Christopher Wool / David Sedaris — White Walls: A Magazine of Writings by Artists #17

White Walls was founded in Chicago in 1978 by artist Buzz Spector and poets Reagan and Roberta Upshaw as an alternative forum for artists interested in writing, language and the relationship between text and visual practice. Its proposition was direct: rather than allowing criticism to retain authority over the artwork, the magazine created a space in which artists could produce the language surrounding their own practices.

Autumn 1987, No. 17 is unusually concentrated. Christopher Wool occupies the cover and pages 25–29. His official bibliography records this exact issue as an artist project; specialist descriptions identify four pages of text works including TROJAN HORSE, HOUDINI and HELTERSKLTER. The Guggenheim identifies 1986–87 as Wool's decisive breakthrough, when commercial paint rollers carrying floral and geometric patterns became both tool and image; the Art Institute of Chicago dates the beginning of his word paintings to 1987. The pages reproduced here appear at the point of formation — letters becoming images, spacing becoming obstruction, language requiring looking before reading. One year later Wool would show with Robert Gober at 303 Gallery, including the now canonical Apocalypse Now word painting. In 1989 came Black Book.

Fifty-odd pages later, another career is forming under different conditions. David Sedaris contributes Crafty. Sedaris graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987, the year printed on this issue, still moving between visual art, performance and writing, years before his radio breakthrough.

This is not a retrospective anthology. In 1987 their eventual positions had not yet stabilised. The magazine records them before the hierarchy catches up. A $5 publication placing an emerging painter beside an emerging writer without needing to know which pages would later become valuable.

Cream paper. Stapled binding. Black ink. $5 printed on the cover. A nonprofit Chicago publication supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and Illinois Arts Council.

Edited by Timothy Porges and Buzz Spector. Managing editor Laurie Palmer. White Walls, Inc., Chicago, 1987. 120 pages. 14 × 21.5 cm. Softcover; black-and-white offset printing throughout. ISSN 0190-9835. Christopher Wool: cover and pp. 25–29. David Sedaris: Crafty.

Condition: very good for age. Light overall toning, handling and minor edge wear to wrappers; occasional surface marks consistent with use and storage. Internally well preserved.