University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Tom Marioni: artistic intoxication

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Tom Marioni: artistic intoxication

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TOM MARIONI:
ARTISTIC INTOXICATION

by

Jennifer Christie Leitch

____________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES

May 2010

Jennifer Christie Leitch
Copyright 2010
ii
DEDICATION
I once received a sobering lecture from a police man, “you kids all throw your
education away on beer, it’s time to wake up, life takes hard work.” It turns out the
cop was only half right; I have in fact spent the last year of my education focused on
beer, and while it did require many many hours of hard work, there was still some
fun to be had. So I dedicate this thesis to Andrea, Noodle, Robbie, and Rowe, who all
made sure there were some laughs (and yes, beer) along the way. You have all
proven, in the true spirit of Tom Marioni, that you can work hard AND play hard…a
lesson I will never forget.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Karen Moss and Donna Conwell for their patience, support and
encouragement throughout this process. I feel very fortunate to have had the
chance work with both of you.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List of Figures v
Abstract vi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Beer, Art, and Philosophy 9

Chapter 2: Curator and Collaborator 24

Chapter 3: Marioni and Later Generations 32

Conclusion 40

Bibliography 47

Appendices 49

v
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Free Beer 13
Figure 2: Beer Drinking Sonata 14
Figure 3: Café Society Beer 15
Figure 4: Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest 16
Form of Art

Figure 5: Museum of Conceptual Art (Breen’s Bar) 21

Figure 6: Chicken Dance 28

Figure 7: Handcuff 29

Figure 8: International Dinner 33

Figure 9: Mining the Museum 35

Figure 10: Untitled (Free) 37

vi
ABSTRACT

This thesis, through a monographic inquiry into the work of artist Tom
Marioni, examines the role of a critical participatory strategy in artistic practices.
As a result of the participatory model Marioni employs, he calls into question the
inherent social conditions experienced within social, public spaces such as museums
or institutions. Through a humorous but critical position, his work serves to
introduce a sociability that is currently lacking in these spaces, and ultimately
stimulate criticality towards normative behavior expectations in public experiences.
Marioni’s role as an artist should not be romanticized, nor should his work be
considered as a utopian claim, but instead, recognized as a temporary intervention
that values communality and exchange in a space predicated on disavowing
plurality.

1
INTRODUCTION

My social art and my performance art are influenced by jazz. The way combo
jazz is written traditionally is to start all together, improvise in the middle,
and all finish together. In jazz improvisation the musicians have back-and-
forth abstract conversation. There is freedom in jazz but there are rules
too…I want to make art as close to real life as I can without it being real life.
1

-Tom Marioni

Throughout his artistic career, Tom Marioni has acted as a performance
artist and sculptor, as a curator, and finally as a collaborator. While certainly
different in each of these roles, Marioni used his position to create a space for
sociability. While he created these social worlds and opportunities for both himself
as well as others, he was still actively pursuing his own personal, professional and
artistic interests, ultimately finding a truly unique way to merge his art and his
livelihood. For almost forty years he has successfully combined his art and life,
inviting his viewers, partners, and friends to become active participants in his work
that often becomes a social experience. The unpredictability of these exchanges that
Marioni’s work fosters resembles that of improvisation, or real life. His socially
interactive artwork, specifically his beer salons, his curatorial practices, as well as
his collaborations with other artists all embrace the concept of social exchange and
improvisation that are inherent in a participatory model. While Marioni is still the
author of the event, he ultimately constructs a social space where “all members are
equal…the beer acts as a social lubricant, and then you are on your own.”
2
His

1
Tom Marioni, email message to Guillaume Desanges, March 12, 2006.
2
Tom Marioni, email message to Guillaume Desanges, January 15, 2006.
2
authorial control is minimal, or as he says, invisible, opting instead to encourage
participants to experience “the conditions of a pleasure in common.”
3

The notion of participation in art is not a new idea, in fact, it has been
discussed and debated for years
4
, which begs the question: Why is the idea of a
participatory model, or the desire to merge art with life, so intriguing that for
decades artists, scholars, curators, and critics have invested so much energy in
contemplating this strategy? What does the invitation to participate in artistic
practices offer its public audience?
A critical participatory strategy is a strategy that uses artistic practices to
expose the limits of communality or friction in institutional space. Tom Marioni,
through the beer salons and other socially interactive works he has offered his
viewers/co-producers for almost forty years, has questioned and transformed how
social interactions unfold within public space. While a participatory model is
beneficial for an artist as well, as it removes the judgmental eye of a viewer, it more
importantly provides viewers with a form of agency through the invitation to be
engaged as well as induces moments of friction that constitute an authentic
experience of the plurality inherent in a public, which is too often negated. A critical
participatory strategy recognizes the value of such encounters that are self-

3
Tom Marioni, email message to Guillaume Desanges, February 13, 2006.
4
Some of the earliest examples of participation in artistic practices come from Dada, a movement
founded in Switzerland during World War One. Looking to break with traditional aesthetic concerns
in art, the Dada movement claimed in the “First German Dada Manifesto,” that “Life appears as a
simultaneous muddle of noises, colors and spiritual rhythms, which is taken unmodified into Dadaist
art.” Richard Huelsenbeck, “First German Dada Manifesto” in Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology
of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 258.
3
generated, fleeting, and necessarily unknowable in advance; all of which are
elements embraced by the work of Marioni.
This thesis will critically explore Marioni’s use of a participatory model. It
will argue that beyond creating situations of social exchange, where the work
endows the spectator with a form of agency eliciting an active participant, Marioni
also generates a sophisticated critique about the limits set on social exchange and
collectivity within arts institutions.
Marioni’s critique embedded within the humor and light-hearted nature of
his projects must be considered. Herein lies the aim of Marioni’s critical
participatory strategy: engaging an audience in a convivial occasion in an effort to
temporarily reinvigorate a social bond, as Nicolas Bourriaud, a forerunner in the
contemporary debate surrounding issues of participation in artistic practices,
suggests. To point to and provoke consideration of these underlying conditions of
public, social interaction is also of great importance to this strategy. As will be
discussed in Chapter One, it is also crucial to consider who comprises the audience
for these events, which in many cases, Marioni has tightly regulated. Placing Marioni
within a historical framework also serves to highlight the social context in which he
was developing these works and concepts.
Marioni is part of a generation of artists that appropriated social experiences
as a way of bringing art closer to life. Artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark’s Food
(1971), Helio Oiticica’s samba related works (mid-1960s), and Allen
Ruppersberg’s Al’s Hotel (1971), took on the idea of the everyday as art and
generated projects that destabilized the division between artist, art work and
4
audience. Artists in the generation directly preceding Tom’s also engaged with this
kind of participatory model, ultimately endeavoring to introduce and confront the
plurality of their surrounding environment.
5
Artistic practices such as John Cage’s
1960s experimental composition, Allan Kaprow’s Happenings, and Fluxus all took
on this idea of the everyday as art.
John Cage proved to be a large influence on Marioni’s practice. As a
composer in the post-war avant-garde era, Cage introduced elements of chance into
his work, favoring the active involvement of his audience over a tightly narrated
score. His most famous piece, 4’33” (1952), consisted of a performer sitting at a
piano, but not playing a single note for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.
Instead, the sounds produced by the audience and the other surrounding ambient
noises comprise the composition. Prior to this piece, Cage worked on another score
titled Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951), that involved twelve radios and twenty-
four participants, two performers for each radio; one to control the power and the
other responsible for the volume control. For this composition, participants were
instructed to turn on or change the channel of their radios at various times, making
the composition entirely dependent on what was being broadcast at that exact
moment, and simultaneously ensuring that no two performances of this piece are
ever the same. These works introduced the idea of the everyday aesthetic, that

5
Some of these artists include Claes Oldenburg who created The Store (1961), an installation, or
“environment” as he called it, that mimicked the surrounding setting of New York’s East Village, Allan
Kaprow, known predominantly for his Happenings, and the Fluxus movement that insisted on viewer
participation, claiming everything could be art and everyone could make art. These artists drew
from the precedents set by Dadaists who began to erase boundaries between what was considered
“high art” and the everyday.
5
artistic production can be drawn directly from ordinary materials and everyday
situations.
Allan Kaprow, an artist working in the late 1950s and early 1960s also
embraced everyday aesthetics. Influenced heavily by Cage’s teachings at the New
School, Kaprow invented Happenings, time-based, multi-sensory events that
solicited audience participation, such as his landmark 18 Happenings in 6 Parts
(1959), staged at the Reuben Gallery in New York. Like Cage’s work, Happenings
are based on chance and randomness
6
, the conditions of the site and the
participation of the spectators. As Kaprow wrote in his “Notes on Happenings,”
“audiences should be eliminated entirely. All the elements – people, space, the
particular materials and character of the environment, time – can in this way be
integrated.”
7

Fluxus, a non-discreet, international network of artists, saw no distinction
between art and life, and performed a range of activities as artistic events, including
concerts, dinners, and mail art. Fluxus activities insisted on viewer participation
and chance operations, and as such, influenced many key aspects of Marioni’s
practice.
The influence of such artists as Cage and Kaprow, and the Fluxus artists, is
easily detected in Marioni’s conceptual practice, and is especially evident in his
desire to create an experience that reflects real life situations through his artistic
work. Like his predecessors, his own art/life agenda dismantles the boundaries

6
Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900 (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004), 2:450.
7
Allan Kaprow, Assemblage, Environments and Happenings, (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1966), 227.
6
between artist and audience and uses a participatory strategy that specifically
champions the social dimension of collaborative exchange.
So the questions remain: what does a participatory model offer? What kind of
participatory model does Marioni employ? What kinds of relationships does his
strategy foster? How is he enacting a form of critique through these participatory
works? It seems clear that, at least in regard to Marioni’s work, and in light of
Bishop’s testimony that collectivity is paramount to these practices, in accepting the
invitation to be a co-producer, a participant is actively involved in the reparation of
some absent social bond, even if it is quickly dissolved once the piece has come to a
close. Within these public spaces, the model Maroni employs serves to introduce or
overcome the lack of sociability embedded within these experiences of compulsory
homogeneity. Additionally, Marioni’s humorous but critical model ensures that a
provocative declaration of the existing problematic social conditions is brought to
light, that participants understand the limits of their actions even within these
artistic endeavors.
In order to demonstrate how Tom Marioni’s work recreates that bond, even
if only temporarily, I will be discussing his infamous Drinking Beer with Friends is
the Highest Form of Art, first presented at the Oakland Museum of Art in 1970, and
its subsequent presentations as a museum installation, as well as its manifestation
as a weekly salon held in various locations for more than forty years. An important
aspect of this well-known, long-term project is his use of humor and irony, as well as
a participatory model that articulates surrounding social conditions, and also
creates a new, temporary social space that is not subject to the usual pre-ordained
7
or normative conditions of a specific site. Throughout his artistic career, Marioni
has made use of humor as a productive element of his art, encouraging participants
to bond and to work together in a playful, temporary, social intervention.
This inquiry into Tom Marioni’s work will also include a discussion of the
Museum of Conceptual Art, what he considers to be large-scale social artwork, an
“interactive installation” that provided a social and presentation space for events
and actions by fellow conceptual artists. Marioni founded MOCA (1970) in
responding to the absence of an alternative exhibition space for artists working in a
more conceptual and performative manner, (as opposed to the “object makers”) in
the early 1970s. To counteract this existing condition in San Francisco, like the beer
salons, MOCA functioned as a social space for artists to gather and work together in
a supportive, collective environment.
Finally, I will be discussing a duration performance Marioni collaborated on
with another San Francisco-based artist, Linda Montano, titled Handcuff (1973). For
this work, Montano and Marioni were handcuffed to each other for three days, and
their daily activities were videotaped. Since video cameras were quite bulky in the
1970s, the only footage they captured was recorded at The Museum of Conceptual
Art, however, they “rode on the bus, went out to eat, went to the movies, went to the
hardware store, in other words had a life.”
8
The footage they were able to capture
was later shown at the opening held at MOCA.
Through the participatory model he championed, all the constituent facets of
Marioni’s practice merged his art and his life, ultimately allowing him to maintain

8
Tom Marioni, Beer, Art, and Philosophy, (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2003), 106.
8
his own person and to simultaneously create social space or opportunities, even
within his specified limits. While Marioni is not making any utopian claims, he does
create site specific installations that function as a social space, working with his
audience as collaborators. His work allows for a collaborative exchange that is
intentional and purposeful, productively promoting collective, social interaction that
is often suppressed in institutional spaces and other sites.
I plan to demonstrate, that through his art/life agenda, or a critical
participatory strategy, Tom Marioni’s practice both repositions the value of his
artwork to place emphasis on the collaborative exchange it fosters, as well as
reinvigorates a social bond, or at the least, provides a discursive public space to
challenge the often homogenizing influences of public, social experiences.

9

CHAPTER 1: BEER, ART AND PHILOSPHY

“My work is like the light in the fridge, it only works when people are there to open
the fridge door.”
9

- Liam Gillick

As curator Rudolph Frieling said in response to artist Liam Gillick’s quote,
“one can only hope the fridge is not empty.”
10
Luckily for both Gillick and Frieling,
Tom Marioni has made sure that it is not. Hailed as a leading pioneer in the
Northern California art scene in the 1960s and 1970s, Marioni has made himself a
place in the history of conceptual art as “the famous beer drinker,” filling countless
refrigerators marked FREE BEER with exactly that, free beer. While some might
question if this is art, I think a more appropriate or relevant question is ‘What are
we participating in?’
From a young age, Marioni was keenly interested in the arts as most of his
adult role models engaged in some amount of artistic activity: his father’s hobby was
painting, his uncle an architect, and his mother an opera singer and harp player. As
a child, he had a violin lesson every Saturday at the Conservatory of Music, took art
classes all through high school, and attended the Cincinnati Art Academy for
college
11
where he studied painting and sculpture.

9
Liam Gillick quoted in “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” Claire Bishop, October, no. 110 (Fall
2004), 61.
10
Rudolph Frieling, “Towards Participation in Art” in The Art of Participation, (New York: Thames
and Hudson, 2008) Published in conjunction with the exhibition, “The Art of Participation” shown at
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 36.
11
Tom Marioni, Beer, Art, and Philosophy, (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2003), 57.
10
Upon entering the army, he was assigned to the post of Battalion Artist and
he asserts that it was while stationed in Germany that he made his very first
conceptual piece; “Very carefully, with black paint and a small brush, I painted one-
inch black line bordering the shapes. By doing that, I framed the bare plaster wall
where the paint had peeled off. That became the mural. It wasn’t pictorial. It was
about the process. That made it more conceptual than pictorial.”
12

After leaving the army, Marioni relocated to San Francisco because he felt it
was a “place for social experiment.”
13
As Marioni arrived in the Bay Area, a new era
of artistic practices also arrived on the scene. This movement towards
conceptualism embraced strategies utilized by both Cage and Kaprow, such as the
intervention of chance and the negation of ego by soliciting audience participation
which is necessarily unknowable in advance.
14
Its distance from New York meant
Minimalist and Pop traditions were not as pervasive, but it also meant there was no
strong art support system in California, causing artists to “turn to one another for
both audience and space.”
15

Without a prototype to draw from, California artists looked to the rock
concerts, street theater, and political and social events of the 1960s as models,
allying “itself very closely with life…there was only a thin membrane separating the

12
Tom Marioni, Beer, Art, and Philosophy, (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2003), 69. As a reaction
against Clement Greenberg’s Formalism as well the commodification of art, conceptualism became
more popular among artists in the 1960s. Like Marioni’s conceptual mural, a conceptual practice
privileges ideas and thought over aesthetic concerns
13
Tom Marioni, Beer, Art, and Philosophy, (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2003), 46.
14
These practices were first dubbed as “Concept Art” in a 1962 essay of the same name by Henry Flynt,
an artist associated with Fluxus.
15
Moira Roth, “A Star is Born: Performance Art in California” Performing Arts Journal 4, no. 3 (1980):
88.
11
life of the performance from that of the artist and of his or her audience of close
friends.”
16
Marioni, a forward-thinking artist and a curator, was an influential figure
in the San Francisco art scene who helped to re-draw these boundaries of what
could be considered as art and contributed to these critical, canonical revisions.
While in the early 1960s, New York City was the center for some of the first
conceptual practices, the San Francisco Bay Area artists had its own ideas about
what conceptual art entailed, “there was an emphasis on the body…with an element
of everyday life.”
17
Marioni became a forerunner of conceptualism and unlike the
more serious, language and text-based conceptual art coming out of New York at the
same time, Marioni, who was heavily influenced by Marcel Duchamp, relied upon
humor in his work.
18
In fact, humor is such a prominent theme in Marioni’s work
that art critic Thomas McEvilley commented, “…the terms ‘California’ and
‘Conceptual Art’ were seen as contradictory, almost as a kind of joke…but Marioni
found a way to become that contradictory being, by affirming the joke and going
with it, making it a fruitful part of the art material.”
19

Like his predecessors Cage and Kaprow, Marioni embraced everyday
situations as substance for his artistic practice, using humor and conviviality to

16
Moira Roth, “A Star is Born: Performance Art in California” Performing Arts Journal 4, no. 3 (1980):
88.
17
Tom Marioni, Beer, Art, and Philosophy (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2003), 83.
18
Tom Marioni, interview by author, San Francisco, CA, January 11, 2010. Marcel Duchamp, an artist
most commonly associated with the Dadaist movement, introduced the idea of the ready-made into
the commercial art world. Fountain (1917), his most notorious piece, is a urinal displayed upside
down. These subversive, yet playful actions belittle the autonomy of an art object and expose the
contingent factors of spectatorship and presentation. Duchamp’s work stood as an example for many
conceptual artists in succeeding generations.
19
Thomas McEvilley, introduction to Beer, Art and Philosophy, by Tom Marioni (San Francisco: Crown
Point Press, 2003), 1.

12
inspire collectivity, especially evident in Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest
Form of Art (1970 - present) and its subsequent manifestations. Marioni rejected
the up-to-then traditional form of aesthetic expression, painting, and instead
experimented with conceptual forms, resisting representation, and most
importantly using humor. While conceptual art was a global movement, this
element of humor was unique to the California art scene. The conviviality generated
through his socially interactive works not only stood as models for other artists, and
through his Museum of Conceptual Art, he offered them a space for experimentation.
Marioni successfully adopted major principles from the conceptual art movement,
primarily the precedence of thought and process over object, infusing this with his
sense of humor and California lifestyle.
Marioni’s most famous works revolve around the production of social
interactions, and most notably in these pieces, he introduced a favorite American
pastime: drinking beer. As an act familiar to many participants, drinking beer and
encouraging engagement between visitors is a clever and comfortable way to
include viewers who may not be familiar with artists or are otherwise
uncomfortable in a museum or institutional space. This not only extends the
network of all participants, but also articulates the social conditions of a space
predicated on maintaining homogeneity. Marioni cites many memorable and
enjoyable experiences of his life that revolved around the act of drinking beer; from
the jazz parties he would throw in his parents’ basement, to his days in art school
and even his time in the military, beer functioned as a social ritual or a vehicle for
13
sociability that he recreates through the various beer salons, or what he calls his
“public, social art.”
20

Working under his pseudonym Allan Fish, Marioni first shared drinks with
his friends in 1970 for an installation at the Oakland Museum of Art:
I invited sixteen friends to the museum on a Monday while it was normally
closed…I told the curator, George Neubert, to get the beer and to be there.
Everybody showed up, and we drank and had a good time. The debris was
left on exhibit as a record of the event. Basically, the show consisted of the
evidence of the act. It was an important work for me, because it defined
Action rather than Object as Art.
21

As Marioni notes in his description, in this
particular installation, he collaborated with
other artists and friends who acted as both the
bartenders and beer drinkers (something he
has continued throughout these events), leaving
only the detritus of the evening, along with a
refrigerator marked “FREE BEER.” This
particular form of the piece, while not a
collaboration with a larger public, acted almost
as a tease, showing his audience what they
missed. When confronted with the remains of the activities of the previous night,
the audience would immediately notice that a level of sociability was missing from
their own visit. As expectations and rules about acceptable museum behavior (don’t
touch the art, take photographs, speak loudly, etc.,), this piece only reinforced those

20
Tom Marioni, interview by author, San Francisco, CA, January 11, 2010.
21
Tom Marioni, Beer, Art and Philosophy, (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2003), 93.
Figure 1: "Free Beer" fridge. Courtesy
of Tom Marioni.
14
social codes by exposing the conviviality and exchange that had taken place only a
night earlier in that same, now quiet and contemplative location. This revelation
suggested that while public institutions like a museum may appear to offer visitors
the freedom to engage in a reciprocal relationship with the exhibition material and
other members of the public, the experience offered is, in fact, tightly regulated,
denying them the opportunity to experience a relationship of exchange. Like the
leftover beer bottles that symbolize revelry and a social gathering, the museum
presents an image of diversity and discovery, when in actuality its strict regulations
serve to repress plurality and an experience of collectivity among and between
visitors. While these visitors were not invited to participate in the social experience
Marioni hosted, he did draw their attention to the lack of sociability they were
currently experiencing within that same museum space. Through this first
installation, Marioni was able to exhibit the social conditions embedded in an
institutional context, while simultaneously introducing an element of sociability and
humor into that same framework.
Figure 2: Beer Drinking Sonata performance
15
Figure 3: Cafe Society Beer (1974).
Courtesy of Tom Marioni.
Marioni has since evolved the beer salons into various forms including a Beer
Drinking Sonata (For 13 Players). The Beer Drinking Sonata was performed by
Marioni and twelve friends at the San Francisco
museum, The Palace of the Legion of Honor. (see
appendix A) Complete with three movements, the
sonata consisted of the musicians using beer
bottles, in varying degrees of fullness, to make a
musical noise by blowing into the bottles’ glass
neck. The musical component of this
manifestation clearly draws from Cage’s influence,
and work like Imaginary Landscape No. 4
discussed earlier. Marioni adopted their ideas of
using a simple every day object and its sounds to
perform a musical concert. In regards to a critical
participatory strategy, the piece is notable most
importantly because it is accessible to any of-age participants without having to
purchase a ticket for a performance or attend a museum. The instructions (or
perhaps score is more appropriate) are available to anyone to rehearse or perform
the sonata, as one may see in the multiple videos available on YouTube.
22
Not only
did Marioni, yet again, introduce a playful mood into an institutional context, but he

22
Beer Drinking Sonata (Tom Marioni), YouTube video,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx3XOQBKQ14 (accessed February 12, 2010).
16
created a piece that was accessible to many and required participants to work
together in a convivial and social interaction.
Marioni also made a print in the form of a beer bottle label published by
Crown Point Press in 1974. The print also sought to both symbolize and engender
an experience of collectivity and sociability. The press printed special beer labels,
which he had the Anchor Steam Beer Company affix to specially brewed champagne
sized bottles with instructions that read, “This is a social work of art. To complete
the artwork, the beer must be consumed, shared by at least two people.”
23
As
Marioni has mentioned, he believes art to be about action, so it is not the over-sized
beer bottles, but the act of consuming the beer with another person, and the
resulting exchange that constitutes the art. Participants are a necessary element to
activate the work. In both this example as well as the Beer Drinking Sonata, Marioni
introduced an element of play into the art community and created a space for social
interaction. These two incarnations of his work with beer, like much of his other art,
embraces a serious playfulness. The dose of humor or delight in shared dialogue
initiated by these works aims at producing an atmosphere of conviviality within a
framework typically shrouded in gravity. These two pieces refute the “no food or
drink allowed in the gallery,” context of traditional art institutions and instead
empower viewers to step outside this structure and experience art in an accessible
and social manner.
Perhaps Marioni’s most famous variation of his beer salon is its museum
installation, The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art (1970 –

23
Tom Marioni, 139.
17
present). Unlike its museum debut in 1970, for these later incarnations, he opens up
the piece to the public, inviting them to share a free beer with himself and any of the
other participating museum visitors. While in its first incarnation, when the piece
was just a collaboration between himself and his friends, it served to expose the
existing social conditions of the museum space. By opening up the piece to a larger
public, Marioni is not only exposing those conditions, but actually overcoming them,
even if only temporarily, by creating a new space that encourages the dialogue and
plurality that is otherwise repressed. As in its first manifestations, he has continued
to leave the detritus of the events reassembled as the installation while the free beer
is not offered, and even has used the discarded beer bottles to create sculptures
once the work has come to a close, such as GET TITLE AND IMAGE FROM KAREN.
This sculpture created from the debris has an important role as a relic, as an object
that continues the mythology of the event.
In his 1979 Manifesto, Marioni explained that “with some artists in [his]
generation there’s a return to the object, not as an end in itself, but as material to
explain a function.”
24
The object/sculptural aspect of the piece assigns a durational
component to the work allowing viewers to recreate or imagine the experience of
the beer salon. This understanding of art as a record has precedence in his earlier
One Second Sculptures in which he would throw a tape measure into the air and let it
fall to the ground. As he mentioned in an interview, in performing this piece, he
came to discover that the “lasting form of an artwork is created and later recreated

24
Tom Marioni, “1979 Manifesto” in Tom Marioni: Sculpture and Installations (San Francisco: Crown
Point Press, 2001), 13.
18
Figure 4: The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form
of Art (1970 - present). Installation at CAC. Courtesy of Tom
Marioni.
in the viewer’s mind.”
25
The object created from the discarded beer bottles has the
same function, reminding viewers or introducing them to the exchange fostered by
the beer salons. Similar to the first installation at the Berkeley Art Museum, when
confronted with the beer salon relic-object, viewers would experience the
conviviality of the event only second-hand, ultimately serving to expose the
traditional lack of
sociability within an
institutional framework.
The arrangement
Marioni uses for his beer
salons also work to
expose other inherent
contradictions within the
public museum setting.
As seen in the image above, the social event is set-up to resemble the look of the
1920’s Paris café scene, especially evident by the specific chairs chosen for the
event. In fact, Marioni is quoted saying he wants to “recreate the feel of the Paris
café scene in the 1920’s where artists and writers met each other…I wanted to carry
on traditions and at the same time get away with something.”
26
Deliberately
harking back to this particular café era conjures many associations, much like the
image he cites, “where artists and writers met each other…” Marioni uses his

25
Tom Marioni, interview by Rick Pender, 97.1 WVXU radio, September 10, 2006.
26
Tom Marioni, 117.
19
artistic practice to fill a void in the social atmosphere within the art community,
creating a space, modeled on that of a café, that promotes dialogue. His utilization of
the open-ended organization of a café or salon style setting is emblematic of his
desire to bring people together, even if only fleetingly. Simultaneously, his desire to
“get away with something,” suggests that his is also keenly aware of the conditions
of a museum gallery in regard to sociability.
While his intention to foster discursiveness among a disparate group of
people is genuine, by introducing that dialogue, he is also cognizant that moments of
friction may be induced; a plurality of people, ideas, and opinions will clash, merge,
and morph. Unlike the space of the museum that ultimately endeavors to avoid this
level of freedom, or friction, Marioni embraces this as an authentic experience of
sociability that is missing in public/cultural institutions. Again, this quote reveals an
almost mocking tone, as he is conscious of the fact that he is introducing an element
into those spaces that is purposefully contained.
Additionally, by recreating a romanticized image of a salon style gathering
and serving nothing but relatively inexpensive Mexican beer is contradictory. The
1920s Paris café or salon style setting suggests the typical polite restraint
experienced at a traditional museum event, however, the choice of beer, which has
its own set of class-related associations, conflicts with the subdued atmosphere
implied by the cafe style setting. This arrangement not only introduced sociability
into an institutional framework but pointed to its absence. Most importantly,
through the ironic undertones and gentle ridiculousness of serving beer within such
a framework as an idealized café scene, Marioni is commenting on the impossibility,
20
or limits, to sociability and collective exchange within a system, which by enforcing
regulations restricting interaction and individuality or character, is predicated on
disavowing plurality and conflict. He is successful in his aim at creating a space of
dialogue in a café environment, and at getting away with something, both of which
serve to point to the lack of a discursive space and to temporarily overcome it.
27

The other ongoing manifestation of Marioni’s beer salon is what has been
called Café Wednesday, Café Society, The Academy of MOCA, and The Artist’s Studio.
The changing name over the years reflects the shifting location of where the beer
salon has resided, from a local bar, to his alternative exhibition space, The Museum
of Conceptual Art, and finally to his studio. Rooted in his experience as a Catholic
altar boy as a child growing up in Cincinnati, these events have offered Marioni a
“ritual experience.” These social sacraments, as he has called them, echo some
familiar traditions from his childhood such as Benediction which was a Catholic
ritual he partook in on Wednesday evenings.
28
During the last forty years, these
salons have expanded and changed, and in recent years, Marioni laid out some
specific rules for them, but at its core, it is what he calls his “public, social art.”
29

27
As a critical participatory strategy, The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art
installed within a museum, exposes the limits of communality within a public space and makes an
institutional critique on the heels of the Civil Rights, Feminist and other liberation movements of the
late 1960s and early 1970s. This type of institutional criticism surges again during the so-called
“Culture Wars” of the late 1980s and 1990s when artists such as Fred Wilson and Andrea Fraser
began to cite the one-sided, biases or classist nature of museum exhibitions. They called into
question the authority given to institutions to assign value, and command a specific type, or
homogenous viewer, much like Marioni’s piece does. This model of practice was later codified as
Institutional Critique.
28
Tom Marioni, 39.
29
Tom Marioni, 194.
21
Figure 5: Museum of Conceptual Art (Breen's Bar), 1973.
Courtesy of Tom Marioni.
Like Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, these Wednesday
salons offer a chance for people to gather, engage in conversation, and share a beer
together. The free beer has been provided through grants Marioni received, or in
financially restrictive times, everyone has been required to bring their own beer,
(except of course for “first timers because they don’t know any better.”
30
) In its
current form, held in Marioni’s studio, he has set-up a black bar and red leather
booths from Breen’s, “the late great Third Street bar where [he] held his Café
Society in the mid-70s. There’s a Charlie Parker postcard beneath a refrigerator
magnet reproduction of
Picasso’s Guernica, and
original art by John
Cage and Sol LeWitt.”
31

These beer salons are
particularly unique due
to their long history.
Unlike many projects of
a similar nature, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Thai Curry, for instance, Marioni has
religiously maintained his weekly salon for forty years (and counting). When he
began this club, as Marioni calls it, in the 1970s, it was his way to create a

30
Tom Marioni, 118.
31
Jesse Hamlin, “It’s really art – drinking beer and gabbing with friends,” The San Francisco Chronicle,
February 13, 2004.
22
community for artists in San Francisco, who otherwise had no place to gather and
share insight and ideas, “San Francisco seemed quiet at the time...I was too young to
have been a beatnik and too old to be a hippie.”
32
Echoing the range of participants
solicited by the museum installation, this weekly salon creates an open and ever-
changing community. While held at a public bar, the diverse range of people who
participated was expected, however, now that is held in his studio, Marioni has
made the effort to ensure new people are introduced to the group by requesting
that each week, the bartender bring three guests. Through this project, Marioni has
successfully constructed a social space that is not static, but instead, an open-work,
much like the art/life agenda he has embraced throughout his career.
Moving Café Wednesdays to his private studio has had an additional impact
on this ongoing project; a list of rules as a practical necessity. The rules or
guidelines for Café Wednesday, although seemingly contradictory to encouraging
social interactions that are free from inherent conditions of control, have in fact
become integral to the function of the piece. (Please see the Appendix) Many of these
rules again, have elements of humor seeming almost like a joke, but most
importantly, they provide restrictions and a structure to the activities taking place.
Again, these regulations appear to be in opposition to the idea of an open,
participatory model, and therein lies their irony. By demonstrating the need to
provide a structure for an artistic practice, Marioni is translating the inherent
exclusions in the art community to his participatory model. Now that he has not
only regained some amount of authorial control, but also created distinctions about

32
Tom Marioni, 74.
23
participants or behavior that is allowable, he has reflected some of the flaws or
concerns regarding a social experience in public space, or specifically an art
institution like a museum. Reflecting its museum installation, Marioni uses his work
to point to the fact that within an institutional framework, viewers are assumed to
be homogenous, or at least their individuality is suppressed, ultimately creating
exclusions. The rules serve to echo those exclusions and have also exposed the
limits of communality in public space. Drinking beer with friends at a bar would
seem like an innocuous activity free from specific commands and directions, but
with the addition of Marioni’s guidelines, there is an ironic understanding that there
can never really be just free beer, participants are always adhering to some social
code within public space. In the end, through the use of irony, Marioni is successful
in providing a space for social interaction while simultaneously highlighting the
predetermined conditions of social space and exchange within a public setting.

24
CHAPTER 2: CURATOR AND COLLABORATOR
As we have seen in Marioni’s beer salons, humor and conviviality, as key
components of Marioni’s practice, represent an important aspect of his critical
participatory strategy. Shared across age, class, and racial lines, and providing
viewers/participants with a setting that is both welcoming and familiar, this air of
conviviality has translated to many of his projects including the Museum of
Conceptual Art (MOCA).
As the curator of the Richmond Art Center for a number of years, in the late-
1960s, Marioni began to feel limited by the shows he was allowed to install because,
at the time, many felt the work he and other artists were involved in were
considered too radical. After permitting a piece that allowed a woman to crawl
along the gallery floor with a milking machine strapped to her chest spilling cow’s
blood to be performed during an opening, Marion was asked to step down from his
position as curator at the Richmond Art Center. He then committed himself to
finding an alternative space for himself and fellow artists, and with that, MOCA came
into being.
Marioni was at the forefront of a movement of artists who wanted to control
their own practices outside the constraints of an institutional framework. As
previously mentioned, Marioni considered MOCA to be a large scale social artwork,
an “interactive installation” providing space for events and actions by fellow
conceptual artists: as he commented, “when I organize shows of artists, I don’t think
of it as my art, but MOCA’s social activities and the idea of this museum are my
25
art.”
33
Relinquishing control and offering a space to artists that was free both
financially and artistically, Marioni sought to create new opportunities for artists,
and simultaneously foster sociability between artists. When MOCA was founded
forty years ago, there was no place in San Francisco showing conceptual art, and
Marioni used this project as a way to not only offer a space to conceptual artists, but
cultivate a community between them. Unlike traditional museums that hold
exhibitions for an extended period of time, shows at MOCA lasted for one night.
Some emblematic projects presented there include Sound Sculpture As, Body Works,
and All Night Sculptures, where Barbara Smith presented her famous piece Feed Me,
which Marioni has dubbed the “most interesting show that happened there.”
34

Sound Sculpture As is a particularly interesting example of the exhibitions the
Museum of Conceptual Art presented because it was both the first publicly
announced show at MOCA and one of the shows that Marioni presented a piece of
his own under his pseudonym Allan Fish. The nine invited artists were not given
any restrictions or requirements for their piece other than knowing that the
curatorial framework for the exhibition was sound based work. One artist, Mel
Henderson, took this opportunity to present a considerably radical project and fired
a thirty-caliber rifle into a room filled with about 100 people.
35
Allan Fish,
Marioni’s alter ego, performed his infamous work, Piss Piece. As with the other
projects presented under his pseudonym, Marioni announced that Allan Fish had
sent instructions and Marioni would be performing the piece in his absence.

33
Tom Marioni, Crown Point Press Newsletter (San Francisco: Crown Point Press, winter 1993).
34
Tom Marioni, 100.
35
Tom Marioni, 95.
26
Marioni climbed to the top of a step-ladder and urinated into a galvanized tub with
his back to the audience. This humorous demonstration of the “principles of
physics,” as Marioni has described it, maintained the comical and light-hearted
nature of his work, and as he recalls, sent the audience into a fit of laughter as they
clapped and applauded. This work recalls the short, body-oriented performances by
Fluxus artists that were influencing Marioni’s practice at the time, in particular piece
George Brecht’s Water Drip Piece (1959), in which he stood from a ladder and
poured water into an empty vessel placed on the floor below. Piss Piece is a
humorous re-interpretation of Brecht’s Fluxus score that can be performed by
others as they wish. Brecht wrote his scores on index cards that he would send to
friends. The Drip Music composition read, “For single or multiple performance. A
source of dripping water and an empty vessel are arranged so that the water falls
into the vessel.”
36
Later that same year, he revised the score to include, “Performer
on a ladder pours water from a pitcher very slowly down into the bell of a French
horn or tuba held in playing position by a second performer at floor level.” Many of
the works in Sound Sculpture As, like the two previously mentioned, endorse
Marioni’s art/life agenda, using his space as a laboratory for emerging radical art
practices as well as promoting sociability among and between artists and audiences.
Another show Marioni organized at MOCA that proved important for
emerging art practices was Body Works, the first video art show in California and
the first show focused on Body Art in the country. A few of the participating artists

36
Fluxus and Happenings – George Brecht: Events and Performances,
http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/brecht_performances.html (accessed February 2,
2010).
27
included Bruce Nauman, who presented a video of himself walking around his
studio, and Vito Acconci, who burned the hairs around his nipples off.
37
Presented
in the fall of 1970, Marioni requested artists send in thirty-minute videos which
were shown in the bar below the museum, Breens, because Marioni felt this “was
the best way to see real-time tapes. You could come and go, have a drink, talk and
be comfortable.”
38
This relaxed presentation of the work is emblematic of the kind
of social interaction that he encouraged in not only his own artwork but, as is also
evident, in his curatorial practice. He successfully joined his practice as a curator
with his desire to share a pleasurable experience with a community of friends and
artists, once again finding a way to promote an art/life agenda. MOCA offered
Marioni the chance to continue his own artistic practice as well as reach out to
others working in the field, create a network, and present work he felt was
important. Ultimately, MOCA was just another “excuse for a party,”
39
but a
productive one. Marioni’s role as a curator was really that of an impresario,
orchestrating events and creating opportunities to present the new conceptual art
practices that Marioni believed were “moral and political, and because of that [they
were] very vital.”
40
The model of artist as curator that he embodied in the San
Francisco art world, and the resulting impact it had on emerging concepts of artistic
practice and artistic material, should be recognized as equally significant and pivotal
as his own career as an artist. While his alter ego, Allan Fish, allowed him to

37
The titles for these pieces were either not given or not recorded at the time of the show.
38
Tom Marioni, 97.
39
Tom Marioni, 93.
40
Tom Marioni, 132.
28
separate his artistic career from his role as a curator, MOCA allowed him to move
seamlessly between them. Handcuff, a project in which he participated in as a
collaborator, represents another position Marioni occupied that allowed him the
freedom to move successfully between his community and his own work as an
artist.
In 1973, Marioni was approached by performance artist, Linda Montano, to
partake in a collaborative project. Montano grew up in a small town in upstate New
York, and like Marioni, her childhood was heavily influence by Catholicism, and as a
young women, she joined a
convent. After two years, she
left in pursuit of a career as an
artist and spent time in Italy,
then later received her MFA in
sculpture from the University
of Wisconsin. In the late 1960s
and 1970s, Montano, who no
longer wanted to be a “Holy
girl,”
41
rejected Catholicism and began to explore “her urges, her dreams, her own
definitions of religion/sainthood,”
42
in both her art and her practice of yoga. In the
piece, titled Handcuff, Montano and Marioni were handcuffed to each other for three

41
Linda Montano, “7 Years of Living Art,” http://www.lindamontano.com (accessed January 17,
2010).
42
Linda Montano, “7 Years of Living Art,” http://www.lindamontano.com (accessed January 17,
2010).
Figure 6: Chicken Dance (1970). Courtesy of Linda
Montano.
29
days and their daily activities were videotaped. What’s most notable about this
piece, concerning his art/life agenda, is the impact or opportunity it created for
Linda Montano. As a female artist in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and
70s, she was not offered many opportunities to show her work. Given Marioni’s
reputation in the San Francisco art scene as both an artist and a curator, being her
partner in this project offered her exposure. Again, Marioni’s work functioned as a
space for collaboration and community, as well as an exhibition of the inherent
flaws within a social experience or institution, such as the art market.
As a female working in the Conceptual Art scene in the 1960s and 1970s,
which at the time was dominated by men, she faced many challenges in finding
representation for her work.
43
Despite the hurdles she faced, Montano found the
San Francisco art scene to be “exciting, invigorating, and inspiring,” due in large part
to the fact that the “men-
artists were truly
democratic, inviting, and
collaborative.”
44
Marioni,
a good friend of
Montano’s, was certainly
one of these male artists

43
In her piece titled Chicken Dance from 1972, Montano dressed in an outlandish costume and
danced in front of galleries that had refused to represent her or show her work. Much like Handcuff,
this work was about awareness, pointing to the exclusions that confronted her in her professional
and personal life.
44
Linda Montano, interview by author via email, January 15, 2010.
Figure 7: Handcuff (1973). Courtesy of Tom Marioni.
30
she described as he was more than willing to be a part of her project, and has been
adamantly clear that Handcuff, or as he called it, “the ballroom dance,”
45
was entirely
her project in which he acted strictly as a participant.
For Montano, this piece offered her the space to express her discontent with
the gender politics she faced on a daily basis in her professional career as an artist.
Again, working in a male dominated field presented many set-backs for female
artists, and Handcuff visually represented those struggles suggesting that for women
to gain recognition, they must attach themselves to a man. While the feminist
critique of gender politics that was embedded in the piece was of importance to
Marioni, the collaborative aspect held equal weight for him and his practice. He not
only understood the exposure it offered her, but also recognized the opportunity it
presented to create a supportive environment for and between artists.
Collaborating with Montano generated discussion within the art community about
the fact that in order to gain recognition, women literally had to handcuff
themselves to male artists. In this way, Handcuff was a way to foster communication
between artists and about artists, especially regarding the unique situation of
female artists. Again, as Marioni has said, his art practice is about communication
and a social experience. As a collaborator, Marioni again used his position to open
up a social space that refuted the preordained conditions, in this case, a space that
resisted the limitations imposed on female artists in the 1970’s.
Handcuff, which was only between two people, and MOCA, which was a
project that involved participants that had been expressly invited, both represent

45
Tom Marioni, interview by author, San Francisco, CA, January 11, 2010.
31
the spaces of sociability that Marioni’s work sought to create. Each work, for
Marioni, fostered a social exchange or collectivity. Both also encouraged discursive
dialogue around issues significant to Marioni and his art/life agenda. Handcuff
provides a strong example of how his critical participatory strategy, which
embraced a sense of conviviality and exchange, created a social space that promoted
a dimension of collectivity that also commented on the conditions of public space.
As a collaborator, Marioni embodied the role of impresario, helping to advance a
friend and fellow artist’s career, as well as fulfilling his own personal relationships.
Again, exposing the inequalities between the situation of male and female artists
made Handcuff an appealing project for Marioni, while also serving personal
interests. A key component of a critical participatory strategy is pointing to
inherent social conditions embedded within a given space or environment and even
to challenge or provoke discussion around those assumptions, as Handcuff, through
its participatory model, endeavored to achieve.

32
CHAPTER 3: TOM MARIONI AND LATER GENERATIONS
Many other artists in addition to Marioni, have invited audience members to
participate in their projects, using participation as a key element to the success of
their respective projects. Feminist artists have been known to solicit participation
from various groups of women for their performances, and much like Maroni’s
work, this serves to present a united community. Suzanne Lacy, another California-
based artist, studied under Allan Kaprow as well as Judy Chicago and Miriam
Schapiro in the Feminist Art Program at CalArts. Her practice, which was strongly
influenced by these figures, drew from Feminist discourse and utilized a
collaborative model. Lacy presented a piece in 1979 titled International Dinner Party
that embraced participation as a way to create collectivity between women.
Participation, again as a theme in art practices, had a resurgence in the 1990s with
artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija. It has been argued that as technology proliferated and
in some instances, even overtook human interactions, artistic activity aimed at
producing modest human connection. Tiravanija, in one of his most famous
projects, Untitled (Free) (1992), used a model comparable to Marioni’s in order to
achieve these connections. Finally, the strategy Marioni has employed has
championed a criticism embedded within in his work that has also stood as an
example for subsequent generations. Codified as Institutional Critique, this genre of
artistic practices sought to expose problematic conditions or discrepancies within
information offered to publics, much like the work of Marioni. Fred Wilson, in
Mining the Museum (1992), undertook this form of practice and challenged what
was being offered as historical fact to a public audience.
33
Suzanne Lacy, also working in California in the 1970s, found participation to
be integral to her practice as well, however, her work has been more overtly
charged politically than that of Marioni. While it can be argued that The Act of
Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, as well as his curatorial visions
for MOCA and his collaboration with Linda Montano all sought to resist what were
seen as flaws in social conditions or expectations, Lacy does not champion the
interactions that occur as a result of her projects, but instead the message she
projects through her work. As a close friend and student of Judy Chicago’s, Lacy
used International Dinner Party (1979) as both a gift to Chicago, as it coincided with
the opening of her piece The Dinner Party, as well as an opportunity to bring women
together in wide-reaching and supportive community. Lacy sent out instructions to
women across the globe which read, “Have a dinner on The Dinner Party opening
night with women in your
community, to honor women
in your lives.”
46
Everyone who
participated was to send Lacy a
telegram, which she would
then mark with a red triangle
to denote when an event had
taken place, on a large black and white map she had hung in the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. The whole piece took place over a 24-hour period due to

46
Suzanne Lacy, interview by Moira Roth, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, March 16,
1990.
Figure 8: International Dinner Party (1979).
http://www.suzannelacy.com/1980sdinner_international.htm
34
the time differences, and at the end, approximately 2,000 women had participated in
about 200 hundred dinners. Lacy has recounted that as a result of this project, she
received photos, tablecloths, and art works from various women who had
participated. For her, this event was really about organizing an experience of “the
kind of power that happened when [women] came together.”
47
Because she was
involved in the Feminist movement, her work was specifically oriented towards
women’s issues, whereas Marioni was more involved in the conviviality of his life-
oriented projects. Both Marioni and Lacy were really organizers, but Marioni’s work
did not have the political mantle like the Feminists, and instead his work offered a
social aspect, and it is this aspect of his work that has been significant. Where Lacy
rallied around women’s issues, Marioni embodied a sense of 1960s hippie freedom
that championed the experience of social interaction.
Participation in artistic practices is not the only theme of Marioni’s work that
has been adopted or applied by other artists, in fact, on the heels of the 1980s and
the surge of identity politics, many artists confronted the conditions established and
promoted by institutions
48
. Fred Wilson, a black, homosexual male, began his
artistic career amidst this environment of culture wars and identity politics, and
both proved to be largely influential on his work, as evident in his Mining the
Museum. In 1992, sponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Baltimore,
Wilson presented a project that investigated how certain objects or artifacts were
coded with value or meaning and therefore translated as cultural exemplars of a

47
Suzanne Lacy, interview by Moira Roth, Archives of American Art , Smithsonian Institute, March
16, 1990.
48
A movement which came to be recognized as Institutional Critique.
35
Figure 9: Mining the Museum (1992). pyro-
blu.com/assets/images/chains.jpg
seemingly official history. After exploring the Maryland Historical Society’s
collection, Wilson used artifacts he found in storage that had been otherwise
deemed marginal and placed them throughout the existing exhibition in order to
reframe the objects presented as valuable historical artifacts as well as re-
contextualize the history offered to museum visitors. For example, in the case
marked “Metalwork 1793-1880,” which exhibited ornate pitchers, vases, and
goblets, Wilson placed a pair of slave shackles in the middle of the display, creating a
stark contrast to what was
considered valuable and
ultimately significant to the
history the Historical
Society presented. This
piece not only offered a
critique of the museum and
the power afforded
institutions to shape its
audience’s understanding
of particular events or periods in history, but it also offered viewers a political
critique of race and class issues that are propagated by these institutions, even if
unintentionally. While Wilson confronts the histories offered as official or unbiased
in a direct and provocative manner, Marioni’s work is more subtle as well as
humorous. Wilson’s piece, on the other hand, while arguably humorous, is more
36
biting, even sarcastic. As an African-American man, the influence of identity politics
that pervaded the 1980s is easily detected in Mining the Musuem. Wilson’s own
identity as a black male is a driving force in the motivation behind this piece.
Incorporating his own self within his work is culturally different from the 1960s
atmosphere that focused on breaking boundaries, evident in Marioni’s desire to
uproot or reframe viewer’s perception of sociability within public space. As a
product of the 1960s and 1970s Conceptual Art generation, Marioni is concerned
primarily with making a museum experience more sociable or amiable. By shifting
the experience of being in a museum, Marioni is challenging what is considered
normative behavior in public spaces, offering a participatory model in place of the
expected static and passive role typically assumed. Although approached with
different strategies, both Wilson and Marioni question what truly defines art and
who is invested with the power to assign it that value.
Not only were the next generation of artists taking up themes Marioni used
in his work like critiquing institutions, many were also disrupting boundaries
between audience and artist, using conviviality and social interactions as part of
their art practice, codified as Relational Aesthetics twenty years after Marioni began
his projects. Bourriaud’s theory of relation art was initially developed in response
to the increasing electronic mediation and spectacularization of culture in the early
1990s. His text Relational Aesthetics, argues, “the constitution of convivial relations
has been an historical constant since the 1960s. The generation of the 1990s took up
this set of issues, though…the issue no longer resides in broadening the boundaries
of art, but in experiencing art’s capacities of resistance within the overall social
37
arena.”
49
Claire Bishop, another prominent figure in the debate surrounding
participatory art practices, declares that the visual arts no longer emphasize
traditional aesthetics but instead embrace themes ranging from the everyday to the
political, “striving to collapse the distinction between performer and
audience…Their emphasis is on collaboration and the collective dimension of a
social experience.”
50

Rirkrit Tiravanija, an artist coming out of the 1990s generation of Relational
Aesthetics, presented a
series of works titled
Untitled (Free) in the
1990s that draw
resemblance to
Marioni’s The Act of
Drinking Beer with
Friends is the Highest
Form of Art. Presented
at 303 Gallery in New York, he rearranged the gallery space, moving the unseen
areas of the gallery, like the desks and other furniture from the administrative
offices, into public view and set-up a cooking preparation area and stove in the back
where he made Thai curry vegetables and rice to serve to gallery visitors.
51
Similar

49
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, ed. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (France: Les presses
du reel, 2002), 31.
50
Claire Bishop, Introduction to Participation, ed. Claire Bishop (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 10.
51
Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900 (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004), 2:620
Figure 10: Untitled (Free) (1992).
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/saltz/saltz5-15-07.asp
38
to the congeniality fostered by The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest
Form Art, Untitled generated a space for social engagement through the
consumption of a meal, and like Marioni’s piece, Tiravanija used this work as a way
to confuse the normative position of art, artist and audience. Tiravanija also
repeated this piece a number of times and even made it mobile, taking his prepared
curry around to passersby on his bike. While this piece draws many similarities to
Marioni’s work, Tiravanija has maintained a distinct position within the piece as the
chef, and therefore author, whereas Marioni is simply part of the crowd enjoying the
conviviality produced in his work. Additionally, despite its repetition, Untitled does
not have the same ritualistic aspect that Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest
Form of Art has stimulated over its 40 year period. Tirivanija, like Wilson, has also
asserted his own identity into his work, as his grandmother owned and ran a
restaurant. Again, the influence of identity politics of the 1980s has impacted
subsequent generations in a way that is absent from Marioni’s work. Finally, as
mentioned earlier, the 1960s/1970s generation of artists were confronted with the
task of answering what constituted art, and for Marioni, his piece served as a way to
challenge and reframe the definition of art, whereas Tiravanija’s generation, “the
issue no longer resides in broadening the boundaries of art, but in experiencing art’s
capacities of resistance within the overall social arena.”
52
Artists working the
1990s, like Tiravanija, used their artistic practice to continue a dialogue about what
had been deemed the “Society of Spectacle,” or an inundation of images and

52
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, ed. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (France: Les
presses du reel, 2002), 31.
39
information which constantly bombards the public.
53
A work like Untitled (Free)
serves to overcome the image-saturated environment, and instead offer its audience
conviviality and relationships through collective behavior. Where Marioni is
critiquing the normative behavior expected in public space and humorously
challenging the definition of art, Tiravanija is striving to overcome the lack of
sociability that occurs as a direct result of the barrage of the spectacular. Both
however, privilege the experience over the object.
Practices Tom Marioni established and has embraced throughout his 40-year
career as an artist have not only subtlety opened a dialogue surrounding the
definition of art, and the accepted social conditions inherent in public, institutional
space but have also served generations of artists following him. While each
generation is confronted with their own particular set of political or social
implications, Feminism, identity politics, or Relational Aesthetics, each has
borrowed and adapted strategies Marioni implemented in his own practice. The
critical participatory strategy Marioni has created for himself sought to champion
the plurality often negated within public space, but has also served as an example
for fellow artists to provide a discursive space for struggles relevant to their own
concerns, ultimately all endeavoring to reframe a viewer, or participant’s,
perception and experience.

53
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, ed. Donald Nicholosn-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994
(1967)).
40
CONCLUSION
Tom Marioni offers his audience a social space, and a collective experience,
even if it is only temporary, and it is this experience of collective creativity that a
participatory, open structure champions. Echoing sentiments offered by Umberto
Eco in “The Poetics of an Open Work,” these artistic practices set-up a field of
relations with specific structural limits. As he mentions, any work of art is
experienced with some degree of participation on the part of the viewer; each
viewer brings their own personal bias to their interpretation or reading of the work,
but “rather than submit to the ‘openness’ as an inescapable element of artistic
interpretation, [the artist] subsumes it into a positive aspect of his production,
recasting the work so as to expose it to the maximum possible ‘opening’.”
54
By
encouraging this openness within the structural limits determined by the artist or
even the institution (be it a museum, gallery, or public space generally), the control
or regulation inherent within those spaces is revealed, and thus, the limits of
collectivity or communality are experienced. A critical participatory strategy
encourages the recognition of preordained regulations which many have come to be
understood as natural, or perhaps worse, not recognized at all. In a participatory
project, as participants are made aware of the conditions imposed on them by the
spaces they inhabit, they are forced to confront the boundaries dictated by the
overseeing structures, embedded within these experiences of communality, which
are often unknowingly accepted without question.

54
Umberto Eco, “The Poetics of the Open Work,” in Participation, ed. Claire Bishop (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2006), 23.
41
This understanding of the state of social and/or public space is again
confirmed by Rosalyn Deutsch who suggests that “the very notion of an undivided
social space is irremediably deceptive, constituted by disavowing plurality and
conflict,”
55
two principles typically suppressed within public interactions. The
introduction of participation from and between viewers or audience members
resists these homogenizing influences inherent in an institutional or public setting,
favoring instead elements of chance. While it can be argued that participants will
still act according to accepted social codes, the negation of intention coupled with
the invitation of unpredictability creates a new, unique space for social interaction, a
social interaction which asks its participants to step outside the preordained
conditions and expectations of the given setting. Simply pointing to the limits of
sociability and communal experience within these spaces is arguably the pinnacle
aim of a critical participatory strategy.
Another important feature of a participatory model is the alleged removal of
a critical audience. As scholars have argued, the value of Allegorical art was found in
what it represented; a shared religious belief. Within a specific religious tradition,
“artworks have their own individual, ‘inner’ value, which is autonomous because it
is independent of the public’s aesthetic judgment.”
56
Whether it was considered
good or bad aesthetically was not a valid question. As art has moved away from the
allegorical, its value became economically based, allowing a more judgmental

55
Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 34.
56
Boris Groys, “A Genealogy of Participatory Art,” in The Art of Participation (New York: Thames and
Hudson, 2008), Published in conjunction with the exhibition, “The Art of Participation” shown at the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 20.

42
position on the part of viewers. The economic value attached to a work of art
provokes a discussion of its worth, encouraging a critical response. The advent of
participation, on the other hand, requires the viewer to be involved in the
production, ultimately making any critique a self-critique. A method of production
such as this deters evaluation of its economic position, and instead places emphasis
on its value as a collaborative exchange. In a work that invites participation, the
social bond is reconnected, even if only temporarily, and this interaction is where
the work finds its potential for influence or affect, and therefore its value. Again, it is
important not to overemphasize or romanticize the role of the artist or a
participatory model, but it is also equally important to understand, contrary to other
scholars’ assertions, that these works do not have to make utopian claims to exhibit
how collectivity or community is acted out in public space. A work predicated upon
collaboration between an artist and his public can generate a meaningful social
experience even if it is quickly dispersed. It is the real-time experience itself, along
with calling the traditional relationship, or separation, between artist and audience
into question, that is of importance, not the eventual and final outcome.
Marioni has worked to ensure an experience of collectivity and conviviality is
shared as a result of his work throughout his career as an artist, curator, and
collaborator. In its museum installation, Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest
Form of Art provides museum-goers with an experience of sociability typically
suppressed within an institutional setting. Despite its potentially short life, the
interactions it generates temporarily overcome the abjuration of plurality that is
unequivocally accepted. While it can be argued that the audience for Marioni’s
43
works is drawn from a loyal band of followers, the museum installation of his pieces
invites an incidental audience, creating an exchange between groups who may not
have otherwise had any contact. Most importantly in this regard, the critical
participatory strategy employed by Marioni announces the lack of communality that
is inherent in public institutions and public experiences. The playful nature of
Marioni’s work is crucial in its ability to stimulate pointed commentary and
discussion around these issues, fostering a criticality towards the experience of
those social conditions.
These works are not only significant because they serve to provoke
discussion or recognition of normative behavior expectations in public experiences,
but also because the temporary spaces he creates provide a community for people
to gather and share conversation. The beer salons in his studio, MOCA and even
Handcuff, offered a space specifically for artists to come together, share ideas and
work, and belong to a community that was otherwise absent. While cultivating that
community of artists in San Francisco was a major motivating factor for Marioni, his
impact extends far beyond the Bay Area. A five-edition publication titled Visions
that Marioni spear-headed, included submissions from invited artists from various
different regions including Southern California, New York, and Eastern Europe.
These magazine-style works allowed artists to experiment and contribute work in a
synthesized manner. Once again, Marioni took the lead as project director and
organizer, finding another way to bring artists together and extend the breath of his
reach.
44
As one of the first to really embrace the model of artist as curator, Marioni’s
career and personal life worked to strengthen each other, which has in part enabled
him to continue his participatory projects for over forty years. The sheer longevity
of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art should be emphasized. Its
ongoing duration attests to Marioni’s commitment as well as the synchronization he
has been able to maintain between his art and life. This model he has practiced
since the 1970s has become an example for subsequent generations. With his
recent retrospective exhibition at the Cincinnati Museum of Art in 2006, younger
artists have begun to rediscover Marioni and the themes his work has embodied in
an effort to produce productive commentary, but also, like Marioni, to create a
strong network and ultimately have an enjoyable experience.
These themes of play and intervention within museum space that Marioni
helped define in the 1960s and 1970s are still being appropriated by younger
generations today. In a recent project at the Guggenheim titled This Progress (2010)
by Tino Seghal, all art-objects were removed from the museum and replaced with
people of varying ages who were instructed to engage in a philosophical dialogue
with visitors. While perhaps confrontational, as visitors were bombarded with
uninvited (although not necessarily unwelcomed) conversation, the piece continues
an ethos of everyday, social interaction, and serves to re-frame participants’
perception of museum experience. Hal Cotter, art critic for the New York Times
45
commented that the piece left him “feel[ing] stirred up…It really is about life. It
really is about communication.”
57

The fact that the idea of participation within artistic practices is still relevant
points to the potential of this model or strategy to stimulate pointed commentary
around issues of what is considered normative in public space. While it can be
argued that the people attending events like Marioni’s or Seghal’s are a loyal band of
art aficionados, the incidental audience cannot be overlooked. Most importantly,
however, is that a museum audience may not be wholly representative of the
diversity of a public, but these events do foster an exchange between strangers,
which in its nature, is essentially an experience of publicness. Participants may be
art-lovers or first-time museum visitors, regardless of their previous art-related
knowledge, the added dimension of social interaction ensures that each individual
experience is different, and that no two performances of these events could ever be
the same. It is this unpredictability and temporary diversion from enforced
regulations of normative behavior that encourage the examination of these social
conditions, all the while, and of chief concern to Marioni, enjoying the company of
others.
The pleasure offered through participatory artistic practices has always been
of crucial importance to Marioni. Calling into question the relations produced, or
suppressed, within these spaces has been a mainstay in Marioni’s work and he
continues this criticism with his traditional sense of humor. For Marioni, play and

57
Hal Cotter, “In the Naked Museum: Talking, Thinking, Encountering,” New York Times, January 21,
2010.
46
humor have allowed him to examine how interactions and connections unfold
within public space. He has used his sense of humor both as a means of expression
and a tool for conceptual thinking. The playful nature of his work creates a socially
interactive space and simultaneously invites participants to reconsider their
understanding of their own sociability within these spaces. Marioni has utilized
play as an unthreatening approach to inciting a provocative and conceptual re-
framing of one’s own perception of the human interactions they encounter on a
daily basis.
Marioni’s critical participatory strategy, in all its manifestations, by “drawing
us into the world of ordinary actions and things…encourages us to be more than
usually aware of our surroundings,”
58
and invites participants to question how they
connect with other people, and how those connections are dictated by the
surrounding space. While Marioni is not making any grand utopian claims, he is
instead pointing to the lack or limit to community and collectivity within public
space, and ultimately overcoming it, even if it is only momentarily. His work, with a
sense of humor, resists the homogenizing influences of institutional space and
claims that art is for, “beauty…for people to laugh at…for seeing in a new way.”
59

58
Carter Ratcliff, “The (Almost) Invisible Art of Tom Marioni,” in Beer, Art and Philosophy (The
Exhibition) (Cincinnati: Contemporary Arts Center, 2006) Published in conjunction with the
exhibition, “Beer, Art and Philosophy (The Exhibition) 1968-2006” at the Cincinnati Contemporary
Arts Center, 14.
59
Tom Marioni, 205.
47
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bishop, Claire. “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.” October 110 (Fall 2004), 51-
79.

Bishop, Claire. Introduction to Participation, edited by Claire Bishop. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2006.

Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza
Woods. France: Les presses du reel, 2002.

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Edited by Donald Nicholosn-Smith. New
York: Zone Books, 1994 (1967)).

Deutsche, Rosalyn. Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.

Eco, Umberto. “The Poetics of the Open Work.” In Participation, edited by Claire
Bishop. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

Fluxus and Happenings. “George Brecht: Events and Performances.”
http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/brecht_performances.html (accessed
February 2, 2010).

Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh. Art Since 1900. Vol.
2. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004.

Frieling, Rudolph. “Towards Participation in Art.” In The Art of Participation. New
York: Thames and Hudson, 2008. Published in conjunction with the exhibition, “The
Art of Participation” shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Groys, Boris. “A Genealogy of Participatory Art.” In The Art of Participation. New
York: Thames and Hudson, 2008. Published in conjunction with the exhibition, “The
Art of Participation” shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Kaprow, Allan. “Assemblages, Environments and Happenings.” in Art in Theory,
1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Edited by Charles Harrison and Paul
Wood. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Marioni, Tom. “1979 Manifesto.” In Tom Marioni: Sculpture and Installations. San
Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2001.

Marioni, Tom. Beer, Art, and Philosophy. San Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2003.

Marioni, Tom. Email message to Guillaume Desanges. March 12, 2006.

48

McEvilley, Thomas. Introduction to Beer, Art and Philosophy, by Tom Marioni. San
Francisco: Crown Point Press, 2003.

Montano, Linda. “7 Years of Living Art.” http://www.lindamontano.com (accessed
January 17, 2010).

Ranciere, Jacques. “Problems and Transformations in Critical Art.” In Participation,
edited by Claire Bishop. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

Ratcliff, Carter. “The (Almost) Invisible Art of Tom Marioni.” In Beer, Art and
Philosophy (The Exhibition). Cincinnati: Contemporary Arts Center, 2006. Published
in conjunction with the exhibition, “Beer, Art and Philosophy (The Exhibition) 1968-
2006” at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center.

Roth, Moira. “A Star is Born: Performance Art in California.” Performing Arts Journal
4, no. 3 (1980): 86-96.

YouTube. “Beer Drinking Sonata (Tom Marioni).”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx3XOQBKQ14 (accessed February 12, 2010).

49
APPENDIX A

Beer Drinking Sonata (For Thirteen Players)
Allegro. Thirteen bottles are lined up on a table in front of the performers. The
performers stand in a semicircle around the back of the table. Each performer
opens a bottle of beer; the bottle opener is passed around the table. All the bottles
are the same size, long neck, (Mexican “Pacifico” of possible). On cue, all together,
the performers blow into full bottles with a short burst as if tuning up.
Adagio. The palyers blow once into their bottles after each drink (swig) until the
last performer finishes. The performers drink at their own rate so the sounds are
random. After each drink, the sounds is different from the one before and from the
sounds of the other players. As each player finishes the beer, the player puts the
bottle on the table.
Rondo. When the last person finishes drinking, all the palyers pick up their empty
bottles and on cue all blow together three times into the bottles. The piece takes
about 8 minutes.

50
APPENDIX B

Rules for the Wednesday Beer Salons
 People bring their own drinks except first timers who don’t know any better
 Two-drink minimum; this means at least two
 No beer in cans except Tecate
 No drinking from beer bottles except in character
 No use of telephones except with consent
 No one behind the bar except the bartender
 Bartenders can invite up to three guests
 If you don’t know who Sol LeWitt is, you can’t come in
 No theater people except famous people
 No art students except those who can pass as professionals
 No smoking, except writers and cigar smokers
 No art collectors except in disguise
 People should sign the guest book at the bar
 Hours 5-8, except on special occasions, like when everyone is having ‘such a
good time’
 Leave the bathroom light on

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis, through a monographic inquiry into the work of artist Tom Marioni, examines the role of a critical participatory strategy in artistic practices. As a result of the participatory model Marioni employs, he calls into question the inherent social conditions experienced within social, public spaces such as museums or institutions. Through a humorous but critical position, his work serves to introduce a sociability that is currently lacking in these spaces, and ultimately stimulate criticality towards normative behavior expectations in public experiences. Marioni’s role as an artist should not be romanticized, nor should his work be considered as a utopian claim, but instead, recognized as a temporary intervention that values communality and exchange in a space predicated on disavowing plurality.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Leitch, Jennifer Christie (author)

Core Title Tom Marioni: artistic intoxication

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Public Art Studies

Degree Program Public Art Studies

Publication Date 04/28/2010

Defense Date 03/05/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag institutional critique,OAI-PMH Harvest,participatory artistic practices,relational aesthetics,sociability in public space,Tom Marioni

Place Name USA (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Moss, Karen (committee chair), Conwell, Donna (committee member), Decter, Joshua (committee member)

Creator Email jenccleitch@gmail.com,jennifer.leitch@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2971

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Rights Leitch, Jennifer Christie

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