Last week Publicide took a field trip to the Wooster Enterprises exhibit at Churner & Churner gallery in Chelsea, lured by the unprecedented opportunity to see the cult line of 70’s Fluxus-influenced paper ephemera shown in its entirety.
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| Hand in Glove, George Maciunas, 1973/77 |
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| George Maciunas, Torso in Fur stationery, 1973/77 |
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| This is an All Occasion Card and This is an Anniversary Card, 1977 |
Wooster Enterprises was an experimental design company founded by artists Jaime Davidovich and Judith Henry in Soho in 1976. With help from friends in the Fluxus art movement like George Maciunas and Yoko Ono, they created winking, idiosyncratic stationery, greeting cards, postcards, envelopes, masks, confetti, and other goods. Unfraid of a high-brow gag, their products touched on themes of inversion (“Things To Do” and “Things Not To Do” stationery, “I Hate To Write” notepaper), text-art self-referentialism (“This Is An Anniversary Card”), grotesquerie (an apron printed with human organs, a paper face mask with a violent finger-stretched rictus grin) and trompe l’oeil (crumple-print paper, a postcard printed to look like an envelope.)
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| Envelope Postcard, 1977 |
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| Things To Do/ Things Not To Do two-pad set, 1977 |
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| George Maciunas, Grotesque Face Mask, 1973 |
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| installation view |
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| the iconic Crumpled Paper stationery, 1976 |
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| display case housing the Wooster Enterprises greatest hits |
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| installation view: crisp white gray and yellow |
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| love the name of this store on this funfetti-heavy invoice: SHENANIGANS |
Though the products were conceptual, the playfully minimal designs were appealing enough to commercial sensibilities that they became a hit in gift shops, blurring the line between art and commerce and setting the blueprint for designey museum-store gifts thereafter. For a moment, coinciding with the rise of downtown art culture in Soho, Wooster Enterprises was hot, as gift shop invoices included in the exhibition attest. But as a sustainable business, Wooster Enterprises only lasted two years, their output--and Henry and Davidovich's art-as-commerce experiment--largely forgotten to time. But what a thrill to see the original experimental paper goods brought out of retirement and looking sleek in a palette of whites, grays and yellows, expertly displayed in bright class cases and across the walls. The collected invoices papering the walls are a bonus treat in themselves, featuring a wealth of kooky ’70s gift shop names like “Nancy Fancy Inc”, “Shenanigans,” “That Personal Touch,” and “Serendipity.”)
Wooster Enterprises remains up at Churner and Churner, at 205 10th Avenue through Friday. Go!
