ASPEN MAGAZINE: 1965 - 1971

A young mans wanders to all sorts of exhibitions and travels to the places where art is all that’s talked about. On a visit to Whitechapel Gallery  for the Aspen Magazine exhibition.| By Teucer. 

Is Aspen the predecessor of cult conceptual magazines? Yes Sir! On a first note Aspen Magazine looks like the grandfather for what we now see as multimedia, conceptual limited-edition publications.  Yet it came in a box and was conceptualised in the 60’s and it featured awe-inspiring artists-contributors. The likes of Yoko Ono, Peter Blake, David Hockney, John Cage, Ossie Clark, Marcel Duchamp, John Lennon, Lou Reed and William S. Burroughs graced the magazine with their work.

We can only feel intelligent in sharing the information availed when visiting the Aspen Magazine exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery. It’s a mix between the magazines themselves, and contributions of the magazine, which often included posters, booklets, reels of Super 8 film, flexi discs, original artworks and phonographic recordings. 

Eye-stopping editions are a glorified one by Andy Warhol and David Dalton’s focusing on Pop Art in New York and the British edition which consists of British Knickers, a sewing pattern by Ossie Clark, memorabilia collected by Peter Blake and The Lennon Diary (1969), written by John Lennon in 1968 speculating the future.

Why do we think of Aspen magazineas cult?  Well getting together all the aforementioned artists but also adding, to name only a few, French philosopher Roland Barthes, political icon, theorist and much more Susan Sontag and Marcel Duchamp the father of Dadaism, gives the answer. From 1965 to 1971 thanks to the initial idea by Phyllis Johnson we have 10 issues equal to an encyclopedia of the socio-cultural movements of the times. Simply outstanding, the way Whitechapel Gallery always does it.

Aspen Magazine 1965 – 1971 is on until at Whitechapel Gallery until 3 March 2013. For more information [click here] 

This article was commissioned by Art Wednesday.