The High School of Art & Design, New York
The Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to have worked in collaboration with The High School of Art & Design’s Architecture teacher Helen Vachicouras and two of her Junior level classes around the exhibition “Multiples, Inc.: 1965-1992” which took place at MGG NY in January-February 2021.
Multiples, Inc. is the art publishing company founded by Marian Goodman and a few partners in 1965. The exhibition comprised of over 150 editions by over 70 artists including Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol. The broad variety of media used by the artists range from prints to unique objects, works on Plexiglas, portfolios, artist’s books, jewelry, furniture pieces, ephemera, stage props, photographs, and soft sculptural works. During the 60s and 70s, artists often experimented with new techniques and materials, and the lower price point of their editioned works allowed for them to be available to a wider audience.
The students were introduced to the serial work of Sol LeWitt, and focused in on “Autobiography”, the artist book published by Multiples, Inc. in 1980. In this seminal work, Sol LeWitt documents his daily surroundings by photographing every object of his Hester Street studio, ranging from books, to cooking pans, to doorknobs, and cutlery. The artist organized these objects by similarity into a grid of 9 images per page, further cancelling the hierarchy between them. LeWitt's thorough cataloging of the mundane objects around him created a self-portrait of the artist without using any images of his body or facial features. Students were asked to look around their own space and think about ways in which their environment and the objects they are surrounded by evoke their sense of self. This lesson was particularly resonant since at the time the students were strictly learning remotely from home due to the pandemic.
