Other Men's Flowers: A Corsage
for the '90s •Ice Box
Athens
“Other Men’s Flowers”
(OMF) is a unique portfolio of textual works created by 15 of the leading
artists working in Britain today. It has recently been exhibited at Venetia
Kapernekas’s exciting new space, the Icebox, in Athens and was available
during the “Brill” show at Montgomery-Glasoe Fine Art, Minneapolis.
Last month, Adrian Glew interviewed the project’s instigator and
curator, Joshua Compston, director of the avant-garde and catalytic space,
Factual Nonsense (FN). Like confetti at a wedding, here are Compston’s
thoughts—in no particular order—about the project.
Posy 1: The Project
The project came about through my continual utilization of words as a
cultural glue (no pun intended!); as libratory, emancipatory items; as
objects that obscure and bombard in equal measure—with my own practice
to advertise and export FN’s principles. In particular, the project
came about because I’d long been interested by the statements, and
the manner, in which Gilbert & George describe themselves through
interviews and through their early works of the 1970s. I had this proposal,
to garner up a collection of their words and phrases—the most pithily
aggressive ones—from the late 1960s to the present day; not really
making a difference between their phrases from their piece in pink elephant
postal sculpture to statements they may have made for the Evening Standard
or the Times. I did some research on that and this publisher—a friend
of mine—Charles Booth-Clibborn of the Paragon Press, was into the
idea. And we got so far down the road whereby it was all possible and
it had Gilbert & George’s blessing. But they weren’t prepared
to officially sign it, as it was not produced by them. They felt that
it would encroach upon their territory too much, so with that removed
it no longer became a commercially viable entity for Paragon Press, which
has done remarkable work that had to be underpinned by commerce. . . .
So that project unraveled and fell apart, but I felt “that doesn’t
matter too much as I will just get a whole selection of artists to do
words for me instead and these words will be plucked from the sky and
unrolled from underneath the mat. The fact that they don’t as yet
exist posts no challenge.” So the idea was to set up a kind of syncretic
and elegant collusion between a deliberately old-fashioned and almost
an outré printing method: letterpress printing. . . . And the project
is one of those projects that deliberately works as a form of free-enterprise
within exacting control; controlling people’s energies and directing
them into a certain channel, which is what much of FN’s work is about
in terms of they had to do a certain thing. Within that certain thing.
. .the piece of string was very long indeed. I explained to them that
text could cover advertising, mathematical formulae, religious treatises,
calligraphy, slang, borrowed texts, etc., etc. Though there were indeed
technical limitations to the nature of letterpress printing, the thing
would work much better fundamentally as one unit, as a law unto itself
if it was restricted to letterpress printing. And it wasn’t with
reluctance, but it was only out of sheer necessity in the other direction
that a few of the artists were allowed to do screenprints, as those images
couldn’t be realized using letterpress printing. So a standard size
was set by myself based on that size being most attractive and comfortable
to the eye; a standard size of 47 x 61 cm.
Posy 2: The Title
The title comes originally from Montaigne—at the time I didn’t
know that—it was only later, that I realized that it comes from Montaigne,
because in the war there was a general called Viscount Wavell, Lord Wavell,
who was a great war hero and fought in Alamein. A soldier of the old school,
he used to encourage his men by reciting poetry to them. Apparently he
had a very prodigious memory of poetry from the 16th century to the present
day. On leave, his family persuaded him that he should look toward collecting
an anthology of these poems, so he did and it was published by Faber &
Faber in the war and he called the book Other Men’s Flowers. It became
a cult classic and it is still in print today. My father was given this
book when he was a child. Like father, like son, he gave me a copy of
the book in the 1980s. I read it and had it on my shelves. When I was
thinking of a title, I remembered this book and its beautiful title, Other
Men’s Flowers, but I couldn’t find a copy of the book. Then,
I found the copy of the book he gave me and I discovered that Wavell hadn’t
invented the term himself at all. The fact is that—when I say what
I am going to say to you now you could not ask for a better reason—because
what Montaigne said, he said “I had gathered about me a poesie of
other men’s flowers, but nothing but the thread that binds them is
mine own.” It was perfect. Some of the females [included in OMF]
made some wry comments and stuff, but they knew what it meant. “Flowers”
is an old-fashioned word for writing. I also like titles that can be abbreviated
to quite harsh-sounding phrases, harsh-sounding abbreviations; acts as
grit in the oyster, just like Factual Nonsense becomes FN and the SFM
is like the Struggle for Modernism as is OMF; it is often referred to
as OMF. It is very useful that the title became that, because if there
had been another phrase that didn’t abbreviate so precisely and so
elegantly then I probably would have changed it to something that did,
something like OMF, FN, SFM, whatever. So that was fortunate.
Posy 3: The Curator
The way I curate, I’ve always curated with a broad brush believing
the primacy of the idea holds a body of work together. When I first ever
curated an exhibition (bar the ones that I used to be in myself when I
was an artist; the first one was in 1991 called the Courtauld Institute
Loan Collection), I attempted to demolish this ridiculous hierarchical,
static nature of the international art world. In terms that we had—in
the Courtauld Institute Loan Collection—there were Modern Masters,
Young Turks and Students. So, in one room there was a print by Hodgkin,
a Damien Hirst, and a work by a student at the Slade School of Art. And
there were other reasonably obscure artists like Hilary Wilson and Piers
Wardle next door to Langlands and Bell and Gary Hume. And this was in
’91 before someone like Damien Hirst was yet to become, himself,
a Modern Master. I have adopted a similar approach with literally hundreds
of artists. So I wanted to have people go “Who’s that?”
as much as [see] their old favourites which they could readily respond
to because they’ve given up asking too many questions as consumers,
because consumers are too passive nowadays. So I wanted artists who had
done text before and who would be suitable for the project; as I had published
Tracey Emin’s writing before, she was an obvious example. Then I
wanted artists that belonged to different stables, some from Interim Art,
some from White Cube, some from Karsten Schubert, etc., etc. And I wanted
a few artists from an older generation, to disrupt any idea that it was
something to do with some kind of “youth London” that’s
a kind of media bug-bear that, even though I’m supposed to belong
to it, annoys me. I am as happy to work with someone who is 70 as with
someone who isn’t. That’s no big deal. And above all, I wanted
artists who I thought could really contribute and bend the project round.
Take this metal and turn into a beautiful shape. And I think on the whole
it is a project that is 80 percent successful and when they’re hung
as one unit which is how they are supposed to be, the faults and the cracks
in the facade are barely noticed.
Posy 4: The Artists
The artists worked very closely with the printer and myself to realize
their ideas which sometimes were of the vaguest thought and hence had
to be sought out, edged and pushed along by the printer with myself keeping
a close eye that there wasn’t any funny business, i.e. people try
to sneak in images. So that’s why it is slightly ironic, that there
is technically one faux pas vis-à-vis Angus Fairhurst, which is
a kind of a cartoon; more a cartoon than a text work. Bar that, the project
demonstrated the fundamental freedom, vivacity and variety that exists
under the so-called FN control vis-à-vis a work that beautifully
oscillates within the worlds of advertising such as Max Wigram’s
print to a beautiful piece of calligraphy and almost a kind of Surrealist
sentiment as in Helen Chadwick’s adore abhor. From a borrowed page
from Lady Chatterly’s Lover vis-à-vis Mat Collishaw and a
piece of typical searing kind of morality from Tracey Emin to a description
of Monaco by Henry Bond. The examples are numerous. Every which way which
goes went within the project. Ranging from type styles to paper weights
to colours to the content of the work itself. For instance, one artist
even managed to cheekily use it for their own ends vis-à-vis Liam
Gillick who was the only artist to personally set their piece. He later
used his print as an advertisement for a film project, McNamara; like
a film poster.
Posy 5: The Missing Names
Sarah Lucas was going to do a print—she had rather a good idea—which
was a print that was going to say “Sarah Lucas is whole” and
bits of the letters would be cut out of the paper, rather like a print
that Paragon Press published in their London portfolio, a couple of years
ago, with Craig Wood which had this cut-out paper. But then, Sarah decided
that she didn’t like the idea enough, so she fell by the wayside.
Jane and Louise Wilson went to town for a while with the project, but
didn’t do anything in the end. Gillian Wearing did a print for it,
which for various reasons wasn’t published. . . One print was an
attack on the Tory government (one of her placard pieces) and another
about a woman who believed that she was Rameses II’s wife. And then
there were a few people who ducked and dived at the last moment.
Posy 6: The Printer
I used the particular skills of this letterpress printer, called Thomas
Shaw, who published a lot of my earlier propaganda posters. Technically
there’s people, outside the printing world, who would have no idea
of the hell that some of the prints—the technical exactitude—that
went into the making of them. I’m talking for instance about the
Henry Bond print that was completely hand-set—letter by letter—by
the printer and an old boy, John Quirke, who grew up with hot metal printing
in the 1940s and 50s. The prints were realized in a variety of manners.
For instance, Sam Taylor-Wood’s cunt was the result of a telephone
conversation. Sam phoned up the printer, and said, “Look I want this
word ‘Cunt’; I’ve got the typeface, can you bring some
up on the Mac and fax me through and I’ll decide on which one I want
and what size?” So that was duly done. It was then made into a zinc
plate and printed on a letterpress. Whereas Henry Bond’s print had
to be hand-set; 1,300 words. If an average word is four or five letters,
that’s around 6,000 pieces of metal set into a form. I like commercial
printing, I like machines and factories and things. I wanted to wrest
the flower from the grave in the sense that shortly after this project
was completed the printer to all intents and purposes went bust and now
only designs. He had a romantic notion, he’s a young man in his twenties,
that he could resurrect letterpress printing as a way of life concerning
work within the art world. And it all screwed up and went to the wall.
And this is one of the most remarkable things that came out of a short
period of activity when he did have his machines and taught himself how
to use monotype casters, large composite keyboards, proofing presses,
etc., etc.
Posy 7: The Time Scale
The time scale was six months. Work started in January 1994 and it was
launched in Hoxton Square (in a building that has now been demolished)
on 22 June 1994. It was a classic piece of work as, with a few exceptions,
the list is as I imagined it at the beginning. There were a few people
who could not do anything and pulled out at the last minute. But more
or less it is representative of my initial choice.
Posy 8: The Hang
For the Icebox, Venetia gave me a floor plan and as I know the works intimately,
I devised a hang for the show, which she apparently followed more rather
than less. The prints should never be hung alphabetically for the simple
reason that the project is a law unto itself and to hang it alphabetically
is to take an inane view of what it is. They should be hung according
to type, genre, colour and approach. To give an example, there are two
prints that inadvertently have a dialogue between them. The artists don’t
even know one another, vis-à-vis Stuart Brisley and Don Brown.
Both of them adopt, as a central overriding motif, a column of text floating
within the page and picture plane. They work very well together. Likewise,
two “Pop”-inspired (or at least a dialogue with Pop) prints
should be hung quite close together vis-à-vis Andrew Herman’s
evening standard and Max Wigram’s charnel. Another thing that one
should do, and something quite useful to have, is a kind of Robert Rymanesque
Minimalist work like Collishaw’s lady chatterly’s lover; it
disappears as it is embossed into the paper without ink. It is good to
have that in the middle of two very busy and aggressive prints on the
left and the right. So there are various kind of standard procedures that
people are encouraged to adopt. The only ones that should not be disrupted
really, as they are meant as a unit of four, are the title page, introduction
page 1 and introduction page 2 and the colophon page. Ideally they should
remain as four either in a linear pattern or as a two-by-two block. Simply
because the introduction only makes sense when you see Duchamp’s
hand from t’um made to look like a typical printer’s hand; a
sign of assimilation as authority pointing to the Introduction, “PLEASE
KEEP OUT FOOT & MOUTH PRECAUTIONS.” The latter print was done
to demonstrate two things, one because it is a beautiful piece of letterpress
printing and secondly it comes from an original print that I found in
the 1980s in a National Union of Farmers office that had closed down.
It is a jobbing print, a letterpress print for farmers during the outbreaks
of the 1960s and 70s. That’s a generic type of print that could have
been made in 1900, 1920, 1950. We managed to get typefaces that were almost
exactly the same and print that up. It was done as a kind of demonstration
of the beauty of the found object slightly manipulated. That is an introduction
in itself. One doesn’t need a full metal jacket explanation. That
is the introduction; it states itself. That statement is what it is all
about; the alignment of type to paper and all its graphics and variations:
colours, smells and nuances. I didn’t feel that it was necessary
to say we’d like to thank so and so, and in 1920 there was this shit;
and so on; it is not relevant.
Posy 9: The Portfolio
Published in 1994, there are two current editions of OMF consisting of
screenprints and letterpress prints. One is a portfolio edition of 50
copies, with 20 artists’ proofs, consisting of 15 individually signed
and numbered prints, a title page, an introduction, and a colophon page,
all presented in a box. The other is a book edition of 100 copies, with
20 artists’ proofs, consisting of 15 prints, a title page, an introduction,
and a colophon page signed by all the artists, and presented in a box.
Joshua Compston and Adrian Glew
London, Great Britain
1995
Joshua Compston recently passed away. We at zingmagazine would acknowledge
his many contributions to the art world: “Other Men's Flower's”
was just one of many. Our sincere condolences to his family and friends.