Aspen - "The multimedia magazine in a box" - Part one

Independent art magazines have been around for a long time. I’m sure that there were many published earlier than Aspen which began in 1965 as “a multimedia magazine, designed by artists”, published by Phyllis Johnson. The magazine’s unique feature for it’s 10-issue life was that it was published not in standard format, but in a box which contained other objects as well as the paper you would expect. For instance, issue “5+6 included a reel of motion picture film” reproduced here along with the referenced text for this paragraph (scroll up on the page). The web page includes instructions for co-ordinating the film clips with audio files copied from the original phonograph recordings. I played Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s ‘Lightplay’ along with Alexander Scriabin’s ‘Prelude D’ and they really do go well together.

The web version of the magazine has been digitized and presented on the UbuWeb site so that even if you can’t see the magazine in it’s original form (except for the paper if you were to print it) you can at least get an idea of how it looked when it first appeared.

[July 8/09 - Most links to artists added through the magic of Zemanta, although I had to find Claus Oldenburg myself. I wouldn't ordinarily link all personal names but if Zemanta is going to do it for me, fine.]

Issue 1, "The Black Box", is made up of 9 items, including a letter from Phyllis Johnson. To see the separate articles, click on the Issue 1 link, and explore. While I would like you to read the articles I mention, in the interest of promoting wandering as a method of discovery, I’m not providing direct links. There’s also an mp3 of the St. James Infirmary Blues, if you like jazz.

Issue 2, "The White Box", contains a variety of material, including excerpts from speeches by actresses Carroll Baker and Eva Saint Marie and movie director Jean Renoir, and one sentence from screen writer Abby Mann which could apply to artists in all mediums.

Issue 3, “the Pop Art issue”, includes an article by Lou Reed [check out the videos]; cards reproducing art, with commentary, by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns, William deKooning, and others; and much, much more from a time we read about now but was happening as this issue was written.

Issue 4, “The McLuhan issue”, doesn’t necessarily contain much about the subject indicated.

Issue 5+6, “The Mimimalism issue”, on the other hand, provides an embarrassment of riches. There are poem excerpts spoken by William Burroughs; essays by Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes; instructions and diagrams for a very simple, or very complicated, (read the artist’s description) Maze; readings from Merce Cummingham and Marcel Duchamp; four film excerpts, including one by Robert Rauschenberg with hens; and various other projects.