Catalogue/Katalog: 18 Paris IV. 70

[18], 61, [6] pp. 12mo (107 x 164 mm.), black paper over thick boards, title on spine. New York: International General, 1970.


Scarce catalogue for the notable April 1970 exhibition staged by Michel Claura on rue Mouffetard in Paris; the catalogue was published by Seth Siegelaub. Contributions for this group show were sent in by Robert Barry, Marcel Broodthaers, stanley brouwn, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Gilbert & George, Douglas Huebler, On Kawara, David Lamelas, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Niele Toroni, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson, etc.


“Siegelaub published and distributed the trilingual catalogue (truncated) of this seminal exhibition, which a friend, the French art critic Michel Claura, had organized by mailing an invitation to twenty-two artists to submit one project proposal each. The proposed contributions were circulated among all the participants, who were then permitted to alter their initial ideas and submit another proposal. The catalogue, with a preface and a postface by Claura, included both the first and the second proposal by each of the eighteen artists who responded to the call. The few works that did not exist only as text in the catalogue were presented in the exhibition space, the non-traditional setting of a rented film studio in the center of Paris, which Claura had chosen because it was a not a traditional gallery space but had white walls. Claura’s project was reviewed in the French press under the headline ‘L’avant garde à la Mouffe’ (Les Lettres françaises), and the curator was quoted as saying that the ‘exhibition at hand is not conceptual,’ although it operated according to a ‘mechanism’ that questioned the format of the group show.”–Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art, p. 202.


A near fine copy; traces of wear to the extremities and head of spine dinged.


❧ L. Coelewij & S. Martinetti, eds., Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art (2016), pp. 202-5 (pictured). (Inventory #: 10303)