In collaboration with Francesco Bonami, the Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery will be presenting a selection of these works in New York from February 23 through April 14. Amongst the artists brought into the limelight will be Marina Abramović and Ulay, Willem de Kooning, Urs Fischer, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jeff Koons, and Joan Miró.
Joyce Wieland, O Canada
In 1970, the Canadian artist Joyce Wieland (1930-1998) created a piece entitled O Canada, produced at the heart of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, centred around lipstick. The artist – the first living woman to be the subject of a retrospective at the Gallery of Ontario in 1987 – combines feminism and patriotism in this lithograph, offering a critique of excessive blind patriotism. Each mouth is different, and represents the lips’ shape whilst singing the Canadian national anthem.
Vito Acconci, Kiss Off
The following work is linked to that of Wieland. As Vito Acconci produced Kiss Off so soon after the piece by Joyce Wieland, some have submitted that it is almost a replica, or perhaps an homage, to the latter. In 1971, also in residence at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Vito Acconci created a series of pieces entitled Kiss Off: “after applying lipstick and kissing his own body, Acconci would rub his pigmented flesh on a lithography stone, using his body as a stamp. A kiss is typically a transfer of touch between two elements; Acconci bends this to encompass an intimacy both solipsistic and serialized. He suggests that kissing might involve more or less than two, and that a kiss is not always an embrace.”
Vito Acconci, Kiss Off, 1971, Lithograph, 30 ⅛ x 22 ⅜ in. (76.51 x 56.83 cm.)© 2017 Vito Acconci / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkCourtesy of Anna Leonowens Gallery,NSCAD University Permanent Art Collection
Andy Warhol, Kiss
The experimental film by Andy Warhol – a silent movie in black and white – presents 54 minutes of kisses involving around 15 couples. Amongst the pairs, made up of women with women, men with men, and men with women, feature personalities such as Jane Holzer, Robert Indiana, Rufus Collins, Johnny Dodd and Ed Sanders. Coincidentally, Calvin Klein has just released a new underwear collection featuring scenes from the film.
Andy Warhol, Kiss, 1963, 16mm film, black and white, silent, 54 minutes at 16 frames per second©2018 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.Courtesy the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA
Lynda Benglis, Female Sensibility
The American artist Lynda Benglis (b.1941) created a scandal in 1974 with a publicity shot published on Artforum; the photo portrayed her naked form, holding an oversized rubber dildo in front of her genitals. This, however, is comparatively soft. The video Female Sensibility sees “a response to the notion of a distinctly feminine artistic sensibility and to the belief in a necessary lesbian phase in the women's movement—ideas that were often debated in the early 1970s."
Lynda Benglis, Female Sensibility, 1973, Video, 13 minutes, 5 secondsImage copyright of the artist, courtesy of Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled
Finally, something distinctly more conceptual – and contemporary – in the shape of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ (1957-1996) silver hoops, showing “kissing surfaces as just one potential reading suggested by the simple meeting or melding of abstract forms.”
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1995
