artist talk : Tom Marioni's Beer Drinking Sonata

Founder of the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA), Tom Marioni is California based conceptual action artist and a curator who works in San Francisco. He was a curator of the Richmond Art Museum and during these years he used the name Allan Fish as an artist. He works with different mediums and performances to deliver his ideas to the audience.

In his talk he presented his past works were pioneer to the conceptual art world in the 1970's. The The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art in 1970 is one of the most famous works where he combined social situations to a conceptual art form. His obsession with beer not only ends in this performance piece but also in his video work From China to Czechoslovakia 1976 reflecting his idea that act of beer drinking is universal across the world.
It was aesthetically satisfying to see all the different brands of beer around the world and with the soundtrack of someone blowing into each beer bottle. During the early 1970's it was revolutionary that Tom Marioni introduced mundane activity of beer drinking into an art form.

In defining what conceptual art is he clearly explained in the clip of his interview that conceptual art is idea oriented situated art which is not defined by the medium like painting, sculpture or photography but free to work in any medium that works best to present the idea of the maker. He is also well-known for his 'action drawings' which performed in 1972, was recently performed again in 2007, but this time it was a collective work where other people participated to make a drawing. He discussed Tree, Drawing a Line as Far as I can Reach and Bird where for the former piece, he sat down in the gallery with a paper in front trying to draw a line as far as he can reach. For the later work "Bird" he hung a piece of paper on the ceiling and tried to draw a line by jumping across the room. Both drawings were very similar in that it was about the limitation of his body/ his arm, how far it can go, and his drawings was not a pictorial of the actual tree or a bird but a result of the imitation of its actions. He called the group of action drawings Creation of 7 days performance where he tried to make each drawing according to the things that were created in 7days, on the first day using LSD to see new light, like how God created light the first day and ended the work with beer drinking as a sign of resting. In discussing the differences between theatre and performance art he pointed out that in theatre it is the intension of the performer to entertain or to manipulate the audience through storytelling whereas in performance art the artists in not playing a role but manipulating the medium. He described conceptual art using an example of opera, how people might not understand a word of Italian but anyone can understand the essence through the mood or the atmosphere. Today, he is continuing in his works of conceptual art through different mediums such as print-making and installations.