Having Been Said: Writings and Interviews of Lawrence Weiner, 1968-2003
Fietzek and Stemmerich (eds), Hatje Cantz, Ost fildern, 2005
Having Been Said acts as a chronological ‘logbook’ of the 35 years or so that
Lawrence Weiner has focused on art, the nature of its existence, cultural status and function. From ‘anti-form’ beginnings and his Cratering Pieces (1960) – the literal displacement of material through craters blasted into the ground of a Californian National Park – Weiner delivers his 1968 ‘Statement of Intent’ in which he uses the word as material form. ‘1. The artist may construct the piece. 2. The piece may be fabricated. 3. The piece need not be built. Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist, the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.’ It is a statement that he has presented and determinedly repeated in conjunction with subsequent works. The publication also includes all the relevant variations of Weiner’s ‘Statement’, as with the work FLOUR & WATER (+) (-) SUGAR & SALT (1991), which ended with ‘But can they bake a cherry pie?’
The editors and initiators of the project, Gerti Fietzek and Gregor
Stemmrich, have constructed a complex biography of Weiner through primary
documents of a practice that has employed books, posters, videos, films, records, CDs, drawings and installations. Weiner describes all formats as mises-en-scène in which to stage language. As a self-described American socialist, it is important for him that the work be presented rather than imposed. Challenging perceived notions of the artist as expressionistic transformer of materials, Weiner suggests that language contains the same material quality from the gallery to the street.
Having Been Said is testament to a practice that constantly challenges art as a discussion of aesthetic quality, looking instead to the operative, material and use factors of language. Whether bumping semantic heads with Art & Language over the usage and material reality of the word or revealing Weiner’s relation to his ‘conceptual’ peers Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry and Douglas
Huebler, the publication gives voice to the desire for work that operates within the ‘entire cultural context’. It is perhaps Weiner’s distinction between content and context that provides much of the animated push and pull within the text. Is it possible for content to remain the same irrespective of its context?
As with the recent publications of collected writings by artists Mike Kelly and Donald Judd, Having Been Said provides expansive documentary insight into the practice and ideology of a leading protagonist in contemporary art. It is a book that agreeably matches Weiner’s own maxim ‘Literature is about how you feel in life, and art is about how you live.’
Mark Beasely
