Verboten: Tom Marioni’s House Rules

On a recent research trip to California, I found myself skirting around the Tenderloin neighbourhood in San Francisco en route to the conceptual artist Tom Marioni’s studio. Due to an unruly youth, it seems the hippocampus region of my brain (the map reader) has unfortunately been vaporised – I made some wrong turns and needed to angle away pronto.

By Michael Lindeman

Across the road from SFMOMA, I arrived at the historic building which also houses the renowned Crown Point Press. I anxiously knocked on the open studio door. Who was I to meet? The welcoming artist I had shared economical email exchanges with over previous months? Or the potentially prickly character I had been reading about at the Steven Leiber Conceptual Art Study Center the day before, while trawling through the archives?3 With his Einstein-like hair and suave moustache, Marioni (b.1937) zipped towards the door and invited me in.

The studio is a concise set up, sophisticated – no macho painting to be seen. After surveying some of the works and ephemera, we sat down to talk, except, it was lunch time and Tom was raring to drop into Henry’s Huan Restaurant around the corner. We were the early birds, but this place looked promising. Tom is a regular, so it was logical he should steer us around the menu. Along with dumplings he selected his go-to dishes: Chicken with String Beans and Chicken with Broccoli, both, he stressed, with medium spice. You might think there wasn’t enough variation between these two dishes as I did, however, I was mistaken. It was a masterstroke.

Back at the studio we discussed my position as bartender for Marioni’s Society of Independent Artists (SIA) taking place the following afternoon. A weekly “action”, the SIA is an extension of one of his most seminal ongoing works, The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, 1970, in which he uses the museum space for a gathering of artists. We also talked about his exhibition My First Car, 1972, closed by the Director of the De Saisset Museum following the opening as Marioni had used the materials budget to purchase a used 750 Italian Fiat. Marioni drank champagne in the car, talked with the audience through the window, and listened to Mariachi music on the radio at the opening. A certain precursor to French critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘Relational Aesthetics’.

An ongoing "conceptual joke" of Michael Lindeman's is to include this photo in all his work.

The next day I was greeted by Marioni and friend Dan Max smoking cigars on the sidewalk. As artists, writers and sound designers arrived I realised I was out of my depth in the role of bartender ensuring everyone signed the guest book, keeping snacks topped up, remembering names, explaining my research and art practise, and recounting who was drinking what. All I could do was share in the drinking (a requirement of the bartender) and hope nobody got upset with me. I knew Marioni was drinking Old Bardstown Whiskey as he had given me instructions earlier including his limit of two drinks, which he then changed to four as the gathering continued. I may have breached my responsible service of alcohol obligation when I let the eighty-five-year-old ride his bike home, but who am I to argue with Marioni?

Nonetheless, it was a rousing experience that reminded me of what art can aspire to, to bring people together through shared experiences. In contrast to elbowing each other aside with a feigned smile to gain exposure, preaching to the converted, and gathering the “right friends”, Marioni illustrates that we can have it all if we want. It’s possible to participate with generosity, an affable spirit, and undermine conventional demarcations between the artist and the viewer.

As it turns out, Marioni is not a prickly character, although, he is sincerely operating on another register, playing by his own rules. His practise is a loose type of institutional critique, not a hard-hitting Hans Haacke approach, or calling attention to the unsettling politics of the art world like Andrea Fraser. Marioni chooses a conceptual art with humour, sometimes featuring “bizarre moments that push the limits of credibility.”