In 1969, the Suriname-born, Amsterdam-based conceptual artist Stanley Brouwn wrote a letter to curator Harald Szeemann on the Kunsthalle Bern containing proposals for 4 somewhat unattainable tasks. The primary was to drill a gap by the middle of the earth, from the middle of a metropolis the place Brouwn would stand, level A, to the opposite aspect, level B. Glass plates can be put in over each holes. A “sturdy telescope” can be positioned at level B, so individuals there might peer into it “and see the underside of the sneakers of Brouwn”. Then, as quickly as he was approached by a passerby, the artist would ask the best way to a different spot within the metropolis—and stroll away.
Accompanied by a sketch, the telescope idea jogged my memory of a few of Chris Burden’s unrealised tasks, however with much less consideration to the heavy equipment wanted to maneuver earth and extra on the glancing connections between artist and passerby, and our instinctual urge to map our place on this planet—each abiding pursuits of Brouwn’s. I discovered this undertaking within the Szeeman archives on the Getty Analysis Institute, which I visited in March on a quest to be taught extra about this vital however little-known artist, the topic of two reveals opening in April: his first US survey, on the Artwork Institute of Chicago (AIC), curated by Ann Goldstein and Jordan Carter, and a extra targeted present on the Dia Artwork Basis in Beacon, New York, organised by Carter.
Brouwn is little-known for a purpose: he made it clear to gallerists and curators he labored with for many years that he didn’t need his artworks reproduced, mentioned or interpreted. In group exhibition catalogues, his web page was usually left clean. And the upcoming exhibitions are going down not solely within the absence of the artist, who died in 2017 on the age of 81, but in addition with none of the curatorial, pedagogical or promotional instruments that usually accompany museum reveals. There can be no exhibition catalogue, no interpretive wall labels, no public programmes and no press releases.
When requested what she might share in regards to the AIC exhibition, Goldstein responded by electronic mail: “As we’re honouring the artist’s needs in regards to the illustration of the work, we’re fairly restricted in what we will share. In line with the artist’s needs, all that we’ve shared is mirrored on the exhibition web page of our web site.”
That web site confirms the existence of the exhibition (referred to as stanley brouwn, rendered unassumingly in lowercase Helvetica), working 8 April to 21 July, with the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam as future venues and the existence of a companion present at Dia, which opens 15 April. (At press time, an AIC publicist despatched me a brief “truth sheet” including that the present “presents over 50 works from 1960-2006, representing the vary of brouwn’s creative observe”.)
Goldstein and Carter then declined to talk for this text, which is likely to be the primary time in my 25 years as a journalist that curators didn’t welcome the prospect to advertise their exhibitions.
Positive, different artists have positioned circumstances on the exhibiting their artworks, from Bob Irwin in his early days banning pictures of his installations to Tino Seghal inserting restrictions on the documentation and gross sales of his performances. The ever-elusive David Hammons, mentioned to be an admirer of Brouwn, routinely avoids interviews and successfully exposes the framing units that give worth to artwork. However wanting withdrawing from artmaking in a Rimbaudian or Duchampian checkmate, Brouwn’s stance appears a extra excessive type of refusal, rendering curators—who so usually serve to amplify the voices of artist—just about speechless.
His want to guard his paintings from interpretation—or, maybe, protect it for likelihood or fast encounters—holds up a mirror to the bounds of my work as an arts journalist as effectively. Once I first heard Brouwn’s present talked about in an off-the-cuff dialog, it felt to me, frankly, like a problem. What is that this present that no person is meant to speak about and who is that this artist who doesn’t need me to put in writing about him? I’ve a historical past of investigative reporting, and I might absolutely discover out, although maybe the extra significant query—one that also feels to me unresolved—is whether or not I ought to.
Together with making artist books, Brouwn took over a number of Artwork & Mission bulletins; these belonged to collector Giuseppe Panza Jori Finkel
I began out tentatively, simply asking a couple of pals in the event that they knew his work. The one one who did is the artist Kim Schoenstadt, who mentioned she discovered in regards to the work from John Baldessari when she was his studio supervisor. She texted me {a photograph} of a photocopy of a 1969 pamphlet by Brouwn, a part of the influential Artwork & Mission sequence of artists’ “bulletins”—a reminder of a time when xeroxing was a preferred type of creative transmission and when Baldessari would deliver a black suitcase filled with European artwork catalogues to the classroom as a part of his instructing.
At the moment, earlier than the Web made everybody a writer, preserving issues that had been in public view out of public discourse was after all simpler. However lately it’s unusual to seek out this kind of data asymmetry: for an artist with such a prolonged exhibition historical past, together with at the very least 4 editions of Documenta, Brouwn has a comparatively quick bibliography. On-line I discovered solely a dozen or so substantial critiques and essays, most targeted on the undertaking this fashion brouwn. The undertaking featured a sequence of actions on the streets of Amsterdam, the place he’d ask a passerby to attract instructions to a different level within the metropolis and stamped their sketches with the phrases “this fashion brouwn”.
The extra I discovered in regards to the work, the extra questions I had. My subsequent cease was the Getty Analysis Institute, the place I discovered 13 books by Brouwn in addition to materials in giant archives like that of Szeemann, who included his unattainable telescope undertaking within the 1969 present Plans and Initiatives as Artwork. A lot of the fabric felt revealing and concealing without delay, provocations befitting an artist who as soon as claimed all of the shoe shops in Amsterdam as his exhibition.
The Szeeman archive held a stack of postcards saying Brouwn’s exhibitions at galleries like René Block in Berlin and Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf in addition to the Stedelijk Museum, and little or no in regards to the reveals themselves. An artist CV within the combine had only a few strains of biography, figuring out him as a Fluxus member and itemizing“autodidact” instead of faculties.
Considered one of Brouwn’s earliest galleries, René Block in Berlin, confirmed examples from this fashion brouwn within the Nineteen Sixties, work that always concerned mapping out metropolis routes Jori Finkel
The folders of Fluxus collector Jean Brown contained a small, flat glassine bag stamped “use this brouwn”. It was empty and confirmed no hint of ever getting used.
The archive of collector Giuseppe Panza had Brouwn’s Artwork & Mission points and small pictures of what I presume to be his paintings: three metallic submitting cupboards full of index playing cards, maybe the playing cards Brouwn used to file the distances of his walks by cities, typically utilizing the size of his personal foot (the “sb-foot”) or different physique components because the items of measurement. There was additionally a 1972 receipt for 960,000 liras from the Françoise Lambert gallery for My Steps in Milan, maybe the title of this file-cabinet work.
As for Brouwn’s books, most encompass typed numbers or measurements, whether or not organized one per web page or in dense columns and rows. They’re clearly artists’ books, even when revealed to accompany exhibitions, and defy straightforward interpretation. A 1981 guide referred to as one distance consists of vertical strains, 10 per web page, that measure 10cm every. A 1971 guide referred to as 1 step-100000 steps consists of rows of numbers from 1 to 100,000, filling over 100 pages. My favourite guide, 100 this-way-brouwn-problems for pc I.B.M. 360 mannequin 95, has on every web page a typed pc command to “present Brouwn the best way from every level on a circle” to all different factors with a given radius expressed in angstroms (one hundred-millionth of a centimeter).
Understanding that Brouwn was raised in Suriname when it was nonetheless managed by the Dutch, it could possibly be that his insistence on being each the measurer and foundation of measurement represents an try to flip the colonialist script whereby different individuals—white, European males—calculate your value. It’s additionally attainable to see his compulsion for counting as a psychological tic or signal of obsessive-compulsive dysfunction.
Brouwn’s guide 100 this-way-brouwn-problems for pc I.B.M. 360 mannequin 95 suggests artwork is a sequence of operations, not an object of contemplation Jori Finkel
However the IBM guide factors to a different chance. Perhaps one purpose he relied so closely on numbers is that he noticed artwork very similar to coding, as a sequence of operations, not an object of contemplation, and that’s why making an attempt to extract that means from his books is like making an attempt to do literary evaluation of a multiplication desk.
In an everything-everywhere-all-at-once universe, I can think about a distinct model of this text, fully disregarding the artist’s stance in opposition to interpretation, that might provide a full assessment of all of his artists’ books. Yet one more model of this text, strictly following his restrictions, is the one which I write after which delete, phrase by phrase or with a single command, and by no means publish.
Because it occurs, I’m touchdown someplace within the center, making an attempt each to put in writing about Brouwn’s artwork and his refusal to cooperate with the cultural-knowledge-production business that ambushes them, which after all consists of my very own occupation of journalism.
On this method I really feel like I’m pointing my telescope at Brouwn. All I can see is the underside of his sneakers, earlier than he vanishes from sight.
- stanley brouwn, 8 April-25 July, the Artwork Institute of Chicago
- stanley brouwn, on long-term view beginning 15 April, Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York
