ze Benches uv Antoine Delaartiste

Back in '92 / '93 (not sure which) I was walking around campus one day, when I spotted a bench. The campus I was at was for the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, which shared a block with the Minneapolis Art Institute (or maybe that was Mpls Inst of Art, I don't recall the letter order, but I certainly felt like an MIA while there). As you can imagine, that block was packed full of artwork: sculptures everywhere, plus plenty of paintings, drawings, video footage, etc available indoors. But, I digress...

So I stumble across this bench. A very pedestrian (more so than the one pictured above) wooden and brass bench . And there's this little plaque saying the name of the artist who made it, the year of creation, the materials used, etc. Huh? It's a freakin' bench! Not that I've got anything against benches, but none of the other 20 or 30 benches on campus had those little tags. It looked different, but not exceptionally different. Why does this benchmaker get a gallery tag, and the factory workers who made all the others don't? That's not fair. Somebody deserved credit for all those other benches.

So I invented Antoine De La Artiste (sometimes Antoin, or Antwon, and sometimes Delaartiste, D'L'Artist, etc) and I made some little tags. They were parodies of the common gallery tags so commonly found on the MCAD/MIA commons. They'd say things like "Door. Antwon Delartiste. 1992. Wood, varnishe, und ze door-knob metals." I put them on every piece of furniture in my dorm room, every door to my building, every bench on the grounds, all over the damn place. And I started giving tours to my friends: "Und on ze left, you will zee ze famous bench by ze famous artiste, Antoine Delartiste. Note ze craftsmanship. Ze daring. Zis is definitively a stretch outside ze comfort-zone! Und next to it, you will zee ze other famous bench, part of ze series uv benchez..."

If I was to do one today, it'd look something like this:

I claim this internet in the name of D'LaArtiste.