ART CITIES:N.York-Kiss Off
Found in a cave near Bethlehem and now in the collection of the British Museum, the sculpture known as “Ain Sahkri Lovers” (c. 10,000 BC) was made at the dawn of the age of agriculture and is the oldest known depiction of sexual love. Though the couple have no faces, and though their genders cannot be determined, they are clearly kissing: two lovers, hewn from a single stone and fused for millennia.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery Archive
Love is a timeless preoccupation, but its incarnations and representations are mercurial. The group exhibition “Kiss Off” at Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery in New York organized in collaboration with Italian art curator Francesco Bonami showcase the many different expressions and meanings of kissing that artists have explored in the 20th Century. The exhibition takes as starting point two works, Vito Acconci’s “Kiss Off” (1971) and Joyce Wieland’s “O Canada” (1970). In 1970, one of the Canada’s first, and best known, feminist artists, Joyce Wieland created an edition titled “O Canada”, at the print studio of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD). This lithograph bears the marks of her lipsticked lips as she sang the Canadian national anthem against the plate, a succinct and distinctly feminist critique of blind patriotism. Her lips are arranged in seven rows with each row containing 10 mouths, except the last two rows which have nine, making 68 mouth images in total. Vito Acconci’s “Kiss Off” (1971) was made specifically for NSCAD Lithography Workshop, an innovative program that brought many conceptual artists, including Acconci, along with Dan Graham and John Baldessari, to produce prints as artists-in-residence throughout the program’s run from 1969-76. For this print, one of three that Acconci produced during his tenure at NSCAD, Acconci coated his mouth with red lipstick and then planted kisses all over his body before rubbing himself onto the printing stone. In this artwork, the body becomes a discrete unit capable of mechanical reproduction, a quality similar to the printmaking medium’s ability to produce multiples since an original image can be copied ad infinitum. Beyond printmaking, an interest in the relationship between an original image and its manifestation as a multiple corresponded with this era’s interest in serial forms. At times, the featured works invoke kissing literally, like in Sigmar Polke’s “Liebespaar I” (1965), Andy Warhol’s “Kiss” (1963), or Lynda Benglis’ “Female Sensibility” (1973). For the duration of a 1977 performance titled “Breathing In/Breathing Out”, Ulay and Marina Abramović locked lips with their nostrils blocked by cigarette butts, so that the only air available to each was the other’s exhalation. They passed out after 19 minutes as their shared supply of oxygen dwindled, suggesting that interdependence can both give life and poison it. In a 2000 video by Patty Chang made in response to Abramović’s, two women appear to make out but actually pass an onion back and forth between their mouths, tears coursing down their cheeks.. Among others are on presentation works by: Marina Abramović & Ulay, Vito Acconci, Lynda Benglis, James Lee Byars, Patty Chang, Willem de Kooning, Urs Fischer, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jeff Koons, Man Ray, Marisa Merz, Joan Miró, Elizabeth Peyton, Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Joyce Wieland.
Info: Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, 64 East 77th Street, New York, Duration: 23/2-14/4/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00, www.luxembourgdayan.com
