Arquivo da tag: Douglas Huebler

Variable Piece 4: Secrets

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Douglas Huebler (1924–1997)
Variable Piece 4: Secrets
New York, Printed Matter Inc, 2016
14 x 22 cm
94 p.
ISBN: 9780990689683

Variable Piece 4: Secrets is a facsimile edition of Douglas Huebler’s classic artist book, which was originally published by Printed Matter in 1978. Simple and salacious, the publication collects over 1,800 secrets written anonymously by visitors to the 1970 Software exhibition at the Jewish Museum. In doing so, the book provides a fleeting glimpse into the cultural, political, and social preoccupations of the era while showcasing Huebler’s open-ended and variable approach to art making—an approach that sought to undermine the dominance of object-oriented practices in favor of a text-driven conceptualism that relied on variables outside of the artist’s control.

Pioneers of the artists’ books medium, of which Huebler was one, predicted that one day artists’ books would be sold next to detective and romance novels in drugstores and supermarkets throughout America. While this dream was never realized, Variable Piece 4: Secrets could easily find its place amongst these popular genres; a true page-turner that delivers the whodunit in succinct statements, ripped from real life, without the hassle of narrative arcs, prefaces, or chapters.

Variable Piece 4: Secrets

Variable Piece #101, West Germany, March 1973

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19272

Douglas Huebler (EUA, 1924-1997)
Variable Piece #101, West Germany, March 1973
New York, Hassla, 2015
28 p.
17.8 x 22.2 cm
500 ex.
ISBN 978-1-940881-06-5

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On December 17, 1972, Douglas Huebler took ten photographic portraits of the German photographer Bernd Becher. These portraits, together with a written statement, constitute Huebler’s Variable Piece # 101. The statement explains how the work was made: Becher was asked to pose, in the following order, as: “a priest, a criminal, a lover, an old man, a policeman, an artist, Bernd Becher, a philosopher, a spy, and a nice guy.” After two months Huebler reordered the original sequence of photographs and sent them to Becher, asking him to “make the ‘correct’ associations with the given verbal terms.” Becher’s reordered list of character types is listed on the statement as: “1. Bernd Becher; 2. Nice Guy; 3. Spy; 4. Old man; 5. Artist; 6. Policeman; 7. Priest; 8 Philosopher; 9. Criminal; 10. Lover.” The written statement explains all this. But more than a simple explanation, the statement is also constitutive of the work: “Ten photographs and this statement join together to constitute the final form of this piece.” Word and image combine, one playing off the other, to form Variable Piece #101.

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