A few years ago, my husband, Larry Banka, and I started to collect artist ephemera — not in the way it's usually thought of (letters, sketchbooks) — but stuff created or approved by famous, high-priced, critically acclaimed artists during their lifetimes, from record album covers and t-shirts to fridge magnets and Rubik's cubes. Work from our collection will be exhibited at the Richard L. Nelson Gallery, University of California Davis. Titled Merch Art, the exhibition opens September 24 and closes December 13, with an evening reception on Thursday, October 1, from 5:30–7:30 pm.
From the Nelson Gallery press release:
If a famous artist makes and markets a hundred saltshakers, is it art or commerce? One of the defining issues in art of the last hundred years has been the relationship among the art object, the collector, the art institution, the artist and the larger social reality of commerce. San Francisco collectors Lawrence Banka & Judith Gordon loan dozens of pieces of Merch Art for this first-ever exhibition. They focus on the more accessible side of the art market, collecting inexpensive work by the most notable artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that was made for museum shops and other charitable purposes.
“It seemed a whimsical way to participate in a market otherwise closed to us by virtue of the astronomical prices these artists command,” write Banka and Gordon.
From puzzles to wine labels, Christmas ornaments to golf balls, Merch Art covers the full gamut of how art can be incorporated into everyday merchandise. Works included in the exhibition by such artists as Alexander Calder, Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and many more. A catalogue will be available for purchase, containing color illustrations and essays by Banka and Gordon, Nelson Gallery director Renny Pritikin, and UC Davis art historian Blake Stimson.
The Nelson Gallery is located in Room 124 of the Art Building on the UC Davis Campus, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616. For more information: http://nelsongallery.ucdavis.edu/index.htm
Image pictured above: Jeff Koons, Puppy, plush toy, 9" x 10" x 6.5", 1997. Photography by Lloyd Hryciw.
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Looking for Merch Art?
Besides eBay, which provides a ready and fairly trustworthy source of artist-created goods, we discovered several commercial and nonprofit outlets with intriguing offerings that fit our criteria:
A/D Gallery, New York, New York
http://www.adeditions.com/
Arcana Books, Santa Monica, California
http://www.arcanabooks.com/
Art Metropole, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://artmetropole.com/
Art Production Fund, New York, New York
http://www.artproductionfund.org/
Artware Editions, New York, New York
http://www.artwareeditions.com/
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, United Kingdom
http://www.balticmill.com/
Cerealart, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
http://www.cerealart.com/
Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, California
http://www.cirrusgallery.com/
Electric Works, San Francisco, California
http://www.sfelectricworks.com
Printed Matter, New York, New York
http://www.printedmatter.org/
RxArt, New York, New York
http://www.rxart.net/
Smart Art Press, New York, New York
http://www.smartartpress.com/
Specific Object, New York, New York
http://www.specificobject.com/
Supertouch, Altadena, California
http://www.supertouchart.com/
The Artery Fine Art
http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/thearteryfineart
Third Drawer Down, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia
http://www.thirddrawerdown.com/
We also relied on certain museums that consistently have an exciting trove of objects from which to choose:
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, New York
http://ndm.si.edu/
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, California
http://www.moca-la.org/
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, New York
http://www.moma.org/
New Museum, New York, New York
http://www.newmuseum.org/
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), California
http://www.sfmoma.org/
Tate, London, England, United Kingdom
http://www.tate.org/uk
