“Corner Work”

PLACEMENT IS THE IDEA.

Corner, ceiling, floor, baseboard hung works.

     I didn’t have a very large studio In the 80’ and played with the idea of corner works.  The idea had come out of having to work in a relatively small space.  From this experience, I made frames to contain drawings and paintings that were to be hung in a corner.  Other such works played with the idea of being hung in unusual places other then typical Eye Level.  There was the Self portrait done in perspective (lovely nostrils) from below that hung on the ceiling entitled “Trying to Live Up to The Idea of Myself”.  There was a portrait of a high profile person hung rather high on the wall (High Profile).  Placement of each work was not arbitrary.  The concept of the piece was reinforced by it’s placement.

     I remember while doing some of these works that a young artist had come to my Chrystie St. studio for an interview to be an assistant.  He saw some of these corner frames with a plexiglass front and had admired them.  I never did hire this young man who said that he worked as an assistant for Richard Artschwager.  It was not long after he visited my studio that I’d been over to the Mary Boone Gallery in Soho and saw Richard Artschwager’s new crate exhibit.  To my shock, one of these crates was hung on the wall around a corner just like my corner frames.   I immediately knew where the idea had come form but chose to let it go at the time.  It was not the first time I’d had an original idea stolen or so directly borrowed.  The answer given to me upon my query the first time my idea was so directly borrowed was at the Conde Nast Publications.  The explanation from the the art director - Rochelle Udell who used my original idea was that the genius was not always in the idea, but in getting yourself in the place to have the idea recognized.  I thought it a cheap excuse for such a direct copying of an idea of mine.  This was long before the art world and artist like Jeff Koons and Richard Prince came up with the phrase of making legitimate such actions in the concept known as  “Appropriation”.