Jan Dibbets

In the late 1960s, artists utilized documents such as floor plans, maps, instructions, correspondence, and photographs to record ideas or to take the place of artworks that need not be built. These documents were reproduced through the pages of inexpensive publications, intended to be accessible to wider, globalized audiences beyond the scope of physical exhibitions. This article argues that the page offers transformative qualities and functions as a medium for taking original, unique, and personal documents into the public domain; the page is repeatable, mass-produced, and puts art in the hands of the reader. Through using the pages that artists contributed to exhibition catalogs including Prospect 69, Konzeption/Conception, and July August September (all 1969), this article investigates the various ways in which artists adopted the medium of the page to extend the reach of their ideas and facilitate insights into their thinking and making processes. Working from the premise that artists were in the best position to explain their own work, the investigation conducts close readings of selected pages to discover the different functions of catalog contributions alongside, instead of, and after artworks were exhibited.

Jan Dibbets, Adrian Piper, Daniel Buren und Eleanor Antin schufen zwischen 1966 und 1975 in hoher Auflage gedruckte Anzeigen und Ausstellungsankündigungen. Diese Ephemera – gleichzeitig Kunstwerke, Werbeinstrumente und Dokumentationen für künstlerische Aktionen – stehen exemplarisch für die kommunikationsbasierte, flexible und mobile Praxis der Konzeptkunst.

Das Buch zeigt mit Blick auf die ökonomische Entwicklung der Zeit, wie die KünstlerInnen Formen immaterieller Arbeit exemplarisch vorwegnahmen. Die Ephemera zeugen von einem
komplexen Verhältnis zwischen der Kritik an hierarchischen Organisationsstrukturen und der
Forderung nach Authentizität und Individualität. Autonomiebestreben und Institutionskritik bilden hierbei keinen Gegensatz zu ökonomischer Innovation. Sie sind Bedingung einer postfordistischen Gegenwart.

This paper proposes autoethnography as a new approach for conservators. It allows for a process-based assessment that foregrounds the conservator's personal input during conservation treatments and installation procedures. It addresses the cognitive processes that steer towards the desired result in a chain of micro-level decisions. Two examples relating to the work of conceptual artist Jan Dibbets illustrate the approach. One provides insight into the conservator's deliberations during a conservation treatment, the other demonstrates the co-constructed nature of the artist interview as a negotiated text. These conservator's testimonies include and enforce the reflexivity that is needed to remain critical, not only when managing complex artworks. The methodological approach of autoethnography enriches the conservation of cultural heritage in general.

The artist interview has become an important resource for the conservation of contemporary art. The installation of an artwork in collaboration with the artist is an even more valuable research tool. However, as with the artist interview, it needs critical assessment, because first-hand information is gained but also co-constructed. Different ways of presenting the artwork can be explored in dialogue with the artist, as was experienced with Jan Dibbets’ conceptual and variable artwork 'All shadows that occurred to me in… are marked with tape' (1969) in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum.

Installing a conceptual artwork together with the artist may
shift the role of the conservator to that of co-producer. This enforces a critical re ection on the notion of art conservation
and the function of documentation. During the materialization
of Jan Dibbets’ variable installation All shadows that occurred
to me in... are marked with tape (1969), valuable information
was gained, but also constructed as part of the interview conducted while installing the work together. When documenting this participatory practice, a critical point arises because the dynamics on the  oor turn static in documents, losing the context of time and place, action and reaction. By emphasising critical re ections in documentation, on both the dialogue with the artist and the mediation of the artwork’s physical form, adopting an autoethnographic approach, the artwork could be transmitted to the future by documentation in a more transparent way. I propose a “conservator’s testimony” to provide this transparency.

Preview of an essay by Rob van Leijsen on contemporary reinterpretations of historical artists' books. 224 p., bilingual edition. I contributed the French translation. Publisher: Editions Clinamen.

The book can be purchased at https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/58049/

In 1969, Jan Dibbets dug up the Stedelijk Museum’s foundations at its four corners. By claiming his action as an “anti-artwork”, he performed a sort of sculptural gesture of criticism toward the institution. In 1976, Gordon Matta-Clark, on the eve of his exhibition at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, shot at all the windows of the Institute. Ten years later, in 1986, Chris Burden unveiled the foundation of the MOCA Geffen and constructed three sets of wooden stairs to allow visitors to descend into the pits. In 1999, Mike Nelson destroyed museum walls, as Urs Fischer did, in 2005, at the Whitney Museum, or Andrea Nacciarriti in 2010, who shattered the windows of the Soffiantino gallery, in Turin. Halfway between a subversive action and a creative gesture, these examples that span the last 50 years of art history suggest the ambiguous nature of the concept of destruction. They enable reconsidering its binary condition in the light of an ontological reflection concerning the articulation between destruction and architecture. By considering the architecture and, above all, the exhibition space as theoretical objects, this paper probes the heuristic potential of the insurgent gesture of destruction. By considering architecture as a sculptural tool and the related spatial experience as an exhibition paradigm, it investigates the impact the idea of destruction had over the years on the concept of artwork as a spectacular (performative) event.

In the late 1960s, artists utilized documents such as floor plans, maps, instructions, correspondence, and photographs to record ideas or to take the place of artworks that need not be built. These documents were reproduced through the pages of inexpensive publications, intended to be accessible to wider, globalized audiences beyond the scope of physical exhibitions. This article argues that the page offers transformative qualities and functions as a medium for taking original, unique, and personal documents into the public domain; the page is repeatable, mass-produced, and puts art in the hands of the reader. Through using the pages that artists contributed to exhibition catalogs including Prospect 69, Konzeption/Conception, and July August September (all 1969), this article investigates the various ways in which artists adopted the medium of the page to extend the reach of their ideas and facilitate insights into their thinking and making processes. Working from the premise that artists were in the best position to explain their own work, the investigation conducts close readings of selected pages to discover the different functions of catalog contributions alongside, instead of, and after artworks were exhibited.

Cette exposition est née du coup de foudre de Jan Dibbets pour le De laudibus Sanctae Crucis de Raban Maur, moine et érudit du IXe siècle. Saisi par la composition moderne et minimaliste de ce manuscrit, l’artiste néerlandais a choisi de le mettre en résonance avec des œuvres contemporaines qu’il a sélectionnées, interrogeant le rapport qu’entretient l’art avec le passé, en écho à la phrase d’Ezra Pound : « Make it new »…