ALICE AYCOCK
PROJECTS FOR PCA
HISTORY OF A BEAUTIFUL MAY ROSE GARDEN IN THE MONTH OF JANUARY
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011 with funding from
LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation
http://www.archive.org/details/historyofbeautifOOayco
HISTORY OF A BEAUTIFUL MAY ROSE GARDEN IN THE MONTH OF JANUARY.
Part 1: The Ascension Scene (Weapons) in which there appears a huge funnel shaped pit situated beneath the Northern Hemisphere and running down to the center of the Earth.
Part 2: The Coronation Scene (Planets) in which there can be found a Book of Knowledge of Mechanical Devices as illustrated by the Elephant Clock.
ALICE AYCOCK SEPTEMBER 22-OCTOBER 7, 1978
PROJECTS FOR PCA PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF ART PROJECTS FOR PCA
This exhibition has been funded in part by The National Endowment
for the Arts in Washington D.C., a Federal Agency, and
the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
Copyright 1979 Philadelphia College of Art
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 79-3942 Philadelphia College of Art Gallery Staff
Photographs/Alice Aycock, pp. 9, 1 1; Eugene Mopsik pp. 7, 8, 10; Janet Kardon / Director of Exhibitions
John Weber Gallery, p. 6 Paula Marincola / Assistant to the Director
Catalogue production/Jerome Cloud Gordon Gibfried / Gallery Attendant
NOTES FOR THE ROSE GARDEN
Ways to get to heaven, ways to climb there, August, 1978
Leaping the chasm at Stand Rock, Wisconsin Dells, 1887
Eunice Winkless's Dive into a Pool of Water, Pueblo, Colorado, July 4, 1905
Wilbur Wright's Glider Test Flight, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, October 11, 1902
The Angel in the Red Dress Returning to the Center on a Yellow Cloud Above a Group of Swineherds, Sienna c. 1406 1481
Alice Aycock
Alice Aycock has been producing quasi-architectural off- spring since 1972. Her earliest structure, Maze, 1972, a multi- cursal wood labyrinth, elicited its quota of decisions from the spectator. Her discussion of the piece refers to the labyrinth of Minos on Crete, thus placing it in an historical continuum. A year later she built Low Building with Dirt Roof, so "low" one was forced to crawl through it. These physical and psy- chological burdens for the spectator - directional decisions and unnatural postures - have remained constant dimen- sions. Her work since 1973 progressively added physical demands, expected more from the viewer's imagination, and insistently extended its historical references. Now the participatory element has been removed; her recent pieces have become armatures for imaginary, mystical and historical journeys.
The arcane title of Aycock's project for the Philadelphia Col- lege of Art gallery indicates the conceptual terrain to be traversed by the viewer:
History of a Beautiful May Rose Garden in the Month of January.
Part 1: The Ascension Scene (Weapons) in which there appears a huge funnel shaped pit situated beneath the Northern Hemisphere and running down to the center of the Earth.
Part 2: The Coronation Scene (Planets) in which there can be found a Book of Knowledge of Mechanical Devices as illustrated by the Elephant Clock. Found in the Rose Garden were a boat, houses, staircases and corridors, dispersed among five separate structures built with unfinished construction grade lumber strips and plywood. The route around the structures was labyrinthine. Though each part might have been arranged in the gallery by a constructivist cartographer, there were many architec- tural quotations from pre-Christian and Medieval structures and contemporary vernacular houses.
On entering the gallery the most prominent element was the "elephant clock," a paraphrase of a windmill, ceiling high and crowned at each of its eight spokes with small pitched- roofed dwellings. Yet at the center, a square of ladders, recurrent images in Aycock's vocabulary, and one by six upright planks set on the floor of the gallery hindered any possible revolution. This was the only one of the five parts that was "grounded." All the others were raised at various heights from the floor by attenuated "saw-horses."
Behind the clock, and parallel to the long axis of the gallery, a horizontal corridor extended almost the length of the space, floating on saw-horses above the floor at eye-level. The single access into the five structures was at one end of this corridor. Here the spectator stood under a pitched roof enclosure recalling the roof type of pharaohs' dwellings within Egyptian pyramids. From this vantage point, a long tunnel vista through the corridor "framed" the blank gallery wall. At that end the horizontal passage was bridged by a staircase, the first step of which was five feet above the floor; the last step touched the ceiling. Even if one could levitate, entry would be barred by a small ladder blocking the first step and extending to the ceiling. The exterior was decorated with what Aycock referred to as an "upside down railing" — vertical strips of wood which marched down the length of the passageway.
The third structure, an inclined half-enclosed staircase, was set behind the passageway. The first step was eight feet from the floor; again, the last collided with the ceiling. This stair- case was raised from the floor by supports that were not visi- ble from the gallery entry; from there the staircase appeared to be floating in mid-air.
Similar "legs" supported a seven and a half foot wide boat in the left corner of the gallery. The hull of the semi-circular boat contained two miniaturized facing staircases enclosing an inverted ziggurat of space. It was tilted on its axis, as if to surmount a wave.
The final structure to the right of the gallery entrance was an inclined covered chute, the floor of which was marked by parallel ladder risers. In a lecture given at the college during her residence, Aycock showed a slide of the interior of a pyramid passage with a similar architectural detail. Only a crouching person could manuever passage in the pyramid, but even this kind of difficult access was denied the spectator of the Rose Garden.
In Project Entitled "The Beginnings of a Complex ..." for Documenta VI, 1977, free-standing facades appeared to be refugees from a stage or movie set, rather than the remain- ing sides of an actual building, and the spectator was free to devise his own strategies for entry. Now that one is no longer invited to inhabit the set, the spectator's surrogate has to be a limber conceptual performer, with an ability to expand or shrink, contradict laws of gravity, and adapt to palimpsests of different time frames. The corridors of the Rose Garden demanded a reptilian crawl or flotation in mid-air in a floorless hallway. The staircases presented the greatest paradox. While the risers were common house size, their proximity to the ceiling would make passage impossible; yet if a figmentary self were small enough to stand under the ceiling, one's legs would not be long enough to climb the steps.
To "stage" is to construct artifice, which magically restores fragments of history. The wanderer in the Rose Garden was prompted by an eclectic "bricoleur's" gathering of architec- tural notations from the history of buildings. One suspects that Aycock's historical derivations are especially selected for their bilingual messages. Rose Garden's enchantment came about because of an overlay of blatant raw materials and simple construction methods on an amorphic Borgesian structure. Borges writes, "It is enough to recall or to mention subsequent events, in as few words as possible; that concave basin which is the collective memory will furnish the wherewithal to enrich or amplify them."'
All the structures of the Rose Garden, with the exception of the "elephant clock," hovered at various heights between the floor and the ceiling, following the conventions of medieval manuscripts where figures floated randomly on the page. This physical suspension connoted a religious state, related to the malleable conceptual skeleton of the Rose Garden, where ideas shifted in and out of focus to eventually remain in limbo. While constructing the piece Aycock often described the corridors and stairways as accesses to heaven. But if heaven is the destination, it is to be reached by a series of shrewd, child-like fantasies.
Rose Garden had a light-hearted aura of whimsy, even if it was heavily bound by conflicting fantasies. Decorative elements contributed to this ambiance. Drawn from "carpenter gothic" details of the American wood house or shanty were wood rounds of varying diameters and rays of wood strips atop each of the pitched roofs. Ornament is relatively new for Aycock; it has no functional counterpart like the windows, ladders and wheels in earlier works. It first appeared, still guised as lifting devices, in "The Sign on the Door Read the Sign on the Door . . . ," 1978. In an untitled work for the Venice Biennale, 1978, a minaturized echo of a Romanesque cathedral was perched on the roof of a shed which housed four large wheels. The Rose Garden is the first example of the application of decorative elements that,
despite an historical reference to the American shanty, read primarily as sheer ornamentation.
The dimension of perambulation identifies her work as seventies sculpture, even if part of the journey is imaginary. In this sense her work relates to that of Siah Armajani, Patrick Ireland, Robert Irwin, and George Trakas — other artists in the Projects for PCA series whose work must be physically traversed to be experienced. In a recent exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto this genre was entitled "Structures for Behavior". Roald Nasgaard, the curator of that exhibition, writes, "Increasingly the experience of the new sculptures has become centered in the body of the perceiver, who for extended time undergoes the sensation of being suspended in the act of perceiving and transparent to its process and tex- ture."2
Aycock, like Mary Miss and Trakas, adds to the inventory of sculpture techniques. The carpenter's trade is added to modeling, carving, casting, welding and manufacturing. The artist irreverently chooses to become an artisan. The tools, devices, and materials of carpentry produce structures that resemble the skeletons of vernacular buildings - still "in process." Surfaces relentlessly present the wood itself, un- dressed and without "finish."
The only requirement for the abodes Aycock creates is that they present an artifice, rather than make a commitment to shelter. Unlike traditional theater, which separated its sets from the audience, her structures are props for imaginary habitation. Like her colleagues already mentioned, she carefully negotiates "content" into post-modern art. With Aycock the esthetic energies of the seventies — conceptual and physical movement as the avatar of sophisticated perceptions — flow through memories of historical structures and vernacular processes.
Janet Kardon
1. Roald Nasgaard, Structures for Behavior, Exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario, Canada, 1978, p. 37,
2. Jorge Luis Borges, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," Ficciones, Grove Press Inc., New York City, New York, 1962, p. 33.
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HISTORY OF A BEAUTIFUL MAY ROSE GARDEN IN THE MONTH OF JANUARY, 1978 PRELIMINARY DRAWING PENCIL ON VELLUM 24" X 68"
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HISTORY OF A BEAUTIFUL MAY ROSE GARDEN IN THE MONTH OF JANUARY, 1978 WOOD 12' x 45' x 27'5" VIEW FACING SOUTHWEST
VIEW FACING SOUTHEAST
VIEW FROM ENTRY DOOR, FACING SOUTH
VIEW FACING NORTHEAST
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DETAIL OF CHUTE, FACING SOUTHWEST
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ALICE AYCOCK
Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1946 Lives and works in New York City
EDUCATION
Douglass College, New Brunswick, New Jersey, B.A., 1968 Hunter College, New York City, New York, M.A., 1971
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Listings are chronological and include catalogues. One- per- son exhibitions precede group exhibitions. Collated by Paula AAarincola
1970
Sand #7
Artist's studio, New York City, New York Air, industrial fan, sand, weathervane
1971
Sun /Glass
Fry Farm, Silver Springs, Pennsylvania Glass "Clay #1 ," 26 Contemporary Women Artists
Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgef ield, Connec- ticut
Clay, plywood, water
Catalogue with text by Lucy R. Lippard "Sand #2," Untitled group exhibition
1 1 2 Greene Street, New York City, New York
Air, industrial fans, sand, weathervane
1972 Maze
Gibney Farm, New Kingston, Pennsylvania
Wood
Untitled V
Museum of Modern Art, Penthouse Gallery, New York City, New York Communications
Inhibodress Gallery, Sydney, Australia
1973
Low Building with Dirt Roof
Gibney Farm, New Kingston, Pennsylvania
Earth, fieldstone, wood Artlift 549
Women's Interart Center, New York City, New York Conceptual Art
Women's Interart Center, New York City, New York
1973-1974
Stairs (These Stairs Can Be Climbed)
1 1 2 Greene Street, New York City, New York Wood
1974
Walled Trench /Earth Platform /Center Pit Gibney Farm, New Kingston, Pennsylvania Concrete block, earth
Williams College Project
Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts Concrete block, earth, wood
C.7500
California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California. Also shown at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connec- ticut; Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Smith Col- lege Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; 48 Earlham Street, Covent Garden, London, England; A.I.R. Gallery, New York City, New York; and/or Gallery, Seat- tle, Washington, 1974
Catalogue with text by Lucy R. Lippard and notes by the artists
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Interventions in Landscape
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts Projekt '74
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany
Catalogue with text by Evelyn Weiss
1975
Sense of Reference
Mandeville Center for the Arts, University of California at
San Diego, La Jolla, California
Catalogue with artists' statements 2 Artists
Walters Hall Art Gallery, Douglass College, New
Brunswick, New Jersey Biennale de Paris
Museum of Modern Art, Paris, France
Catalogue with text by Evelyn Weiss "A Simple Network of Underground Wells and Tunnels," Projects in Nature
Merriewold West, Far Hills, New Jersey
Concrete, earth
Catalogue with introduction by Edward Fry and artist's
statement Labyrinth
Watson Gallery, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts
Also shown at Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, 1975; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington
D.C., 1976
Catalogue with texts by Ronald J. Onorato and Alice T.
Friedman. Catalogue for Philadelphia College of Art with
text by Janet Kardon "Scaffolding," Untitled group exhibition
1 1 2 Greene Street, New York City, New York
Wood
1976
A//'ce Aycock Projects: Plans And Specifications
Watson Gallery, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts
"Wooden Posts Surrounded by Fire Pits," Sculpture Sited
Nassau County Museum of Fine Arts, Roslyn, New York
Concrete block, fire, wood "Heavy Roofed Building," 2 Artists
Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, California
Concrete, earth "Wooden Shacks on Stilts with Platform," Installations
Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, West Hartford,
Connecticut
Wood 4 Artists
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massa- chusetts
Catalogue with text by Michael Klein Small Masterworks
Rosa Esman Gallery, New York City, New York 1976 Invitational
John Weber Gallery, New York City, New York
1977
The True and the False Project Entitled "The World Is So Full
of a Number of Things"
1 1 2 Greene Street, New York City, New York
Sheetrock, wood Project Entitled, "Studies For A Town"
The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York
Wood W American Artists of the 1970s
Muhlenberg Center for the Arts, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Catalogue with introduction by Monroe Denton "Project Entitled 'The Beginnings of a Complex . . .'," Documenta VI
Kassel, Germany
Concrete, wood
Catalogue includes text on Alice Aycock by Nancy D.
Rosen and artist's statement "Project Entitled 'The Beginnings of a Complex . . .": Excerpt
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Shaft #4/Five Walls'," Artpark Lewiston, New York Wood
Catalogue with text by Nancy D. Rosen and artist's state- ment
"The Twentieth Floor — A Series of Twenty-one Walls,"
Metaphor and Illusion
The First National Bank Building, Dayton, Ohio, Wright
State University, Dayton, Ohio in conjunction with the city
of Dayton
Sheetrock, wood
Catalogue with text by Paul Wick
Drawings for Outdoor Sculpture: 1946- 1977
John Weber Gallery, New York City, New York Also shown at Amherst College, Amherst Massachusetts; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts; University of California at Santa Barbara, San- ta Barbara, California, 1978 Catalogue with text by David Shapiro
1978
A//ce Aycock
John Weber Gallery, New York City, New York
Project Entitled "A Precarious Method for Attacking an Enemy
Fortress. . . "
Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Portland, Oregon
Sheetrock, wood 'The Sign on the Door Read the Sign on the Door, "
University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island
Wood Project Entitled "On the Eve of the Industrial Revolution. . ."
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Wood The Angels Continue Turning the Wheels of the Universe
Despite Their Ugly Souls: Part I
Gallery Salvatore Ala, Milan, Italy
Wood The Happy Birthday Day Coronation Piece
Muhlenberg Center for the Arts, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Sheetrock, wood
Catalogue with texts by Monroe Denton, Edward Fry, and
Stuart Morgan. Acknowledgments by Alice Aycock Recent Works
John Weber Gallery, New York City, New York "Untitled," From Nature to Art, from Art to Nature. Six sta- tions for artnature. The nature of art, La Biennale di
Venezia
Venice, Italy
Wood
Catalogue with texts by Jean Christophe Ammann, Achille
Bonito Oliva, Antonio Del Guercio, Filiberto Manna "The Angels Continue Turning the Wheels of the Universe:
Part II," Made By Sculptors
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland
Wood
Catalogue with texts by Rini Dippel and Geert Van
Beijeren Architectural Analogues
Downtown Branch, Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York City, New York
Catalogue with text by Lisa Phillips "Untitled House from Venice," Dwellings
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Wood
Catalogue with text by Lucy R. Lippard Beyond fhe Canvas . . . Artists' Books and Notations
Touchstone Gallery, New York City, New York
SELECTED WRITINGS ABOUT THE ARTIST
Bear, Liza, "Rumbles," Avalanche, Summer/Fall, 1973, pp.
66-67. Bourgeois, Jean-Louis, "Review of Exhibitions," Art in
America, July/August, 1977, p. 94 Celant, Germano; Mello, Franco; and LeNoci, Marina,
"Denied Information," Domus, January 1972, pp. 53-56. Crary, Jonathan, "Projects in Nature," Arts Magazine,
December 1975, pp. 52-53. Glueck, Grace, "Artpeople," The New York Times, January
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6, 1978. Kardon, Janet, "Interviews with Some Modern Maze- makers," Art International, April/May, 1976, pp. 64-68. Kingsley, April, "Reviews: Philadelphia," Artforum,
February, 1976, p. 62. , "Six Women at Work in the Landscape," Arts
Magazine, April 1978, pp. 108-112. Lippard, Lucy R., ed., Six Years: The Dematerialization of the
Art Object from 1966 to 1972, Praeger, New York, 1972,
pp. 208, 253. Lorber, Richard, "Reviews," Artforum, Summer 1977, pp.
64-65. Morgan, Stuart, "Alice Aycock: 'A Certain Image of Some- thing I Like Very Much'," Arts Magazine, March 1978, pp.
118-119. , "The Skateboard on Middle Ground 'Looking at
Documenta VI'," Artscribe, November 1977, p. 30. Morris, Robert, "Aligned with Nazca," Artforum, October
1975, pp. 26-39. , "The Present Tense of Space," Art in America,
January/February 1978, p. 70. Muchnic, Suzanne, "Installations by Aycock and Reynolds,"
Artweek, November 6, 1976. Olson, Roberta J.M., "Aycock and the Antithetical, The Soho
Weekly News, April 14, 1977. Onorato, Ronald J., "The Modern Maze," Art International,
April/May, 1976, pp. 21-25. Perreault, John, "Art: Women in the News," Village Voice,
April 29, 1971. Rosen, Nancy D., "A Sense of Place," Studio International,
March/April 1977, pp. 115-121. Shapiro, David, "A View of Kassel," Artforum, September
1977, p. 56. Sheffield, Margaret, "Alice Aycock: Mystery Under Construc- tion," Artforum, September 1977, pp. 63-65. Siegel, Jeanne, "Notes on the State of Outdoor Sculpture at
Documenta VI," Arts Magazine, November 1977, p. 130. Smith, Roberta, "Reviews," Artforum, September 1974, p.
71.
, "Reviews," Artforum, December 1975, p. 69.
Wooster, Ann-Sargent, "Reviews: New York," Artforum, February 1976, p. 62.
WRITINGS BY THE ARTIST
Aycock, Alice, "An Incomplete Examination of the Highway Network/User/Perceiver System(s)," Unpublished Master's Thesis, Hunter College, New York City, New York, 1971
, "Four 36-38 Exposures," Avalanche, Spring
1972, pp. 28-31.
'5 Semi-Architectural Projects," c. 7500. Ex-
hibition catalogue, The California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, 1973.
"New York City Orientations," Triquarterly 32,
Winter 1975.
_, "Notes on 'Project for a Simple Network of
Underground Wells and Tunnels'," Projects in Nature, Ex- hibition catalogue, Merriewold West, Far Hills, New Jersey, 1975. , "Notes on 'Project for Five Wells Descending a
Hillside'," Tracks, Spring 1976, pp. 23-26. , Project Entitled "The Beginnings of a Com-
p/ex. . .," Lapp Princess Press Ltd. in association with
Printed Matter Inc., New York, 1977. , "Writings," Individuals: Post Movement Art in
America, A. Sondheim, ed., E.P. Dutton and Co., New
York, 1977.
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PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF ART
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Sam S. AAcKeel, Chairman
Arnold A. Bayard
Mrs. Helen Boehm
Nathaniel R. Bowditch
Mrs. Helen Chait
Mrs. Evelyn Copelman
Thomas Neil Crater
James Eiseman
Philip J. Eitzen
KermitHall
Mrs. Samuel M.V. Hamilton
H. Ober Hess
Josef Jaffe
Mrs. Paul Kaiser
Louis Klein
Mrs. Virginia H. Knauer
Berton K. Korman
Mrs. Austin Lamont
The Hon. Samuel M. Lehrer
Mrs. H. Gates Lloyd
Harvey S. Shipley Miller
Kevin Miller
Jeffrey Natkin
Richard L. Newburger
Gordon Parks
Mrs. Meyer P. Potamkin
William Rafsky
Mel Richman
Mrs. Sydney Roberts Rockefeller
Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald
Mrs. Neill Schmeichel
Samuel R. Shipley, III
Dr. J. Finton Speller
Frederick T. Waldeck
Philip H. Ward, III
HONORARY TRUSTEES
Mrs. Malcolm Lloyd Ronald K. Porter Mrs. Marguerite Walter Mrs. Thomas Raeburn White Mrs. John Wintersteen Howard A. Wolf
EX OFFICIO MEMBERS
The Hon. Frank L. Rizzo, Mayor, City of Philadelphia The Hon. Robert W. Crawford, Commissioner of Recreation The Hon. George X. Schwartz, President, City Council
Thomas F. Schutte, President
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