“Ottawa is a city full of surprises!” laughed Glenn Lewis at my astonishment on discovering that in 1974 he had succeeded in realizing the Great Wall of 1984, a collective work stamped with anti-establishment spirit, within the strict official framework of a Ministry of Public Works’ public art commission for the library of the National Research Council Canada (NRC) in Ottawa. Located at the heart of the scientific complex which was inaugurated in 1973, the NRC Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), formerly known as the NRC National Science Library, houses one of the most impressive expressions of Correspondence Art1I use the term Mail Art for convenience to qualify the work of artists who endeavoured to create communication tools and networks using the postal system. Several artists who participated in the Great Wall of 1984 also practiced art parallel to the network, while others were only involved sporadically. produced by Canadian and international networks.
Glenn Lewis, Great Wall of 1984, 1974 (installation view)
On the ground floor of this serious institution, Robert Filliou established some 752 square inches of territory of his inspired Republic; Kate Craig or her character Lady Brute deposited one of the drawings of rabbit heads dedicated to her by Ray Johnson and the Buddha University; her companion, Dr. Brute (Eric Metcalfe), put his saxophone into storage; Les petits bonbons collective celebrated the 1,000,011th anniversary of art, etc. The list of contributors is long since the Great Wall is a mural comprised of 365 Plexiglas boxes containing objects and prints sent to Lewis at his request by artists and collectives of the Correspondence Art networks.
The artwork composed of these miscellaneous artefacts is paradoxical in several regards. On the one hand, its counter-culture driven spirit is at odds with the official institutional context out of which it arose. This begs the question as to how Lewis managed to get approval for such a project within the framework of a government commission for the integration of art into architecture. One also wonders about his and the participants’ motives in becoming involved in such an institutional project. On the other hand, the “material” nature and “monumental” form of the Great Wall are also surprising in the Correspondence Art context, seeing that the artists, like their colleagues in conceptual art, were turning away from the production of objects in favour of the circulation of ideas and information. Their activities generated publications and archive collections, but the realization of a work in the form of a perennial sculptural object was rare amongst them and may even seem opposed to the driving spirit of these artist communities and the ephemeral aesthetics that they had developed.
These contradictions dissolve as soon as one grasps the singularity of these artist networks in Canada, specifically in their very pragmatic dimension. While criticizing and parodying the art milieu, its aesthetics, values, practices, and institutions, these artist communities were responsible for conceiving and establishing a new institutional landscape which is still ours today, by creating the artist-run centres, then known as the parallel galleries.
The decentralized Eternal Network—a continual interactive process between artists, imagined by Robert Filliou and George Brecht in 1968 on the closure of the Cédille qui sourit, a “non-boutique” dedicated to “permanent creation”—was beginning to materialize into legitimate institutions in Canada. Filliou realized this in 1973 during his first visit to the recently established Canadian artist-run centres. He immediately recognized the importance of his Canadian experience, of which he said, “There was no doubt that at that time, really I think the impetus for the actual creation of the Eternal Network has come from these people in Canada…”2Filliou, Robert. “The Propositions and Principles of Robert Filliou, transcript from the video Portafilliou,” in Robert Filliou. From Political to Poetical Economy, Robert Filliou. Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. p. 78. As for the Canadian protagonists, they believed that Filliou and Ray Johnson’s ideas had certainly contributed to the networks that were developing with the aid of the institutions in Canada: “[…] Both Filliou and Johnson contributed a spirit and a style to an activity and an era which gave the network a legitimacy that otherwise could have been lost in the bureaucracy of its own making.”3Morris, Michael, and Trasov, Vincent. “Letter from Berlin,’ in Robert Filliou. From Political to Poetical Economy. Ibid. p. 73.
It is due to this institutionalization of the Eternal Network at the beginning of the seventies that the Great Wall was to take on such significance, and that the paradoxes associated with it could seemingly be overcome. I will attempt to illustrate that Lewis’ proposition marks the transition between two defining moments in Canada’s contemporary art scene: the first being dominated by an experimental, anti-establishment model, infused with the spirit of the counter-culture, and characterized by flexible, ephemeral organizations, which materialized and dissolved according to personal affinities and potential projects, mimicking institutional organizations in a playful and parodical fashion, all while receiving the support of several official bodies. The second proceeded from an institutionalization of these flexible organizational forms into artist-run centres, regrouped into national and provincial networks, a development that was accompanied by the withdrawal of certain official institutions and a lack of support from those who maintained their allegiance. While this mutation allowed the artists to expand their field of expertise on the one hand, it also burdened them with a heavy administrative load for which they would now be responsible. Not only was the figure of the artist-administrator and manager thus consolidated, but an astonishing permeability between institutional and artistic practices was also established.
Correspondence Art: A Whispered Art History
Lewis created the Great Wall within the framework of the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver, an informal network of artists brought together by him in Vancouver in 1970. Inspiration for the name came from Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School. Lewis coupled New York with Vancouver in order to underline the idea of decentralization essential to the notion of the Eternal Network. The word sponge is an allusion to Whispered Art History by Filliou, who claimed that the first artistic gesture in the history of humanity was when a man dropped a sponge into a bucket of water on January 17, a million years ago.4This reference is explained in Clair, E.E. (pseudonym of Lewis). Mondo Artie Episode no1777, 28 March 1973. Morris/Trasov Archive, Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. 25.28, Box C 14. Filliou, Robert. Whispered Art History. L’Histoire chuchotée de l’Art. Artist book. Unpaginated. Fine. C. Hiver, Siauve, F., 1994. This reference underlines the desire to almost limitlessly extend the notion of artwork. The activities of the members of the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver were primarily focused on performance and postal exchanges.5Every week, the members, wearing shark fin swimming caps, met during the free swim period at Vancouver’s public swimming pool, the Crystal Pool, for sessions of synchronized swimming, the “swimming events” being a nod to the films of Esther Williams. Among the Mail Art projects of the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver are Better body works at the Nova Scotia College of Art, Halifax, in March 1972; the Trajectoire 73 exhibition at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, for which Lewis invited the members of the network to send “French letters, French kisses, French ticklers and French toast.”
Glenn Lewis, invitation to participate in Great Wall of 1984, 1973
The New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver did not however constitute an independent entity. The networks that developed between 1969 and 1974 merged, overlapped, and combined because their members wished to create an international community of artists in which the dissemination and sharing of ideas was the principle vehicle. As A.A. Bronson remembers, it was a question of creating a decentralized art milieu, a network based on an image virus, a parallel epidemic to the established art system.6Bronson, A.A. “The Humiliation of the Bureaucrat: Artist-Run Centres as Museums by Artists,” in Bronson, A.A., and Gale, P., eds. Museums by Artists, Toronto: Art Metropole, 1983. 31. Also, the lists of members, projects, themes, and images were passed on from one network to another.
Closely interlinked, all of these networks exchanged their lists. From 1969, Michael Morris acquired that of the members of the New York Correspondence School and used it for Image Bank. In 1971, this was augmented by several other important lists, including that of artist Ken Friedman, founder of Fluxus West in Vancouver. General Idea was to use the same list for the artist directory of File. It seems that Lewis also used it for projects of the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver, and consequently for the Great Wall.
The Great Wall of 1984 is a manifest example of this fusion phenomenon. While artists from the major networks of the period participated in it, it also contains references to notable projects that evolved during the early years of the decade. The title of the work and its reference to George Orwell’s celebrated novel 1984 immediately associates the Great Wall with the project that Image Bank had launched two years earlier. In 1972, the collective launched this request for images around the theme of 1984: “Inventors of today are planning now for tomorrow! Look into the future! Please send your image of 1984 to Image Bank.” The reference to Orwell oriented the project towards the themes of totalitarianism, communication technology, and science fiction. Several participants, including General Idea sent media images from the fifties taken from sources such as Life, Time and Fortune magazines, illustrating the collective concepts of the future in post WWII society: the conquest of space, the happiness promised by consumer society, popular culture, and technological advancements. In an interview dedicated to Western Front during the summer of 1973, Avalanche magazine presented the Image Bank project as preliminary research for the Great Wall.7Sharp, Willoughby. “Business as Usual at the Western Front,” Avalanche, summer-fall 1973. 4 p.
I would like to thank Vincent Bonin for having drawn my attention to this interview.
At the same time, other projects were evolving around the theme of 1984. Gary Lee Nova photographed every house on Vancouver bearing the number 1984. In 1972, the Ant Farm collective realized a Time Capsule whose contents were not supposed to be revealed until 1984.8It was finally opened in 2000. Numerous projects of General Idea were based around the year 1984. For seven years, the collective organized rehearsals for The 1984 Miss General Idea Beauty Pageant and exploited the idea of ruins of the future with the Miss General Idea Pavilion whose vestiges dated to 1984.
Lewis worked the 1984 theme very openly. In his invitation to members of the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver, he played on the notion of time as portrayed on a calendar—the number of boxes for the Great Wall corresponded with the number of days in a year, with each box attributed the number of a year between 1620 and 1984. The numbers would, however, only appear on the boxes if an artist explicitly integrated them into his or her contribution. Chance would play a major role: 1620 happened to be the year the Mayflower landed at Plymouth!9The contents of box 1620 are directly related to this founding event in U.S. history. Lewis’ proposal took up the notion of vestiges from the future visited in the projects of Image Bank, Ant Farm, and General Idea, since the artefacts deposited in the Great Wall would remain there permanently. Numerous participants explored this idea. Others, close on the heels of Image Bank’s 1984 project, pursued their reflection on collective concepts of the future. A few others remained within the Orwellian spirit of counter-Utopia, perhaps due to the fact that Lewis integrated a reference to the Great Wall of China into the title of the work, and that at a time when Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s government was in the process of renewing diplomatic ties with China.
Correspondence from COUM: To the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver c/o Flakey
A map indicating the origins of the participants of the Great Wall, drawn up after consulting Lewis’ archives, illustrates the internationalization of the New York Corres Sponge Dance of Vancouver network. The majority of contributors were from the west coast of Canada or the USA.10The quasi-absence of Quebecois artists should be noted here. Several European artists took part, including COUM, Blitzinformation, L’École d’art infantile; Robin Crozier, Robin Klassnik and Allen Jones from England; Robert Filliou and Ben Vautier from France, Beke Laszlo from Hungary, and William Louis Sorensen from Denmark; Rich Vermeulen from the Netherlands, Jochen Gerz and Klaus Groh from West Germany, and Rita Morris and Helicopter Art Coy from Australia; Horacio Zabala from Argentina, Pedro Friedeberg from Mexico, and Gan Matsushita and Synzo Fujimito from Japan. Although only approximate, the map nevertheless reveals the extent of the network. If one compares it to the one Michael Crane refers to in his essay “The Spread of Correspondence Art,”11Crane, Michael. “The Spread of Correspondence Art,” in Crane, M., and Stofflet, M., eds. Correspondence Art. Source Book for the Network of International Postal Art Actvity. San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press, 1984. p. 133-197. despite several important absences, it reflects well the expansion of the Correspondence Art network, which in 1973 was active in Australia, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
The exchange of ideas, themes and personalities, and their circulation on the networks so that each member could adapt and transform them as he or she pleased, is also palpable in the Great Wall. Many of the participants placed evidence of this communication and exchange in their boxes: lists of members, addresses of individuals and collectives, correspondence, requests for images. The work also illustrates the forms of recognition used by this community of artists; charged with innuendo, jokes, and coded language, the true nature of the work only reveals itself to the members of the network or those interested in it, and ones capacity to decode the messages becomes a sign of membership. The mural and the invisible numeric system modelled on the calendar year devised by Lewis allowed for a non-hierarchical spatial organization of the exhibits (each participant chose a date at will) and reiterated the compilation principle underlying the majority of Correspondence Art projects. The role of the compiler was reduced to that of assembling all the submissions, without exclusions or hierarchy. The use of a ready made system of organization seemed to guarantee this effacement.
Despite the apparent paradox that the choice of a monumental and perennial work constitutes, the Great Wall effectively embodies the spirit and values that were the driving force behind the Correspondence Art networks. It demonstrates to which point these practices broke down traditional conceptions of the author—the artist as creator—in the realm of the fine arts. All alternative forms of authorship were in evidence: the use of pseudonyms, anonymity, polyonomy, the collective, effacement, and incorporation. Moreover, the Great Wall was warmly received within the artistic communities. It received the best correspondence artwork award at the Decca Dance event held in Hollywood on January 17, 1974.12The most imposing gathering of network artists, Decca Dance was a prize-giving ceremony parodying the Oscars.
The representation of the network emanating from Lewis’ mural, in which anecdotes, gossip, legends, myths, inventions, innuendo, hoaxes, important and derisory events intermingle indistinctly, evokes the “Whispered Art History”13Filliou, Robert. “Whispered Art History.” Op. cit. that Filliou imagined in 1963, a history without names, without works, without events, without important dates that only remind us that art is still very much alive.
A Museum of Artists: Networks in Decline
In Networked Art, Craig Saper14Saper, Craig J. Networked Art. London: University of Minneapolis, 2001. p. 3-4. likens the artefacts circulated within the artist networks to Roland Barthes’ notion of the “receivable” due to their deliberately non-aesthetic quality. Barthes identifies three types of textual entities: the readerly, the writerly, and the receivable:
A readerly text is one I cannot rewrite (Can I write today like Balzac?); a writerly text is one I read with difficulty, unless I completely mutate my reading regime. I now conceive (certain texts that have been sent to me suggest as much) that there may be a third textual entity: alongside the readerly and the writerly, there would be something like the receivable. The receivable would be the unreaderly text which catches hold, the red hot text, a product continuously outside of any likelihood and whose function—visibly assumed by its scriptor—would be to contest the mercantile constraint of what is written; this text, guided, armed by a notion of the unpublishable, would require the following response: I can neither read nor write what you produce, but I receive it, like a fire, a drug, an enigmatic disorganization.15 Barthes, Roland. “Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes.” Trans. Richard Howard. Hill and Wang, New York, 1977. p. 118.
Based on this notion, Saper forged the concept of intimate bureaucracy, claiming that the circulation of this material creates an extremely personal, even intimate relationship between the sender and receiver. It is therefore a question of bringing impersonal transactions borrowed from the universe of bureaucracy into the sphere of intimacy. Although I have taken up Saper’s reference to Barthes, I will use it very differently. The notion of the “receivable” conveys the idea of personal archives as a privileged destination for materials in circulation. One could in fact pursue Barthes’ thought of “what I can neither read nor write, I receive” by adding that I keep it. Correspondence Art, following the example of many other ephemeral art forms, has in effect generated impressive corpora of documents, which the artists themselves have constituted, organized, and conserved in their homes and studios before submitting them to various institutions. In this manner, Morris and Vincent Trasov assembled the archives and activities of Image Bank. Stored for many years among administrative documents at the Western Front Society, they were transferred to the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in 1992. Lewis conserved his archives at home until very recently when he too transferred them to the same institution. The receivable therefore stems from the moment when the artists withdraw the materials from the network to conserve them in private or transitory spaces. This is not archiving in the proper sense of the word; as Jacques Derrida evoked in Archive Fever, institutionalization is intrinsic to the notion of the archive. Not only does it offer consignation—an address—but also a system, unity, coherence. It guarantees its readability and hence its accessibility to the public.16Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, University of Chicago Press, Chicago London, 1995. p. 3.
One might consider that from the time of the Great Wall, Lewis anticipated the question of the consignation of correspondence art. It permanently propels the receivable into an entirely public sphere, offering it a place, library, and system reminiscent of the universe of the museum, where artefacts and documents can be conserved and displayed. His proposal seems largely indebted to the Artists’ Museum section organized by Harald Szeemann for Documenta 5 in 1972, which brought together five works in the form of fictitious museums: The Box in a Suitcase by Marcel Duchamp, The Museum of Drawers by Herbert Distel, Mouse Museum by Claes Oldenburg, Section publicité du Musée d’art moderne Département des Aigles by Marcel Broodthaers, and Armoire pour Arman by Ben Vautier. The works had a retrospective quality, with the artists presenting—in an often playful fashion—their earlier works (Duchamp, Broodthaers) or creative processes (Oldenburg, Ben). Following the example of Lewis, but embracing a different sense of the concept of the network, Distel created a miniature museum of international artists in a dry goods warehouse. Contrary to popular belief, which did without an analysis of this section, the Artists’ Museums did not consist of an ideological critique of artistic institutions.17 Except for the work of Marcel Broodthaers. Instead, they represented a willingness on behalf of the artists to extend their field of competence and claim greater intellectual responsibility and freedom in regard to the mediation of their work and its inclusion in the history of art. The artists were the curators of their own work, and in Distel’s case, the work of other artists. The Great Wall clearly seems to fall within the scope of this type of approach.
Lewis found his inspiration in a painting from the beginning of the nineteenth century, The Artist in His Museum (1822), a self-portrait of Charles Wilson Peale unveiling the natural history Museum which he created in 1784 in Philadelphia and to whose development he dedicated his whole life. Ornithological specimens in horizontally organized showcases line the length of the left-hand and back walls of a long gallery. It is this device that Lewis integrated into the Great Wall. Peale’s self-portrait was therefore more than just a source of inspiration. Lewis conserved a reproduction of the painting in his Ottawa project archives and had it published on two occasions in close proximity to the photograph of the Great Wall, first in 1979 in the Art & Correspondence From the Western Front catalogue,18Art & Correspondence From the Western Front, Vancouver, Western Front, 1979. p. 44-45. and then again in 1993 in a publication dedicated to Lewis by the Burnaby Art Gallery.19Glenn Lewis: Utopiary, Metaphorest & Bewilderness: Works from 1967-1993, Burnaby Art Gallery, 1993. p. 62-63. The artist insisted on establishing a parallel between the two works. Two aspects of Peale’s self-portrait seem particularly interesting in this regard: the dimension of memory and the artist as creator of his own museum.
The two works fall within the framework of a process of grieving, of renouncing the concept of knowledge and the democratic dream in the case of Peale, and the concept of art and culture for Lewis. Even if the museum is portrayed as being magnificent, it also shows signs of being scientifically outdated and suggests the failure of the political project that the painter cherished. The left and right sections of the painting reveal different scientific approaches; on the left, the evolutionary theory of the species and Linné’s classification system that fall within the scope of Deism, widespread in Great Britain and the United States at the time. While admitting the existence of a divine creator, the Deists considered that human beings would succeed in mastering the natural world through science and technology. On the right side of the painting, a mastodon skeleton that Peale and his son had excavated in 1801 advances the hypothesis on the extinction of species. The presence of the mastodon, despite its being one of Peale’s major scientific successes, suggests that the concept of the living to which the museum is a response is already dated.20On memory and grieving in the work of Peale: Stewart, Susan. “Death and Life, in that Order, in the Works of Charles Wilson Peale,” in Cooke, L., and Wollen, P. Visual Display. Culture Beyond Appearances. Seattle: Dia Center for the Arts, Bay Press, 1995. 30-53. Moreover, as Peale was working on this painting, he was on the point of losing one of his most significant political battles, his wish to transform his museum into a state-financed public education institution, based on the European museum model.21On Peale’s political thought: Ward, David C. “Democratic Culture: The Peale Museums, 1784-1850,” in Miller, L. B. The Peale Family. Creation of a Legacy 1770-1870. Abbeville Press, Smithsonian Institution, 1996. 261-275. An extremely progressive concept at the time, he believed education to be a central goal of the democratic state. Despite all his efforts, Peale did not succeed in securing public funding, and in 1827, five years after painting his self-portrait, he resigned himself to moving his museum from State House (Independence Hall) to the Arcade Building, the first commercial centre in the United States, a difficult compromise between his scientific and democratic ideals and the consumer/entertainment society that was establishing itself.
Like The Artist, the Great Wall is a response to important transformations in the artistic scene, namely the decline of Correspondence Art, and the mutation of informal and flexible networks into more organized institutions—the artist-run centres. At the end of 1973 and the beginning of 1974, Correspondence Art ran out of steam. The network had become a victim of its own success. Several artists complained of the excessive quantity and mediocre quality of the mail they were receiving. The “compilers” were faced with the difficult decision of either reconciling themselves to selecting acceptable works or to integrating works of lesser quality into their compilations.22In an interview with Anna Banana, Gary Lee Nova explains the situation: Banana, Anna. “Mail Art Canada,” in Crane, M., and Stofflet, M., eds. Correspondence Art: Sourcebook for the Network of International Postal Art Activity. San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press. 250. According to A.A. Bronson, the travel grant program created by the Canada Council for the Arts at the beginning of the 1970s accentuated this lack of interest, since the artists could meet more easily: Bronson, A.A. op. cit., p. 33. Finally, the creation of the first artist-run centres channelled the energy of several key figures. A posteriori, Michael Morris envisaged Correspondence Art as an intermediary step: “My major activities vis-a-vis correspondence art undertook a major metamorphosis with the development of artist-run spaces. Correspondence seems now like a very nice but transitional stage […]”23Michael Morris cited by Crane, Michael. “The Spread of Correspondence Art.” Op. cit. p. 147. This decline is palpable in the Great Wall. Several artists who had confirmed their participation and chosen their boxes never submitted their contributions,24This was the case for thirty boxes. while others never even replied. Lewis resorted to asking Morris for help in soliciting artists.25Letter from Flakey (pseudonym of Lewis) to Marcel (pseudonym of Morris). Morris/Trasov Archive. Op. cit. (file 32.6, box C21). Despite all their efforts, 121 boxes were to remain empty.
Parallel to this disengagement, the extremely favourable rapport that had been established between the official institutions and the experimental artistic practices was deteriorating. In Vancouver, the artistic scene witnessed the disintegration of relatively informal production collectives, which had nevertheless received the support of the official institutions, in favour of artist-run centres, which, despite their more permanent and developed structure and administration, did not benefit from the same official support. The disappearance of the Intermedia Society in 1972 and the foundation of Western Front in the following year are emblematic of this phenomenon, as the new organization did not receive the same institutional support as its predecessor. As of 1975, the increase in the number of artist-run centres was so significant that the Canada Council for the Arts no longer had the financial capacity to adequately support their activities.26In the course of the 1975-1976 financial year, the Council for the Arts froze its funds for new artist-run centres, although they continued to support already existing centres. See Artists’ Centres: A Twenty Year Perspective 1972 to 1992, Canada Council, Visual Arts Section, September 1993. p. 2 and 5. In 1974, the Vancouver Art Gallery cancelled its series of events dedicated to the parallel scene, and the University of British Columbia did not renew its teaching contracts with the artists that had been affiliated with Intermedia.
This new institutional landscape is inscribed on the Great Wall. On the one hand, numerous members of Western Front participated in the work, with the artist centre in all likelihood having served as a platform for Lewis to manage the project. On the other hand, several other legitimate organizations also sent contributions in the same way as the artists, collectives, and fictitious companies, including the New Era Social Club, the Western Front artist-run centre, and the Talon Books publishing company. Various actors from the artistic milieu also participated, including Victor Coleman (under the pseudonym Vic D’or), critique at artscanada and founder of the publishing company Coach House Books; Willoughby Sharp, editor of Avalanche; bill bisset, founder of blew ointment, a concrete and experimental poetry magazine created in 1962 and transformed into a publishing company in 1967. Yet it is above all the porosity between these artistic and administrative practices from which the Great Wall arose that seems characteristic of this period and its institutional mutations.
The Artist as Administrator: Permeability between Institutional and Artistic Practices
Although the programs of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Federal Government (Youth Perspectives and Local Initiative Projects)27These programs were implemented by the Trudeau Government in 1972 and 1973 to offset the economic/unemployment crisis. They also facilitated a certain form of cultural decentralization. provided financing for a fair number of projects (among others, those of Image Bank), they obliged the organizations benefiting from them to be structured according to traditional administrative models, with a board of directors, director, and employees such as coordinators, secretaries, etc., responsible for various everyday tasks. This marked the first step in the institutionalization of this experimental and informal artistic scene, and a shift in the ideals of the counter-institutions from self-management towards more hierarchical structures. This period witnessed the emergence of a new type of artist, as well as an astonishing permeability between artistic and institutional practices.
The implication of the artists in the administrative process had consequences for their status and required them to considerably expand their field of competence. From that time on, they would assume tasks that had traditionally fallen to museum curators, gallery owners, or art critics. They took charge of defining how their work should be diffused, since the new functions and institutions they had created allowed them to author press releases, catalogues, reviews, and artist books, and to organize exhibitions, etc.
Lewis is emblematic of this new figure. From 1970 to 1972, he sat on Intermedia’s board of directors, and from 1973 to 1976 on that of the Vancouver Art Gallery. His implication in Western Front is significant: in 1974, he created the videographic section and administered it for two years; from 1977 to 1979, he was responsible for programming and performance, and from 1979 to 1987, he supervised the administration and general coordination of the organization. In the course of this long mandate, he introduced, among other initiatives, a new program, Computer—Integrated Media. In 1987, he was appointed head of the media arts section at the Canada Council for the Arts, a position he occupied for three years. Lewis also regularly organized exhibitions and events in the title of curator, including the Intermedia Dome Show (1970) at the Vancouver Art Gallery; the B.C. Open Art Race (1974) broadcast on the CBC; and Art & Correspondence from the Western Front (1979). Moreover, Lewis played a key role in ANNPAC/RACA,28In English: ANNPAC, Association of National Non-Profit Artists’ Centres. In French: RACA, Regroupement d’artistes des centres alternatifs. where he advanced the figure of the “artist-administrator” and “manager of his own destiny,” and encouraged “the emergence of the artist from exile into the palpable world of people, concerns and problems—reminiscent of a time when an artist was an integral and necessary part of the whole society.”29Lewis, Glenn. “The Value of Parallel Galleries,” Parallelogramme. Vol. 3, no 2, February 1978. p. 5-6.
Besides the emergence of this new artist figure, this period was characterized by an astonishing permeability between administrative and artistic practices. The two spheres of activity seemed to contaminate each other, as though a real distinction no longer existed between creative and administrative work. Not only did the projects, themes, personalities, and member contact lists circulate from one artistic project to another, but, surprisingly, their artistic practices also spread to the institutions.
The list of network members constitutes an interesting example of this shift. After being circulated among various artist networks, it was used by Flash Art, Who’s who in American Art and Who’s Who in America.30For the itinerary of this list, see Friedman, Ken. “The Early Days of Mail Art,” in Welch, C., eds. Eternal Network: A Mail Art Anthology. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1995. p. 3-16. As Ken Friedman explains,31Ibid. if the elaboration of artist lists was originally a means of short-circuiting the stranglehold of the institutions on this information and its hegemony in terms of diffusion, its reintegration into the institutional milieu ensured a form of control for the artists over its dissemination.
The 1984 theme constitutes another interesting example of the permeability between the works and the institutions. When created by General Idea in 1974, Art Metropole structured its program of activities and institutional development around the year 1984. In a grant application submitted to the Ontario Arts Council in April 1974, the organization outlined its plan to document non-traditional artistic forms over the next ten years and to deposit it in a permanent location in 1984, a program uniquely justified by the myth that the artist communities had created around this date.32Handforth, Robert. Grant application to the Ontario Arts Council. Art Metropole Collection, Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, 30 April 1974. 6.
I would like to thank Vincent Bonin for having drawn my attention to this document.
The artists did not content themselves with parodying or criticizing the institutions from the outside but sought to infiltrate them to use them in new ways, and create their own institutions at the heart of the existing artistic and cultural systems. The Great Wall seems emblematic of this complexity. While the participating artists appropriated administrative practices, Lewis, for his part, in order to produce his work, designed a device with certain similarities to an institutional form. As a result, he managed to clearly articulate his project to the commissioning body of Public Works.
In the Great Wall, several interventions originate from the appropriation of the administrative and entrepreneurial universe. Fictitious companies, corporations, and institutions abound, with names such as Hoo Hoo Archives, COUM, Gross Entreprises, Fat City School of Finds Arts, Les petits bonbons, etc. appearing on letterheads, envelopes, stamps, and certificates. In addition, the organization and logistics developed by Lewis in order to realize his mural resemble a form of administrative activity. The artist designed a series of printed forms and leaflets that he sent to around 400 members of the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver. Aesthetically, they resemble regular administrative forms, but the artist endowed them with a “hand made” aspect that contradicts the rationality of their organization. The participants themselves also left their aesthetic mark on them by affixing their stamps, creating collages, and by colouring in the boxes.33Glenn Lewis’ personal archives.
Lewis filed these forms in numerical order according to their box number. For every artist who responded to his call, he also set up a file with the artist’s name and the number of his/her box typed on it, and created a second index filed in alphabetical order according to the artists’ names. In addition, he typed a list with the same information and classifications, which he introduced as follows: “The following is a list of names with corresponding box numbers which shows who is cheek-to-cheek on the border-lines of their safety deposit boxes in the 1984 Wall at the National Science Library, Ottawa, to date.”34Ibid. It seems fairly clear that the artist devoted himself with great pleasure to the list as well as the filing and organization of the data.
These documents that Lewis preserved in his personal archives, never making them public, constitute a hidden yet fully integral part of the work. The integration of blank forms into the mural, in a smaller compartment conceived specifically for this purpose, clearly reveals the importance the artist attributed to them. Yet, these documents also fulfilled their administrative functions, since they facilitated the smooth running and effective management of the project.
Lewis managed the Ottawa project with great skill, taking full advantage of the Public Works program. He benefited from the flexibility of this institution, which was still relatively new and more accommodating towards artists than the majority of government programs for the integration of art into architecture in effect today. Lewis knew how to take advantage of these favourable circumstances, just when the first signs of disengagement on behalf of the official institutions were beginning to be felt. The government program offered him both financial support and a sufficiently flexible institutional context for him to realize his project.
The Department of Public Works introduced the Fine Art Program in 1964, at the general request of the art milieu.35This program was implemented six years after the Ministry of Transport’s program, which was limited to airport construction sites, had been established for the construction of Gander Airport. The program was axed in 1978. It endorsed that up to one percent of total construction costs for federal buildings be allocated to art works. The architects suggested artists, while a consultative committee, nominated for three years, ratified the choice of creators, the site for the works, and the proposed projects.36The consultative committee comprised Public Work’s Chief Architect, a representative from both the Musée des beaux-arts du Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts, an art critic, an artist, and a member of the public; all Canadian provinces and the National Capital Region were required to be represented. In 1973, it included K.C. Stanley, Mayo Graham, Peter Bell, Jean-Louis Lalonde, Ken Lochhead, Suzanne Rivard-Lemoyne, Clifford Wiens, and Joan Lowndes. The architects and artists were expected to collaborate closely from the design stage of the building, so that the art works were not simply tacked onto the architectural space or reduced to being mere decorative elements.
At ICIST, however, things happened differently. The artists were integrated very late into the process. When the design of the science complex was entrusted to Toronto architects Shore Tilbe Henschel Irwin in 1965, the NRC was reticent to take advantage of the Fine Art Program, which was still in its early stages. Chief architect Stephen Irwin, Earl Helland from Omniplan Design Group Limited, responsible for interior design, and Barry Briscoe, responsible for graphic signage, insisted throughout the project that the works be integrated into the building, all the more so since the interior design distinguished itself considerably from the contemporary aesthetic of libraries of the era.37Specifically in terms of the brightly coloured carpets, the organic forms of the signage and furniture, and the assorted lighting in the corresponding colours of each space. Unfortunately, today only vestiges of the original design remain. The architects fitted out the spaces likely to display the work, which only received approval in 1972, one year after construction had begun.
Seven works were realized with a budget of $120,000 (for a total building cost of $14.9 million): The Great Wall of 1984 by Glenn Lewis, Hanging Waves by Kubota; Banners by Jean Noël; Prairies by Douglas Bentham; Quilted Wall Hanging by Joyce Wieland; Elemental Murals by Michael Hayden, and Plants have feelings by Robin Mackenzie. The selection accorded much importance to experimental practices.
The architectural firm coordinated the realization and installation of the works. The modalities of the commission privileged the ideas of the artists without demanding that technical problems be resolved in advance.38The artists only had to guarantee that their work would last five years. As a result, the works could evolve during their realization. In Ottawa, Lewis wagered that he could convince the committee to accept a collective project, which went against the grain of the program’s mission to commission a work from a specific artist.
Lewis’ first proposal submitted in 1972 did not in fact state the collective nature of the work:
(…) The intention is to make and or use objects that relate to information found in the Science Library, for example things from the natural world, sand and rocks, star charts, maps, antique instruments, etc., along with objects that I will manufacture probably out of porcelain similar in technique to my past work. I have inserted 365 boxes to correspond with the number of days in the year and will attempt to use the changing seasons and relate it to the information found in the boxes.39Lewis, Glenn. Project presentation text, “National Science Library Fine Art Proposal Shore and Moffat and Partners,” CNRC Archives, Ottawa.
When the artist sent out a call for submissions through the network of the New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver, the architects and personnel of the library, instead of being concerned, were inspired by the idea and asked to collaborate. A letter from Wenda Montgomery, secretary of architect Irwin, is very revealing in this regard:
Glenn, your method of participation in the furnishing of the individual boxes for the wall is of interest to us. We understand that these have scientific overtones and NRC. have expressed interest in filling several boxes. You also mentioned that we might be able to have one. Please let us know if this is possible.40Montgomery, Wenda. Letter to Glenn Lewis. August 3, 1973. Personal archives of Glenn Lewis.
This is why in the Great Wall there are several contributions from library employees, including head librarian Jack Brown, who supervised the construction of the new building and collaborated with the architects; and Tom West, head of administrative services, who worked with Helland on the fitting out of the interior. The plumbers from the worksite created a modernist sculpture out of copper pipes; one box was fitted out with carpet, while others were filled with electrical wires and wood shavings. One box was transformed into a scale model with two concrete columns and an assortment of electrical wires. Lastly, photographs of the new building, inserted in a Plexiglas cube, were dedicated to all the collaborators: “National Science Library. Presented to THE SURVIVORS of the construction period Aug. 10 1971 to Feb. 10 1974 occupied Feb. 11 1974.” The participation of people from beyond the artist community was one of the greatest successes of the Great Wall. It allowed two communities—that of the artists and the one created around the library construction site—to be linked together. Even today, the employees still enjoy telling their stories or those of their predecessors about the work. While realizing this generation of artists’ wish to fuse art with life, Lewis invented new means of engaging these institutions. Morris was not wrong when he wrote about the Great Wall in 1978: “The finished mural is the most anarchistic yet democratic and intelligent manipulation of official bureaucracy to date. It mirrors the complex implications of current artist/government interactions.”41 Morris, Michael. “New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver,” artscanada, vol. 35, April-May 1978. p. 43.
The Artists’ Museum in an Era of Institutional Critique
Correspondence Art, in particular the way it is presented in the Great Wall, allows one to envisage other cases in the episode of late modernity where the rapports between art and the institutions have been renegotiated. In his celebrated essay “From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions,”42Buchloh, Benjamin. “Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions,” in October. Vol. 55, Winter 1990. p. 105-143. published in 1982, Benjamin Buchloh envisages the aesthetic of administration, which he perceives in the conceptual art of the sixties as a manifestation of institutional critique, according to an interpretation of this period in art history, which is not without a teleological dimension. This critical dimension would validate the aesthetic of administration, or constitute its horizon, an outcome of sorts. In both cases, a judgement criterion emerges: the works that appropriate the administrative universe are pertinent in that they engender institutional critique.
This essay falls directly within the scope of the many other anti-museum writings by artists in the late sixties and early seventies, including Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, Hans Haacke, Donald Judd, Michael Asher, the Art Workers’ Coalition, etc.43The list is too long to include here. Kynaston McShine proposes an anthology of extracts of the artists’ critiques of the museum: “Artists on Museums: An Anthology,” in The Museum as Muse. Artists Reflect. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1999. p. 200-239. Buchloh’s text has received exceptional critical acclaim and engendered a long genealogy of texts from theoreticians and artists alike, who not only adopted its terminology but also a fair number of its ideas. The symposium, Institutional Critique and After, held in 2006, bears witness to this, and the notion of institutional critique is meanwhile considered as an aesthetic and historic category in itself: a “movement launched in the late 1960s, redeveloped in the 1980s, and vigorously reoriented in recent years”.44Welchman, John C., eds. Institutional Critique and After, Southern California Consortium of Art Schools Symposium Vol.II, Zurich: JRP/Ringier, 2006.
Based exclusively on U.S. and European artists who enjoyed recognition in the major artistic centres and were fundamental players in the seminal institutions in the late sixties and early seventies, Buchloh’s analysis can, however, only be applied with difficulty to the artistic practices born of the periphery, and hence the Canadian context. Another limitation is the fact that it ignores Szeemann’s research, which had nevertheless been widely disseminated as of 1972 through Documenta 5, and which sketched a different perspective on the rapports between art and the institution of the museum. This impasse is all the more surprising since several pieces written by artists considered to be founding members of institutional critique were published on the occasion of Documenta 5, challenging both the curator/author figure and the anthropological bias of the exhibition.45Based around the theme “Inquiry into Reality – Today’s Imagery”, Documenta 5 embraced the ensemble of visual culture, bringing together artistic practices with non-artistic productions such as propaganda, advertising, kitsch, religious imagery, and children’s games, etc. Among the texts: Smithson, Robert. “Cultural Confinement,” in Documenta 5. Exhibition catalogue. Documenta GmbH/Verlagsgruppe Bertelsmann GmbH/C, 1972. Section 17. 74. This text is also reproduced in Artforum, no 11, October 1972. 36. Buren, Daniel. “Exposition d’une exposition,” in Documenta 5. Op. cit. Section 17. p. 29.
With the Artists’ Museum section, Szeemann invented new ways of articulating the prerogatives of artists and their ever-increasing sphere of action to that of artist-curator, a new figure in the institutional landscape of the era. Moreover, in the Documenta 5 catalogue, he advanced nothing less than that the critique of institutions era was over and that the art created in the early seventies was the art of the museum! “The rapport between the artist and the museum is once again self-evident and the signs already indicate that when we have cleared the museum of its odious reputation as a consecratory space, through the works it will again become the place it once was,”46Trans. Ashcroft, Louise. “Préface du catalogue de Documenta,” in Écrire les expositions. By Harald Szeemann. Bruxelles: La lettre volée, 1996. 28.
namely a space for experimentation and freedom. Szeemann’s position, anachronistic in the context of the seventies, is opposite to that of Buchloh. Szeemann perceives the end of institutional critique where Buchloh sees its beginnings. The curator refuses to reduce the museum to its consecratory and legitimating function, while the theoretician focuses his analysis on exactly this aspect of the institution.47In regard to Robert Morris, Buchloh writes that art had become “the ultimate subject of a legal definition and the result of institutional validation,” since the work makes one see and reflect on the processes of legitimation of which it is the object, which rest neither on its visual qualities nor on its manual competence. Buchloh, Benjamin. Op. cit. p. 117.
Nourished by avant-garde culture, Szeemann seems to revive the dialectic and global Living Museum project, elaborated by Alexander Dorner at Hanover’s Provincial Museum in the mid-1920s. Rejecting the vacuity and neutrality of the museum space, Dorner realized whole scenographies, which he named “tones of being,”48This is exactly what Szeemann did at Documenta 5 by proposing an “Inquiry into Reality.” with the objective of restoring the socio-historical context of the works while provoking a multi-sensorial experience in the spectator. He involved contemporary artists in the conception and realization of the museological program, commissioning El Lissitzky to design an environment destined to exhibit abstract art – the celebrated Abstract Cabinet, and Moholy-Nagy a multi-sensorial and multi-media futuristic space dedicated to contemporary art. With the “Artists’ Museums,” Szeemann brought Dorner’s project up to date, underlining the fact that artists are in a position to create presentation devices that induce new readings and interpretations of the works.
Additionally, following Documenta 5, in the spirit of the “Artists’ Museums,” Szeemann formulated the idea of an imaginary Museum of Obsessions, and created an actual administrative structure, the Agency for Intellectual Guest Labour and the Museum of Obsessions. The Museum of Obsessions existed only in Szeemann’s imagination, and consisted largely of an intellectual exercise of having “a new idea every night” without the necessity of actually bringing it to fruition. Should it be realized, it would take the form of an exhibition that the agency would realize with the help of legitimate museum institutions (museums, art galleries, exhibition centres, biennials, etc.). Szeeman’s lengthy descriptions of his museum and agency are not only evocative of the parodies of institutions written by the Collège de Pataphysique (on which he wrote his doctorate) but also of the “Artists’ Museums” and the Correspondence Art networks. Like them, his museum and agency parody the institutions, while articulating and generating new institutional forms:
I have an idea. I hire myself, as an Agency for Intellectual Guest Labour, to realize the idea. The Agency for Intellectual Guest Labour creates the stimulus and the context and commissions me to work out the concept. I then order the agency to carry it out. The Agency for Intellectual Guest Labour informs me that I am the only person qualified for the job. I ask the agency what resources are available. The finance department informs me that there are neither funds nor personnel available, at least not at the present time. Strenuous meetings involving executive and legislative bodies as well as financial experts lead to a passage of the following resolution: If I am willing to realize the idea, the others will respect the decision and go along. Since the decision is ultimately passed down to me by the agency, and because I am the agency, I accept the commission to carry out my idea. From that point on, everything goes without a hitch. I make decisions on behalf of the agency and serve as my own staff, at least until the preparation phase begins, after which nothing more can be done without assistance from the others.49Szeemann, Harald. “Agency for Intellectual Guest Labour,” in Harald Szeemann: with by through because towards despite, Catalogue of all Exhibitions 1957-2005.” Edition Voldemeer Zurich, Springer Wien New York, 2007. p. 280.
The museum/agency dialectic is an alternative solution, both imaginary and real, to the traditional and official institutional world of art from which Szeemann wished to distance himself, all while continuing to work within it.
The Museum of Obsessions can not be reduced to an apolitical over-valuing of individuality; it is “eminently political,” wrote Szeemann,50Szeemann, Harald. “Museum of Obsessions.” Ibid. p. 374. outlining an intellectual filiation between the notion of obsession and the celebrated work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, The Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, published in 1972.51Szeemann, Harald. “Agence pour le travail intellectuel à la demande au service de la vision d’un Musée des obsessions,” in Écrire les expositions. Bruxelles: La lettre volée, 1996. p. 51. At the heart of Szeemann’s museological work is desire, not as a natural state of individuality but in terms of the rapport that an individual maintains with reality and the institutional world. Both imaginary and real and privileging the positive, the multiple, flux, nomadism, difference, and proliferation, the Museum of Obsessions does not confine itself simply to forms of representation but also establishes a dynamic between thought and action.
Szeemann’s ideas seem to have had a major impact in Canada, and it seems that he also participated in the network, since the curator’s name and request appear in the International image exchange directory.52 International image exchange directory, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1972. Evidence of his influence is manifold. As we have seen, the Great Wall reveals affinities with Documenta 5’s “Artists’ Museums.” Several manifestations of Correspondence Art, including the Great Wall, and the organizations arising from it depend on the porosity of artistic and institutional practices evoked by the simultaneously real and imaginary status of Szeemann’s museum/agency. The book Museums by Artists, published by Art Metropole in 1983, grants Szeemann a privileged position53 Bronson, A.A., and Gale, P. Op. cit. Gale writes in the introduction: “In a discussion of museums by artists, Harald Szeemann plays a unique part — both for his presentation of such works in Documenta 5, 1972, and also for his inspirational role within the European artistic and museum community.” p. 10.. While its title evokes the “Artists’ Museum,” a whole section is dedicated to the curator and reproduces in part two of his texts on the Museum of Obsessions.54Szeemann, Harald. “Museum of Obsessions: Proposal for an Exhibition at the Academy of Art in Berlin” and “Museum of Obsessions: Proposal for a Future Documenta,” in Bronson, A.A., and Gale, P. Ibid. 271-281.
Yet it is above all in the virulent debate following the networking of the parallel galleries with the creation of ANNPAC/RACA in 1976 that Szeemann’s thought seems to have played an important role, even though this has never been directly acknowledged. In 1978, in an article entitled “The Value of Parallel Galleries,”55Lewis, Glenn. “The Value of Parallel Galleries,” Parallelogramme. Vol. 3, no 2, February 1978. 6-12. published in the journal Parallelogramme, Lewis defines ANNPAC/RACA – which constituted a supplementary step in the institutionalization of the alternative scene – as the “Living Museum Network of Canada.” In his long plea for improvements in the financing of artist-run centres, Lewis exposes the precarious financial position of the organizations and their employees, the artist-administrators, and laments the fact that public financing favoured historical heritage to the detriment of living culture. The network proposed by Lewis aimed at relieving the artists of their heavy administrative burden, which was distracting them from creation, by a sharing of resources and means:
The Living Museum Network of Canada is a communication tool in the arts; it provides information where, when and how it is needed through exhibitions, multi-dimensional-interdisciplinary-cross-cultural projects, publications and distribution and sales of products; it deals with the living heritage as artistic and contemporary issues; it changes as society changes. As a museum it is the traditional starting point in all its ramifications and variations, and as a network it exists in Parallel Galleries and other centres across the nation, connected by communication systems. This museum would not have a building, a collection or much equipment of its own. It might have an office. It would exist as an association of autonomous artist-run centres as they are already constituted. Properly designed, the Living Museum Network would […] take most of the administrative load off the artist-administrators in each centre for travelling shows and performances, larger cross-community projects, and the distribution of products and publications.56Ibid. p. 11.
Although his proposition is very pragmatic, Lewis reaffirms the filiation of this new organization with the artistic project of the eternal network, playing once again on a voluntary confusion between institutional and artistic practices:
ANNPAC developed out of the consciousness of an informal network of artists across the country in touch with each other through correspondence, meetings, exhibitions and performances. Even before this, there was a creative network through correspondence, sometimes called “correspondence art” but which Robert Filliou in France calls the “eternal network” and goes on to say that it has replaced the concept of the “avant-garde.” He credits Canadian artists with giving real strength and value to this concept of a network of art and artists. It took off in Canada and has been the mainstay of an international artists’ network ever since. Many of these artists were germinal to the establishment of the Parallel Gallery system.57Ibid. 11.
The use of the word museum in Lewis’ proposition may seem surprising and antithetical to the universe of artist-run centres, and he was indeed sharply criticized by several protagonists on this account: Bronson saw an excessive adherence to bureaucratic models (which he associated with the protestant work ethic) and the nationally funded cultural character.58Bronson, A.A. Op. cit. p. 35-36.Diana Nemiroff commented, “It is a gloriously perverse attempt to institutionalize the anarchistic, decentralized ‘eternal network’ by installing a head office.”59Diana Nemiroff, “Par-al-lel,” in Bradley, Jessica, and Johnson, Lesley, eds. Sightlines, Artexte editions, 1994. p. 180. This text was originally published in Parrallelogramme. Vol. 9, No 1, 1983. Yet the notion of the museum advanced by Lewis seems to me to be impregnated with the thought of Szeemann and his agency/museum dialectic. In Lewis’ view, there was no paradox in articulating the museum in the context of the eternal network.60Lewis’ proposal copies that of the network of the National Museums of Canada, which received the majority of the federal budget for culture, so Lewis created his counterpart for living culture with the aim of receiving more favourable financing.
Following the example of Szeemann, Lewis wished to articulate artistic and institutional forms, both real and imaginary, in order to invent a new institutional landscape bordering on the limits of utopia. Intermedia marks the advent of this dream, and ANNPAC/RACA its decline. Between the two, the Great Wall constitutes one of the works that best embodies not only its ideas but also its limits and paradoxes.
I would like to thank Glenn Lewis for opening up his personal archives to me and for his generosity in allowing me to explore his past; Krisztina Laszlo, archivist at the Belkin Art Gallery, who helped orient me in the Morris/Trasov collection; Stéphane Lévesque of the National Research Council Canada, who facilitated access to the Great Wall and to the NRC archives; and Anik Glaude and Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre for their invaluable help towards my research.
Anne Bénichou is a Canadian historian and theoretician of contemporary art. In her work she looks to archives and historical accounts that result in contemporary art practices and the institutions that preserve and disseminate them. Her interests in the documentation of ephemeral and continually evolving works have fuelled her writing. She teaches at the Visual and Media Arts School at Université du Québec à Montréal and currently resides in Montréal, Canada.