Pontus Hultén, ed.

Boulevardkartongen Tvångs-Blandaren [with paintings by Claes Oldenburg]

Stockholm: Blandaren, 1955. (11 ¾ x 17 in.) Original box containing 32 illustrated prints in different sizes; without the licorice figure, flip book, or lottery ticket found in some other examples. Some light tears and wear to box; interior contents are in very good condition, with some light edge-wear to a small number of items. Item #ANT136

The rare assemblage issue of long-running Swedish art students’ magazine Blandaren, with contributions from Pontus Hulten and P.O. Ultvledt. Features a set of two “machine paintings”, which notably pre-date Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio’s industrial paintings. Unknown until recently, they are startling and beautiful pre-figurations of Situationist technique. The box assemblage marks a hidden historical link between the pre-war European avant-garde and post-war movements like Fluxus; it was rumored to have sparked in George Maciunas the idea for his assemblage publications, the Fluxus Boxes.

Boulevardkartongen Tvångs-Blandaren was a collaborative project of the magazine Blandaren, spearheaded by Pontus Hultén, who in 1960 assumed the head of the Modern Museum of Art in Stockholm, and in 1974 became the first director of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Hulten conceived of Boulevardkartongenafter becoming acquainted with Marcel Duchamp, and was inspired by Duchamp’s Boîte-en-Valise, or box in a suitcase, which gathered together sixty-nine reproductions of Duchamp’s early works in an assemblage.

Comprised of a disparate assortment of objects such as a musical score, a fake bank note, a call from the Swedish Society For Water As A Friend, black and white and color illustrations, newspaper clippings, and two “machine paintings,” it numbered among its contributors P. O. Ultvedt, and others.

As a result of the work’s assembly by energetic and inebriated students, as well as the frenetic pace of production (25,000 copies were produced by six people in four hours), each box carries slightly inconsistent contents.

Price: $2,000.00