LAWRENCE WEINER BOOKS 1968 – 1989
[Catalogue Raisonne]
Dieter Schwarz
Dieter Schwarz: LAWRENCE WEINER BOOKS 1968 – 1989 [Catalogue Raisonne]. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König/ Le Nouveau Muse, 1989. First edition. Parallel text in English, German and French. Quarto. Printed paper covered boards. Blue cloth quarter strip titled in black. 205 pp. Fully illustrated in black and white with some color reproductions. Book design and layout by Weiner. Lower corner of the first three leaves faintly creased, otherwise a fine copy.
8.5 x 11.25 hardcover book with 205 pages: “Catalogue raisonne of the first eleven years output of Lawrence Weiner's artist books, artist designed books, and exhibition catalogues.” Presents Weiner's artist's books, catalogues of his work, books he designed, texts from some of them, and a lengthy bibliography.
Lawrence Weiner's writings, philosophies, and ideas are eloquently expressed through typography often relying on upper case Franklin Gothic and similar bold fonts.
One of Conceptual art’s most popular and iconic protagonists, Lawrence Weiner (born 1942) has stood as a pioneer for practitioners of language-based art for the last 40 years. His philosophical aphorisms, poetical declarations, idle observations and casual musings, and his appropriation of the art catalogue as artist’s book, have proved enduringly influential strategies.
Weiner began his career as an artist in the early 1960s, traveling across the U.S., Mexico, Canada and eventually to Europe, furnishing himself with an ad hoc education on the way. He soon turned away from any conception of art as requiring a production of objects and focused instead on constructing new ways of perceiving language. Today, Weiner works with almost any medium, from books and movies to public and private installations, on grand and small scales.
Lawrence Weiner's art uses language in reference to materials. Language itself is a material and at the same time a means of presentation of his work. Weiner evolved this approach in the context of the Conceptual art of the late 60s, yet he does not see his own work as “conceptual.” The “space” he works within is the entire cultural context, and his works are associated with various different media and forms of presentation: books, posters, videos, films, records, drawings, multiples, installations indoors and outdoors, and more. Since his earliest days as a professional artist, Weiner has given written and verbal expression to questions concerning his work and its context.
Weiner is regarded as a founding figure of Postminimalism's Conceptual art, which includes artists like Douglas Huebler, Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth, and Sol LeWitt.
Weiner began his career as an artist as a very young man at the height of Abstract Expressionism. His debut public work/exhibition was at the age of 19, with what he called Cratering Piece. An action piece, the work consisted of explosives set to ignite simultaneously in the four corners of a field in Marin County, California. That work, as Weiner later developed his practice as a painter, became an epiphany for the turning point in his career. His work in the early 1960s included six years of making explosions in the landscape of California to create craters as individual sculptures. He is also known during his early work for creating gestures described in simple statements leading to the ambiguity of whether the artwork was the gesture or the statement describing the gesture: e.g."Two minutes of spray paint directly on the floor.." or " A 36" x 36" removal of lathing or support wall ..." (both 1968). In 1968, when Sol LeWitt came up with his Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Weiner formulated his "Declaration of Intent" (1968):
- 1. The artist may construct the piece.
- 2. The piece may be fabricated.
- 3. The piece need not be built.
- Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.
Weiner created his first book Statements in 1968, a small 64-page paperback with texts describing projects. Published by The Louis Kellner Foundation and Seth Siegelaub, "Statements" is considered one of the seminal conceptual artist's books of the era. He was a contributor to the famous Xeroxbook also published by Seth Siegelaub in 1968. Weiner's composed texts describe process, structure, and material, and though Weiner's work is almost exclusively language-based, he regards his practice as sculpture, citing the elements described in the texts as his materials.