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Iain Baxter& |
| project: Département ACT et ART |
The
ACT and ART Department, 1967–1970
(Aesthetically Claimed Things and Aesthetically
Rejected Things) |
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N.E. Thing Co. developed the ACT and ART department
in 1967, essentially to produce photographic documentation
of situations, things and works—and to pass
judgment on them, declaring whether they satisfied
the “sensitivity information criteria”
defined by the company. Photographs produced for
the ACT and ART department were systematically reproduced
on “spec sheets,” which were then marked
with an official seal either certifying or disapproving
of the quality of their content. Marcel Duchamp’s
ready-mades, Robert Smithson’s non-sites,
Andy Warhol’s Elvis prints, Mike
Heizer’s Circumflex, an Edward Weston
landscape and even the cover of the January 1969
issue of Artforum were all ironically assessed
in this way according to the preferences of the
company directors. This enterprise aimed to, among
other things, raise awareness of the processes of
aesthetic judgment that all observers apply in their
relationships to works of art. The image production
was often inspired by evocative shapes perceived
by the artists in their immediate surroundings or
encountered in their travels. Other times, their
image production consisted most often in rephotographing
works and landscapes published in catalogues and
art magazines (a method that would be systematically
taken up again in the late 1970s by Sherry Levine
and Richard Prince). Many of these images thus speak
judiciously to a relationship to the world and an
experience of art that is conditioned by reproductions
in magazines and books. It bears repeating that
these distribution media represented, at the time,
a means for artists living and working outside the
world’s great artistic capitals to have access
to contemporary practices. |
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