GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE ACQUIRES ARCHIVE OF POET AND VISUAL ARTIST EMMETT WILLIAMS

LOS ANGELES – The Getty Research Institute has acquired the archive of poet and visual artist Emmett Williams (American, 1925-2007), who played a central role in Fluxus and in the concrete poetry

movement.

The Emmett Williams collection, referred to here as the Berlin archive, covers Williams’ entire

career, including his early 1950s arts features for the U.S. Army daily newspaper The Stars and

Stripes, his signature concrete poems Alphabet Poem and Sweethearts in the 1960s, his collaborations

with Fluxus artists and concrete poets from the late 1950s into the 2000s, and the graphics and

multiples he received from fellow poets and visual artists. This archive was purchased in an acquisition

process that began in 2017. The archive was officially purchased early this year.

“Emmett Williams played a significant role in the practice and dissemination of interdisciplinary

art forms in the latter half of the 20th century, and his archive intersects deeply with our superb holdings

of both concrete poetry and Fluxus multiples. There are also exciting overlaps with the GRI’s recent

DATE: April 3, 2020 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Emmett Williams, in collaboration with Rosanna Chiessi and Francesco Conz, Dance Fragments, from the suite Dance Fragments, 1980, silkscreen print, Verona: Edizioni Francesco Conz and Reggio Emilia: Pari&Dispari, edition 48/60. © The Estate of Emmett Williams, Courtesy Archivio Conz, Berlin, Courtesy Rosanna Chiessi / Pari&Dispari

acquisition of the papers of Claes Oldenburg, who collaborated with

Williams on a book of photographs and documents called Store Days

(1967), and the papers of Simone Forti, who taught with Williams at

California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and worked with him on her

book at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design between 1972 and

1974,” said Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research Institute.

“Williams’s vibrant, creative work and extensive archive are thus a

tremendous addition to our special collections.”

Long acknowledged as a leading representative of the postwar

arts, Williams made key contributions through his varied production of

poems, prints, scores, and performances. He published many works of

concrete poetry, as well as three books and numerous essays and

interviews on Fluxus. In addition, he served as editor of Something

Else Press from 1966-1970.

“Despite Williams’ role as an enthusiastic promoter of concrete

poetry through his Anthology of Concrete Poetry (1967) and as a

leading figure within Fluxus, there are currently few scholarly articles

and no monographs – except for those he wrote himself -- analyzing

his long artistic career and collaborations,” said Nancy Perloff, curator,

modern & contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute.

“His archive will provide curators and art and literary historians with a

unique opportunity to assess his influential contributions to post-World

War II European and American art.”

Key components of the Emmett Williams Archive include

artwork, scores and performance instructions, posters, prints,

ephemera (announcements, invitations, brochures, clippings), correspondence, project files,

photographs, catalogues, and art books, ranging in date from the beginnings of Fluxus in the late 1950s

to 2007, the year Williams died.

Williams was a keen and active collaborator. In tracing his collaborations with Fluxus artists and

with concrete poets, the archive also offers a path to the study of many important members of the

postwar avant-garde, including Ay-O, George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Benjamin Patterson, Dieter Roth,

Gerhard Rühm, and Daniel Spoerri (the last two of whom were members with Williams of the Darmstadt

Circle of Concrete Poetry).

Emmett Williams, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (Alphabet Poem), ca. 1963, offset print on paper scroll, Fluxus Editions. Getty Research Institute, 2807-529. © The Estate of Emmett Williams Credit Line: © The Estate of Emmett Williams

A cache of about 100 letters from Williams to his first wife, Laura, provides important

biographical information from his initial Fluxus years. Williams wrote half of these letters from the

Chateau of Ravenel, an artists’ commune north of Paris where impoverished residents lived together

and performed. Williams writes principally about his artist, poet, and composer friends. For instance, he

praises the composer Earle Brown; alludes to a “sort of happening” that he and poet Spoerri performed

in Vienna; writes reverently of his “dear letter-friend whom I’ve never met, Ian Hamilton Finlay” and

deems him “one of the most important people in the world” who has “broken the concrete thing”

(referring to Finlay’s early concrete poetry); expresses his interest in new music through references to

John Cage, Luciano Berio, and other American and European experimental composers whom he met

for the first time while living in Darmstadt. He also writes about his major projects, namely, his book-

length concrete poem, Sweethearts (1967), and his Anthology of Concrete Poetry (1967).

A collection of Fluxus scrolls in the archive provides an opportunity to study and admire this

distinctively postwar medium, which poets used in performance. Printed on joined strips of buff-colored

paper stock and rolled, these scrolls consist of visually striking typographic scores such as Williams’s

An Opera (1958), which uses ellipses to indicate rhythmic beats. A very long, narrow scroll is devoted

to Williams’s Alphabet Poem (1963), one of his key concrete sound poems comprising arrangements of

the 26 letters of the alphabet in rows and long columns resembling numbers printed on adding-machine

tape. Other scrolls include a journal entitled Review featuring elaborate typography by Lithuanian

American artist George Maciunas and a German Kalender that reproduces sound scores by the

German Dadaist Raoul Hausmann and French sound poet François Dufrêne.

Performance scores in the archive sometimes take the form of instruction cards, such as those

Williams made for An Alphabet Symphony, in which a letter from the alphabet is handwritten on one

side and an action to be performed (or an object) is written on the reverse. Williams produced a set of

these cards in German, as well as English, calling them “score cards” and inventing such actions as “er:

ich komme ja schon!” His friend Filliou created a set of cards which he and Williams used in a Paris

performance of Filliou’s Poéme collectif (1963). Each card contains the title of the piece, with answers

written by members of the audience on the reverse.

In addition to scores and instruction cards, the Emmett Williams archive is rich in original works

of art by Williams and his colleagues, Most of these, representing both Fluxus and concrete poetry,

take the form of drawings, silkscreens, posters, and paintings by Roth, Brecht, Dorothy Iannone,

Spoerri, Seiichi Niikuni, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Charlotte Moorman, Wolf Vostell, and Robert

Watts. Paper boxes with graphic designs by the Japanese artist Takako Saito, sculptures by Iannone,

Polish invitation cards to events at the gallery of Jaroslaw Kozlowski, an artist’s proof of The Sun by Ay-

O, and silkscreens with fanciful titles, invitations designed as works of art, and acrylic paintings on

photographic canvas from the series Berlin Berlin by Williams are among the highlights.

The Berlin archive also offers an important collection of ephemera spanning the 1940s to the

present. Housed in chronological binders compiled by William’s widow, the visual artist Ann Noël, the

contents comprise programs, invitations, brochures, and clippings documenting a history of Williams’

and Noël’s careers.

During the 1970s, Williams sold a portion of his archive and single works to the American

collector Jean Brown, and these became part of the Jean Brown Archive acquired by the Getty

Research Institute in 1985. Brown’s original archive from Williams included correspondence from such

luminaries as George Brecht, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Claes Oldenburg, and La Monte Young, scores by

Williams, and letters and prints by colleagues. The Research Institute’s acquisition of the Berlin archive

brings it together with the Jean Brown material, establishing the complete Emmett Williams Archive in

one location. Such commitment to the integrity of an archive is emblematic of the GRI’s mission.

The Emmett Williams Berlin archive will be accessible for researchers once the material is

processed and cataloged. An update will be posted online as the archive becomes available.

MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Hood ahood@getty.edu (818) 469-7223 Getty Communications

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Emmett Williams, Voodoo, 2004, print, Edition Kasseler Kunstverein © The Estate of Emmett Williams

and Getty programs share art, knowledge, and resources online at Getty.edu and welcome the public for free at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. The Getty Research Institute is an operating program of the J. Paul Getty Trust. It serves education in the broadest sense by increasing knowledge and understanding about art and its history through advanced research. The Research Institute provides intellectual leadership through its research, exhibition, and publication programs and provides service to a wide range of scholars worldwide through residencies, fellowships, online resources, and a Research Library. The Research Library—housed in the 201,000-square-foot Research Institute building designed by Richard Meier—is one of the largest art and architecture libraries in the world. The general library collections (secondary sources) include almost 900,000 volumes of books, periodicals, and auction catalogues encompassing the history of Western art and related fields in the humanities. The Research Library's special collections include rare books, artists' journals, sketchbooks, architectural drawings and models, photographs, and archival materials.

GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE ACQUIRES ARCHIVE OF POET AND VISUAL ARTIST