Photomatic Enunciation Piece ("Anything Goes")

Vito Acconci American
1969
Not on view
As Acconci's art shifted from poetry to body-oriented performance in the late 1960s, he often incorporated photography as a means of returning his art to the page and of creating something that would last beyond the moment. This work, dubbed a "photomatic enunciation piece," is a photo-booth strip showing five random flashes of the automatic camera as the artist sang Cole Porter's 1934 song "Anything Goes" with exaggerated clarity. Merging performance, chance occurrence, conceptual art, and an assertively anti-art process, Acconci's work is quintessentially of the 1960s.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Photomatic Enunciation Piece ("Anything Goes")
  • Artist: Vito Acconci (American, Bronx, New York 1940–2017 New York)
  • Date: 1969
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: 25.1 x 3.8 cm. (9 7/8 x 1 1/2 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1994
  • Object Number: 1994.186.2
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Vito Acconci
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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