[1] pp.; 61 x 46 cm.; color; edition size unknown; unsigned and unnumbered; offset-printed Poster designed by Adrian Piper published in conjunction with performance by the artist held March 23, 1984. Poster comprised of detail from William Bootsy Collins's 1982 "The One Giveth, The Count Taketh Away" album cover featuring a photograph of Collins by Phillip Dixon. ?"'Dance is not a universal language. It is a precise, culture-specific mode of communication. As Imamu Amiri Baraka says 'A way of walking is as profound as a system of judgement. I have to do this piece in order to do any other pieces ever again. I have to assume that there is a common language between me and my audience. Doing Funk Lessons has altered my life. It has allowed me to come out of the closet culturally.??'I like to dance to funk and also to think about how it works structurally. I could say that I want to explain everything, that I naturally put things into contexts but I think it is more than that. I want to demonstrate that there is a lot to talk about. Formal cultural analysis makes (art) audiences more receptive and gives the work legitimacy. I am concerned that this music is assimilated and then given legitimization by rock groups in a slightly different form so that the origins of the music are completely invisible. I don't like it that people like Talking Heads are getting all the kudos, while people like Bootsy cannot even get their butts on MTV. Around 1970 I stopped thinking of art practice as something that I do for its own sake. I feel real comfortable with the idea that art is basically the tool for some further goal. Then the question is 'what's the goal?' For some people it's having a good investment, for others it is having an aesthetic experience. Well my goal happens to be social transformation and I take that to be intrinsically connected with self-transformation?--excerpts from Irene Borger, ?Funk Lessons: A Guerrilla Performance,? L.A. Weekly, March 2, 1984. Reference : "Adrian Piper : A Synthesis of Intuitions" by Adrian Piper, Christophe Cherix, Cornelia Butler, David Platzker, Tessa Ferreyros. New York, NY : The Museum of Modern Art, 2018, pp. 59 - 61, 230, 364 (checklist no. 177). Good / Very Good. Folded in four as issued, mailed copy with mild mailing marks and mailing wear, address sticker on verso. This copy mailed to pioneering curator William Olander, then acting director and curator of modern art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. Creasing and rubbing along fold lines with some light handling wear and light edge wear. Two pinholes in top left and right corner of unfolded poster. 2 cm. area of erased pencil marking on verso. Otherwise clean and unmarked.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Funk Lessons : A Collaborative Experiment in Cross-Cultural Transfusion
Publisher: New Langton Arts San Francisco, CA
Publication Date: 1984

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Specific Object is a gallery, bookstore, and think-tank dedicated to art post 1958 - specifically pop, Fluxus, minimal and conceptual - with an interest in the art that informed the 1960s and 1970s, as well as artists whose works organically followed from the era. Specific Object is always interested in purchasing artwork as well as used books, ephemera and other objects of interest. Specific Object works to isolate distinct works of value - historically, monetarily and / or intellectually valuable - and show them in isolated contexts, allowing these works, or objects, their own place, space and time. The material Specific Object presented ranged from artists' publications, ephemera, prints, multiples and other editions to literature, music / audio works and unique artworks of the contemporary world. In November 2004 Specific Object acquired the inventory of Barbara Moore's bookstore Bound & Unbound. Through her bookshops Bound & Unbound and its predecessor Backworks, founded in 1976, Moore has been a seminal and innovative champion of artists working in alternative mediums. From 1998 through 2004 David Platzker was the Executive Director of the non-profit institution Printed Matter, Inc. He is also the co-author, and co-curator - with Elizabeth Wyckoff - of "Hard Pressed: 600 Years of Prints and Process" (International Print Center New York & Hudson Hills Press, 2000); and - with Richard H. Axsom - the book and exhibition entitled "Printed Stuff: Prints, Posters, and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg : A Catalogue Raisonn� 1958-1996" (Madison Art Center & Hudson Hills Press, 1997), which was awarded the George Wittenborn Award for Best Art Publication of 1997 by the Art Libraries Society of North America. He has curated exhibitions of the works of Art & Project, John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Documenta 5, Conceptual Art, Marcel Duchamp, Donald Judd, John McLaughlin, Bruce Nauman, Oldenburg, Raymond Pettibon, Dieter Roth, and Edward Ruscha in addition to commissioning or curating exhibitions at Printed Matter of Angelblood, Larry Clark, Erin Cosgrove, Meg Cranston, General Idea, Jenny Holzer, Reverend Jen, Allan Kaprow, Yoko Ono, Ryan McGinness, Sonic Youth, Tom Sachs, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle and the Guerrilla Girls. Platzker was also the host of WPS1.org's Recorded Matter online radio program. Archived programs can be found at www.artonair.org. His writings have been included in Claude Closky: Hello And Welcome, I Love John Giorno, Jonathan Monk: In Relief (My Collection of Sol LeWitt Books - Exact Size, Shape and Occasionally Colour), 2015. From 2013 through 2018 Platzker was Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he curated the exhibitions "There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage's 4'33"" with Jon Hendricks; "Sites of Reason: A Selection of Recent Acquisitions" with Erica Papernik; "Gilbert & George: The Early Years; and Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965 - 2016" with Connie Butler and Christophe Cherix. He authored essays for the catalogues "Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971," "Louise Lawler : Receptions," "Being Modern: Building the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art," and the critical theory volume "Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology" (MoMA Primary Documents). His additional MoMA publications include the vinyl LPs "There Will Never Be Silence," "The Thoughts of Gilbert & George," and "Antonio Dias: The Space Between" as well as the artists' books "Yoko Ono: Grapefruit" and "The Conquest of Space: Atlas for the Use of Artists and the Military" by Marcel Broodthaers. Recent writings also include "A Love Supreme: Charles Gaines and Trees," in "Charles Gaines : Palm Trees and Other Works" (Hauser & Wirth) and "John Baldessari Gets Booked" in "John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonn�, Volume Six: 2011 - 2019" (Marian Goodman / Yale Univ. Press). Visit www.specificobject.com for our complete inventory.

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