Browse Items (283 total)
Sort by:
Odalisque
Dianne Blell confronted the infamous “topless” district of San Francisco and its standards of public morality with a painting of a nude torso on a billboard. It was made from a photograph which she had staged of a female in the classical…
I Became a Secret Hippie
The piece began when I took my clothes off, jeans and a t-shirt, and lay on my floor on my back. A friend hammered a star-shaped stud into my sternum. I then sat in a chair and had all my hair cut off. Finally, I dressed in some FBI clothes I had…
Fire Roll
I began the evening watching television, smoking and drinking beer. The other artists were preparing their pieces. People were filling the museum and my activity went almost unnoticed. After about an hour I got up and went around the room turning off…
Garcon
The week of 3-7 August, I served cappuccino and expresso (sic) to visitors to the Hansen Fuller Gallery. I did this during gallery hours, 10.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., for an entire week, serving more than 300 cups of coffee. The gallery made no…
Sculpture in Three Parts
I sat on a small metal stool placed on a sculpture stand directly in front of the gallery entrance, an elevated door. A sign on the stand read "Sculpture in Three Parts. I will sit on this chair from 10.30am 9/10/74 until I fall off." About ten feet…
There Have Been Some Pretty Wild Rumors About Me Lately and I Just Wanted to Set the record Straight
This performance took the form of an oral narrative in which I revealed the truth of certain startling crisis events in my personal life which formed the basis of many wild rumors. Except for the one evening, no record, written or otherwise, of this…
Castle to Castle
A single invitation was sent out telling the receiver to arrive at the Art Institute at a given time and the guard on duty that night would direct the person to the bottom of the stairwell of the tower. The tower is seven stories high and has steep…
Jump
During office working hours, I drove around San Francisco’s high-rise financial district. (Bustos 1979: 59)
The Perfect Kiss
Byars' works find their source in philosophy and theology rather than visual perception. The artist and poet William Blake once stated, "The eye envies the mind." Byars empathizes with such sentiments. His calculated actions and images serve…
Windows: No. 1 - 2169 Jones
In Eleanor Coppola's participatory Windows (1973), she proposed that visitors pick up a map and go out into the streets of San Francisco to complete the experience of the exhibition. The windows that were designated by the artist as rich visual…