97

Illustrations and Commentary

196

6

FIGURE 48

John Latham (British, b. Zambia, 1921–2006). Art and Culture, 1966–69. Leather case containing book, letters, photostats, and labeled vials filled with powders and liquids: case, 31∕8 × 111∕8 × 10 in. (7.9 × 28.2 × 25.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund. © 2011 John Latham. (Digital image: © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY)

Perhaps no work expressed the dissatisfaction with the status quo of the 1960s art market as directly as John Latham’s Art and Culture. This work gathers together the relics of an action that began when Latham checked the critic Clement Greenberg’s seminal book of the same name out of the library of the St. Martin’s School of Art, where he was teaching. He and his friend Barry Flanagan then threw a party at which everyone was invited to chew its pages into a pulp. After introducing yeast, an “Alien Culture,” into the masticated results, Latham held onto the brew until he received an urgent overdue notice from the library almost a year later. Pre-sented in a suitcase are the cover of the book, the distilled pages in vials, the library notice, and the letter he subsequently received after his thwarted attempt to return the “book,” informing him he would not be rehired the following year.