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Robert Topol's sculptured driveway in Mamaroneck, with trench "designed" by Lawrence Weiner.

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Dealer-consultant Seth Siegelaub, whose barren gallery walls constituted an "exhibit." 


good place for the person who wants to study cracks."

The owner of an earthwork who owns it "in his mind" also owns an exclusive, signed photograph of the work. There is yet another group of young artists who do not consider it necessary that their work should exist in any concrete form. The idea is all-important, and may remain an idea, or be executed, according to the desire of the artist - or the buyer. The work of some of these young artists was "shown" last month, in a gallery appropriately bare, except for some clippings on the wall, and a noticeable stain on the otherwise immaculate carpet. The stain on the carpet was the idea of Lawrence Weiner and is owned by Mickey Ruskin, the art-collecting host of Max's Kansas City. "What he loaned to the exhibition was permission to reproduce it here," explained Seth Siegelaub, a 26-year-old  dealer-consultant , who rented space on East 52nd Street for the show. (Prices ran around $1000.) The clippings on the wall were the idea of Joseph Kosuth: advertisements has had placed in the New York Times, Museum News, Artforum, and The Nation. Each advertisement consisted of one of the four definitions of the word "existence" in the thesaurus. 

But the catalogue to the exhibition is actually the exhibition, listing ideas that may or may not have been executed, and containing forthright statements by the artist. Explaining his thesaurus idea Joseph Kosuth wrote: "I changed the form of presentation from the mounted photostat to the purchasing of space in newspapers and periodicals... This way the immateriality of the work is stressed and any possible connections to painting are severed... My role as an artist ends with the work's publication."

Douglas Huebler's 42nd Parallel consists of 21 postal receipts mailed from 21 towns along the 42nd parallel between Truro, Mass. and Hilts, Calif. The catalogue scrupulously gives the names of 21 towns, and this work is owned by Alan Power, the leading English collector of contemporary art. Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Topol bought and have executed (see cut) one idea by Lawrence Weiner: "A 2-inch-wide 1-inch-deep trench cut across a standard one car driveway." They also own: "Three minutes of forty-pound pressure spray of white highway paint upon a well tended lawn. The lawn is allowed to grow and not tended until the grass is free of all vestiges of white highway paint." Weiner specifies in his catalogue statement: 1. The artist may construct the piece. 2. The piece may be fabricated. 3. The piece need not be built. Robert M. Topol, a stockbroker living in Mamaroneck, only recently bought the white highway paint idea. He has every intention of executing it, and is waiting for the spring thaw before going to work with the pressure spray on his well tended Mamaroneck lawn.

"'If the artist is going to pander to the collector, he's going to remain bound to the timeless, rigid object.'"