Self-taught artist Lawrence Weiner grew up in New York in the American society of the 1950s, surrounded by pictures. Following in the footsteps of pioneering artists [1] who were using video tape or film as genuine artistic mediums, he produced, from the 1970s until in his death in 2021, a substantial corpus of film and video works that remains largely unknown to the public or institutions.

Although he had set up a studio in Amsterdam in 1970, where he created his first video works, it was after his return to New York—and thanks to the support of Leo Castelli, who loaned him his gallery and a camera for an improvised shoot in 1972—that he produced TO AND FRO/FRO AND TO/AND TO AND FRO/AND FRO AND TO and SHIFTED FROM THE SIDE [2] with the help of musician Richard Landry. [3] Filmed in one afternoon, with the idea of producing two short commercials for existing works, these two videos had the same simple composition of those he had made in the Netherlands; [4] that is to say, the recording by a stationary camera of a simple gesture, performed by the artist in real time, in various ways, accompanied by the reading of a speech derived from his 1968 statement. In TO AND FRO/FRO AND TO/AND TO AND FRO/AND FRO AND TO, Weiner’s hands move an ash tray, placed on plain background, to and fro, from one edge of the image to the other, while he reads his statement. The gesture here is subordinated to the instructions given by the artist’s voice; it follows and obeys the language. The repetitive, mechanical nature of the action, governed by language, was one of the ways in which the artist challenged the notion of original work of art or copy. This logic of repetition and variation extends across the artist’s entire body of work, in which a single sculpture can reappear in various mediums: film, book, posters, etc. The TO AND FRO/FRO sculpture, for example, was used several times in Weiner’s first film, A FIRST QUARTER [5], produced the following year.

Shot indoors, in what might be the artist’s studio, this film also highlights the importance of the studio for Weiner. A conceptual artist, he nevertheless remained a studio artist, who experimented, tested and produced. His concept of the studio probably resulted from his early sculptural works in the 1960s [6] but was also inspired by the contemporary painters he associated with, especially Jasper Johns. For Weiner, as for Johns, the studio was “an arena outside of the personal angst of other people,” [7] an important place in his practice, then; a sanctuary protected from the world and a place to develop his artistic work.

Low budget and structurally simple, this metaphorical work explores the various paths that the creation of a piece might take, in one direction or the other, with none of the options holding more artistic validity than another. A stylistic exercise to showcase one of these existing works, and serving as a realization of the artist’s statement of intent, TO AND FRO/FRO AND TO/AND TO AND FRO/AND FRO AND TO was one of the artist’s last videos built on a simple, fundamental structure before he shifted to creating works with more complex organization and composition, approaching audiovisual grammar as a language in its own right.

Coline Davenne
Translated by Anne McDowall

[1] Especially Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, Joseph Cornell, and Jack Smith.

[2] Lawrence Weiner, SHIFTED FROM SIDE TO SIDE, 1972 video, black and white, sound, 1:00, AM 1996-474.

[3] Composer, saxophonist, photographer, and painter, born in 1938, with whom Lawrence Weiner colted regularly.

[4] TO THE SEA/ON THE SEA/FROM THE SEA/AT THE SEA/BORDERING THE SEA, 1970; BEACHED, 1970; BROKEN OFF, 1971.

[5] Lawrence Weiner, A FIRST QUARTER, 1973, 16 mm film, black and white, sound, 85:00.

[6] Notably Cratering Piece, 1960; The Stone on the Table, 1960–1962; Children’s Sculpture, 1962.

[7] Lawrence Weiner in “Benjamin H. D. Buchloh in conversation with Lawrence Weiner,” in Alexander Alberro, Alice Zimmerman, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Lawrence Weiner (London: Phaidon, 1998) p. 10.