Daniel Buren

Within and Beyond the Frame 1973

Striped banners, hanging like washing from a gallery window, flutter in the breeze. The black and white stripes have become Buren's trademark. This is ironic, since he uses the anonymity of stripes to register his contempt for individual style, announcing in 1967, that "all art is reactionary". His striped billboards, exhibited in Paris in 1968, contituted an eloquant voice of dissent against traditional art and traditional forms of patronage and presentation. Later he began to work for the kind of institution he had previously derided, he continued to retain political tension between art and context in his work, which is rarely available to collectors.