Friday 2 December 2016

Robert Barry - Otherwise -1981- (LP, Van Abbemuseum), US/Netherlands


This record came out for the occassion of an exhibition in the Dutch Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Van Abbemuseum is a museum for modern and contemporary art with quite a special modern art collection for Dutch standards. Robert Barry's conceptual LP came with a booklet written by two former directors of the museum: Rudi Fuchs and Jan Debbaut. From the liner notes:

Robert Barry (1936, New York) belongs to the first generation of 'conceptual' artists, together with a.o. Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth and Douglas Huebler; starting from a fundamental new art-concept, they changed with their activities around gallery-onwer Seth Siegelaub the international art-world at the end of the sixties drastically. [...] Amongst the conceptual artists who worked more in particular with language, Robert Barry occupies an important position on the borderline of visual art, poetry and philosophy. Conceptual art is - more than formal revolutions in modern art - a fundamental re-thinking of the function of art and the artist in a changing cultural context; it is in the defining of this new attitude towards art that the ideas and works of Barry make an essential contribution. 

Otherwise is a minimalist conceptual art project in which associative words are being recited. The record was also included in the famous book Broken Music (after the Milan Knížák record) gathering artist records in a catalogue overview. I suppose that you can also just use this record if you have trouble falling asleep. Just put it on, listen and drift away. Scans of the booklet are included (Dutch and English).

Get it HERE

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