RKD STUDIES

Introduction

All Bulletins (unless otherwise stated) were printed in black and white, on white paper, a single sheet, 29,7 x 42 cm, folded in two. Each edition circa 800 copies, printed with the exception of nos. 20, 21, 101-109) by Drukkerij Delta (from Bulletin nr. 110 named Drukkerij de Dageraad), The Hague. Circa 400 Bulletins of the total edition were mailed from Amsterdam, with the exception of nr. 11 (Düsseldorf), nr. 20 and 21 (Tokyo) and nr. 56 (Venice).

Art & Project published two inventories of their Bulletins. The first one in 1972 - on occasion of the presentation of Bulletins at the Cologne Art Fair - and a complete inventory of 156 Bulletins in 1997.¹

50 complete unsent sets of the Art & Project Bulletins were published in 1997 by 20th Century Art Archives, Cambridge. Seven reprints (Bulletin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 10) were printed for this limited edition by De Dageraad, but never contained a complete set of reprints, in most cases only 5 reprints and two ones from the original stock.

Three complete orginal sets of Art & Project Bulletins are in the collections of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, The Museum of Modern Art New York and the RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague. The Art & Project Archive at the RKD also contains several sent and unsent versions of the Bulletins, and correspondence with artists, printers etc.

From the earliest days in 1968 when the bulletin appeared under the title of 'Architectural Research' the small statement printed on the bottom of the front page rings out with the spirit of its' time. "Art & Project plans to bring you together with the ideas of artists, architects and technicians to discover an intelligent form for your living and working space. Art & Project invites you to participate in its exhibitions which will explore ways in which art, architecture and technology can combine with your own ideas."

This statement was to prove prophetic. The bulletin became well-known and as the gallery in Amsterdam grew, it attracted artists in the Conceptual Art Movement to whom the bulletin was a way of conveying art ideas from the artist to the viewer/reader at low cost: it did not have a value except for the ideas it contained; bulletins were mailed free to an international mailing list or distributed from the gallery to visitors. The bulletins contained original material in a sequence which is determined by the artist, but the viewer/reader can read the material in any order but the artist presents it as s/he thinks it should be. As Lawrence Weiner, who made five bulletins states "THEY (BOOKS) ARE PERHAPS THE LEAST IMPOSITIONAL MEANS OF TRANSFERRING INFORMATION FRON ONE TO ANOTHER (SOURCE)."

The important of the bulletins as an archival source on the period is paramount, both through the quality of the original pageworks and the calibre of the artists involved. All the key artists from this period contributed in one and others more bulletins: Robert Barry made four, Stanley Brouwn made seven, Jan Dibbets, six, Hamish Fulton, three, Gilbert & George, four, Douglas Heubler four, Sol LeWitt five, Richard Long, seven, and Allan Ruppersberg two.

From Daniel Buren's transparent bulletin to Sol LeWitt's beautiful bulletin folded into 48 squares, from Bas Jan Aders's final bulletin, (see above) mailed during his last work in which he died to Gilbert & George's tender drawn double portrait, these issues are a unique moving international artwork that stands apart from anything else in this period in its breadth of artists included and the quality of the original work involved due to the freedom given to the artists to express themselves by Art & Project. It is increasingly included in exhibitions concerned with Conceptual Art . Most recently it was included in the major exhibition 'Eye on Europe, Prints, Books & Multiples, 1960 to Now, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006, (colour illus full page 102), where it formed a part of the section on Language.²