16 4 66 Portfolio

Basic Information

Title: 16 4 66 Portfolio
Artist(s): Max Bense Reinhard Döhl Helmut Heißenbüttel Yüksel Pazarkaya Klaus Burkhardt Hein Gravenhorst Hansjörg Mayer Frieder Nake Siegfried Cremer Herbert W. Kapitzki Günther C. Kirchberger Günther Neusel Rudolf Hoflehner Erhard Karkoschka Dieter Roth K. H. R. Sonderborg Siegfried Maser Dieter Hönisch
Date Created: 1966
Edition Info: 91/150
Unframed Dimensions: 18 x 13.25 in.
Medium: serigraph and letterpress on paper
Inventory ID: 16466-1966-01

Description

A portfolio of sixteen artists, writers, typographers, photographers, computer graphic designers, painters, sculptors, and musicians with four serigraph or letterpress works by each artist – based on an idea by Klaus Burkhardt. Accompanied by the rare serigraph poster for the eponymous exhibition at the Hansjörg Mayer Gallery in Stuttgart, from October 21 – November 30, 1966 to mark the publication of the portfolio.

the portfolio is housed in a custom made linen bound box and slip case
the portfolio contains a title page, a justification page, 4 pages of artist’s biographies and pictures, 4 pages of foreword explanation text in German, and 64 letterpress and/or serigraph prints

each print is signed and numbered verso in graphite
the justification page is numbered 91/150 in graphite

image dimensions: variable
folded sheet dimension: 18 x 13.25″
unfolded sheet dimension: 18 x 26.5″
portfolio dimension: 19 x 13.75 x 2″

translation of the justification page from German to English:
“The portfolio was created between April and September 1966 as a collaborative effort between Edition Dombgerger and Hansjörg Mayer, Sutggart, DE.

The foreword for Groups 1 and 2 was written by Seigfried Maser, and for Groups 3 and 4 by Dieter Honisch.

The contributions by Burckhardt, Cremer, Gravenhorst, Hoflehner, Kapitzki, Karkoschka, Kirchberger, Nake, Neusel, Rot, and Sonderborg were silkscreened in the graphic arts workshops of Edition Domberger, Stuttgart, DE, where the portfolio cover was also printed.

The contributions by Bense, Dohl, Heissenbuttle, Mayer, and Pazarkaya were letterpress printed by Edition Hansjorg, Stuttgart, DE where the prefaces, the biographies, and the imprints were printed.

The edition consists of 190 copies, of which 150 copies are numbered and signed in Arabic numerals, and 40 copies are numbered and signed in Roman numerals for the artist’s and collaborators. This copy is number 91/150.”

Group 1: Literature
Max Bense
Reinhard Döhl
Helmut Heißenbüttel
Yüksel Pazarkaya

Group 2: Coldtype Structures, Photography, Typoems, Computer Graphics
Klaus Burkhardt
Hein Gravenhorst
Hansjörg Mayer
Frieder Nake

Group 3:
Siegfried Cremer
Herbert W. Kapitzki
Günther C. Kirchberger
Günther Neusel

Group 4:
Rudolf Hoflehner
Erhard Karkoschka
Dieter Roth
K. H. R. Sonderborg

description is courtesy of Penka Rare Books:
Important graphic portfolio of West German avant-garde artists of the sixties; here additionally with the very rare exhibition poster of Galerie Hansjörg Mayer. One of the most important protagonists was the Stuttgart-based art, science, and drawing theorist Max Bense, who also worked at the Ulm School of Design. As early as the late 1950s, Bense experimented with the production of computer-generated “stochastic” texts, in which words were randomly selected from a vocabulary collection and put together. In the portfolio, he published a text created “as a direct application of his semiotic, linguistic, and information-aesthetic investigations.” Some of the graphics in the portfolio are also the result of mathematical calculations. The programmer Frieder Nake, for example, became known from the circle around Bense. At the Stuttgart Computer Center, the mathematician developed “stochastic” graphics, i.e. images that the computer generates through random decisions, as early as 1965. These beginnings of artificial intelligence caused such concern at the time that Nake wrote in an essay that “there is not the slightest danger that mathematicians or even computers could completely take over image generation.”

In the commentary on the graphic included here, on the other hand, Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s thesis of human consciousness as a machine is emphatically repeated, as Nake’s serigraphy “proves (…) that today’s electronic calculating machines not only solve mathematical and scientific problems, but can also generate aesthetic states, especially graphics, but also texts, music and others, i.e. that there is a far-reaching analogy between machine and human consciousness (…).” Accordingly, art criticism would be a strictly analytical practice that must be based on objective criteria. The judgments with regard to art history are correspondingly clear. Futurism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl, and the Dessau Bauhaus are of lasting importance. Surrealism, on the other hand, according to the author of the foreword, has proved to be a dead end. Op Art, Kineticism, Concrete Art and Poetry are emphasized as the heirs of progress in art history. Dieter Rot is only mentioned in the theoretical remarks in a few lines at the end, after it is emphasized that the portfolio attempts to give a cross-section of the situation in 1966, because “despite stylistic differences” there is a “convergent problem situation.” And indeed, the portfolio provides a broad and, above all, aesthetically impressive insight into the contrasting avant-garde movements of the late sixties in West Germany before 1968.”