Item #2352 Forty Found Fakes 1976-1978. Ernst Caramelle.

Forty Found Fakes 1976-1978

New York: Thomas Way & Company, 1979. First edition. [48] pp. Tall stapled wrappers. Some surface wear, minor old staining to top of front cover. Contents clean. One of 1000 numbered copies.

A conceptual livre d'artiste, in which the artist reproduces forty found photographs and matches them with an artist who could have conceivably "created" that work (such as Christo, Haacke, Broodthaers, Darboven, De Maria, Vostell, Kaprow, Lichtenstein, Serra, Acconci, Becher, Judd, et. al.) He describes it in the colophon as “not a collection of imitations of artworks, but rather of reproductions which at first glance strike one as works by particular contemporary artists.”

As Caramelle’s gallerist Peter Freeman notes, “In contrast to what the title with its alluring alliteration might suggest, what is at issue here is not so much the question of forgery or faking but rather the question of the original. The possibility of mistakenly recognizing in the photographs of day-to-day situations the work of important artists makes conversely clear that their ‘authentic’ works must be seen as originals attributed to them personally. This is noteworthy inasmuch as each of the works invoked draws on Marcel Duchamp’s aesthetics of the ready-made, i.e., the radical questioning of artistic originality. Ernst Caramelle’s ability to see in all possible things a reflection of artistic originality makes clear to what extent the young artist was able to perceive in the outstanding art of his time a return to the cult of the original.”. Item #2352

Price: $750.00

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