MATHIEU COPELAND: 'STUDIES FOR A CATALOGUE: A STUDY FOR AN EXHIBITION OF VIOLENCE IN CONTEMPRARY ART (REFPRISE 1964/2011)' AT LATHAM'S FLAT TIME HOUSE

John Latham's Flat Time House in Peckham


Mr. Copeland and Mr. Bruggemann at Latham's brain, watching 'a study for an exhibition of violence in contemporary film'


Latham's study for Flat Time House facade






Panels of a Study for an Exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art


catalogue for 'A Study for an Exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art (Reprise 1964/2011)' available to download at http://www.reprise.me/


Stefan Bruggemann's contribution to the catalogue


PLB's contribution to the catalogue


and PLB as the BBQ man!


Reprise #1 - Studies for a catalogue / a study for an exhibition on violence in contemporary art (reprise 1964/2011)
Flat Time House, London - Friday 24 June - Sunday 31 July
Closing Bbq & Publication Launch - Sunday 31 July, 2-6pm

Reprise #1 - Studies for a Catalogue: a Study for an Exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art (Reprise 1964/2011)

with Karel APPEL – Jean ARP – Francis BACON – Enrico BAJ – Elena BAJO – Giacomo BALLA – Davide BALULA – BALTHUS – Erica BAUM – Max BECKMANN – Tom BENSON – Hans BELLMER – George BELLOWS – Emma BJORNESPARR – Peter BLAKE – Umberto BOCCIONI – Frank BOWLING – Georges BRAQUE – Victor BRAUNER – Stefan BRÜGGEMANN – Edward BURRA – Alberto BURRI – Reg BUTLER – Alexander CALDER – Guiseppe CAPOGROSSI – Carlo CARRA – CESAR – Paul CEZANNE – Lynn CHADWICK – DADO – Salvador DALI – Alan DAVIE – Giorgio DE CHIRICO – Willem DE KOONING – Niki DE SAINT–PHALLE – Philippe DECRAUZAT – André DERAIN – Otto DIX – Jean DUBUFFET – Marcel DUCHAMP – James ENSOR – Max ERNST – Peter FILLINGHAM & Charlotte MOTH – Lucio FONTANA – Sam FRANCIS – Alberto GIACOMETTI – Juan GRIS – Arshile GORKY – Georg GROSZ – Renato GUTTUSO – Richard HAMILTON – Raoul HAUSMANN – Rudolph HAUSNER – John HEARTFIELD – Erich HECKEL – Anne-Sylvie HENCHOZ – Camille HENROT – Maurice HENRY – Roger HILTON – David HOCKNEY – Hans HOFMANN – Allen JONES – Asger JORN – Frida KAHLO DE RIVERA – Wassily KANDINSKY – Ellsworth KELLY – R.B. KITAJ – Paul KLEE – Oskar KOKOSCHKA – Alfred KUBIN – KUKRYNSKI – Felix LABISSE – Wilfredo LAM – John LATHAM – Fernand LEGER – Pablo LEON DE LA BARRA – Wyndham LEWIS – Roy LICHTENSTEIN – Max LINDNER – Jacques LIPSCHITZ – LUCEBERT – René MAGRITTE – André MASSON – Umberto MASTROIANNI – Georges MATHIEU – Henri MATISSE – Mark MCGOWAN – MATTA – F.E. McWILLIAM – Henri MICHAUX – Manolo MILLARES – Joan MIRO – Piet MONDRIAN – Henry MOORE – Edvard MÜNCH – Antonio MUSIC – R. MUTT (Marcel Duchamp) – Paul NASH – Warren NEIDICH – Sidney NOLAN – José Clemente OROZCO – Eduardo PAOLOZZI – Peter PHILLIPS – Francis PICABIA – Pablo PICASSO – Edouard PIGNON – John PIPER – Philomene PIRECKI – Jackson POLLOCK – POSADA – Mel RAMOS – Man RAY – Odilon REDON – RICHARDS – Germaine RICHIER – Bridget RILEY – Diego RIVERA – RODIN – Theodore ROSZAK – Georges ROUAULT – Henri ROUSSEAU – Antonio SAURA – Giorgio SADOTTI – Gerald SCARFE – Karl SCHMIDT–ROTLUFF – SCHROEDER-SONNENSTERN – Kurt SCHWITTERS – Gino SEVERINI – Ben SHAHN – SINE – David Alfaro – SIQUEIROS – Richard SMITH – Chaim SOUTINE – Saul STEINBERG – Graham SUTHERLAND – Rufino TAMAYO – Yves TANGUY – Dorothea TANNING – Jean TINGUELY – Henri de TOULOUSE-LAUTREC – Clovis TROUILLE – Fritz VAN DEM BERGHE – Victor Vincent VAN GOGH – VASARELY – Renzo VESPIGNANI – Andy WARHOL – Neal WHITE – WOLS and Ossip ZADKINE.
An Exhibition by Mathieu COPELAND.

"I am calling this a 'Study' for an exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art so as to be able to include reproductions and design it so that it can travel to the Provinces when it closes here at the end of March."
Roland Penrose in a letter to the Hon. David L Astor.

Over the winter of 1963 Roland Penrose and his colleagues at the ICA were busy planning A Study for an Exhibition of Violence in Contemporary Art, “an anthology of the various ways in which Violence appears in art”. The exhibition was primarily made up of photographic representations of works, categorised and mounted on thematic panels. The accompanying events programme was an attempt at a similarly exhaustive investigation of violence in the other art forms (film, poetry, theatre, music) and in society more generally. The three-month programme included events as diverse as screenings of Jean Rouch’s films of the traditions and culture of the Niger River valley; films of Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock and Karel Appel at work under the collective title ‘Films of Action and Violence in Painting’; R.D. Laing speaking on ‘Violence and Love’; Dr Hans Keller on ‘Musical Sadism’; Dr Alex Comfort on ‘Hokum and the Ancestry of the Novel’; and Desmond Morris on ‘Sex and Aggression in Animals’.

In a letter to Dominique de Menil, a patron of the exhibition, Penrose wrote that the ICA hoped to publish a collection of “the most important lectures, and radio and T.V. will, we believe, do their part. What we hope is that we can make this programme so important that it will start up other discussions and provoke a general interest with a view to shedding more light on this trouble-maker, violence.” There was some discussion with Penguin about the publication of a volume of papers drawn from the events programme, but as far as we can tell, this did not happen. An special edition of the BBC arts magazine programme, Monitor, was broadcast in 1964. But the only known publication to accompany the exhibition was a slim volume with a foreword by Penrose and a list of works, original and in reproduction. It’s cover was illustrated with an image of Lucio Fontana at work.

The exhibition at Flat Time House of curator Mathieu Copeland’s ‘bootleg’ of the ICA show, and the very lack of an extensive catalogue of the original show, prompted this publication, Study for a Catalogue. It is an imagined version of what that catalogue might have been; and also of what the exhibition might be, if curated anew in 2011. It comprises photocopied reproductions of all the works from the show (with some free replacements where works were not identifiable from the original catalogue, or have not been readily available in reproduction); a text on the violence of curation by artist Warren Neidich; a downloadable screening programme, again liberally expanded from events that took place in 1964; and pages specially produced for the catalogue in the summer of 2011 by artists including Elena Bajo, Neal White, Davide Ballula, Erica Baum, Tom Benson, Emma Bjornesparr, Stefan Brüggemann, Philippe Decrauzat, Peter Fillingham & Charlotte Moth, Mark McGowan, Anne-Sylvie Henchoz, Pablo Leon de la Barra, Warren Neidich, Philomene Pirecki, and Giorgio Sadotti.

The catalogue, in B&W and A4 format, can be downloaded from http://www.flattimeho.org.uk or http://www.reprise.me ready to be printed. A page template will be freely available so that new pages and chapters can be added with the intention that these Studies for both an Exhibition and a Catalogue of Violence in Contemporary Art can extend the debate, begun in 1964, about the good and bad in violence and about the very image of violence itself.

Text by Elisa Kay
27 July 2011

http://www.mathieucopeland.net/