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Entrance space
Robert Barry (born 1938, New York City)
It can be . . .
slide piece
1971-2
Invitation Piece 1972
edition 3/8
(scans)
Jack Wendler Gallery was one of the participants in Robert Barry’s Invitation Piece 1972, which comprised a set of eight cards, printed in the standard format used by each participating gallery, issued by one gallery but giving notice of an exhibition in the next.
Ramp space
Copies of cards and correspondence relating to exhibitions in the gallery’s first year, with related works in Jack Wendler’s collection, as follows:
Ian Wilson (born 1940, South Africa)
Certificates for two discussions
(scans)
Douglas Huebler (born 1924, Michigan, USA, died 1997)
Certificate for Variable Piece # 70 (In Process) Global
(scan)
Mario Merz (born 1925, Milan, died 2003)
Fibonacci drawing, May 1972
typewriter on paper
(photocopy)
This drawing was not exhibited at the Jack Wendler Gallery, but was given as a gift after Merz’s exhibition,
May 2 to 16 1972
Marcel Broodthaers (born 1924, Brussels, died 1976)
English Series, 1972
printed inks on unprimed canvas, nine parts, each 85cm by 1 metre
(photographs)
Video of Marcel Broodthaers action at Speakers Corner, November 1972,
20 minutes, sound
Marcel Broodthaers’ action at Speakers Corner was shot on video on 26 November 1972 (in Wendler’s
archive there is a permit from the Royal Parks giving permission for ‘sound recording equipment or camera car, etc’ to be used in Hyde Park on this date). Broodthaers’ exhibition at Jack Wendler Gallery opened a few days later, on 1 December 1972, and the video was shown on a monitor unedited. It runs to a length of c. 20 minutes.
The exhibition at Jack Wendler Gallery comprised this video and nine paintings, Série Anglaise, each 85 cm by 1 metre, with the name and dates of a famous English writer printed on canvas. The paintings are
represented at CHELSEA Space by a set of nine photographs (see scans of Broodthaers’ certificate for this work, dated November 1974).
Main space
Daniel Buren (born 1938, Boulogne-Billancourt)
video
Buren recorded this video to introduce the viewer to his second exhibition at the gallery, ‘Manipulation, paintings by Daniel Buren, presented by Jack Wendler’, March 9 to 30 1973. The exhibition could only be seen when the viewer asked Jack Wendler to present one of seven paintings by Buren that were otherwise folded and put away, not on view.
John Baldessari (born1931 National City, California)
Five videos were shown in the John Baldessari exhibition at Jack Wendler Gallery, April 7 to 21 1972.
Inventory, 1972
Three Feathers and Other Fairy Tales, 1972
Baldessari Sings Lewitt, 1972
I Am Making Art, 1971
Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, 1972
on view: Baldessari Sings Lewitt (other videos can be played on request)
David Askevold (born 1940, Montana, USA, died 2008)
Learning about Cars and Chocolates, 1972
Askevold recorded this video at the Jack Wendler Gallery in 1972, sitting with his back to the window and with the camera looking down onto North Gower Street, north of the Euston Road, near the station. Jack Wendler is out of shot and we hear his expert responses to Askevold’s questions about the passing cars.
Learning about Cars and Chocolates was shown in Askevold’s exhibition June 9 to 23 1972, together with two other videos, The Murdered Rancher and the 15 Million Dollar Insurance Policy and Audience Empathy.
Lawrence Weiner (born 1940 Bronx, New York)
Wall text, 1973
Lawrence Weiner’s second exhibition with Jack Wendler Gallery was presented from 25 September to 16
October 1973 and took the form of a poster fly posted around London and also shown at Jack Wendler
Gallery in North Gower Street. There was a printed announcement in the usual postcard format and a ‘ticket’ to be handed out in the gallery, printed on one side only and with the same typographic layout as the announcement. The work was subsequently installed as a wall text at the Wendlers’ home in Greencroft Gardens and is presented in this form at CHELSEA Space.
Other artists shown at the Jack Wendler Gallery are represented by publications or by material from the
archive.
All works are from Jack Wendler’s collection.
Audio recording of conversation between Seth Siegelaub and Jack Wendler, chaired by John Murphy, at Jan
van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, 2008, by kind permission of the participants
Marcel Broodthaers
Speakers Corner and Série Anglaise, 1972
Marcel Broodthaers’ action at Speakers Corner was shot on video on 26 November 1972 (in Wendler’s
archive is a permit from the Royal Parks giving permission for ‘sound recording equipment or camera car, etc’ to be used in Hyde Park on this date). Broodthaers’ exhibition at Jack Wendler Gallery opened a few days later, on 1 December 1972, and the video was shown on a monitor unedited. It runs to a length of c. 20 minutes.
The exhibition at Jack Wendler Gallery comprised this video and nine paintings, Série Anglaise, each 85 cm by 1 metre, with the name and dates of a famous English writer printed on canvas. These paintings are represented at Chelsea Space by a set of nine photographs.
Jack Wendler describes how he hired a video camera, as he had done recently for his son Noah’s birthday, and made the video with his wife Nell and other friends taking it in turns to use the camera (telephone conversation with TG, 8 May 2009). Visible briefly about ten minutes into the video is the figure of Maria Gilessen, Broodthaers’ partner, rewinding a small handheld film camera. The film she shot was edited by Maria Gilessen and Jean-Louis Dewert in 1987, after Broodthers’ death, and is listed in Michael Compton’s catalogue, Marcel Broodthaers, Cinema, 1997, as ‘Speakers Corner’, 16mm, black and white, 8 min, London.
Reviewing the Jack Wendler Gallery exhibition in the Financial Times, 1973 (date not known), Marina Vaizey wrote:
‘In London the exhibits, done especially for the show, consisted of two things. The first was a series of names and dates printed on canvas. Each name was that of an author, but the kind of man was chosen who stood for more than his own works: for a life style, for a private tragedy, for a resonating vision. Phrases were used: The Mind of James Joyce, The Turpitude of Oscar Wilde, The Dimension of Jonathan Swift. Under each name was a beautiful curling printer’s symbol, the kind used to set one section of a book off from another, and underneath that the year, dates of birth and death of each author. The ninth canvas carried all the dates of birth and death in a sequence and then, finally, the date of this year. The canvases were handsome, immaculate, pleasing to look at; the colours of the inks were usually black, sometimes brown, and William Blake was given a rainbow of colours for the letters of his name and dates. In a way the bare facts of name and date were like some awful final register, some kind of stylised cemetery, but of course what set the spectator thinking was the individual response each of us has to the giant dimensions of each author’s work and how important they are to our shared culture. Confronted with the series, one’s mind was somehow wound up and set to reflecting.
‘There is also a video-tape of Broodthaers, himself a handsome man of great presence, at Speaker’s Corner. There he was, simply with a blackboard on which he chalked up words and phrases; for instance Silence Please. He was surrounded by a moving crowd of curious passers-by, including a splendid hatted fat lady who broke into irrepressible song, Silent Night naturally. They asked him questions. He answered not, but simply chalked up more messages on his board. It is curiously moving, perhaps the whole exhibition a little paradigm of how we do — and do not — communicate, through our cultural symbols, through writing and speech.’
