HOUSE
Quadrat-Print / Quadrat-Blatt / Feuilles-Cadrat / Kwadraat Blad
Les Levine
Les Levine: HOUSE [Quadrat-Print / Quadrat-Blatt / Feuilles-Cadrat / Kwadraat Blad]. Hilversum: Steendrukkerij De Jong & Co, 1971. First edition [limited to 1,000 copies]. Printed brown chipboard wrappers. Unpaginated. 26 black and white photographs. Publishers errata sheet laid in. Designed by Pieter Brattinga. Slipsheet stained, and wrapper edges age-toned, otherwise a fine copy.
9.75 x 9.5 square octavo with 26 black and white photographs by Les Levine. “Each photograph in this book is a working plan for a sculpture or monument. The person who acquires this book should attempt to erect one of the monuments according to the scale of the space that he finds available. He may do this alone or in conjunction with a group. When he has finished his work on the monument or is tired of it, he should send photographs to Les Levine, 181 Mott Street, NYC, 10012 USA.”
"The main issue for me is the mind. The main aspect is what is going on in the mind when one is experiencing a work of art. It could be highly visual or highly conceptual, but it doesn't in the long run make any difference. I'm interested in how this is contributing to thinking." — Les Levine
Les Levine (b. 1935) is a conceptual artist and one of the originators of media art. Early on, he recognized the potential of television as an art medium and a means of mass dissemination. He was one of the first artists to use videotape. Levine regards himself as a "media sculptor" and has used outdoor advertising, posters, television, radio, and telephone conversations in his work. He studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and exhibited and lived in Canada during the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973 he was an artist-in-residence at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He has been based in New York City since 1964.
At the beginning of his career, Levine introduced the idea of disposable art, earning the name "Plastic man." In 1966 he exhibited thousands of vacuum-formed plastic reliefs in various colours, selling them for between $3 and $6 each. This was considered a populist response to art world conceptions of art as unique and precious objects. Wiretap (1970), in the National Gallery of Canada collection, consists of 12 speakers on the wall, each playing a loop of 12 hours of recorded telephone conversations that Levine made on his home phone. The audience listens to the taped document of actual inquiries and conversations about the production of artwork over a period of one year. For its time, Wiretap was radical in proposing that the activity surrounding the process of making a work of art is as valid and interesting as the end product.
Like others of his generation, Levine addresses in his artwork issues of value and consumption in North American society. In the early 1980s, his first billboard campaigns in Los Angeles and Minneapolis followed on the heels of a successful mass media project that featured 4000 images along the NYC subway system. Levine has made over 200 videos and has had over 100 solo exhibitions. [national Gallery of Canada]
"The Quadrat-Prints are a series of experiments in printing ranging over the fields of graphic design, the plastic arts, literature, architecture and music. They are edited by Pieter Brattinga and are not for sale."
"The Quadrat-Prints appear at irregular intervals. They are published only after the most stringent requirements of intellectual and technical production have been met."
Steendrukkerij De Jong & Co. published 34 Quadrat-Prints between 1955 and 1974, with Brattinga serving as general editor and individual designers given free reign with their chosen subjects in the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, typography, etc. None of these publications were for sale -- they were distributed to friends and business associates by De Jong as elaborate self-promotions.