for the little people ...

how to work better

Peter Fischli & David Weiss' ten-point manifesto comes from one of my favourite shows of the past few years, Flowers and Questions: A Retrospective at Tate Modern, London, 2006-7. For a fine text by the artist Ryan Gander about this manifesto, 'Working It Out', see here. Gander writes: "I like it quite simply because it acknowledges their awareness of the idea of practice rather than production, which indirectly points to the main aspect of what they do that I find really endearing. It's relatively easy to stumble around making a successful work now and again, sandwiched between disasters that never leave the studio, but it's hard to attain good practice. Their's isn't about making good artworks, but about how to mould the conditions for artworks to be made possible".

Sister Corita's 'manifesto' (bottom image), the Art Department rules from the Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, in the late 1960s, is drawn from Julie Ault's exquisite book about this genuinely remarkable teacher-artist-nun, Come Alive! The Spirited Art of Sister Corita, London: Four Corners Books, 2007.