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GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE ACQUIRES ARCHIVE OF POET AND VISUAL
ARTIST EMMETT WILLIAMS
LOS ANGELES – The Getty Research Institute has acquired the
archive of poet and visual artist Emmett Williams (American,
1925-2007), who played a central role in Fluxus and in the concrete
poetry
movement.
The Emmett Williams collection, referred to here as the Berlin
archive, covers Williams’ entire
career, including his early 1950s arts features for the U.S.
Army daily newspaper The Stars and
Stripes, his signature concrete poems Alphabet Poem and
Sweethearts in the 1960s, his collaborations
with Fluxus artists and concrete poets from the late 1950s into
the 2000s, and the graphics and
multiples he received from fellow poets and visual artists. This
archive was purchased in an acquisition
process that began in 2017. The archive was officially purchased
early this year.
“Emmett Williams played a significant role in the practice and
dissemination of interdisciplinary
art forms in the latter half of the 20th century, and his
archive intersects deeply with our superb holdings
of both concrete poetry and Fluxus multiples. There are also
exciting overlaps with the GRI’s recent
DATE: April 3, 2020 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Emmett Williams, in collaboration with Rosanna Chiessi and
Francesco Conz, Dance Fragments, from the suite Dance Fragments,
1980, silkscreen print, Verona: Edizioni Francesco Conz and Reggio
Emilia: Pari&Dispari, edition 48/60. © The Estate of Emmett
Williams, Courtesy Archivio Conz, Berlin, Courtesy Rosanna Chiessi
/ Pari&Dispari
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acquisition of the papers of Claes Oldenburg, who collaborated
with
Williams on a book of photographs and documents called Store
Days
(1967), and the papers of Simone Forti, who taught with Williams
at
California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and worked with him
on her
book at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design between 1972
and
1974,” said Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research
Institute.
“Williams’s vibrant, creative work and extensive archive are
thus a
tremendous addition to our special collections.”
Long acknowledged as a leading representative of the postwar
arts, Williams made key contributions through his varied
production of
poems, prints, scores, and performances. He published many works
of
concrete poetry, as well as three books and numerous essays
and
interviews on Fluxus. In addition, he served as editor of
Something
Else Press from 1966-1970.
“Despite Williams’ role as an enthusiastic promoter of
concrete
poetry through his Anthology of Concrete Poetry (1967) and as
a
leading figure within Fluxus, there are currently few scholarly
articles
and no monographs – except for those he wrote himself --
analyzing
his long artistic career and collaborations,” said Nancy
Perloff, curator,
modern & contemporary collections at the Getty Research
Institute.
“His archive will provide curators and art and literary
historians with a
unique opportunity to assess his influential contributions to
post-World
War II European and American art.”
Key components of the Emmett Williams Archive include
artwork, scores and performance instructions, posters,
prints,
ephemera (announcements, invitations, brochures, clippings),
correspondence, project files,
photographs, catalogues, and art books, ranging in date from the
beginnings of Fluxus in the late 1950s
to 2007, the year Williams died.
Williams was a keen and active collaborator. In tracing his
collaborations with Fluxus artists and
with concrete poets, the archive also offers a path to the study
of many important members of the
postwar avant-garde, including Ay-O, George Brecht, Robert
Filliou, Benjamin Patterson, Dieter Roth,
Gerhard Rühm, and Daniel Spoerri (the last two of whom were
members with Williams of the Darmstadt
Circle of Concrete Poetry).
Emmett Williams, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (Alphabet Poem), ca.
1963, offset print on paper scroll, Fluxus Editions. Getty Research
Institute, 2807-529. © The Estate of Emmett Williams Credit Line: ©
The Estate of Emmett Williams
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A cache of about 100 letters from Williams to his first wife,
Laura, provides important
biographical information from his initial Fluxus years. Williams
wrote half of these letters from the
Chateau of Ravenel, an artists’ commune north of Paris where
impoverished residents lived together
and performed. Williams writes principally about his artist,
poet, and composer friends. For instance, he
praises the composer Earle Brown; alludes to a “sort of
happening” that he and poet Spoerri performed
in Vienna; writes reverently of his “dear letter-friend whom
I’ve never met, Ian Hamilton Finlay” and
deems him “one of the most important people in the world” who
has “broken the concrete thing”
(referring to Finlay’s early concrete poetry); expresses his
interest in new music through references to
John Cage, Luciano Berio, and other American and European
experimental composers whom he met
for the first time while living in Darmstadt. He also writes
about his major projects, namely, his book-
length concrete poem, Sweethearts (1967), and his Anthology of
Concrete Poetry (1967).
A collection of Fluxus scrolls in the archive provides an
opportunity to study and admire this
distinctively postwar medium, which poets used in performance.
Printed on joined strips of buff-colored
paper stock and rolled, these scrolls consist of visually
striking typographic scores such as Williams’s
An Opera (1958), which uses ellipses to indicate rhythmic beats.
A very long, narrow scroll is devoted
to Williams’s Alphabet Poem (1963), one of his key concrete
sound poems comprising arrangements of
the 26 letters of the alphabet in rows and long columns
resembling numbers printed on adding-machine
tape. Other scrolls include a journal entitled Review featuring
elaborate typography by Lithuanian
American artist George Maciunas and a German Kalender that
reproduces sound scores by the
German Dadaist Raoul Hausmann and French sound poet François
Dufrêne.
Performance scores in the archive sometimes take the form of
instruction cards, such as those
Williams made for An Alphabet Symphony, in which a letter from
the alphabet is handwritten on one
side and an action to be performed (or an object) is written on
the reverse. Williams produced a set of
these cards in German, as well as English, calling them “score
cards” and inventing such actions as “er:
ich komme ja schon!” His friend Filliou created a set of cards
which he and Williams used in a Paris
performance of Filliou’s Poéme collectif (1963). Each card
contains the title of the piece, with answers
written by members of the audience on the reverse.
In addition to scores and instruction cards, the Emmett Williams
archive is rich in original works
of art by Williams and his colleagues, Most of these,
representing both Fluxus and concrete poetry,
take the form of drawings, silkscreens, posters, and paintings
by Roth, Brecht, Dorothy Iannone,
Spoerri, Seiichi Niikuni, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles,
Charlotte Moorman, Wolf Vostell, and Robert
Watts. Paper boxes with graphic designs by the Japanese artist
Takako Saito, sculptures by Iannone,
Polish invitation cards to events at the gallery of Jaroslaw
Kozlowski, an artist’s proof of The Sun by Ay-
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O, and silkscreens with fanciful titles, invitations designed as
works of art, and acrylic paintings on
photographic canvas from the series Berlin Berlin by Williams
are among the highlights.
The Berlin archive also offers an important collection of
ephemera spanning the 1940s to the
present. Housed in chronological binders compiled by William’s
widow, the visual artist Ann Noël, the
contents comprise programs, invitations, brochures, and
clippings documenting a history of Williams’
and Noël’s careers.
During the 1970s, Williams sold a portion of his archive and
single works to the American
collector Jean Brown, and these became part of the Jean Brown
Archive acquired by the Getty
Research Institute in 1985. Brown’s original archive from
Williams included correspondence from such
luminaries as George Brecht, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Claes
Oldenburg, and La Monte Young, scores by
Williams, and letters and prints by colleagues. The Research
Institute’s acquisition of the Berlin archive
brings it together with the Jean Brown material, establishing
the complete Emmett Williams Archive in
one location. Such commitment to the integrity of an archive is
emblematic of the GRI’s mission.
The Emmett Williams Berlin archive will be accessible for
researchers once the material is
processed and cataloged. An update will be posted online as the
archive becomes available.
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Hood [email protected] (818) 469-7223 Getty
Communications
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Emmett Williams, Voodoo, 2004, print, Edition Kasseler
Kunstverein © The Estate of Emmett Williams
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collections include rare books, artists' journals, sketchbooks,
architectural drawings and models, photographs, and archival
materials.
GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE ACQUIRES ARCHIVE OF POET AND VISUAL
ARTIST