Photomatic Enunciation Piece ("Anything Goes")

Vito Acconci

1969 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

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.

Artist

Vito Acconci

Date

1969

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1994