Donald Celender, conceptual artist
deb...@comcast.net
Artist Donald Celender dies at 73
He taught at Macalester for 40 years
BY BILL GARDNER
Pioneer Press
He once asked the H.J. Heinz Co. to fill the Grand Canyon with ketchup.
He wanted the Pillsbury Co. to coat the tips of the Rocky Mountains
with angel food cake.
He thought airliner exhaust trails should be in bright colors.
Donald Celender, former head of the art department at Macalester
College, was a "conceptual artist'' whose art was mostly in ideas and
not on canvas. His proposals, letters and the responses are featured in
books and in art galleries.
After a short battle with pancreatic cancer, Celender died Wednesday in
the presence of family members in his native Pittsburgh. He was 73.
Celender taught art at Macalester for 40 years and still was teaching
Jan. 21, when he was diagnosed with the cancer. He stopped teaching and
stepped down as department chairman shortly afterward.
Although Celender was trained in classical art and taught art history
classes, his fame came largely from his imaginative proposals and
surveys.
"He would send these silly proposals to people to see if they would
think about it for a minute," said Ruthann Godollei, art professor who
replaced Celender as chair of the art department at Macalester. "It's
humorous, but it's also about the nature of art and its ability to make
people think."
"Take art out from its frames ... involve the people everywhere; shake
them up; start them thinking about the whole Earth as an art gallery to
be enjoyed by the masses," Celender said in a 1974 interview with the
Pioneer Press.
Ivan Karp, whose O.K. Harris Gallery in New York City has featured
Celender's work for more than 30 years, said Celender would send
letters to people asking interesting questions, then hang both the
questions and answers on the wall.
"Post the letters and replies; that was the nature of his work," Karp
said.
"He was a generous, sweet-tempered person without pomposity, without
pretension and beautifully dressed," Karp said. "He's a deflater of
pomposity."
One letter, Godollei said, asked various chefs and cooks if they could
make a meal for one artist in history, who would be the artist and what
would be the meal.
"Wolfgang Puck said he would make Monet a meal of edible flowers,"
Godollei recalled. "The cook at Mickey's Diner said he'd make Picasso a
cube steak because he's a cubist."
Celender's work is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1976, his Artball cards, modeled on baseball cards but featuring
famous artists, appeared on the cover of Art in America magazine.
Celender is survived by his former wife, Ivy Celender of St. Paul; a
daughter, Catherine; sisters Norma DiPrimio and Teresa D'Amico; and
brothers James and Joseph.
A funeral service will be held Saturday in Pittsburgh, and a memorial
service will be scheduled later on the Macalester campus.
Hyfler/Rosner
<deb...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1109955815.7...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Posted on Fri, Mar. 04, 2005
>
>
>
>
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> Artist Donald Celender dies at 73
>
> He taught at Macalester for 40 years
>
> BY BILL GARDNER
>
> Pioneer Press
>
His work is fantastic:
http://www.artretran.com/newsite/ARTPRESS/celender/ARTBALL/set1.html
http://www.artretran.com/newsite/ARTPRESS/celender/ARTBALL/set2/set2.html
Hyfler/Rosner
"Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com> wrote in message >
His work is fantastic:
>
> http://www.artretran.com/newsite/ARTPRESS/celender/ARTBALL/set1.html
>
> http://www.artretran.com/newsite/ARTPRESS/celender/ARTBALL/set2/set2.html
>
NY Times obituary:
March 10, 2005
Don Celender, Art Professor and Artist, Is Dead at 73
By Roberta Smith
Don Celender, an art professor and quirky Conceptual artist
whose projects involved taking polls, died on March 3 in
Pittsburgh. He was 73 and lived in St. Paul, Minn.
The cause was cancer, said Ivan C. Karp of the OK Harris
Gallery in SoHo, his longtime representative.
Mr. Celender, who was born in Pittsburgh in 1931, earned a
bachelor of fine art degree from Carnegie Mellon University
in 1956 and a Ph.D. in art history from the University of
Pittsburgh in 1963. After working briefly in the department
of education at the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
he taught at Macalester College in St. Paul until he learned
of his illness in January.
In 1969, with Conceptual Art gaining steam, Mr. Celender
began a series of letter-writing campaigns that spoofed the
movement while spreading its ideas and gathering interesting
information. With his Cultural Art Movement he sent
outlandish proposals to 25 museum directors, suggesting for
example that Sherman Lee, director of the Cleveland Museum
of Art, drop by parachute 1,000 works of Asian art from the
museum's collection, one at a time, onto the state of
Alabama. Mr. Lee replied that since art was in the mind of
the beholder, he had "mentally performed" Mr. Celender's
idea.
In subsequent works, Mr. Celender surveyed film directors,
prison wardens, labor leaderss, religious figures, travel
agents, celebrities and famous chefs about their art
preferences. He also produced a series of baseball cards
using artists' faces.
Mr. Celender's work was included in many books and
exhibitions surveying Conceptual Art. On a nearly annual
basis, he tacked the responses to his surveys to the walls
of Mr. Karp's gallery, mounting 29 exhibitions from 1970 to
2004.
He is survived by his daughter, Catherine; and two sisters,
Norma DePrimio and Teresa D'Amico, and two brothers, James
and Joseph, all of the Pittsburgh area.