Guy deCointet

1934 - 1983

BiographyBorn in Paris in 1934, he moved to New York in 1965, and then to Los Angeles in 1968. He worked for a time as an assistant for the sculptor Larry Bell. Between 1975 and 1977 he taught at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, giving courses focusing on performance art. His text works on canvas and on paper were based on systems of cryptography. He produced many cryptic publications including a completely encoded newspaper, ACRCIT.
His performance pieces combined literary puzzles inspired by the works of Raymond Roussel and the tropes of TV soap opera. The pieces were performed by actors such as Factory 'superstar' Viva and diminutive comedian Billy Barty. Theater critic Frantisek Deak once wrote of Cointet's structuralist approach in plays such as Tell Me (1979) in which fashionably attired actresses variously describe a white cardboard square featuring the black capital letters A, D, M, and The artist juxtaposed "lifelike casual conversation with contrived literary language ... [pointing] out that both are particular styles and that, with a certain distance, the casual conversation will appear contrived as well." His work has influenced that of Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, and Catherine Sullivan, among others.

Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_de_Cointet; http://www.guydecointet.org/

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