John Armleder was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1948. He recalls attending a music festival in Germany as an adolescent, where he went to listen to John Cage give a lecture. Armleder recalls that, following the lecture, there were open questions which were "boring" and that "Cage started looking bored", so he asked Cage "if he would tell them some funny stories instead", which Cage did. After the lecture, Cage came up to Armleder and asked what he wanted to do in the future. Armleder remembers his spontaneous response, "coming out of nowhere", was "I want to be a painter". Ten years later in Cologne he saw Cage on the street, who came over having recognized him and asked "how’s the painting going?"
When I ask Armleder how important this encounter with Cage was, he parries the question, saying "everything is important", but admits that it might well have led to his research on Fluxus and happenings. He pursued this research through Ecart, which was founded by Armleder and other artists in Geneva. "It was at the beginning a group of friends," he explains. "It was in 69 that we got this name Ecart … for the happening festival. By then I was very interested and close to and had contacts with Fluxus artists. So we did a series of happenings, some of them based on John Cage scripts. Others were related to Fluxus and other improvisations in a cellar in Geneva." This group introduced Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, amongst others, to Switzerland.
Although not a musical practitioner himself – he plays no instrument – he admits that what appeals to him is not only the way instruments sound but also the visual aspect. "I like the fact that the instruments stay the same. They have been like that forever. The electric guitar does not need to look like that anymore. The technical part moves on but this brings in the aesthetic. Because of the way they look, they become more a formal element and they become fetishes, recalling who has played them. The musician’s significance also produces meaning’.
Untitled (FS 245) incorporates the geometric patterns that Armleder appropriated during the 1970s alongside the concrete musical object, presented here as a formal element. Appropriation is something that Armleder has unashamedly used throughout his career incorporating variously Op-Art-like decoration, Suprematist composition, De Stijl design and Minimalist pattern, at one time or another. To Armleder’s career of over 40 years, appropriation is an enabling process that allows him to continue his investigations and practice.


Karen Wright