CAA Limited-Edition Prints
Buzz Spector, as if, 2002
Paper, fabric, and thread, 11½ x 9 in., edition of 60
Price
$750 $200 CAA individual and institutional members
$1,000 $300
Nonmembers
Add $150 for framing (maple cap with natural finish)
Add $50 for shipping and handling
About the Work
As if echoes the shape and size of a book, one of Buzz Spector’s obsessions and persistent themes. The work is composed of three chine collé layers of handmade cotton and hemp paper with an embedded red string. Another piece of string, initially planted in the work, has subsequently been torn away by the artist. Its absence from the sheet is clearly delineated by the scar left behind, spelling the word “as” in cursive letters. Beneath it, the red string spells “if,” and the length of string continues to the right, its end dangling alongside the sheet. The work’s philosophical point is to consider the gesture of tearing the first string as perhaps an invitation to complete the work by tearing away the remaining one. But what happens if you do?
Born in 1948 in Chicago, Spector studied art and systems design at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and art and philosophy at the University of Chicago. He has exhibited his work in museums and galleries internationally, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato, Italy. His work with the book as subject and object has been the subject of much critical commentary, and Spector himself is the author of The Book Maker’s Desire (Santa Monica, CA: Umbrella Editions, 1995), a collection of essays on the arts of the book. He is a professor in the Department of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and was elected to the CAA Board of Directors in 2005..
