F-Art

F-ART HISTORY

F-Art was a group of anti-art activists who also made noise as The F-Art Orchestra. Active in Toronto in the 1970s, they were known for frequently postering the city, and for their disruptions of cultural events dressed in white coveralls and wearing pounds of make-up. Labelled by mainstream media as “useless layabouts” (not an unfair characterisation), F-Art dissolved in a series of expulsions in the early 80s. Although they are best known today for Nikita Sunburn’s seminal masterpiece, Piss On Modernism, Shit On Post-Modernism, Sunburn was only ever an honorary member. Some F-Art members went on to begin Charivari Press in 1989.

ON CONTRADICTION

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself 51, Leaves of Grass

“I was never enamoured of Nikita Sunburn’s frequent bragging. In the early days of F-Art, Walt Whitman’s lines about contradiction became something of an F-Art motto. Whenever Sunburn saw the Whitman quote being used by any of the members however he would vigorously repeat his assertion that Whitman had stolen the lines from him. Now Nikita was an old coot but he was too young for that. Another example of his braggadocio that comes to mind was his story about how he wiped out Joseph Kosuth in a knock down debate at CEAC in 1974 and that Joey started to cry. There appears to have been some truth to that boast because several people who claimed to have been there told me that Sarah Charlesworth hit Sunburn over the head with Fox (Issue #2) which she was holding devoutly to her breast while chanting ‘The world is all that is the case’.”

Joe Palumbo, Notes from Kirkland Lake

SOME FACTS AND RUMOURS ABOUT F-ART

Who was Jean-Guy Talbot? Jean-Guy Talbot (the famous one) denies any knowledge of F-Art.

Some rumours out there suggest that Jean-Guy Talbot was a disguise for John Bentley Mays who confused F-Art with Fluxus (or was it Fuckus).

Fuckus was a libertine sub-section of F-Art dedicated to sexcess. Ted Fox’s illustrated manifesto was entitled, “Finger Me.”

Reportedly, at some top secret meetings of Art and Language the propositions that F-Art was started by some break-away Fluxus artists and that F-Artist, Eléonore Brunette, was really Isidore Isou in drag were discussed.

Stewart Home and George Maciunas are rumoured to have infiltrated F-Art to steal their ideas about non-copyright. F-Art’s response to this underhanded plagiarism was to say, “Yeah, go ahead steal it. We don’t give a fuck.”

F-Art members were all known to be failing at university due to hiding from a gang of vigilante professors who F-Art had exposed as draft-dodgers secretly sent to Canada to stir up imperialist ideologies by claiming that F-Artists were behind a movement to force all Canadian school children to speak Scots, to be able to recite all poems by Robbie Burns with a Scots accent, and to be able to identify Highland single malts from one sniff.

Joseph Kosuth in a fit of jealousy once said, “Those F-Art people are really mean man!”

SELECT DOCUMENTS

Share this: