James For Real

Eleonor Antin

100 Boots, 1971-1973

The project 100 Boots is without a doubt one of the most renowned works to date by Antin. It consists of 51 photographs, documentation (as if the documentation were derived from performances) of a march of 100 rubber boots throughout the USA across the span of 1971 to 1973. The boots are shown inside of scenes of everyday life, trotting along a beach site in California, a path to a church, lined up outside of a bank, at a construction site, or in the middle of the city. They are aligned in a horizontal line, in a circle, or back to back in front of the camera. Their display permits a kind of personification, which makes the images humorous. On other occasions, they are depicted as abstract forms, moving and adaptable. Like enigmatic clones, the boots resemble non-identified invaders exploring the USA’s territory. Made at the time of USA’s involvement in the controversial Vietnam war, this simple conceptual narrative has a political turn. At the time, the pictures were sent as postcards by the artist, and the work was launched around the onset of “Mail Art ”. In 1973, MOMA purchased the complete series of the 51 postcards. After this acquisition, Eleanor Antin “consigned” the boots and created a photographic edition of 10 copies.

Over a roughly thirty-year period, conceptual and multidisciplinary artist Eleanor Antin has been creating narrative images in photography, video, film, performance, and installation. Her practices blur fiction and history, often with humorous wit, theatrical sensibility, and allegorical impulse. During her early career, Antin was associated with a group of artists who were recognized for returning the element of narrative to contemporary art, which until the 1970s had been dominated by highly abstract, purist work.