Spoerri's habitat: the subject of two recent European retrospectives, Daniel Spoerri has been making art from mealtime leftovers, flea-market finds and commercial transactions since the late 1950s

Art in America, July, 2002 by Judith E. Stein

After traversing seven galleries of various chronological and thematic groupings, visitors were lured forward to the eighth and final space by an aural trail of vintage jazz, blaring from a small radio. Like hip Hansels and Gretels, we arrived at a remarkable dwelling, namely Chambre No. 13, Hotel Carcassonne, a 1998 re-creation of the monastically sized sleep, work and storage space in which Spoerri lived between 1959 and 1964. The original one-room habitat was located in the garret of the Hotel Carcassonne, on rue Mouffetard in Paris's Latin Quarter. Because the hotel's present owner denied them access, fabricators worked from photos and from the artist's recollections to approximate the experience of the actual room. The bed and washbasin, only a pace apart, were contemporary to the early '60s, a conceptually rich, yet financially impoverished phase of Spoerri's life. To the artist, who in recent conversations expresses no nostalgia about those years, the gestalt of Chambre No. 13 is the equivalent of a giant snare picture composed of his memories. Like his lodgings in the Chelsea Hotel, the Parisian version was an ongoing work of art--Spoerri periodically elbowed aside quotidian items to make room for new art works, some of which were barely distinguishable from the wine bottles, hot plates, china and silverware that crowded his shelves. Making a virtue out of necessity, he filled up the wall space, guided by a joyous horror vacui. The 1998 version is crammed with assemblages and objects in the spirit of the past. A table evokes the one on which Spoerri composed his celebrated book, An Anecdoted Topography of Chance, a compendium of associations inspired by the random assortment of such objects as matches, screws and plastic plugs, strewn across his work surface.

In 1999, Spoerri made a simplified bronze version of Chambre No. 13, which is installed on the grounds of Il Giardino, his sculpture park near Seggiano. Unlike the museum version, it has no ceiling. Visitors can enter through the door of this dreamlike room, peering out at the sky and trees as they make their way amid the eternalized appurtenances of art and daily life.

The esthetic issues that uniquely fascinated Daniel Spoerri four decades ago are today common currency. Artist multiples flourish; Keith Haring's Pop Shop, Rirkrit Tiravanija's cooking projects and Josiah McElheny's glass still lifes of mealtime residues are but three instances of art seemingly infused by Spoerri's spirit. One suspects that many younger artists are unaware that their work is preceded by his example. It's time for American art institutions to wake up and smell Spoerri's coffee.

(1.) Zabriskie Gallery in New York showed Spoerri's recent assemblages in the early '90s [see A.i.A., Mar. '92]. In 2000, another New York Gallery, Emily Harvey, showed "Le Cabinet Anatomique," a series of altered and augmented antique lithographs. The Guggenheim SoHo exhibited Spoerri's installation Chambre No. 13 as part of "Premises: Invested Spaces in Visual Arts, Architecture, and Design from France, 1958-1998" in 1998-99 [see A.i.A., Mar. '99].