19 APRIL — 6 MAY, 2017

Three decades after Walter Benjamin gave rise to “Art in the age of mechanical reproduction” in a 1936 essay, Siegelaub would support a generation of artists to create work which was beyond material constraints and limits of representation. He believed the artist’s output could take form in a concept or primary information once it was freed from physical presence. Deeming art to be doomed by Benjamin, Siegelaub offered art a rebirth and new conceptual foundation, which still serves as a tenet of art production today.

His pioneering vision was evident in the seminal Xerox Book of 1969, for which he invited Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Lawrence Weiner to create 25 pages in photocopy format. The reproduction was the primary medium of the collection of works. It offered an alternate exhibition model in response to the challenges of a traditional gallery. He was a radical thinker, responding to the needs of artists whose principal mode was their ideas and whose goal was to disseminate them. Siegelaub believed his gallery extended beyond the walls to the rest of the globe, long before the age of information and onset of globalization.

In 1971, he published The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, across numerous languages and exhibitions, providing a framework which endures today. It was designed to bring attention to the “generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists’ lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it” which Siegelaub sought to remedy.

The Agreement was the first of its kind and foundational in advocating for artists’ rights and remains an essential document today. While Siegelaub remains a figure whose significance is eclipsed by the artists he championed, he has recently gained greater recognition through shows including at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the acquisition of his archives by the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2011.

The Embassy chose to focus on Siegelaub after staging two shows of artists of the era, as the show presents an opportunity to delve further into the movement which produced fundamental shifts within art discourse. The works and documents included in the exhibition span the entire decade, with a focus on 1968 and 1969. The ephemera and writing provide a broader context for his involvement with publications, curating, and production.