Francis Alÿs’s photograph of a walk with his edition for Parkett 69 in Mexico City. Courtesy Luma Living Archives, Arles
Selected Parkett Editions 1984-2017
Parkett was a unique international voice in contemporary art publishing from 1984 to 2017. The publication, whose early slogan was “Parkett is for keeps,” was meant to be collected, displayed, and read often. Its 101 volumes were devoted to monographic artist “portraits”: three to five texts about a single artist by renowned authors and curators. Featured artists were invited to contribute to the book’s design and content and to create a special artwork in the medium of their choice.
This online presentation coincides with a group exhibition of the same name at David Zwirner’s 20th Street location in New York, on view June 30–August 5, which features work by more than forty artists created in collaboration with Parkett. The exhibition honors the legacy of Parkett’s publisher and cofounder, Dieter von Graffenried, who passed away in December 2021. Here, we highlight some of the captivating stories behind the making of the editions and the history of Parkett.
- TOMMA ABTS
- FRANCIS ALŸS
- NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN
- JOHN BALDESSARI
- LOUISE BOURGEOIS
- CAROL BOVE
- MARLENE DUMAS
- KATHARINA FRITSCH
- RASHID JOHNSON
- YAYOI KUSAMA
- SHERRIE LEVINE
- BRUCE NAUMAN
- MERET OPPENHEIM
- LAURA OWENS
- NICOLAS PARTY
- CHARLES RAY
- JASON RHOADES
- BRIDGET RILEY
- JOSH SMITH
- ANDY WARHOL
- FRANZ WEST
- JORDAN WOLFSON
- CHRISTOPHER WOOL
- PARKETT INSERTS
Francis
Alÿs
For Parkett 69, Alÿs created a series of sculptures—individual dogs made of tin, magnets, string, and rubber wheels—that relate to the artist’s 1990–1992 performance piece entitled The Collector, in which he walked the streets of Mexico City pulling a small magnetic toy dog behind him.
The toy collected metallic objects and urban debris, such as bottle caps and scraps of metal, creating a souvenir of his walk through the city.
“After three days people started talking about the crazy gringo walking around with his magnetized dog, but after seven days, the story, the anecdote, had remained even though the characters were gone. That’s how I started developing the idea of introducing tales and fables into a place’s history at a particular moment of its local history.”
—Francis Alÿs
Sherrie
Levine
This work, created in collaboration with an Italian shoemaker, is based on a ready-made pair of shoes that Levine exhibited in 1977 in her first solo show in New York. For the exhibition, seventy-five pairs of children’s shoes, which the artist had bought at a thrift shop, were arranged on a table in a storefront gallery in SoHo and offered for sale.
“In the early seventies... I lived in Berkeley and taught in the area.... I used to stop at a thrift shop on my way home. One day I went in and saw a carton of seventy-five pairs of little black shoes for fifty cents a piece. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.... And when I moved to New York in 1975, I had nothing but a suitcase and this carton of shoes.”
—Sherrie Levine
Jason
Rhoades
Rhoades’s edition for Parkett 58 includes a hand-painted gourd with seeds, a backpack, eleven photographs, and one cylindrical cardboard container that serves as both the gourd’s storage box and its display pedestal.
The gourds were grown in Rhoades’s parents’ garden, and some of the photographs—which are tucked into each backpack—show his parents hand-painting them.
This multiple unpacks to stack into a homegrown Brâncuși sculpture complete with pedestal. (A bottle in a valise, this multiple stands as a reminder of one of Duchamp’s bigger business ventures, acting as an agent for his friend Brâncuși’s work in New York.)
—Ingrid Schaffner, curator
Katharina
Fritsch
Jordan
Wolfson
Charles
Ray
An image from Charles Ray’s Parkett edition. Notably, no two sets of photographs are alike as each edition is comprised of nine distinct images Ray captured. Courtesy Parkett Publishers, Zurich/NY, and the artist
Ray describes and draws his suggested layout for the cover of Parkett 37. Courtesy Luma Living Archives, Arles; Ray’s cover for the issue, featuring supermodel Tatjana Patitz, who also appears in the unique photographs of Ray’s edition The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, 1993. Courtesy Parkett Publishers, Zurich/NY and Luma Living Archives, Arles
Each work in Ray’s edition consists of a specific grouping of nine unique snapshots of German supermodel Tatjana Patitz, who also appeared on his cover for Parkett 37.
Ray designed the cover using the tropes of the fashion magazine, recalling the glossy, highly stylized photographs of the era. His edition features intimate snapshots of Patitz, showing her seemingly without professional styling as she lounges at home, subverting the standards of beauty and glamour of the time.
Rashid
Johnson
I should tell you that no publication has had a more significant effect on me as an artist .... Thank you for all you’ve done.
—Rashid johnson
Carol
Bove
Tomma
Abts
Yayoi
Kusama
Detail of Infinity Nets, 2000
Kusama’s edition brings together two of the artist’s central motifs: Infinity Nets and mirrors.
The silkscreen on mirror, created for Parkett 59 and designed to be similar in dimensions to a Parkett volume, combines Kusama’s celebrated motifs and materiality in work that is uniquely domestic in scale.
Meret
Oppenheim
In 1985, Oppenheim collaborated with Parkett on a limited-edition pair of gloves, realizing a design she had first conceived in 1936 while working as a designer for Elsa Schiaparelli, the haute couture designer known for her playful surrealist garments.
The sky-blue goat-suede gloves feature red veins in both hand-stitched embroidery and silkscreen, metaphorically turning the hands of the wearer inside out.
Christopher
Wool
Josh
Smith
I LOVE TO THINK OF PARKETT THE WAY FRANZ (WEST) MAY HAVE, WHICH IS AS A SHARP COLLECTION OF IMAGES, THOUGHTS, AND IDEAS SITTING QUIETLY ON A SHELF (FRANZ’S SHELF).… THAT’S THE WAY I EXPERIENCE IT. I WILL ALWAYS BE HONORED TO HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN PARKETT WITH SO MANY GREAT ARTISTS AND WRITERS.
—JOSH SMITH
Franz
West
John
Baldessari
Bruce
Nauman
Violent Incident—Man-Woman Segment derives from Nauman’s twelve-monitor video installation Violent Incident (1986), in the collection of Tate, United Kingdom.
Featuring one of the segments from the larger video installation, the plot centers on a prank that goes awry as a man pulls the chair out from under his female dinner companion, leading to an escalating series of violent interactions. Significantly, the work coincides with Nauman’s return to video—an important medium for the artist—after an almost fifteen-year hiatus.
Marlene
Dumas
A letter from Marlene Dumas to Parkett, printed in no. 100/101. She poetically reflects on her art, her life, and her connection to the publication. Courtesy Luma Living Archives, Arles
Louise
Bourgeois
Nicolas
Party
Andy
Warhol
One of the last works Warhol ever made, his edition for Parkett was completed and signed just a few days before his untimely death in 1987.
The skeletons relate to the artist’s repeated motif of skulls, which figure prominently in a body of work begun in 1976 and function as a darkly humorous memento mori.
Laura
Owens
Nairy
Baghramian
Baghramian’s edition for Parkett 100/101, Maintainers, features two seemingly identical forms, one in aluminum and one made from the wax used for polishing aluminum. The pairing of the two forms, one of which would in theory consume the other upon their interaction, engages Baghramian’s interest in the relationship between the organic and the mechanical and between sculptures and molds—concepts the artist explores in a series of large-scale Maintainers begun in the late 2010s.
Bridget
Riley
I am sorry that the magazine is closing down…However, it is good to hear that this is by no means the end of your activities on behalf of artists and the art world.
—Bridget Riley, quoted in Parkett Volume 100/101
Parkett
Inserts
These artist-designed inserts were created as removable centerfolds throughout the run of Parkett. Featuring text, drawing, painting, and graphic elements, the inserts honor the tradition of the artist’s book and take a variety of forms, showing the creative possibilities of the printed page.