Fantastic Architecture

Fantastic Architecture
Wolf Vostell, Dick Higgins
Primary Information, August 2015



Hardcover | 5 x 8 inches | 200 pages | 120 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-0990689607 | $28.00

Publisher Description:

Primary Information is reprinting the seminal book, Fantastic Architecture, making the book widely available for the first time since it was originally published: first in 1969 by Droste Verlag in German (with the title Pop Architektur) and later in 1970 by Something Else Press as Fantastic Architecture. Edited by Dick Higgins and Wolf Vostell, this artist’s book/anthology explores the boundaries between pop art and architecture through writings and projects by key artists and thinkers of the 1960s and earlier—from John Cage and Buckminster Fuller to Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Beuys. It will retain the book’s unique design, specifically its Mylar inserts, which add unique depth and elaborate the publication’s content.

Contributors to this publication are Ay-O, Joseph Beuys, Erich Buchholz, Pol Bury, John Cage, Philip Corner, Jan Dibbets, Robert Filliou, Buckminster Fuller, Geoffrey Hendricks, Richard Hamilton, Raoul Hausmann, Michael Heizer, Jan Jacob Herman, Bici Hendricks, Dick Higgins, K.H. Hoedicke, Hans Hollein, Douglas Huebler, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Addi Koepcke, Franz Mon, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Gerhard Rühm, Diter Rot, Carolee Schneemann, Kurt Schwitters, Daniel Spoerri, Frances Starr, Jean Tinguely, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell, Lawrence Weiner, Stefan Wewerka.

dDAB Commentary:

On a recent trip to Washington, DC, I went out of my way to visit Second Story Books, a used bookstore at Dupont Circle. Although I didn't buy anything on my visit, two books I thumbed through stuck in my head after the visit: The Life Work of the American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, first published by Wendingen in 1925, and Fantastic Architecture, first published in English in 1970. The bookstore had first editions of both — $300 for the Wright book and $100 for Fantastic Architecture (both too much for me) — but it also had a later reprint of the Wright book, apparently a steal at $15. But in comparing the first edition and reprint of the Wright book, it was clear the latter did not embrace every aspect of the original: the buckram hardcover, the beautiful heavyweight paper, the occasional gatefold, and the binding that allowed each spread to lay flat. Needless to say I didn't see the point in buying the inferior reprint after touching the original one. How does this relate to Fantastic Architecture? After seeing the first edition published by Something Else Press at Second Story I learned it was recently reprinted, by Brooklyn's Primary Information. Given how the publisher boasts, "It will retain the book’s unique design, specifically its Mylar inserts," I took the plunge and bought a copy via their website. Compared to my memory of the first edition, the reprint is pretty spot-on, from the dust jacket and buckram cover to the image quality and vellum (not mylar) inserts.

Fantastic Architecture consists of contributions by 36 artists, including Wolf Vostell and Dick Higgins, both Fluxus artists and the latter of whom founded Something Else Press in 1963. Among the artists are only a couple architects: Hans Hollein and Bucky Fuller. So the book is not so much "fantastic architecture" as it is a call by artists to make architecture more imaginative and open to different, then-contemporary ways of life. Or as Vostell writes on the vellum pages at the beginning of the book, what follows "are all utopias containing more truth and visualization of present-day thought than the repressive architecture of bureaucracy and luxury that imposes restrictions on people." Additional writing is inserted between the artists' visual and textual contributions (there seems to be a lot more of the latter than I'd expect from such a book) in the form of 14 "captions" by Vostell and Higgins. These captions, combined with now iconic projects, such as Claus Oldenburg's Wing-Nut Monument for Stockholm and Hans Hollein's Aircraft Carrier City (both are visible in the spreads below), make the book some sort of artistic manifesto. I'm not sure what impact the book had at the time, either in German- or English-speaking parts of the world, but Primary Information's decision to create a facsimile indicates it is an important book, at least in historical terms. Reading the captions all these decades later, it seems that architecture has dealt with some of the ideas and questions posed in Fantastic Architecture (caption 7, for instance, about events, makes me think of Bernard Tschumi's writings and buildings), but it has also shied away from the political aspects, such as "dealing ... with the problems of race [and] of nationality." Perhaps an artistic update around the book's theme is needed, not just a reprint.

Spreads:


Author Bio:

Wolf Vostell (1932–1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Dick Higgins (1938–1998) was an American composer, poet, printmaker, artist, and a co-founder of Fluxus.

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