In a moment of carelessness all the magazines of the future....It was 1962 - a moment when the discipline of art criticism was improvisatory and before ideologies hardened. It was still possible to launch a magazine without a million dollars of demographic surveys and focus groups, and people in their twenties could innocently commit themselves to an idealistic experiment. That they were naïve, inexperienced and flying by the seat of their pants emerges in the stories of those early days: borrowed quarters, unpaid staff, mistakes, blunders, missed issues and a midnight escape from creditors.
For a while, Philip Leider wrote most of the "Letters to the Editor" under relatives' names, and an ad in an early issue for painter (and review editor) James Monte's show at a San Francisco gallery featured Leider's three-year-old-daughter.(Amy Newman, Challenging Art: ArtForum 1962-1974, 3)
Hi there MORE MILK! I've been reading your blogzine whilst hiking through Patagonia. I've particularly appreciated the focus on books I have no chance of obtaining. I have to say that out here at the end of the world my sense of the current changing relationship between an exhibition and its catalogue is less urgent than your own...
Hello! I think we met in a bar some months ago. You talked at great length about your plans for a magazine and I said artists' film in London needed a culture of criticism. What did I mean by that? I have no idea. I look at your magazine, I read every word and still I have no idea. Keep it up!
Dear More Milk Yvette, the other night I stayed up late reading your opinions on some exhibition or other - I forget which one. Is their anything in London other than multi-screen film and video installations? When I finally got to sleep I dreamed of a magazine printed on leaves of lettuce. I think this story is a complement.
THE EDITOR REPLIES: Relationships of book form and exhibition are designed to be different at different places throughout the world. Some of the best books are those we cannot obtain: have you a copy of Dieter Roth's Mundunculum? No, neither have I and isn't it magnificent?
Yes, it was I, in the bar, talking about magazines. I didn't believe you. I still don't, and yet here we are. I think we might be saying the same thing.
What exhibition it was only matters if you need it to. Yes, plenty. I would like to collect stories of imaginary magazines, to rival histories of imaginary exhibitions or proposals for fantastic architectures. We would need mock-ups and I think ALL of these should be printed on lettuce leaf pages.
Letters to the editor and proposals for imaginary magazines should be sent to moremilkyvette@gmail.com
