Piero Manzoni's Magic Base, 1961

Oscar Bony, The Proletarian Family, 1968

Vanessa Beecroft, 2000

Santiago Sierra, Hiring and arrangement of 30 workers in relation to their skin color, 2002

Gianni Motti, Broker, 2005

I have compiled this brief review of living humans used as art exhibits in 20th and 21st century, to represent MANAGEX in the context of contemporary art. This material has been selected according to formal criterion of people being used as art objects, mostly in a static museum and gallery format, and is by no means exhaustive. Not included in this article are classic performances and happenings, body art, and artists who use their own bodies as objects (such as Oleg Koulik, Marina Abramovic, etc.)

My starting point is Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-1963). In my opinion, Manzoni is one of the most creative minds of Italian Arte Povera ("Impoverished Art"). In 1961 Manzoni showed his first "Base Magica" (Magic Base) for living sculptures. Magic Base was a plinth with footprints on it, and anybody who stood on it became a work of art. The transformation of human bodies into a "living sculpture" was made not only by the Magic Base, but also by placing artist’s signature on the bodies of people. In April 1961 in Rome Piero Manzoni began to sign people (nude models or visitors) with his name  changing them into works of art, so that they would become a kind of 'living sculpture' of his work.

Manzoni's "Sculture viventi" (Living Sculptures) were completed by certificates of authenticity – documents which bore four types of stamps: a red stamp certified that the subject was a whole work of art for life; a yellow stamp limited the artistic status to a body part, while a green one meant that the individual signed was a work of art under certain circumstances (i.e. only while sleeping or running); finally a purple stamp stuck on the receipt of authenticity meant that the service was paid for.

In 1968 Argentinian artist Oscar Bony (b. 1941) exhibited “La Familia Obrera” (The Proletarian Family). Bony exhibited a son, mother and father on a pedestal in a gallery. The author paid the worker exactly twice his hourly rate.  

Cuban-born American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) in 1991 showed Untitled (aka Go-Go Dancing Platform). It was a large pale blue box with a string of lightbulbs; it served as a platform for a go-go dancer who performed on it for five minutes a day, dressed in a silver lame bathing suit. Untitled represented absent figure, as for the majority of time the platform remained empty. The dancer arrived daily at an undisclosed time to dance for her own pleasure, with a Walkman.

The British filmmaker Peter Greenaway in 1996 exhibited people (actors) at the Hayward Gallery in London, when he took part in the exhibition "Spellbound: Art and Film". He exhibited different 'kinds' of people each day during the course of the exhibition - one day he would have 'men with beards', another day he would have 'women with long blonde hair', another day 'men under 5'10"' etc. 

In 1998 Paola Pivi (Italian, b. 1971) exhibited "100 Chinese" - a phalanx of fifty Chinese people of mixed age and gender, dressed in dark blue trousers and gray tops. They simply stood and stared for two hours. 

Vanessa Beecroft (lives in USA, b. 1969 in Italy) made many works of nude female models standing in large groups, hosted by galleries throughout the world. In 1999 she displayed a group of 17 U.S. Navy commandos, dressed in white uniforms, who formed a geometrically precise human sculpture in Farris Gallery, San Diego.

Santiago Sierra (b. 1966 in Spain, lives in Mexico) made numerous exhibitions with people, often with a social message related to unemployment, immigrant labour etc. In 2004 in London he exhibited "Polyurethane Sprayed on the Backs of Ten Workers". He used ten Iraqis,  who stood in line facing the wall, their heads and backs draped by black plastic sheeting. They were sprayed with polyurethane which solidified, as if Iraqis were buried alive in chemical foam. In South Korea, Sierra paid 68 people to block the main entrance to Pusan Contemporary Art Festival. Each wore a sign saying: "I am being paid 3,000 wons [twice the country's minimum wage] per hour to undertake this job."

In 2005 Gianni Motti (b. 1958 in Italy, lives in Switzerland) exhibited “Broker” at Art Basel fair. "Broker" displayed young man in a business suit seated in a waist-high cube cage coming from the wall. In fact, the person was not a real broker, but a Swiss national celebrity (badminton champion.) 

Notes on MANAGEX concept

Within this rich artistic background, I see MANAGEX as a project bearing certain independent significance. In our work we attach primary importance to using volunteers, who take part in the project without any material motivation, solely out of their will of being displayed preserving their professional identity.  Another important aspect is to minimize our authors' influence in the process of selecting people for exhibition, which had been going automatically since the moment of publication of our announcement. However we ensure participants are indeed employed managers. We consider this preparatory period as essential part of MANAGEX project.  During exhibition itself, it is important for us to provide maximum freedom of appearance and behaviour to participants, within the limits of our artistic concept.  Last but not the least, the gallery exhibition per se should not be seen as the final part of MANAGEX, as we intend to further explore the applicability of living managers as art objects in traditional sense, including assessment of their art market value, their decorative potential, as well as usability as collectors' items.

Alexander Kaffka 

I am grateful to Jörg Heiser of Frieze Magazine and Joshua Sofaer for their kind help with this compilation

Piero Manzoni's Living Sculptures, 1961

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1991

Paola Pivi, "100 Chinese", 1998

Vanessa Beecroft, VB, 1999

Vanessa Beecroft, Navy Seals, 1999

Santiago Sierra,  Polyurethane Sprayed on the Backs of Ten Workers, 2004

Image credits: Piero Manzoni Foundation, © Vanessa Beecroft courtesy Metropolitan Bank & Trust; Felix Gonzalez-Torres courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; © Santiago Sierra courtesy Lisson Gallery, London; courtesy  Fundación Sao Paulo; © Gianni Motti courtesy Galerie Nicola von Senger; The Guardian.

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