2010 Olivia Giacobetti

As sometimes, there is a theme leading to an utterly tight bound composition. So tight that multiple accords and juxtapositions seem to fuse into one controlled sphere. Complete container or geometric volume – you have to inhale it and let yourself sink in order to get to the bottom of its obscure details. There is bitterness, a rarer and profound quality within a structure. There is green. There is powder and butter as in orris root. There are carrot seeds and filmy patchouli as from moist soil on roots. Carrot seeds and bitterness. Carrot seeds and powder. Carrot seeds and vanillized orange peel. There is sweetness. Sometimes bitter tastes sweet. This type of sweetness appears gauzy within floral systematics, and makes up for a clearly kinder feel. So as sometimes, a homely theme with its many seemingly recognizable components may lead you into the inner world of an imaginary object – a bubble or bobble or multilayer ball. It was a mistake to state that ... is a point it.

On Love les carottes by Olivia Giacobetti

In some other context a famous perfumer compared perfume to poetry, more precisely to "poems on souvenirs."

1980 Design Office

In the short story "Honeymoon Habit" Kim Gordon tells about one of her early Design Office interventions. The clients, an artist couple sharing one room on 8 Spring Street, New York, had commissioned her to change their apartment  As part of her art practice, Gordon – widely known as a founding member of the band Sonic Youth – added a small mirror and a light with a metal shade to the place and spray-painted both of them in copper. "With the two new items added to the apartment and painted a color that is simultaneously street oriented, in a defined state, and rich looking, the project will not be resolved until the clients buy a smaller refrigerator."

"Honeymoon Habit" was originally published in Real Life Magazine's 5th issue, in winter 1980. The magazine was founded and edited by artist, writer, curator, Thomas Lawson, and artist, writer, Susan Morgan as an intermittent black and white magazine. It collects significant early writing by fellow artists and writers, a loose clique of the New York artworld of the Eighties. In 2014 it got included into the book Kim Gordon, Is It My Body? Selected Texts by Sternberg Press.

Constanze Schweiger, Untitled (Große Neugasse 44), 2015
Part of Kim Gordon: Honeymoon Habit by Anne Speir and Constanze Schweiger, pinacoteca, Vienna
Photo: Thomas Ries

On the occasion of the 2014 show Design Office: Coming Soon presented by Gagosian Gallery at Fitzpatrick-Leland House, Los Angeles, Kim Gordon recounts: "Design Office began in 1980 as a way to practice art outside of the gallery system. The first projects involved friends’ apartments. D.O. was to be sort of a reflective intervention into the lifestyle of the clients. Objects and a physical change to the interior based on the personality and desires/needs of the client. The design activity was not meant to be well executed or look a certain way, have a certain look or style. If anything it was a lo-fi aesthetic using or recycling other aesthetics."

1961 Claes Oldenburg

In Claes Oldenburg's famous artist statement for the Environments, Situations, Spaces catalog (Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1961) he brings together an extensive list of associated forms and states that art can take in order to define vigorously his interest in the complexity of art and life. In "I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself" he literally pictures a line that behaves and exists in our imagination in many diverse and familiar ways "that twists and extends impossibly & accumulates and spits and drips, and is sweet and stupid as life itself." He calls for art that one can smell or hear or smoke, that one can touch and interact with, that is a joke, that makes no sense or that eventually fulfills a function; "art you can sit on" and "art that does something other than to sit on its ass" within the context of an established art institution. Oldenburg is "for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting signs or hallways" and "for the art of bread wet by rain."

2013 Karel Martens

In a short text that could be read as an artist statement, Karel Marten claims it would be a matter of common sense and instinct that somewhere there is the right answer. Somewhere, he pictures a "box" and he describes the way to find the box and the key to the enclosed answer inside of the box a matter of choosing and giving this box a distinct color: "Alice blue. or alizarin crimson. or amber. or amethyst. or aqua. or aquamarine. or asparagus. or azure. or beige. or bistre. or black. or blue. or bondi blue. or brass. or bright green. or bright turquoise. or bright violet. or bronze. or brown. or buff. or burgundy. or burnt orange. or burnt sienna. or burnt umber. or camouflage green. or cardinal. or carmine. or carrot. or celadon. or cerise. or cerulean. or cerulean blue. or chartreuse. or chestnut. or chocolate. or cinnamon. or cobalt. or copper. or coral. or corn. or cornflower blue. or cream. or crimson. or cyan. or dark blue. or dark brown. or dark cerulean. or dark chestnut. or dark coral, or dark goldenrod. or dark green. or dark indigo. or dark khaki. or dark olive. or dark pastel green. or dark peach. or dark pink. or dark salmon. or dark scarlet. or dark slate gray. or dark spring green. or dark tan. or dark tangerine. or dark tea green. or dark terra cotta. or dark turquoise. or dark violet. or denim. or dodger blue. or eggplant. or emerald. or fern green. or flax. or fuchsia. or gamboge. or gold. or goldenrod. or gray. or gray-asparagus. or gray-tea green. or green. or green-yellow. or heliotrope. or hot pink. or indigo. or international Klein blue. or international orange. or jade. or khaki. or khaki (X11). or lavender. or lavender blush. or lemon. or lemon cream. or light brown. or lilac. or lime. or linen. or magenta. or malachite. or maroon. or mauve. or midnight blue. or mint green. or moss green. or Mountbatten pink. or mustard. or Navajo white. or navy blue. or ochre. or old gold. or olive drab. or orange. or orchid. or pale blue. or pale brown. or pale carmine. or pale chestnut. or pale cornflower blue. or pale magenta. or pale pink. or pale red-violet. or pale sandy brown. or papaya whip. or pastel green. or pastel pink. or Paul mauve. or peach. or peach-orange. or peach-yellow. or pear. or Persian blue. or pine green. or pink. or pink-orange. or plum. or powder blue. or Prussian blue. or puce. or pumpkin. or purple. or raw umber. or red. or red-violet. or robin egg blue. or royal blue. or russet. or rust. or safety orange (blaze orange). or saffron. or salmon. or sandy brown. or sangria. or sapphire. or scarlet. or school bus yellow. or sea green. or seashell. or selective yellow. or sepia. or silver. or slate gray. or spring green. or steel blue. or swamp green. or tan. or tangerine. or taupe. or tea green. or teal. or teené. or terra cotta. or thistle. or turquoise. or ultramarine. or viridian. or wheat. or white. or wisteria. or yellow. or zinnwaldite perhaps." In the end Martens completes his personal file of color names with the eventuality to leave and keep the box as it is.

In: Karel Martens, Full Color, Roma Publications, Amsterdam, 2013, p. 143-145

Dienstag Abend Chicago

Cover the fridge with painted paper, so to make a three-dimensional painting that relates and interacts to its place, its situation by color.
This can be made from water-based paint and simple packaging paper on a roll or thicker or millboard ... for the Pepsi-lightbox on top of the fridge I suggest a piece of cardboard. If the paper already has a color (like brown paper or cardboard) it shall be primed first. The color shall be applied roughly and thick, in several layers, necessarily on both sides of the surface. By doing so its form will get slightly waved but overall it will stay quite flat. Brush strokes can be visible, dripping might occur. In general it is preferable that the painted paper maintains a handmade look and a weighty body.
After drying the painted paper shall be cut out freely with scissors or cutter and makes therefor flowing edges. Three shapes are developed according to the silhouettes of the fridge's left and right side and its light box on top. The mounting shall be done with pieces of tape rolled into loops or double-sided adhesive tape. It must be invisible.

Two color propositions

1. Advanced. Try to imitate the color of the floor or something in its immediate vicinity, literally or practically touching the fridge. By my experience a color does not have to be a precise rendition in order to look similar to a neighboring one.

2. Easy. Make a color out of the available leftovers around. In this case the mixture is made at best from more than two paint sources. There can be primer added, more paint from a neighboring boot, some grey or what is in reach.

ArtReview presents Dienstag Abend, Expo Chicago, 2014

1915 Pablo Picasso

In one of his letters Pablo Picasso aims to give his friend Guillaume Apollinaire a painter's advice. He argues that similar to the cannons, which back then were painted grey, the artillery would just as well remain visible to airplanes. Only the fact that they are jointly coated and dressed in solid colors would point out their form. Instead he suggests to daub the soldier's uniforms "with vivid colors and in bits of red, yellow, green, blue, white, like a harlequin."

In: Kenji Kajiya, The Aesthetics of Camouflage: The Art of a Military Design and its Transformation in Art, 2001

1967 Alison Knowles

Once she had the invitation to go to tea. She arrived at his door with eleven color swatches in her attaché case and the kindest smile on her face. She found a thin cloud of smoke floating above the open door; in no time the room was filled with people. Hands holding trays went high atop their heads. She kept herself in constant movement. She noted, order had become play.
So now about the color swatch: it was for him to select exactly the hue or tint of red-orange and blue that he wanted to have for the print that she was going to silkscreen later. Eleven times she had made a red circle on black Color-aid paper but in different intensities and each time overlapped it with a blue. There was Torch Red, Flame, Bittersweet. He chose one. The color swatch went on the windowsill and the ones he had not selected went back into her case. She thought, even though all is proceeding as foreseen, there must have been an irregularity somewhere along the way.
So the tea party proceeded and at some point his wife got up to go to the window, perhaps she wanted to open it. She looked down onto the windowsill and there was the color swatch, left out, designating his choice. She held it up and said, “When did you do this?” He got up from the table, walked over to the window, toward the fluttering paper and said, “Give me a pencil.” He signed the color swatch. He put the pencil down. After all he did not return to the table as he had left for the window.
Here the curtain falls vertically and the question is now, what is that? Is that a work of art? Is that something that helps in the methodology of doing the print? Is it one of his numerous rounds acted out in the moment?
The artifacts, in their arrangement, as they stood, showed a general affinity of opinions. They seemed neither unsettling nor distracting. Only the attaché case felt unnaturally heavy as she picked it up on the way out. Everything seemed fine. Nothing is wrong. And in the end there will be time.

Above: 10th Street, New York, 1967. Alison Knowles and Marcel Duchamp looking at color swatches, produced in connection with the silkscreen edition accompanying the cooperation on the Emmett Williams publication Sweethearts with Something Else Press in 1967.