Vik Muniz’ The Last Supper (Milan), created in 1997, was one of the first artworks incorporated into the Dikeou Collection; it is also the first in his popular series, “Pictures of Chocolate.” It is a harbinger of sorts, imbued with a sense of preeminence that set the trajectory of the collection and of Muniz’ chocolate streak, yet it is not an original composition. The Last Supper (Milan) is in fact a copy of a copy, stemming from Da Vinci’s iconic 1495 fresco and subsequently appropriated by Warhol in 1986, which served as the inspiration for Muniz’ chocolate painting. Food, religious iconography, and appropriation are potent themes in this multi-layered work, but one crucial aspect of Muniz’ process in creating The Last Supper, along with much of his body of work, is one that is frequently glossed over, and that is its destruction. He meticulously creates images, both appropriated and original, out of food, dust, trash, toys, earth, and air, photographs them, then disposes of what he made, keeping the photograph as the art object. “Destroy” has strong and deliberate connotations, very different from “temporary” or “ephemeral,” which are soft and passive. What does it mean for an artist to intentionally destroy something of their own creation? What path is he following or setting by participating in this act?

Muniz started on this path of destruction out of necessity. In the early ‘90s he made sculptures out of plasticine to photograph, and then destroyed the sculptures to continue the process because he had only a small amount of the material to work with and would reuse it to make more sculptures.

From “The Sugar Children” series, 1996.

In 1995 he traveled to the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean where he befriended the local children whose parents worked in the sugarcane fields. Struck by the parents’ emotional and physical plight, and their children’s inevitable inheritance of this difficult life, he created portraits of the children out of sugar, photographed the results, and then swept away the sugar and preserved the remains in small jars. This was a breakthrough series for Muniz which resulted in an invitation to participate in a major photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. His process remains the same today - create, document, destroy. Most artists would weep at the thought of destroying something they put so much work into, but for Muniz it is quite practical. Sure, he could use some kind of adhesive or fixative to give his handmade creations more permanency, but they would lose the legibility that only a photograph could produce.

”Double Mona Lisa, After Warhol, (Peanut Butter + Jelly),” 1999.

According to the Collaborative Arts Resources for Education website, Vik licked away his Last Supper chocolate painting after he photographed it, but it is not likely that he would have licked/consumed all of his food-based work. In his biography/catalogue raisonné, Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer, he stated that he hates the taste of peanut butter, which is one of the materials he used in his Double Mona Lisa (Peanut Butter + Jelly), so it is doubtful that he would have destroyed the piece by eating it. Perhaps he allowed someone else to consume the food; there is no definite answer. How he destroys the images he photographs, though, is not as important as positioning him amongst other artists who have done the same thing but for differing reasons.

Janine Antoni, “Lick and Lather,” 1993-1994.

Chocolate is a seductive substance, one that has tantalized artists for decades. Janine Antoni’s Lick and Lather uses chocolate’s decadent allure as a vehicle to express the dualistic yet circular relationship between creation and destruction. The defacement of these works was meant to be self-inflicted, but Lick and Lather has twice fallen victim to the mouths of viewers who bit off noses from the chocolate busts. Here we see how destruction functions as a means of creating an artwork, but also harms it when not performed by the artist. When an artwork is charged with a high level of intimacy from its creator, especially an intimacy that entails a level of degradation, the viewers’ boundaries can become blurred and feel that are they welcome to partake in the process.

Robert Rauschenberg, “Erased de Kooning Drawing,” 1953

One of the most (in)famous cases of a destroyed artwork is Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing , in which Rauschenberg obtained a drawing from the renowned AbEx artist for the sole purpose of erasing it from the page. Rauschenberg did this to discover if an artwork could be made through erasure, and initially did this to his own drawings, but found this method ineffective and uncreative; he had to erase a work of significance. de Kooning gave Rauschenberg one of his drawings, and, in knowing his intentions, chose one with media that was especially difficult to remove. It took Rauschenberg about a month to achieve a bare page, which was then placed in a frame inscribed by Jasper Johns. Vincent Katz aptly surmised Rauschenberg’s radical destructive tendencies: “Erased de Kooning Drawing symbolised what was iconic about much of what Rauschenberg did in those days – iconic and iconoclastic at the same time… it stands for an era when something seemingly negative could, in fact, turn out to have positive repercussions.” de Kooning willingly sacrificed his own art so that another artist could manifest his own vision. The story behind this work is far more valuable than piece itself, in both its original form and final form.

Sometimes an artist disposes of their work simply because they don’t like it. Monet took a knife to thirty of his waterlily canvases, John Baldessari burned more than a decade’s worth of art, and Louise Bourgeoise would break her small sculptures if they did not satisfy her. These instances often lead to a renewed perspective and creative rebirth. Attachment can lead to stagnancy, a lesson that Vik likely learned on a visit to The Asia Society in New York in the mid-‘90s. There he saw a beautifully intricate and painstakingly executed sand mandala get swept away by the Tibetan monks who created it. Flabbergasted by what he saw, Vik incessantly questioned one of the monks how he could destroy something that helped create. Finally the monk admitted that he took pictures of the mandala before it was swept, a tip that he likely kept in his head during that journey to St. Kitts.

-Hayley Richardson

Ester Partegàs is interested in examining the minute, overlooked aspects of prevalent themes in contemporary life. As the adage goes, the devil is in the details, and Partegàs scrutinizes broad issues of place/space, consumerism, and isolation with her replicas of portable headphones, newspapers, candy bars, and airplane pillows in her sculpture, Homeless (1999), at Dikeou Collection. She dissects these details and replications even further in Detours, a series of drawings she began in 2001 that mimic cashier receipts, one of which she created as a poster for zingmagazine issue 17. When viewers encounter Homeless and Detours, they are presented with objects that are common and uninteresting yet embedded with compelling insight that begs for a closer look at the things we deem unimportant yet engage with on a daily basis.

Homeless is a replica of an airplane chair constructed out of wood and styrofoam, accessorized with wares that only serve temporary functions before being discarded. The chair and its accoutrements represent the living environment of the contemporary nomad and their entrapment in consumer culture. Who is this contemporary nomad? Judging by the bags from Helmut Lang and Kate Spade, the laptop, and the copy of The New York Times, this is a nomad who likely travels for business. The ubiquitous name brands and the need to stay informed and connected via the internet and newspaper are what ground this traveler with some sense of familiarity as the scenery and the people change. The chair itself is a grounding mechanism as well, serving as the place where one eats, sleeps, works, and maybe squeezes in some entertainment and socializing. These objects provide familiarity and functionality, but not comfort, which is a feeling most naturally achieved in a home environment.

When one is outside of the home and in the public realm, it is to be expected that everything a person needs will have to be purchased. Gasoline, parking, picking up dry cleaning, lunch, shopping…every activity is essentially a monetary transaction. With Detours Partegàs takes sales receipts, the calling card of consumption, and turns those transactions inward. Phrases like “I can’t stand the house anymore,” “Some days I feel so worthless,” and “I am desperate for something new and exciting” appear on the receipts with each word itemized as a product and its cost. Essentially,

Detours shows how everything outside the home comes at a price, and even one’s most private thoughts can be nickel and dimed while in the midst of these transactions.

Image courtesy of Foxy Production

Image courtesy of Foxy Production

Image courtesy of Foxy Production

Ester is currently exhibiting a new body of work in her solo show, “The Passerby,” at Foxy Production, where she turns her focus to objects that would be found at construction sites and camp grounds rather than travel destinations and department stores. In “The Passerby,” she recreates and recontextualizes plastic tarps, buckets, box containers, and shipping labels by meticulously and beautifully recrafting them and placing them in a gallery. Tarps, which are cheap, durable, and meant to cover and protect things more precious than themselves, are transformed into gauzy polyurethane veils which are hung from the ceiling like fine silks. The crinkled texture of the heavy tarp, formally a weathered sign of use, is now an area of visual interest that is more comparable to delicate gold leaf than foldable plastic. The buckets and storage bins are cast in a colored resin with their handmade qualities not immediately apparent, encouraging viewers to closely inspect these items that they would otherwise ignore. These containers are filled with oversized silkscreened replicas of shipping labels and airline tags, which are documents of people and objects passing between various destinations.

Ester Partegàs’ ability to subtly yet effectively point out the deeper meanings inherent within seemingly inconsequential items helps us to gain a greater understanding of the world around us. She does very little to change these objects’ appearance or function, but by simply giving them some handmade love and attention and tweaking the context she amplifies their value. The effectiveness of her work has longterm sustainability beyond the gallery space, meaning we can learn how to train ourselves to be more mindful of the objects we live with everyday, appreciate their usefulness and craftsmanship, and therefore feel satisfied with simplicity. Doing so will lower our drive to consume and allow us to find peace with the way things are and not what they “should” be. Her work at Dikeou Collection and her show at Foxy Production begs us to be considerate of the space between places and things and the details that populate these spaces. In doing so, life starts to fill out and become whole as opposed to a series of connect-the-dot motions with so much emptiness in between.

-Hayley Richardson

Karl Benz invented the first gas-powered automobile in 1886, but it was Henry Ford’s Model T introduced in 1908 that revolutionized the auto industry. The Ford Motor Company continued to release exciting new models, and in 1932 debuted its Model B and Model 18, which came in several body styles. These models, particularly the roadster and coupe builds, became popular with hot rodders who would tear the car down to the chassis and rebuild with custom engines, exhaust, tires, body mods, and paint. By removing the flash, speed, and signature roar, British artist Chris Gilmour’s Ford (Hot Rod) can easily be interpreted as the antithesis of what a hot rod should be, yet his dedication to the design and build process, as well as his conceptual reinterpretation of “customization,” magnifies the less tangible aspects of what these cars represent. Made entirely out of used cardboard, Gilmour’s Ford truly is one of a kind in a culture that values originality and craftsmanship, and is just one of the many fine examples of how cars have the ability to transform into vehicles of wild creative expression.

Ford is a replica of 1932 roadster with a V8 427 blown engine, dropped front axle, and exposed headers. 

Reference images and build process from Gilmour’s studio

Gilmour’s painstaking attention to detail tempts people into thinking this is a real car, and quite often people try to open the trunk or the doors thinking they can hop inside. If there were a set of keys then someone would likely try to start it, despite its obvious artificiality. The contrasts between real and unreal, common material and luxury object, and fragility and solidity, are central to his work and made immediately apparent to viewers in a way that is accessible and delightful rather than confrontational and confusing. Gilmour spends about 3 to 6 months working on one of his cardboard sculptures, and, fittingly, his studio occupies an old car repair shop in a small town in Italy.

Options were limited for customization prior to Ford’s models of the 1930, but artist Sonia Delaunay was likely one of the first to visually radicalize her car and redefine the automobile as an art object. In 1925 she painted a Citroën B12 with blocks of color to match one of her textile designs. The above image points to the growing popularity of the automobile as something that is not only functional, but fashionable as well. The 1920s was a significant decade for women’s liberation, and Delaunay’s personalized vehicle illustrates women’s increasing freedom and mobility in society.

Decorated art cars like Delaunay’s became more common in the 1960s, with the tripped out hippie buses and Volkswagens dominating the aesthetic of the time. Janis Joplin’s 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet, painted by San Francisco artist Dave Richards, is an ode to the hippies’ love of color and nature. With rainbows, mountains, butterflies, and celestial bodies elegantly swirling all over the metal body, it’s hard to think of why she would want to trade in this masterpiece for a run-of-the-mill Mercedes Benz.

John Lennon painted his 1965 Rolls Royce Phantom V bright yellow with flowers, making it look like a circus carousel or gypsy caravan, and fellow Beatle George Harrison adorned his 1965 Austin Cooper ’S’, LGF 695D with Tibetan Buddhist imagery. Like Joplin’s Porsche, these cars were painted by talented yet relatively obscure artists. Having their art promoted by celebrities on a mobile platform did much to not only bolster their own profile but that of the art car in general. A decade after the flourish of ’65 celebrity hippie-mobiles, French race car driver Hervé Poulain invited Alexander Calder to paint his BMW 3.0 CSL, thus prompting BMW’s engagement in the arts and bringing the concept of the art car to a broader audience.

Art cars designed by: Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Ken Done

BMW is currently celebrating the 40th anniversary of the art car tradition with exhibitions in Hong Kong, at the Centre Pompidou, the BMW Museum and the Concorso d’Eleganza at Lake Como. “The BMW Art Cars provide an exciting landmark at the interface where cars, technology, design, art and motor sport meet,” reflects Maximilian Schöberl, Senior Vice President, Corporate and Governmental Affairs, BMW Group. “The 40-year history of our ‘rolling sculptures’ is as unique as the artists who created them. The BMW Art Cars are an essential element and core characteristic of our global cultural engagement.” The tradition has tapered off, though, the most recent car designed in 2010 by Jeff Koons. His car, a M3 GT2, is 17th in the series and he adorned it with the number 79 to commemorate the year Andy Warhol created his BMW art car. Each car serves as a symbol of its time, but also shows how the combination of blue chip artists with high-end automobiles creates the ultimate exclusive luxury item. Celebrity artists and celebrity owners are recognized and lauded for their creativity and fashionable taste in cars and the way they choose to customize them, but there are regular, working-class people out there who pour their hearts, souls, and a lot of their income into building their own rides from scratch.

Lowriders represent one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized sects in the world of custom cars. Men and women who partake in this culture are often assumed to be involved in gang activity, but the truth is these people use lowriding as a way to connect with family and build community. Lowriders are typically built from classic American cars of the 1960s, the ’64 Chevy Impala being the most popular model. The technical knowledge and creative vision of lowrider culture is passed down generation through generation. People know each other by what kind of car they drive - what the exhaust sounds like, what kind of stereo they have, and who helped them build it. The car is an extension of personal identity. Aside from the wild paint jobs, custom upholstered interiors, and booming sound systems, what makes lowriders stand out from all other custom cars is the special hydraulic system that gives them their signature bounce, which can reach as high as 8 vertical feet. Anyone who may dispute lowriding as an art form should read the following passage from Dave Hickey, who grew up immersed in car culture and has a firm grasp on its influence on American art aesthetics. 

From Air Guitar 

Chris Gilmour’s Ford (hot rod) may not have the operative mechanics and other material elements of a real car, but he proves his knowledge and ability to construct such a vehicle with the most minimal of materials. By creating an object of such affluence and fascination out of something as democratic as cardboard, Gilmour challenges the viewer to reconsider their own material desires. A collector of rare and valuable cars would certainly want to add this piece to his collection for its novelty factor while an art collector added it to her collection for its subtle conceptual underpinnings, but both could agree that it is the beautiful craftsmanship that makes it a truly remarkable work of art and contribution to the American car legacy.

-Hayley Richardson

The average American, ages 20 to 65, works 40 hours a week. That adds up to approximately 10.3 years over the course of a lifetime. While some people have jobs that require them to work outdoors, or in labs, factories, classrooms, and theaters, most of us spend our days working in an office environment. Desks, chairs, computers, and filing cabinets populate these spaces, walls are typically white with no decorative elements, and some are windowless. Offices like this can make work a real drag, so it is exciting when a company makes an effort to create a stimulating environment for their employees. In 2002, Devon Dikeou created what would be her “ideal office” for the French media and publishing company, Outcasts Incorporated. For four months, the Outcasts office was customized with furnishings picked out by the artist, as well as artworks of her own creation. Devon’s Ideal Office is still in operation today at the Dikeou Collection, and continues to be a fun and inspiring space to work. 

Outcasts Incorporated had six ideal office installations by different artists until July 2004, with Dikeou’s being the first of the series. As an artist whose concepts analyze the inner workings of the art world and different viewing contexts, and whose studio also operates as an office for the production of zingmagazine, designing an ideal office was an appealing opportunity to present her multifaceted practice in a novel environment. Wall color was of primary importance when beginning the project, and Devon opted for a shade a of blue that matched the color of Peggy Guggenheim’s bedroom at her palazzo in Venice, which she renamed “Peggy Guggenheim Blue.” Blue signifies loyalty, confidence, and intelligence, and is said to be the most productive color for an office environment, as it stimulates the mind and easily compliments other colors in the space. This particular shade is lively yet soothing, suggests luxury but not ostentation, and sets the tone for the individual artworks and modern décor. 

Plants like the ones in Dikeou’s Cajole are known to reduce stress at work and can help diffuse office noise. They would also decrease the frequency of airborne illness and help maintain room temperature if they were real, but their artificiality is what best suits the idealized scene. The use of plants suggests a desire to bring the outside in, and she extends this idea by considering not only what goes inside of an ideal office, but where an ideal office would physically exist. She envisions her office to be in one of America’s most iconic landmarks, Yankee Stadium, first base to be specific, represented via Touch of Greatness: Babe Ruth. The fact that Outcasts’ headquarters is in an entirely different country from Yankee Stadium makes the setting even more outlandish, therefore pushing the impracticality of idealism to its maximum. But like the wall color and the plants, Touch of Greatness could have a beneficial impact on the employees, perhaps working as a subliminal motivator, instilling greatness through osmosis. 

The baseballs signed by Babe Ruth and the green Astroturf with base and baseline that comprise Touch of Greatness inspire success, but they also call for interaction and bring a sense of play to the setting. The Trick Is, There Is No “K” is another work by Dikeou installed in the office where players collect the letters printed in matchbooks to spell out “Dikeou” in hopes of winning a carton of cigarettes. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has written extensively about work and business psychology, and says game playing at work relaxes the mind and allows for creative thinking and breakthrough ideas. However, this game is impossible to win without the letter K, and will likely lead to frustration rather than a celebratory smoke. 

While the overall scheme of the Ideal Office is imbued with wit and joviality, Dikeou’s Takes A Licking, and Keeps on Ticking serves as a reminder that time is not free, and when an employee checks in at that clock he/she is then obligated to put all personal matters on hold until they punch out. The title, though, which refers to the popular Timex campaign introduced in the 1950s and brought back in the ‘90s, is about resilience and the ability to function under stress. Strong work ethic and professional integrity are qualities that define an ideal employee, and only those who fit that motto have the honor of clocking in at the Ideal Office

The Ideal Office is still ticking today at Dikeou Collection, albeit not in the exact form as installed at Outcasts Incorporated. Two employees work in this office and share a desk, which allows for easy communication and collaboration, and also democratizes the space. It still symbolically exists on first base in Yankee Stadium, but its real location is in the heart of the collection itself, which means visitors pass through all the time as they make their way through the galleries. This facilitates opportunities to engage with our audience and adds a personal touch to their experience. The best part is witnessing people’s reactions when they realize they can handle the baseballs in Touch of Greatness: Babe Ruth. The intention of the piece is that the balls lose value as collectibles when handled, but gain value as art objects. Like the baseballs, the office has accumulated the marks of everyday use and interaction, but that is what distinguishes it as a place where meaningful work happens. Dikeou’s Ideal Office, in both its original temporary installment and in its current ongoing state, shows how “the ideal” can be obtainable but is impossible to maintain long-term. An ideal office evolves with the needs of the people who use the space yet holds true to the principles of the company, and Devon Dikeou’s office has held up to this criteria for over a decade.

-Hayley Richardson

Sarah Staton has been exhibiting her work in museums and galleries since the late ‘80s, but in the summer of 1993 she hit the streets of London in an attempt to sell her art like a door-to-door salesman. She’d make appointments with potential buyers, or just show up at a person’s house, with the hope that someone would want to buy from her inventory of papier-mâché coins, cigarettes, credit cards, and other seemingly insignificant daily detritus. This act evolved into her ongoing SupaStore project, a DIY art sale experiment that has transpired at dozens of galleries and alternative venues over the years, the most recent at Galerie Emanuel Layr in Vienna. Over one hundred artists, ranging in recognition, have had a piece they created on sale at the SupaStore. Installed at Dikeou Pop-Up: Colfax is 10 SupaStore SupaStars, a portfolio of lithographs by various artists selected by Staton.

The artists, who include Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Tomato, Sarah Staton, Simon Periton, Gary Hume, Georgie Hopton, Anya Gallaccio, Tracey Emin, Simon Bill, and Ellen Cantor personify the rebellious spirit of the SupaStore scheme, and their presence in a relinquished record shop-turned-gallery underscores its history as a rogue outpost in art’s commercial sector.

Emin herself splashed around in the art market when she and Sarah Lucas opened The Shop in East London, also in 1993. Staton, Emin, and Lucas ushered in a new wave of underground hipness that London desperately needed at the time simply by offering venues and artworks that were intelligent, fun, and unpretentious, and by bringing together likeminded people in the arts with the rest of the neighborhood population. These ladies introduced something fresh to their community, but they were not the first, nor the last, to engage in the commercial side of art.

In 1935, Marcel Duchamp tried to sell his Rotoreliefs at a Paris inventor’s fair in an effort to have “a direct contact” with the consumer. It was a financial failure, as the consumers he reached out to were invested in science and technology, not art. The occurrence, however, became a quirky footnote in his biography, and was followed up with a stint posing as a cheese merchant to pass Nazi checkpoints in 1941. Duchamp’s episodes in mercantilism involved a degree of role-playing in which he detached himself from his artist position. Claes Oldenburg, on the other hand, placed his occupation as an artist at the forefront of his business endeavors when he opened The Store in December 1961.

The Store occupied the front of Oldenburg’s studio in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and he filled it with his sculptural replicas of diner food, clothing, cigarettes, price tags and sales posters. The Store allowed Oldenburg to bypass the gallery/art dealer/middle man and sell his work on his own terms, but more importantly it marked a pivotal moment in American culture when art and commerce started to blatantly appropriate each others aesthetics and economic agendas. Artists continued to incorporate commercial activities and spaces into their creative practice, but some took it a step further by investing in their stores and merchandise long term.

Emin and Lucas’ shop lasted six months, Oldenburg’s store only one month. Keith Haring’s Pop Shop stayed open for nearly two decades, from 1986 until September 2005. Located on Lafayette Street in SoHo, Haring decked out his Pop Shop with floor to ceiling murals and sold gifts and clothing donning his signature artistry. Haring made his motive for the shop clear: “Here’s the philosophy behind the Pop Shop: I wanted to continue the same sort of communication as with the subway drawings. I wanted to attract the same wide range of people and I wanted it to be a place where, yes, not only collectors could come, but also kids from the Bronx … this was still an art statement.” Unfortunately the Pop Shop had to close due to the high cost of maintaining a retail space in NYC, but it still operates online with profits going toward The Keith Haring Foundation.

The Pop Shop grew into a successful business establishment, but it always maintained its DIY attitude and was accessible to people from all walks of life. Larger corporate entities, particularly distinguished fashion houses, have since caught on to the soaring popularity and marketability of artist wares, and frequently enlist prominent contemporary artists to design and promote their products.

Jeremy Deller installation for Louis Vuitton, London

One of the companies leading this trend is Louis Vuitton, which has collaborated with dozens of artists who work in a range of genres. From the graffiti styles of RETNA and Aiko to the conceptual aesthetics of Jeremy Deller and Daniel Buren, LV has exposed its clientele to a world of art that supersedes other brands. The artists they work with not only design the line, but they also frequently use the stores as space to create immersive installations. This level of collaboration thus transforms the usual shopping trip into a cultural experience, where the shopper is not just walking into a store and buying a purse, but rather walking into an exhibition and leaving with a piece of art.

Contemporary art is so heavily dependent on the market that it’s no wonder artists are finding ways to integrate it into their practice. What is most interesting to observe is the manner in which they choose to do this, whether it’s in a temporary space where they sell their own handmade items, or by teaming up with established companies to spread their work to a mass audience. Regardless of the approach, though, is the fact is that artists are recontextualizing space and interrupting the typical patterns of the art market. Sarah Staton’s SupaStore is one of the longest running projects to do this, which is an important quality that sets it apart from others. The SupaStore is also dependent on the contributions of multiple artists, allowing it to showcase such a range of artworks while other artist shop projects focus on one or maybe a few different people. What started as a parody on art’s commodification eventually grew into a documentation of the developments and movements in contemporary art, and the subsequent correlations that ebb and flow with the market and consumer habits. With 10 SupaStore SupaStars now at the Dikeou Pop-Up, a work acquired by an artist who also participated in the SupaStore, we see how the art market can come full circle in meaningful ways that can be sincere rather than superficial or trendy.

Click here to read more about the economics behind 10 SupaStore SupaStars.

-Hayley Richardson