Art-Rite

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dated summer 1974, Dorothea Rockburne had the staff (deAk, Robinson, and Cohn, that is) fold the bottom right-hand corner of every cover upward on a diagonal to divide a large, delicately outlined, but otherwise blank square into a pair of triangles. Art-Rite’s editorial perspective was self-characterized as “coverage of the uncovered,” a notion that informed all facets of the magazine, across its writing, design, and photography.

The magazine was famous for its covers, which were always by artists, William Wegman contributing an oh-so-smart and funny drawing for no. It had something of a samizdat quality, it was passed around—I don’t think Artforum ever saw it as competition but it was hot stuff. But since the magazine deAk and Robinson published and edited, and wrote and designed and typeset and distributed, out of their downtown-Manhattan lofts between 1973 and 1978 was so open, democratic, and fresh-faced, they may think the parallel fine, or at least poetic justice: They and a third editor, Joshua Cohn, staged an exhilarating deconstruction (if an exhilarating deconstruction isn’t a contradiction in terms) not only of art but of art writing, so they must take what they get.Art-Rite Auction House offers art market professionals a selection of works by modern and contemporary artists. Published simultaneously in two editions, one with black cover text and one with red, containing substantial interior differences.

Featuring works by Genesis P-Orridge, Patti Smith, and Laurie Anderson, Art-Rite embodied the anarchic free-for-all that was Downtown New York. Drawn from the archives of editor Edit DeAk, the show traces the early history of Art-Rite through an array of original production materials, much of which is on display for the first time. A good deal of thought went into images, so that the issue is virtually a compendium of decisions on how to represent a book visually—whether to show the cover, or individual pages, or individual images cropped from their pages, or perhaps the book as an object, held open by somebody’s hands, which in deAk’s case might also hold a cigarette. Founded in 1973 by Edit DeAk, Walter Robinson and Joshua Cohn, Art-Rite brought a homespun aesthetic to a new generation of arts writing. To a rather shy and quiet Irish/English person (my main contribution to Artforum at the time, I’m quite sure, was a trivial willingness to work ninety-hour weeks), she was intimidatingly glamorous; but besides being sparkling in both her perceptions and her style, she was always warm and always utterly a pleasure.The magazine was famous for its covers, made by such artists as Alan Suicide, Carl Andre, Dorothea Rockburne, William Wegman, Christo, Vito Acconci, Pat Steir, Joseph Beuys, Judy Rifka, Robert Ryman, Rosemary Mayer, and Ed Ruscha. Looking at this device, which applies the principles of Rockburne’s work in folded paper to turning the issue into a mass-produced multiple, you may not realize at first that it also rephrases the notion of a cover: To make it function, the magazine’s first spread—the inside cover on the left and the facing page on the right—must be blank, since the folded-over outer cover lays them bare, including them in the work. Yet despite the magazine's commitment to disposability, Art-Rite somehow managed to craft each issue with artist-produced covers: Dorothea Rockburne's hand-folded design intersected the cover across the diagonal for issue 6, while issue 8, designed by Pat Steir, included potatoprinted decoration in bright primary colours that were originally hand-stamped by the editors. For three young college students back in the 1970s, New York proved to be the ideal place to create an art magazine perfectly in step with a changing art world. Across nineteen issues the editors created a space for criticism that was heady and smart, offbeat and irreverent, publishing an energetic mix of artist interviews, statements, exhibition reviews, “loft reviews”, and photo editorials that transcended the interests of typical art journals.

A few years later the punk magazines came along, and I realized that’s what I’d wanted—I loved those fanzines.That may seem like a double-edged compliment, but I don’t think he means it that way: Making something out of nothing, after all, is what artists do themselves. He extended this invitation to Cohn, Robinson, and finally deAk, whom, however, it puzzled: “I thought, Aestheticism must be in trouble if they want baby blood—I mean, what do we know? DeAk has had various health- and life-related problems and by her own account has been “out of the picture for years. is pleased to present From the Margins: The Making of Art-Rite, an exhibition coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the legendary underground arts magazine. I never quite saw them as students because they were pretty well grown up—the personalities were very rich.

Edited by Walter Robinson, Edit DeAk, and Joshua Cohn, Art-Rite was published in New York City between 1973 and 1978. The insert idea died but the larger idea stuck, and to make it happen they enrolled in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, for which they proposed to publish a magazine as their class project. Distributed free, it was “given away,” according to an undated grant application, “in recognition of the community which nurtures it. Obblighi informativi per le erogazioni pubbliche: gli aiuti di Stato e gli aiuti de minimis ricevuti dalla nostra impresa sono contenuti nel Registro Nazionale degli Aiuti di Stato di cui all'art. Printed Matter’s online catalog is one of the largest and most comprehensive databases of artists’ books and related publications.Still in its formative years, the ISP, which would later count Félix González-Torres, Kathryn Bigelow, and Jenny Holzer among its alumni, only offered programs for artists and art historians. Art-Rite moved easily through the expansive community it mapped out, paying homage to an emergent generation of artists, including many who were—or would soon become—the defining voices of the era. Several issues were turned over to artists to do with what they chose; the standouts, for me, are Alan Suicide’s harsh and punky no. Published in 1977, this issue of Art-Rite captures Vega at a high point in his career as a visual artist and musician, vividly capturing the late-70s New York sensibility. Over its five year run, Art-Rite would publish hundreds of interviews, exhibition and performance reviews, statements, and projects “by, with, and about” a generation of artists who felt accessible in these pages, even as many of them were, or would soon become, the defining voices of the era.