The World as Murphy Bed: Andrea Zittel
by Matthew Rose
In 1992 Zittel showed her mettle for human needs and created the sociologically arresting, fascinatingly functional fold-out modular living and working system: A-Z Management and Maintenance Unit. Yes, you could sort of live and work there. One year later, Zittel’s Living Units appeared along with her Duchampian A-Z Purity Work: Chamber Pot.
"This Chamber Pot," writes Zittel on her web site, "was the result of a move into a new studio that didn’t have any running water. It was spun in aluminum so that it would be beautiful and unbreakable. Because it is fairly attractive and does not have immediate toilet references it could be also a practical object to keep in various rooms of a more traditional home." And, not only an artist, but an entire industry was born. Her most well known pieces are the Living Units which she built in 1994: Fold up homes. Fold up lives: The World as Murphy Bed.
This November the Italian publisher Gabrius launched a series of limited edition artist books–diaries. Zittel’s Diary of the construction of her Homestead Units in the desert is the inaugural work. Beautifully printed with 144 color pages (editions in English and Italian) the diaries are conceived and edited by Simona Vendrame, the editor of the Italian art publication tema celeste (owned by Gabrius). The format is a personal daily entry, with snap shot photos and daily entries. (US$45). The concept is simple enough: Allow the artist the space to tell how a work is produced, along with a running conversation about what happens when you set out to make something. And something always happens.
Upon arriving in the Joshua Tree National Forest (near Palm Springs, CA) in June 2001 to begin construction of the new "Homestead" units, Zittel, miles from anywhere has to call the gas man to check out her propane tank. It’s been sitting in a broiling sun for months and has an "audible leak." The gas man said "try painting it white." She did, and the problem seemed to be solved. The white propane tank, a beached submarine, ends up looking like one of her works. In another entry, a water problem forced her to conserve water for three days until the water truck arrived. But the artist, unflappable and self-possessed, manages admirably. In one series of photos and entries, she converts a metal tub into a hot tub by building a fire in a pit beneath it. You have to admire her economical approach to living on the planet.
But most of the book is about how she goes about her workaday life, building, thinking, conceptualizing–whether it’s clothes, bathing units, homes, organizing space, or considering the sky. At the end of the book, an interview with artist and friend Allan McCollum underpins much of Zittel’s thoughts with some of the nuts and bolts of architectural, social and art historical theory–all tied to an extremely personal point of view.
One also sees the range of Zittel’s large scale obsessions, including her Pocket Property, a forty-four ton floating fantasy island off the coast of Denmark commissioned by the Danish government. It is both a "creative escape," and a contemporary and playful inversion on the John Donne line: "No man is an island."
The publication of diary #01, coincides with the limited edition work A-Z 2002 Homestead Unit. This is a scale model of one of her life-size habitations. Both a gesture towards the American pioneering spirit–autonomy and self-sufficiency as prerequisites of personal freedom–and an investigation of freedom. Zittel is certainly an artist ready for the twenty-first century.
Matthew Rose is writer and an artist based in Paris. His silkscreen prints "Paintings" are currently on view at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, in Boca Raton, Florida. His e-mail is: mistahrose@yahoo.com
