 and ’95, authentic fossils sealed in Plexiglas blocks, closely related to his last projects, in which he materialized through a minimal
visual orchestration the paradox of a void which has the consistency of
stone, just as his definition of “accelerated creative inactivity” applied
to his artistic career in the last three decades is paradoxical.
159
Bermard HEIDSIECK
Canal Street n° 21 -1984
Mixed media - 80 x 50 cm
160
George BRECHT
VOID -1984
Unique fossil stamped VOID and embedded in clear plastic medium
24 x 31 x 5,5 cm - Edition F. Conz
If Brecht in “Chance Imagery”, written and self published in 1957
and published as a Great Bear Pamphlet by Something Else Press in
1966, analyzed the potential of chance in overcoming preconceived
attitudes, Daniel Spoerri, in his “Anecdotic Topography of Chance”
(1962), proposed a specific case, in which he describes the chance
placement of objects on the table in his room at the Hotel Carcasonne of Rue Mouffetard 15 on October 17 1961”, halting the process of disorder through a “precise inventory”, in accordance with a
procedure which he applies, in plastic terms, in his “objets-piège”,
where he glues to the surface of the table all the objects ( plates,
bottles, remains of food) in the exact position they were found at
the moment in which he appropriated the table. An example of this
procedure is found at the foot of the stairs leading to the second
floor, in “Piège-à-mot” (1963), where fragments of stone and birds’
egg-shells appear. It is an incongruous juxtaposition with, as epigraph, a mocking, alliterative quatrain on the antithesis of these two
components, the one resistant, the other fragile. A second, more
classic example (an entire little folding table with pot, bowl and
coffee pot and a red fly swatter) is located on the upper balcony,
together with the silk screen (signed by all the participants) of a
161
George BRECHT
Cube-Sphere - 1991
Mixed media - 40 x 20 x 20 cm
162
Joe JONES
History of the Music Bike - 1977
Photomontage - 28 x 20,5 cm
Dedication: To Francesco Conz who made the History of the Music Bike possible
163
Daniel SPOERRI
Piège à mot-1963
Mixed media - 38 x 69 cm
164
The stone falls on the egg:
pity for the egg.
The egg falls on the stone:
still pity for the egg
165
Daniel SPOERRI
L’ultima cena. Banchetto funebre del Nouveau Realisme -1970
Poster pubblicato in occasione del Bancetto Funebre del Nouveau Réalisme organizzata
da Daniel Spoerri al Ristorante Biffi a Milano il20 novembre 1970. Firme di Arman, César,
Christo, Deschamps, Dufrène, Hains, Klein, de Saint Phalle, Raysse, Rotella, Spoerri, Tingely
e Restany - 98 x 69 cm
“Last Supper”, the table set —not by chance this time—by Spoerri
in Milan on the 27th of November 1970 for the exhibit of the tenth
anniversary-exhibition of Nouveau Réalisme.
Before entering the room that Francesco Conz occupies on his summer stays in Erbezzo, a violin, a Music Machine by Joe Jones can be
seen on a slender wooden support (the latter spent several years
in Asolo at Conz’s invitation), one of the many mechanical instruments made by the American composer, a student of Earle Brown
starting in 1962, the year before he joined Fluxus, inspired by the
automatic orchestras in vogue in the 18th and 19th century as well
as by steam organs (Calliopes). Powered by a little electric motor, a ping pong ball strikes the strings producing a sound: an elementary mechanism giving rise to some surprising sounds. “What
166
is simpler is more satisfying from my
point of view, I don’t want complicated
mechanisms,” he stated in an interview in 1992.”I prefer that it appear
as something natural. Like little butterflies. Like a little animal, or a bird
making music”.
Nam June Paik, Robert Filliou, Astrid
and John Furnival, Bob Watts, Geoff
Hendricks, Alison Knowles, Carolee
Schneemann, Al Hansen, Claudio
Costa, fill Francesco’s room with their
works, along with two collections of
“fetishes”, bottles and shoe forms with
artists’ interventions, otherwise occupied by an imposing bed and an antique Chinese commode. “Asolo Tv”
by Paik, the Korean artist, father of
video-art, is a collage assembled with
childhood drawings of Conz’s son and
daughter, Gianluca and Cristina, which
are arranged in the shape of a television screen on a black background and
enclosed in a Plexiglas box. Robert Filliou, the protean French proponent of
Fluxus, is the author of the 24 hour
clock (“The Key to Art”, 1972), with
Scott Hyde photographing 22 hands of
artists from Arman and Ay-O to Emmett
Williams, plus their own. The 24 handprints in a circle become the clock, and
are dedicated to his artist friends, ideal
members of his “Eternal Network”. In
the spirit of this concept he promoted
collaborations, for example with Emmett Williams, Daniel Spoeri—among
others on the pièges à mots—and with
George Brecht, his accomplice, from
1965 to 1968 in Villefranche-sur-mer,
in their Cedille qui sourit experiment,
a gallery conceived of as a center of
permanent creation. John Furnival,
concrete poet and co-founder with
Dom Sylvester Houédard of Openings
Press, together with his wife Astrid, an
Joe JONES
Music machine -1975
Mixed media - 160 x 37 x 21 cm
167
Nam June PAIK
Asolo-TV -1974
Mixed media - 71 x 89 cm
artist who expressed herself through the weaving of tapestries, has
clothed a manikin in stickers and publicity clippings, producing a
graceful, if sarcastic, monument to the “brand”. Ugo Carrega, father
of “symbiotic poetry”, an expression which he used to define “that
field of experimental poetry in which signs of various extraction interact”, in “Il Gancio” (1987) he juxtaposes a meat hook with a brief
lyrical phrase (the ears closed,/like something turned off/ defines
noises/in the silence) underlined with sharp green strokes on a uniform red background.
Some of Robert Watts’, famous “Yamflug Stamps”, sheets of one
hundred stamps, may be seen just outside the entrance—“a parade
of faces from a broad range of sources, works of art, old snapshots,
ancient postcards, advertisements and women’s magazines” (Peter
Frank), there is also a large photograph on aluminum from Watts’
“Cars” series. Two panels of wood dominate the far wall. On the right
is a panel entitled “Fluxus Cosmogony, 2008, by Alison Knowles, on
which are inscribed the names of a constellation of Fluxus artists in
interlaced with and around multicolored circles. On the floor, next to
168
Bob WATTS
Cars - 1971
Mixed media - 98,5 x 156 cm
the wall, within one of the “Medusas” of Claudio Costa, lies a collage
of branches and leaves on an earthy background. At the center a
hint of a face may be distinguished and above it the rays of hair of
the mythical monster stream out.
Geoff Hendricks has developed the panel on the left into a companion
to his “Recasting the Riace Bronzes” project (2004). The figures of
the two bearded men are painted as blue silhouettes, and joined with
watercolors of night skies, two bird cages and old farm tools, scythe,
pick-ax, broom and faggot. The fiberglass copies of the ancient Greek
bronzes he also painted blue, which he has embodied by painting with
Sur Rodney—as he had done with his own body in performances in the
Seventies—in celestial blue, two garden statues in a resinous material which reproduce the sculptures discovered in 1972 in the watery
depths off the Calabrian city, and decorating these with white clouds
thus transporting them from “the sea to the heavens”. Whether this
operation, as suggested by Hendricks in a recent volume dedicated to
the work, may represent the beginning of a new, specific collection of
objects by Conz, has not yet received an answer.
169
Eric DIETMANN
Selected Down Down from my Pillow-Book 1959-1973 - 1973
Mixed media - 32 x 21,5 cm
170
Al HANSEN
Power Plant - 1973
Mixed media - 27 x 23 cm
171
Jon HENDRICKS
CLN - 1975
Collage - 21 x 18 cm
To the left of Hendricks’ panel by the window is a Japanese cabinet
transformed by Ladislav Novak with a mass of ink drawings, spots of
black ink on heavy rice paper in a procedure he called veronage.
Above the bed on the wall opposite the windows is a photographic
sequence by Carolee Schneemann of her skating naked across the
ice with a long scarf about her neck. The American performer, who
undertook, starting with the “physical transformations” of Eye-Body
(1963), to use her own body as “visual territory, “exploring the potentiality, on the plane of the image, of carnality as “material”, ex-
172
Jon HENDRICKS
A car crash - 1975
Collage - 21 x 18 cm
pressing “a primary, archaic force, capable of unifying the energies
thus illuminated as visual information of my female desire”.
Long a guest of Conz in Asolo, where he filled hundreds of albums
with collages, in a sort of limitless visual diary, Al Hansen is represented by a collection of his anti-classic Venuses based on the
primordial female form, portrayed through minute assemblages of
cigarette butts, pieces of Hershey bar wrappers or torn colored paper. While Hansen sacrificed to the goddess of love, whom he even
dedicated a rap to, (rhythm is a family thing: Beck, his grandson,
173
2
Larry MILLER
Genetic Code Copyright (Alison Knowles) - 1989
Installation
175
became a music star of the first order). Ferlinghetti expresses a
ferocious irony with regard to his Catholic background: on an oil
painted representation of Jesus who, in a protective attitude, hugs
the apostle John to himself, probably an allusion to the crucifixion
and death on the cross, “Fais pas de connerie, toi!” And, in a comment on a saint that the author has engraved in the act of opening
a book, he writes, “Learn to read!” If the author of one of the most
important anthologies of modern American poetry, Coney Island of
my Mind, (1958), and the publisher of the Beats, likes to joke with
the saints, the same can be said of Ben Patterson, author of “Last
Supper at the Club”, where a reproduction of the thirteen meeting in
the Supper-Room hangs beneath the logo of Playboy Club, and one
of the guests is saying to his neighbor, “What do you know about his
mother? He clearly said “Madonna”!
In the back room, there is another parody on relics that recalls the
precedent of Boccaccio. Here created by Steve McCaffery, one of
the Four Horsemen (a Canadian group of Sound Poets”) is “The Holy
Staff of Antioch” (2002), a bent stick from which hang photographs
of the artist in hieratic costume and a cassette player. A caption
declares it to be “an authentic branch of the Tree of Knowledge”. A
display cabinet in the room holds artists’ books and editions, including a Roman Missal stained with red paint by Hermann Nitsch, the
“Dollar Bill” blocks by Bob Watts and the “Poemobiles” of Augusto
De Campos.
On the main wall hangs a large work by Larry Miller, Genomic License
No. 5 (Alison Knowles Properties) 1992-97, asserting a declaration
of rights of ownership of the individual genetic code as a personal
property, as well as rights to sell one’s genome as a commodity, if
desired. The installation includes nine photographs and five documents, featuring a life size portrait of Knowles, the American Fluxus
artist. While Miller regards the certified documents, and the DNA
samples provided in the legal agreement as the essence of the work,
it includes medical and biographical details in the parodying register
of Fluxus, satirically appropriating legal and clinical forms , but at a
deeper level raising the fundamental question of the preservation of
personal identity.
176
Geoff HENDRICKS
My Tai Chi slippers (recto and verso) - 2009
Mixed media - 28 x 55 cm
177
1
2
3
4
5
6
Fetish collections of bottles
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Bernard Heidsieck; April 8, 2000
Alain Arias Misson
Ben Vautier
Jackson MacLow; January 3, 1999
Allan Kaprow; May 14,1998
Emmett Williams; October 20, 2001
Julien Blaine, Nicolas Zurbrugg, Joel Hubaut,
Arrigo Lora Totino, Jacques Donguy, Bernard
Heidsieck; 1999
8 - Arrigo Lora Totino; 2002
9 - Grogerova Bohumila; December 11, 2001
10 - Juan Hidalgo; Octiber 8, 1999
11 - Lawrence Ferlinghetti; September 2002
12 - Ben Patterson; 2002
13 - Jack Hirschman; 2002
14 - Jean Dupuy; August 14, 2000
15 - Allan Kaprow; 1997
16 - Henri Chopin, 1994
178
-
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
179
Dieter ROTH
Untitled - 1980
Pencil on paper - 29,5 x 21 cm
180
John FURNIVAL
All the color of the Rimbaud - 2000
Mixed media - 38 x 39 x 7 cm
Eric DIETMANN
Residuo della Guerra - 1983/1986
Mixed media - 88 x 116 cm
181
Eric ANDERSEN
Four photographs
with jam
1982
Fluxus box
9 x 13 x 7 cm
Joseph BEUYS
Postkarten
1962
Fluxus box
16 x 12 x 4 cm
Carla LISS
Sacrament Flux Kit
Fluxus box
17,5 x 11,5 x 3,5 cm
182
Ay-O
Finger Box n° 29
1970
Fluxus box
9,5 x 8 x 8 cm
Philip CORNER
The Piece of
Reality for Today
1966
Fluxus box
17 x 12,5 x 12,5 cm
Takako SAITO
A Dream
1970
Fluxus box
11 x 8,5 x 7 cm
183
Ay-O
Put-In
1995
Fluxus box
25 x 32 x 2 cm
George BRECHT
Games Puzzle
1965
Fluxus box
12 x 9 x 2 cm
Philip CORNER
Una settimana di
detti
Fluxus wallet
13 x 10 cm
184
George BRECHT
Water Yam
1986
Fluxus box
17,5 x 17,5 x 3,5 cm
Takako SAITO
Untitled
1980
Fluxus box
10 x 7 x 3,5 cm
Takako SAITO
Is that all what
you want?
1968
Fluxus game
10 x 10 x 10 cm
185
Al HANSEN
Also man of the Mt. - 1966
Mixed media - 25 x 18 cm
Robert FILLIOU
Optimistic Box N° 1 - 1968
Mixed media - 11 x 11 x11 cm
186
Bob WATTS
Tit box. - 1984
Mixed media - 21 x 11 x 4 cm
Takako SAITO
Untitled - 1977
Mixed media - 18 x 12 cm
Carolee Schneemann
Naked Ice Skating - 1972/1988
Silkscreen on paper - 32,5 x 25 cm each
187
A DAY IN THE MOUNTAINS
It was cold in Verona, so I knew that it would be very cold
at the Museum in the Mountains. Accordingly, I bought, and
brought with us, a bottle of good Scotch Whisky, - probably Lagavulin – which I placed on the table where we were
all working. By the end of the day, it was empty.
Working in the same room with a group of other artists,
was like being at Art School again (without the whisky).
There would be burst of chattering, followed by long periods of silence, when people were getting on with their
work. Henri Chopin, a quick worker (and now sadly gone from
us), finished his project in about two hours, and spent the
rest of the day wandering about, playing the clown – but
that was O.K! Contrarywise, I started something that was
meant to be over in a day, but which in fact, took me at
least a year to complete. I decide to make a frieze that
would be a poem of praise to Nelson and Winnie Mandela,
coupling their names and words such as Uhuru, Freedom,
and so on, in a continuos line, zig-zagging up, down, and
along each sheet. I used stencil letters, and the colours
of the African National Congress, black, green and gold
in gouache.
I like to use stencil letters; they are a sort of half-way
house between calligraphy and typography.
When I started the project, Winnie and Nelson were an
iconic couple. By the time I was half-way through it, it
had emerged that Winnie was no Penelope faithfully undoing her day’s weaving in the night awaiting the return of
her Ulysses.
Artists: Steer clear of making political points!
La Cardonie 21st Oct. 2008
PS: The whisky is spelt: LAGAVULIN
John Furnival
188
John and Astrid FURNIVAL
Untitled - 2001
Mixed media - 151 x 89 x 43 cm
IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING
For some reason, when I began to think about writing this
text, the phrase “In the hall of the mountain king” kept
returning to my mind. And I kept wondering, “Why?” On the
surface, ths phrase is a more or less adequate beginning
point for rememberances of days at Franceaco’s “Casa-Museo.” The “casa” is in the mountains, and Francesco is an
acknowledged “king.” But, there are other, less innocent,
associations with this phrase, which may or may not apply.
First, I doubt that Francesco is a great fan of the music
of Edvard Grieg (whose music for Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt,
is infinitely better known than the play itself). Second,
the “mountain king” is a troll! Which is not a likely description of the noble features of our Francesco. And then
there is the problem of Peer’s character (if Francesco is
the “mountain king,” then the visiting artists must be
“Peer.”) Were we all selfish, bad boys, who stole things,
played tricks on others, never helped their mothers, deserted wives, embarked on fantastic adventures and were
often drunk? Well, if you could lump the lot of Francesco’s
artists into only one character, this might be a good description. Finally, the satire, the surrealism, the absurdity, the internationalism and even the “neo-paganism”
of the play provide interesting perspectives from which
to study the “goings-on” at the “Casa Museo.” My personal
memories? I must admit that specifics are fading. I do remember that I always looked forward to and very much enjoyed my visits to the “Hall of the Mountain King.” It was
the perfect “get-away” from the heat and tourists of Verona
in the summer. And the views into the distance and the good
country air seem to have inspired a few interesting works.
I remember in particular of two of the works I made there
that Francesco rather disliked my Portrait of Dick Higgins
with Wounded Knee and looked with considerable favor on the
large Francesco, Biographical Installation. But, perhaps,
what I found most important in my visits to the “Casa-Museo” was the “retreat” or “refuge” aspect of the situation.
No, there was no sauna, massages, aroma therapies or the
like. But the long, sweet, summer evenings with good food,
good wine and diverting conversation were perfect for mental rejuvenation! I remember Francesco had many plans for
his “Casa-Museo.” And I hope he will be able to realize as
much he has always hoped, or even more, of his plan to keep
this wonderful collection perpetually in flux!
190
Ben PATTERSON
Fuck You, Papa ! - 1999
Mixed media - 180 x 115 cm
191
PART II.
Now, several months after writing Part I. of this text, I
am back on the mountain, visiting the Secret Museo for the
first time in nearly 10 years. Roaming through this amazing house has refreshed and elevated my mind to new levels
of appreciation. Memories return of my first visit here
(Francesco tells me, that I was the first artist to whom
he showed this place and spoke of his dreams.) and it is
wonderful to see that, although much has been added, nothing has changed. It remains a magnificent, living portrait
of a grand family and (forgive me, Francesco) its patriarch. This is not a museum for a casual stroll. Here,
among hundreds of artworks, artifacts, photographs and
documents, you are confronted with the History of a Revolution…a revolution, which for better or worse, changed
forever how we see, think about and make art. Here, on
every inch of the walls, ceilings and even the creaky, old
wooden floors, you see, smell and feel the blood, sweat and
tears of this revolution. The audaciousness the works – in
concept and realization – is stunning. But, it is even
more astounding when remembering that the works exhibited
here, represent only about one tenth of Francesco’s entire
collection!
But, perhaps the two most important stories I find at this
secret place, are, first the story of Francesco’s relationships with his artists, and, second
the rambling,
but revealing stories/documentations of “what the artist
does on his day-off”. Concerning Francesco’s relationships
with his artists, here we find more than ample evidence
to prove that he was not a passive collector. Francesco
did not assemble this collection by shopping at art galleries, art fairs or art auctions. As an editor and publisher, he actively sought-out and commissioned artists to
produce specific works, based on his personal knowledge of
the artist’s interests and capabilities. Again and again,
we see photographs of Francesco and an artists reviewing
a projects. And here and there, we find works exhibiting
typical “trade-marks” of Editions Conz.
The second story – what the artists does on his day-off – is
perhaps unique in the world history of museums. Here and
there, throughout the house, we find casual notes, quick
doddles, photographs and other evidence of artists work-
192
ing, playing, eating,
drinking and even sleeping… plus many “minor
art works”, artifacts,
drafts,
discards
and
“throw-aways”…all documenting the “working of
the mind” of the artist,
when he/she is not on
public display and calculating his/her next
move, sale or exhibition. With reference to
the notion, that music
is what happens between
the notes, it is in this
“down-time”, “the day
off”, in the informal,
off-guard
photographs
and in the spontaneous “little” art-works,
when we learn who the
artist really is…how he/
Ben Patterson, 1999
she thinks, lives, feels
and works. Here we hear
“hear the music” between the lines of the resume.
Finally, - and I don’t know how Francesco feels about this
– but, I think it would be absolutely wonderful if this
secret museum could be visited in cyber-space…on the World
Wide Web. It could be a discreet, well hidden site discoverable by only very diligent searchers (not surfers).
But, I am certain that it would a delight and inspiration
for hundreds of people around the world. Would this increase or decrease the requests for personal visits to the
museum? Only a test can answer this question. (Remember,
the site can always be removed from the web.) In any case,
Francesco, please get it all on DVDs, as best as you can.
And, best wishes forever!
Ben Patterson
193
Second floor
Pag. 184: Detail of corridor
Pags 196-197: View of corridor
Pags 198-199: View of guests room
Pags 200-201: View of studiolo
Pags 202-20: Detail of of artists’ dresses in the corridor
195
Henri CHOPIN
Radio Robots - 1988
Mixed media - 85,5 x 66 x 28 cm
204
John GIORNO
Life is a killer - 1973
Silkscreen on vinyl - 27 x 23 cm
L
IFE IS A KILLER proclaims John Giorno’s large vinyl canvas at the
top of the stairs on the second floor. Giorno is the creator, among
other things, of the “Dial-A-Poem” (1969) service that gave people
the opportunity to listen to fifty minutes of poetry over the telephone. For many years he performed together with William Burroughs, and was the subject of Andy Warhols film Sleep. He has
used found text as material to transform within the structure of his
poems. Tibetan Buddhism and Queer sexuality both inform his work
that appreciates the music of the spoken word.
Just beneath the Giorno is Bob Watts’ “Pork Chop Table” (1974), a
low table in the form of a pork chop. A green Buddha, cut vertically
in half down the middle, that sits on Watts’ table is a work by Milan
Knizak. Both artists are connected to Fluxus.
205
Daniel SPOERRI
Table de Vigneron - 1983
Mixed media - 115 x 98 (diameter) x 55 cm
Next to the door into the back room are two works by Henri Chopin.
He is a seminal figure with both his reviews Cinquième Saison and
OU, and being the first in the field of Sound Poetry to experiment with
the possibilites of tape recording. In the second half of the fifties he
played a role perhaps similar to that of Nam June Paik in the field of
206
SERGE III
Ad Augusta - ????
Mixed media - 42 x 55 cm
video art. La cantate vibratoire (1979) is a board with a number of
reels placed on it interlaced with magnetic tape. Radio robots (1988)
is a pyramid of wireless radios bound together with magnetic tape,
which takes on a vaguely anthropomorphic shape.
The long wall between the doors to the two rooms is taken up entirely
by the Last Supper of Hermann Nitsch. It is a very large silk screen on
fabric, hand drawn by the artist, with the cloth stained with blood and
dried before the printing. Standing figures are portrayed in an underground architecture flanking a centrally placed Buddha-Christ, in anatomical sections which reveal in turn corridors of the underground out
of which rebirth could develop. It is a prophecy in an apocalyptic era.
The origin of which is closely related to the longstanding friendship of
the artist with Francesco Conz. One of their first collaborations conceived in Asolo in the 1970’s, is the famous “Asolo Raum” that in the
last decade was exhibited at the Los Angeles MOCA and at the Martin
Gropiuis Bau in Berlin. It is a gesamtkunstwerk, an altar-space with
hangings, photographs, “relics” of actions, and graphic works.
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Nitsch has in forty years gone from ostracism by Austria to recently
having the Vienna Opera House to stage a major Action.
Two works on paper by Ladislav Novak, one of the main exponents
of Czech art of the 20th century, also relate to a friendship with
Conz, (“Le destin et le sphynx” and “L’aéronautique”, both from
1974), done with a froissage technique, which uses the folds of a
crumpled sheet of paper in order to create the drawing. Noted for
the originality of the techniques he uses (aside from froissage he
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Hermann NITSCH
Das letzte Abendmahl (The Last Supper) - 1983
Silkscreen on canvas - 160 x 400 cm - Edition F. Conz
also used alchimage which he practiced in the sixties, in which the
image is altered through the use chemical agents), Novak, during
a stay in Verona as a guest of Conz, elaborated a new procedure
which he called veronage, consisting of china ink spots dropped and
sprinkled on a damp surface. An example of this is in Novak’s piece
in Conz’s bedroom.
Above the banister hang tunics, jackets, suits, night-gowns of various
styles, originals done here in editions, among them a blouse--with
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writing (n° 45 in this series)—by Eugen Gomringer, a leader of Concrete
Poetry in the German language with
his Konstellationen (1953). Other
works include an authentic prisoner’s
uniform from ex-Communist Czechoslovakia that has interventions by
Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hirsal, who are leading personalities in
the world of Bohemian experimental
poetry.
In the front room on the second floor
overlooking the garden, above a
beige sofa, white and pink “printed
underwear” hang by clothes-pins on
a stretched wire in a frame, with the
image of the female sex printed on
both of them. They were made by
Bob Watts in 1966 as a Fluxus object for George Maciunas. The next
year, 1967, Watts, Maciunas and Heman Fine formed a partnership, Implosions Inc., to mass produce Fluxus
objects, including stick-ons of jewelry, and temporary tattoos, a product
that would be commercially successful twenty years later, but by that
time Mr. Fluxus had died, and been
commemorated in the Flux Funeral
held on the 13th of May, 1978
In the middle of this room, hangs
an extremely interesting work of
Ben Patterson, a white disposable
cover-all with zipper front, and applied anatomical decals of a heart,
male genitals, muscles, and a little
raw flesh around a worn hole in the
left knee exposing the stuffing. Two
other decals of significance are one
of heraldry, a rampant lion and a
white rose; and the other of a white
Hurdy Gurdy man with a small derogatory black figure sitting behind
on the drum, with beaters attached
to his feet to play the drum and a
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Philip CORNER
Asolo e dintorni - 1975
Mixed media - 58,5 x 64 cm
Charlotte MOORMAN
Cello Bomba - 1984
Mixed media - 196 x 33 x 33 cm
Edition Soleway ex. n° 3/10
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cymbal to play attached to his hand. Patterson has used this same image in a silkscreen print. The upper part of a head of
an Asian man, perhaps Tibetan, emerges
from the collar of the jump-suit. Ben Patterson has titled this work “I Had Good
Reasons to both Hate and Love Dick Higgins”, 1999. It should be considered in
relation to the Kaprow sculpture, Banjo
Player, 1957, in the entrance hall. These
two works are like the alpha and omega
of the Secret Museum. Allan Kaprow and
Dick Higgins were both in John Cage’s
class at the New School in New York in
1957-59. Ben Patterson and Dick Higgins
were both performing in the first Fluxus
concerts in Wiesbaden in 1962, and Patterson had a close, but not always easy
relation with Higgins in the early days
of the Something Else Press, in Higgins’
house on West 22nd Street in New York
City. The Kaprow anticipates Happenings.
The Patterson could come only after attitudes about materials had changed from
four decades of performance art. In addition the Patterson in a subtle but profound way confronts the issue of race and
racism. On the wall behind this hanging
figure is another large formal portrait of
an English gentleman bought by Conz—
because of the close resemblance to his
own father-to which the latter has stuck
a letter written by his father to his sons.
The gloss “Fuck You, Papa!” in a cartoon
bubble defines the work, thus summing
up with caustic verve the difficulties of
the family relationship. On the right, in a
corner, the cover of a field exercise bomb
has been transformed, with strings and
bow, into Charlotte Moorman’s violoncello
(“Cello Bomb”, a 1984 edition). Between
a drawing by Diter Rot and a reading desk
piled with books, the window is covered
by a silk screen by Isidore Isou, another
edition by Francesco Conz which belongs
to the series from the novel “Introduction
Ladislav NOVAK
L’Aeronautique ? - 1974
Mixed media on paper - 36 x 26 cm
à la haute volupté”, published in 1960 by the founder of Lettrism.
The image on this cloth documents in exemplary fashion the “hypergraphic” method of Isou’s writing, introduced ten years ago in his
“Les journaux des dieux”, in which the narrative in a customary style
is set alongside figures extrapolated from other contexts (symbols,
riddles, publicity designs), with streams of invented alphabets etc.,
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assembled in a vaster and more complex work of signs and signifiers. On the walls we find photographs of actions (“Little Valentine”,
1969, by Gina Pane, by Erik Dietman, by Ferlinghetti (“I am not a
pope”), and on a low stand on the floor is “Würftext” (1991) by Ludwig Gosewitz, a German concrete poet and Fluxus artist, a table on
which white dice have been glued with an indication of their original
position inscribed on their various faces (above, below, right, left)
contradicted by the chance arrangement left by a throw.
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Bob Watts & George MACIUNAS
Printed Underwear - 1964
Mixed media - 63,5 x 123,5 cm
Project for Implosions Inc.
In the room at the back, a large painting stands out on which Otto
Mühl, another exponent of Viennese Aktionism, drew Francesco Conz
in 1985 when the latter visited the AA-Kommune in Vienna, drawn in
impulsive, vigorous strokes vaguely reminiscent of Van Gogh. Maurice Lemaître, dean of the Lettrist group, has produced a silk screen,
coloring this reproduction of “Formule de l’amour prodigieux”. Takako Saito, a Japanese Fluxus artist living in Germany, with an unpredictable sense of humor has decorated a set of toilet paper sheets
215
with drawings and collages of elephants, testicles, loaves and feathers. Dick Higgins, the mythical publisher of Something Else press,
theoretician of intermedial art, twice married to another representative personality of Fluxus, Alison Knowles, is represented by a
silkscreen, “Labyrinth”, which refers to his scholarly study of Pattern
Poetry (poetry before 1900 in which words are arranged so as to
form images, which he studied in Greek and Latin prototypes as well
as in Baroque and Classical, Indian and Japanese compositions),
reproducing here an ancient work in which, horizontally, vertically
and diagonally, the phrase “The divine Raj” can be made out. Milan
Knizak has fixed a dog’s head on a human torso in ceramic. Picking up the theme of maps proposed by Robert Delford Brown in the
preceding room, Henri Chopin has inserted reels and tapes on a map
of Paris in “Monsieur post-scriptum” (1977), and Philip Corner has a
little map covered with annotations (“Asolo e dintorni”, 1975). This
brings us back to Asolo and friendship in its dedication.
Alain ARIAS-MISSON
Untitled - 1982
Mixed media - 21 x 26 cm
216
Thomas SCHMIDT
Zeit Winkel - 1973
Mixed media on paper - 45 x 63 cm
Ludwig GOSEWITZ
Wurftext - 1991
Mixed media - Edition Galleria A - 70 x 70 cm
217
Takakko SAITO
Above (left to right) N° 13 ; N°??
Below(left to right) N° 6 ; N° ?? - 1969
Mixed media on toilette paper - 28 x 21 cm each
218
Alice HUTCHINS
Homage Prud’hon - 1966
Mixed media on paper - 26,5 x 20 cm
219
PIECES OF REALITY
AT THE SECRET MUSEUM
La Casa Museo di Francesco Conz!
Francesco Conz’ “Museum House” — or i. it “Hause Museum”
I usually see him in Verona not that the apartment there is
not already a museum on two floors yet. Where he lives and
receives and below where he puts the artists. His artists.
Every wall covered with art he has produced, provoked! So
away to the mountains. Cappella Fasano is what the place
is called. Near the border. He drives up to where the bunkers were on a high rocky hill to show me where the Italians and the Austrians once squared off. Maybe still some
sort of border. He himself is both Italian and Austrian.
The difference is that in this house the art is permanent.
My “Pieces of Reality” are permanent places in it. To
start from the outside door. We wanted to place a bell,
old campanacci made to sound pulled by a rope, above the
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Philip CORNER
Pieces of Reality - 2002
Site specific installation
entrance, but the fabbro didn’t know how to follow the design. I could never get to work it out with him. Too bad.
The design seems to be lost.
I can include another sketch, though for the piece of used
toilet paper I glued one morning on the inside lid of the
toilet bowl. Holy shit! (A piece of divine and human reality.) Just one small section of a piece of toilet paper,
wiped! (once) and framed… most beautifully in gold - an
elegant and gracious one – an oval – as a reliquary.
Or just glued to the inside of the toilet bowl lid as was
done in Francesco Conz’s bathroom in his mountain retreat,
Casa Museo. Intended to be permanent it was removed the
same morning (not by him).
The unrealized idea might still be done! And other
years…
What might still be there … Francecso is it?
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Is the cardboard tube (I love ‘em) left over from that
same wipe and glued somewhere else in the bathroom.
What the interested viewer might well find are variations
on the theme of “Pieces of Reality: Rhythm.” I don’t really remember all the things I glued up in various places,
but I do remember (and am grateful for it) that wonderful
tube of glue (Mille chiodi) which really does hold justabout-anything and I am still using it at home.
“Pieces of Reality: Rhythm” would be not just a single
reality but as the word implies …. a: Rhythm!
Get some good photos !
That is: a sequence of well-placed positions such as: (put
the photos wherever you like) bricks on wall of upstairs
bedroom, plastic cups hung from kitchen ceiling.
Note the regularity in these progressions and these. All
sort of patterns showing order. Pattern.
Don’t forget these are real objects. They may circle
around, accelerate, get closer together or further apart
from left to right. Retard. Comes to the same thing all
around.
Philp Corner
Philip CORNER
Metelelementus - 1980
Hand bells cast in bronze in the form of stones collected by the artist from the river
Brenta - Various sizes - 21 signed and numbered copies + 3 A.P.
Edition F. Conz,1980
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Francesco Conz and Philip Corner, 1999
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Haroldo DE CAMPOS
Ideocablegram - 1991
Mixed media on paper - 24.5 x 35 cm
224
Decio PIGNATARI
War Was - 1991
Mixed media on paper - 24.5 x 35 cm
225
Robert DELFORD BROWN
Mrs God’s Little Boy - 2000
Mixed media - 51 x 39 cm
226
Paul SHARITS
Unrolling Event- 1977
Fluxus box - 16 x 13 x 4 cm
To conclude (without ending)
Many
have spoken of how Francesco Conz, fascinated by people
and ideas, has collected not art but artists. But if it is true that “the
art, the objects, the editions are a diary of his meetings with the artists who make up his collection”, the spirit which inspires his activity seems rather to be that of a witness and a promoter. Francesco,
according to Henry Martin, “was interested in creating documents
which would preserve and transmit an art otherwise highly transitory and which would eventually impose its presence in a vaster and
possibly more public scale, and furthermore he wished to help artists
in set up new and unusual situations in which they could continue to
work”. At the same time, his attitude toward artists brought him to
consider them—as has already been remarked—as a community of
modern saints ”conveying a set of wholly different values—together with a complex of mental or spiritual or contemplative attitudes
which are simply not found in the rest of society”.
On the one hand, therefore, the boundless archive, far beyond the
collection described above, which Conz put together in his extended
lehrjahre, on the other hand the construction of a deep personal
relationship with the artists of his generation. “I never had the possibility of paying much attention to the beginnings of the Fluxus
227
movement, since I was not
present to take part in it, so it
made much more sense to involve myself with what artists
were actually doing, and I have
continued to be concerned with
what they have continued to
do. I have a rather romantic
ideal of the artist, which means
that I cannot believe that an
artist was valid ten or twenty
or thirty years ago, and that
nothing he has done more recently can be of interest. People mature, and should go on
improving. I have been able to
see that these Fluxus artists
have grown and continue to do
so. Titian and Monet did their
best works at the end of their
lives, and there is no good reason why that should not be
the case again.” Even if not
all the artists of these movements have remained at the
same level level (in ’60 Debord
was already quarrelling with
Isou, and wrote “Le plus sûr
symptôme du délire idéaliste
est d’ailleurs la stagnation des
mêmes individus, se soutenant
ou se querellant des années
autour des mêmes valeurs arbitraires, parcequ’ils sont seuls
à les reconnaître comme règles
d’un pauvre jeu»), the nonretrospective character and
in-progress attitude of Conz is
clearly established, as his Secret Museum and Archive, an
iceberg which the Museum represents only the tip of, is manifest testimony.
It has been said of the relationship with artists, a peer to
peer relationship, an exchange
228
Charlotte MOORMAN
Photocello - 1995
Mixed media - 134 x 60,5 cm
Signed post mortem by: Henri, Chopin,
Phiip Corner, Eric Dietman,
Geoff Hendricks, Dick Higgins
and Ben Patterson
Eugenio MICCINI
Ex libris ex rebus - 1976
Collage - 52,5 x 52,5 cm
which, more than the potlach, a competitive and at the limit ruinous gift, is related to the munus, which term—as the philosopher
Roberto Esposito recalls—is at the root of communitas: hence both
a foundational and necessary gift. It is a gift which consists mainly
in the contribution of a specificity or a difference tout court, in the
framework of “the method of freedom of method”.
Forceful as his involvement with the experimentation of the avantgarde groups of the second half of the twentieth century has been,
just as sharp has been his dissent, which may be fully shared, with
respect to the market-imposed trends which dominate the art scene
today, and whose heroes are the Jeff Koons and Damien Hirsts,
judged to be similar to the nineteenth century pompiers who, not by
happenstance, have been been the object of recuperation in these
times.
229
From this point of view, the Museum, in its precarious but vital existence, even today the theater of a performance by Alison Knowles,
is an archive become a sort of Qumran scroll, a document addressed
to generations to come, not in a flashback but, in a special way,
a flashforward in a tension to reintroduce experimentation closely linked to the human experience: the word, the voice, play and
chance, action and rite.
Daniel SPOERRI
Kochrezepte in 10 portfolios - 1989
Wooden box with an unique “Tableau-piège” containing 10 portfolios of recipes
collected, transcibed and annotated by Daniel Spoerri, each dedicated to a specific
ingredient. The portfolios illustrated by Attersee, Blume, Hofkunst, Luginbuehl,
Schroer, Schwegler and Topor edited by Editions Conz. Daniel Spoerri edited the
portfolios illustrated by Duwen, Gerstners and Roth - 57 x 53 x 37 cm
Edition F. Conz, 1989
230
1
3
2
4
1 - Eugen GOMRINGER - Vestaglia - 1991
2 - Milan KNÍZÁK - Abito maschile - 1987/1989
3 - Bohumila GRÖGEROVÁ Josef HIRŠAL - Divisa carcerato - 1991
4 - George BRECHT - Paradox Shirt - 1989
231
12
34
56
Walking with fetish
Shoes’ shapes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
7
232
-
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - 2000
John Giorno - 2000
Steve McCaffery - 2002
Rasa Todosievic - 2003
Alain Arias-Misson - 2001
John Furnival - 2000
Gerhard Ruehm - undated
89
10 11
12 13
8 - Edward Sanders - 2001
9 - Alison Knowles - 2000
10 - Jack Hirschman - 2000
11 - Arrigo Lora Totino - 2001
12 - Milan Knízák - 2000
13 - Philip Corner - 2000
14 - Emmett Williams - 1989
14
233
Henri CHOPIN
La cantate vibratoire - 1979
Mixed media - 39 x 24,5 cm
234
Ben VAUTIER
Music in the dark - Undated
Mixed media - 59 x 55 cm
235
a V TRE EXTRA - March 24, 1979
George Maciunas memorial issue of Fluxus newspaper
Cocept of Geoff Hendricks, editor and publisher - 29 x 38 cm
236
Appendix
The Fetish Collection of Francesco Conz
by Geoffrey Hendricks
The Rebirth of Wonder:
an Interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti
by Laura Zanetti
Futurism Bolshevism:
an interview with Jack Hirschman
by Laura Zanetti
237
Hermann NITSCH
Fetish - 2000
Shoes - 44 x 39 cm
The Fetish Collection of Francesco Conz
The preservation of the artifacts and remains of performances is
something that Francesco had assiduously carried out over the
years. After an action he would gather up the remains and have the
artists sign and document an object or paper. He would collect the
adding machine tapes used in a performance of George Maciunas’
“In Memoriam Adriano Olivetti” or the tape cut in a performance of
Bob Watts’ “2 inches,” document when, where and who performed
it, and get us to sign everything. Small fragments of material would
be put into envelopes and identified, pieces of fabric from Charlotte Moorman performing Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece”, fragments of a
smashed violin from a performance of Paik’s “One for Violin.” Would
be gathered up. The artists would sometimes joke about it but would
help him and save artifacts when he was not there. As with his collection of photographs, these have been organized and preserved.
The process extended into his home so that scores, signatures, texts
239
and dates have been added to wardrobes, stoves, bathroom mirrors and innumerable other locations, turning the environment and
his apartment into an extension of the archive. Art joins life. This
process has continued at the casamuseo, the secret museum, and
become an integral and unique part of the collection.
There were also various kinds of objects he would ask the artists to
transform. He has collections of pianos, refrigerators and stoves. He
also made a collection of cars. Bob Watts painted one and the VW
Beetle that Charlotte Moorman and Frank Pileggi owned for many
years and which contained the spirit of the New York Avant Garde
Festivals Francesco bought and had transported to Italy when it’s
useful life came to an end.
The Armoire in the bedroom at Vicolo Quadrelli had texts and signatures of every one who slept in the bed in that room. They were
written first in the back of the cupboard, then the door. As it got
more covered people would search for a b+are area to write on.
This was parallel to the signing and writing of dedications on all the
photos and relic objects from performances.
Francesco regularly traveled with the artists to Fluxus events in Wiesbaden; Seoul, Korea; St. Petersburg, Russia; Los Angeles; Copenhagen; Odense; New York; Bangor, Pennsylvania; Pouilly and
Cogolin, France; Genoa and Naples, Italy and many other places.
On each occasion he would return with suitcases full of relics from
the performances. He was at the memorials for Robert Filliou, Bob
Watts, Dick Higgins, Al Hansen, and many other events and was
there for the recreation of the Flux-Mass in Wiesbaden (Erbenheim)
in 2002.
Francesco’s development of his Fetish Collection is in the spirit of the
art that he has been collecting, it is making the archive into something that is like the work it is archiving.
Following a special meal together Francesco would have everyone
sign the wine bottle. Some these are in the Secret Museum.
Sometimes relics would be transformed into art, other times art
would be transformed into relics. Like a good wine, these relics and
artifacts will become more and more interesting with the passing of
time.
In the spirit of Intermedia, Happenings, Fluxus, Concept Art and
Process Art, the transformation or rejection of the art object is always there as a possible act. The boundaries of art are breaking
down.
The collection is in the tradition of a Gesamtkkunst Werk.
Geoffrey Hendricks
240
The Rebirth of Wonder: an Interview with
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
by Laura Zanetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Laura Zanetti: In an interview
published in Lifescapes, you
stressed the fact of your being
active in a several different arts.
You also remarked that you feel
yourself to be more European
than American. So, to what extent have you felt the influence
not only of French but also of
Italian culture?
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: First
of all, I’ll say that I’m a Dadaist, Anarchist, and Fluxist artist,
and therefore can’t be expected
to answer your questions in any
conventional way. I’ll answer
your questions Dadaistically and
Fluxistically. So, I’ll begin by
saying that Italian culture has
taught me to apply the “al dente test” to everything I decide to
do. For instance, I might get the
idea of painting a moustache on
the rear of the Mona Lisa, but
if the idea couldn’t pass the “al
dente test,” I’d reject it. That’s
to say that any idea that’s cotta,
or overcooked, has to be rejected. My second test for new ideas is whether or not they have
the taste of fresh pesto, rather
than French mustard. Whenever ideas have had the taste of
French mustard, I have always
rejected them.
LZ: How did you meet Francesco Conz, and what do you remember about that first occasion?
LF: I met Francesco in the
1990s in Florence at an exhibi-
signing the armoire in the guests room, 2000
241
tion of my artwork. At the opening reception for the show, he loudly
told the assembled Florentines to wake up out of their Medieval dreams, and to recognize the genius of modern artists such as myself. I
agreed, of course, with everything he said, since it was obvious that
I was one of the mad modern geniuses who are going to change the
world (for better or worse).
LZ: Both you and Francesco Conz are meditative people, and in the
course of getting to know each other you discovered a shared vision
of art. How did your collaboration begin, and what was the first of
your works to enter the Conz Archive?
LF: I had a lot of roba vecchia lying around in the closets of my mind
when I first met il miglior fabbro Francesco Conz. With his help and
inspiration, I was able to dust off various robe and inject new life
into them, as for example when I repainted the Mappamondo.
LZ: “Abandon all despair ye who enter here.” You wrote this phrase
not only on your Mappamondo, but also on your Underwear piece.
What’s the joke?
LF: It’s not a joke! Mutande are a very serious subject. Anyone
who pulls on a pair of mutande must either “abandon all hope” or
“ abandon all despair.” Underwear is very subversive. When you
really get down into it, it raises some shocking problems. Everybody wears some kind of underwear. The Pope wears underwear, I
hope. Women’s underwear holds things up. Men’s underwear holds
things down. Underwear is one of the things that men and women
have in common. Underwear is really a fascist form of undercover
government, controlling what you can or cannot do. (Did you ever
try to get around in a girdle?). Perhaps non-violent action is the
only solution. Underwear hanging on a clothesline is a great sign of
freedom. Somebody has escaped from their underwear, and may be
somewhere naked. Help! But don’t worry. Everybody is still hung up
on it. There won’t be a real revolution.
LZ: It was in 1999 that you first came to Verona as a guest of Francesco Conz: That marked the start of an intense collaboration which
then grew even more concrete in 2001 when Conz arranged for a
show of your work at Juliet’s house: a series of “creative transgressions.” For the month that preceded the opening of the exhibition,
you lived and worked in Conz’ studio in vicolo Quadrelli, and you
created two particularly interesting pieces there: The Nation, and
Mappamondo. How did those two pieces come about?
LF: “The Nation” is an assemblage that portrays the United States
as a baseball player with an enormous penis for a bat. It’s a satire:
America as world bully and macho empire builder. The Mappamondo takes aim again at the same target: the United States as world
conqueror. I saw my baseball man in relation to Juliet as the macho
suitor who would conquer her with his big bat, since there is little
solid evidence that Romeo’s bat was ever properly wielded or put
242
to use. Since my baseball man was exhibited just a few feet from
Juliet’s balcony, an encounter between his bat and Juliet seemed
quite likely.
LZ: How, when and where did you invent the conjugation of the verb
fluxare?
LF: One night I was on a television variety show in Verona, along
with Francesco, and in spite of the protests of the master-of-ceremonies, I proceeded to paint the conjugation of the new verb fluxare on a screen, and since the program was “live” there wasn’t any
way they could stop me, even though the meaning of fluxare may at
times have assumed obscene connotations. So, that’s how it came
about. And ever since that time—at least in my dreams—the verb
fluxare has been adopted in all official Italian dictionaries and has
been hailed by all the leading Italian lexicographers as a valuable
addition to the Italian language.
LZ: What memory do you have of the performance in a theater in
Brescia where you painted a grand piano for the already vast “piano
collection” that’s a part of Archive Conz?
LF: Un gran successo! ...because immediately after the performance,
the police in Brescia attempted to arrest me on three-fold charges
of disturbing the peace of the bourgeoisie, causing local museum directors to drop their pants, and awakening the ranks of Lombardy’s
famous sleep-walkers.
LZ: The Conz Archive in vicolo Quadrelli has a folder of prints on religious themes that you have beautifully—divinely—desecrated with
a lucid, healthy iconoclasm. What’s the source of these apparently
spontaneous provocations, so rife with humorism?
LF: That folder was inspired by the fictional hero we meet in the
Bible, Jesus Christ Superstar. The Bible too is rife with satire and
humorism, and has long been recognized by America’s Fluxistas as
one of the greatest fairy tales ever written.
LZ: You know, of course that we’re doing this interview for the book
that Francesco Conz is planning to do on his “secret museum”: the
little house he has in the mountains where he keeps some of the
artworks that he holds especially dear, and to which he has invited
various artists to come and spend some time there, and to make
some make some kind of contribution to it. You too have been there.
How do you feel about Conz’ idea of a private, almost hidden museum that seems as well to be a kind of personal biography.
LF: It’s exactly what a museum should really be. It’s exemplary. A
Wunderkammer. Something that really has a meaning for the person who has put it together. A personal resource, full of personal
thoughts and ideas and intuitions. It’s a place that has helped somebody keep his mind alive. With none of that ordinary nonsense
about objectivity or art historical importance. It’s a place with blood
in its veins. And all the rest of the bodily fluids.
243
LZ: You have been to Verona on several occasions and have stayed
there for weeks: making paintings and collages, doing various kinds
of experiments, performing, doing readings, staging poetic actions,
as well as creating silk-screen editions on cloth. When do you plan
to come back?
LF: I am ready to swing, baby... Except that first I have to procure a
new body to inhabit since my old body is no longer capable of flying
across oceans to Italia. If you’ve got a line on a Fluxist artist there
who’d be able to transform my body, I would really appreciate it. Or
maybe you could ask the Pope for a dispensation with which I could
buy a five-cent cigar. (It is definitely NOT true that all most women
need is a good five-cent cigar. The male chauvinist pig who first said
that should be drowned in a boiling vat full of art critics and Freudian
psychiatrists.)
LZ: Both Dante and Homer wrote about the travels of Ulysses. And
it’s worth remembering that Dante found refuge in Verona at the
Court of the Can della Scala during his time as a fugitive from Florence for political and ideological reasons. You too have found a
second home in Verona, but fortunately not as a fugitive. So, the
question that finally comes to mind is whether you more with Ulysses or with Homer?
LF: With Ulysses: because I’m always searching—just like my dog—
for the buried bone of love.
San Francisco, Café Trieste, September 2009
244
Futurist Bolshevism: an Interview with
Jack Hirschman
by Laura Zanetti
Jack Hirschman
Laura Zanetti: How did you
make the acquaintance of Francesco Conz?
Jack Hirschman: Originally,
it was Lawrence Ferlinghetti
who put me in touch with Francesco Conz. I already knew of
the Fluxus movement, and that
John Cage was somehow connected with it, but I wasn’t at
all aware of anyone’s keeping
an Archive, as Francesco Conz
has done. So, on a trip I made
to Florence, for an event at the
City Lights Book Store, I decided to go up to Verona to meet
him. Conz and his assistant,
Agostino, took me on a visit to
a studio, which happened to be
right at street-level, right next
door to the place where he lives
in vicolo Quadrelli, and it was
there that I began to work on a
piano, painting it and writing on
it. The writing was in Russian,
which of course makes use of
the Cyrillic alphabet. Conz saw
me and what I was doing as a
combination of Bolshevism and
Futurism. I myself then coined
the term “Futurist Bolshevism.”
We had an enormous amount
of fun together, like a couple of
crazy people, also with the help
of abundant of vodka.
LZ: Francesco Conz is known in
the art world for his life-long interest in the avantgardes of the
early twentieth century, and in
the neo-avantgardes of the
1960s, most particularly Flux-
signing the armoire in the guests room, 2002
245
us, but also Zaj, Lettrism, Eat Art, Visual Poetry, Sound Poetry, Concrete Poetry, Viennese Actionism, and Happenings. As a painter—in
addition to being a poet—you’ve created any number of works for
the Archive: a piano, a series of wedding gowns, some rows of seats
from an old movie-house, a car, works with shoes, and manuscripts
as well. What can you say about this combination of so many different experiences?
JH: That’s an important observation. Francesco knows quite well
that the avantgardes are dead. And that’s the point, ironically, of
his way of declaiming: “Long Live the Avantgarde!” This conundrum
lies at the very heart of Fluxus. We’re all well aware—those of us, at
least, who aren’t too addled—of the way in which modern technology has leveled creativity, all throughout the world. Jean Baudrillard
puts it very well, saying that “underground” art by now has ceased
to exist, and that the “outlaw” quality that some of the arts could
once achieve has been thoroughly co-opted by the market economy of the culture industry. We need to create a whole new underground, a new avantgarde, a new black hole, not simply in order to
survive, but to overthrow the machinations which are everywhere
around us, the ways in which everything gets quantified. So, Fluxus
is involved—in terms to be borrowed from the aesthetic philosophy
of Martin Heidegger—in the action of presence, and the presence of
action, which then come together in the truth of the instantaneous.
Francesco’s genius lies in knowing how to turn the trick of fully existing within this moment of existence, and within all the movement
that’s a part of it. So, when you see a Fluxus or Fluxus-related work
of art you think how terrific it is for the impression it gives of total
improvisation. It’s an art that’s in no way monumental, but which
manages nonetheless to evoke a sense of life, here and now, hic
et nunc. An art that also evokes a bit of kitsch (kitsch is in general
the art of a mechanized world), but Fluxus sees kitsch as connected
with the profundity of superficiality. And that idea is a part of all the
various project that I’ve realized with Francesco: it’s a part of the
piano no less than of the wedding gowns or the movie seats.
LZ: One of your constant concerns as a poet is with technical or
“practical” problems. To what extent has this aroused an interest on
your part in visual, verbo-visual, concrete or sound poetry?
JH: When I was young man I experimented with Concrete Poetry,
but not in a very serious way. During the ‘70s I began to write poetry in Russian, and to translate Russian poets, right here in this
Café Trieste where we’re seated now. I wrote at least one poem in
Russian every day for eleven years, because writing in Russian while
living in the streets of San Francisco was the greatest linguistic experiment of my life. I stopped doing that two years after the fall of
the Soviet Union. Some years later, as I was first getting involved
with Francesco Conz, it was he who suggested that I make use of
246
Russian in the realization of the projects I’d be doing for him: the
Volkswagen minibus, for example, which we set up in the back room
of a bookstore in Bergamo. While the Agneta Falk and Igor Costanzo
read their poems to the public, I painted that Volksvagen van, writing Russian words all over it. Yes, that was a truly Fluxus action.
LZ: Could your use of paint in your performances be seen as related
to verbo-visual poetry?
JH: I don’t recall the particulars of these performances I’ve done for
Francesco, simply because I’ve done so many of them. One day, for
example, I remarked to him that maybe we should do an homage to
Pierre Molinier. When I entered his apartment on the following day, I
was greeted by the sight of fifteen wedding gowns. These too were
painted with Russian words. Francesco was quite excited by the very
look of the Cyrillic alphabet. He said to me, “Jack, you’re a good abstract expressionist, but your real expressionism lies in your artistic
use of the Russian language.” I agree with him.
LZ: Would you say that your relationship with Francesco Conz has
led you to the production of works that approach the spirit of the
movements or currents of creativity which are finally the hallmark
of his Archive?
JH: Ever since I was boy, I have shifted my religious feelings towards the religion of art, and that brings me into the spirit of Dylan
Thomas and James Joyce. There’s a “magic-making” at the center
of the work of these two writers, of these two poets, a way of seeing
and revealing the magic of every moment. All sorts of other things
have likewise entered my life, culturally, politically, and comunistically. When I met Francesco Conz and made the acquaintance of his
Archive, it was like rediscovering my roots, and to the way I had
then replanted them in the realm of the divinity of art. I feel quite at
home in the House of Fluxus.
San Francisco - Caffè Trieste sept.18-2009
by Laura Zanetti
247
Table of Contents
- Prefazione Francesco Conz
p.
5
- Introduction Patrizio Peterlini
p.
13
- Toward the secret museum
Sandro Ricaldone
Nature and secret
Mirabilia and fetishes
Passion and/or possession
Archivist/ Alchemist
The plural avantgarde
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
19
24
28
33
34
- Lettrist presence at the Museum Alain Satié
p. 40
- Testimonial Alain Arias-Misson
p. 49
- Eût-il fallu que je le susse pour que je l’epatate ? Et Patatì et patatate...
p. 52
Jean Dupuy
- From Lettrism to Viennese Actionism by way
of Fluxus and the new trajectories of poetry.
Eight windows onto the movements and the
research in the Secret Museum
S. Ricaldone
Lettrism
Concrete Poetry
Sound Poetry
Visual Poetry
Beats and protest
Fluxus (Geoff Hendricks)
Wiener Gruppe
Viennese Actionism
Unto Zaj what is Zaj’s (Rubén Figaredo)
Gorgona (Boris Brollo)
p. 55
p. 59
p. 63
p. 69
p. 77
p. 79
p. 86
p. 89
p. 95
p.103
249
- Full sun p. 108
- Museum House p. 111
Jean-Fraçois Bory
Jack Hirschman
- An anecdoted topography of a collection
S. Ricaldone Ground floor
p. 115
- A pannel for Francesco’s Secret Museum Geoffry Hendricks p. 138
- Testimonial Alison Knowles
p. 144
- An anecdoted topography of a collection S. Ricaldone
First floor
- A day in the mountains John Furnival
p. 147
p. 188
- In the Hall of the Mountain King Ben Patterson p. 190
- An anecdoted topography of a collection S. Ricaldone
Second floor
- Pieces of Reality at the Secret Museum Philip Corner
p. 195
p. 220
- To conclude (without ending)
S. Ricaldone p. 227
Appendix
- The Fetish Collection of Francesco Conz
by Geoffrey Hendricks 250
p. 239
- The Rebirth of Wonder: an Interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti by Laura Zanetti
p. 241
- Futurism Bolshevism: an interview with
Jack Hirschman by Laura Zanetti p. 245
Published in Italy by Patrizi Peterlini
© 2014 Patrizio Peterlini
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical, now known
or hereafter invented, inclufing photocopy, recording or any other
information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publisher.
Editing and Graphic design: Patrizio Peterlini
Translations: David Seaman
Photos by Michael Goldgruber, Francesco Grigolini, John-Daniel Martin, Walter Pescara, Sandro Ricaldone, Renzo Udali, Nicola Viviani
A special thanks for their collaboration to:
Alain Arias-Misson, Chiara Bonfatti, Agostino Botturi, Philippe Broutin, Anna Maria Cagalli, Philip Corner, Fabrizio Garghetti, Francesco
Grigolini, Geoff Hendricks, Désirée Iezzi, Hubert Klocker, Maria and
Milan Knizak, Henry Martin, Steve McCaffery, Hannah Stegmayer,
Elisabeth Wahl, Ester Widmer, Laura Zanetti and all which have contributed writing their testimonies.
Lettrism
Concrete Poetry
Sound Poetry
Visual Poetry
Beat
Fluxus
Wiener Gruppe
Viennese Actionism
Zaj
Gorgona
Edited by
Patrizio Peterlini
2014