Overview

Paul Lamarre grew up oldest of seven children in a large Roman Catholic family. Early inspiration to be an American contemporary artist came as a child seeing the Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA). Lamarre received his BFA for paining, ceramic, and photography from the University of Michigan graduating in 1979. He was mentored there, by the abstract expressionist painter Jerome Kamrowski who actually encouraged Lamarre to "drop out" and move to New York. However Lamarre completed his degree graduating magna cum laude and after a brief spell in Chicago, moved to New York City in 1980 where he still lives and works with his wife and art collaborator Melissa P. Wolf. The duo, called EIDIA, began working together while Lamarre was living at the Chelsea Hotel, (to create The Chelsea Tapes video series). This work was made possible by a fellowship from the New York C.A.P.S. (Creative Artist's Program Service).

Melissa P. Wolf (born in Buffalo, New York) attended Syracuse University, Boston Museum School, Tufts University and Pratt Institute Brooklyn, New York.

EIDIA is the pseudonym under which transdisciplinary artists Paul Lamarre and Melissa P. Wolf have collaborated since 1986. The name EIDIA (created by Lamarre) is derived from the ancient Greek word for idea, “eidos,” but the acronym has many possible meanings that Lamarre and Wolf outlined in their 1978 Manifesto: Each Idea Defines Itself Aesthetically; Esthetic Interpretations Directs Imaginative Action; Everything I Do Is Art; Every Individual Does Individual Art; Every Individual Develops Ideal Aesthetics; Every Intellect Develops Intuitive Art; and Ecological Involvement Demands Immediate Action/Individual Action.

EIDIA takes many different approaches to their work, playing with different concepts and materials simultaneously. Over the years, they have worked in sculpture, photography, painting, and video and film, presenting everything from static objects to multimedia installations. For years, they have purposefully worked outside of traditional gallery systems. EIDIA House, founded by Lamarre and Wolf, is a meeting place and forum for artists, scholars, poets, writers, architects and others who are interested in the arts as instrument for positive social change (a concept dubbed "idée force" by the late French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...

). The intent of EIDIA House is to “broaden aesthetic research, promote a comprehensive expansion of the influence of art on a world wide basis, encourage 'green' architecture, and create an authentic forum for social change originating from the art world.” Although Eidia House can be located anywhere, at the moment it is based in Lamarre and Wolf’s home and studio space, located in the Williamsburg

Williamsburg

Williamsburg may refer to:*Williamsburg, former name of Kernville , California*Williamsburg, Colorado*Williamsburg, Florida*Williamsburg, Dunwoody, Georgia*Williamsburg, Indiana*Williamsburg, Iowa*Williamsburg, Kansas*Williamsburg, Kentucky...

 area of New York City’s Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 borough.

Major Works

Lamarre and Wolf began their collaboration in 1983 with the video series The Chelsea Tapes, a series of 26 video vignettes forming an autobiographical diary of Lamarre's extended stay at Manhattan's infamous and famous Chelsea Hotel. Inspired by the fact that luminaries Dylan Thomas, Virgil Thomson, Viva, and Sid Vicious all took up residence at the Chelsea Hotel, he sought to capture in video what influences if any, the legendary hotel could have on his work. Lamarre began shooting in 1983 and soon found a collaborator in Melissa P. Wolf after they met at a New Museum opening. (At that time, the museum was still up-and-coming under the driving force of its sole founder Marcia Tucker.) Wolf became chief cameraperson and editor of The Chelsea Tapes.

Their next video and book project, FOOD SEX ART The Starving Artists' Cookbook (1986–1991), chronicled approximately 150 artists cooking in the U.S., Europe, and Russia. While expounding on the artists' relationship between art and life, FOOD SEX ART The Starving Artists' Cookbook is also a portrait series on the artist in society; and a video documentation of the social-economic condition of the arts community in downtown New York and internationally.

Continuing their work in video, EIDIA’s went on to make the award-winning documentary the nea tapes (1995–2001) about the threatened dismantling of The National Endowment for the Arts. (The piece is held in the library collections of over 200 universities, colleges, and art institutes. Based on “the nea tapes” archive, Lamarre and Wolf interviewed over 300 artists, curators, art professionals, politicians, and religious persons on their views on the status of American art in the late 1990s. “the nea tapes” also had the distinction of being screened in the U.S. Capitol Building, Washington DC, under the auspices of the office of the House of Representative Jerrold Nadler.

EIDIA’s performance/installation DECONSUMPTION (2001 to 2007) was modeled on the idea of "more production of less." They performed the "sale" of numerous found objects (reclaimed by EIDIA as “art”) purchased by the thousands of visitors to EIDIA House. With this piece their production of artistic matter shifted from creating works using new materials to re-introducing, re-considering, re-shaping, and recycling pre-existing items (remarkably, before the “green” era ever began). DECONSUMPTION has been renamed and reformulated since 9/11, becoming DECONSUMPTION & THE DECONSUMPTIONISTS. This roaming installation consists of a 48-foot trailer that serves as a platform for EIDIA’s current dialogue and aesthetic research. The trailer houses 171 boxes that contain, among other things, thirty years worth of collective works, ephemera, and correspondence. The trailer was shown for the first time at the Sydney College of the Arts, Australia in 2011. (An earlier version was presented in New Mexico at the Santa Fe Art Institute in 2006.)

EIDIA's most recent project is Plato's Cave (2009 to present). Based on Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's Allegory of the Cave, and inspired by Art & Project

Art & Project

Art & Project was Amsterdam's leading contemporary art gallery in the 1970s and eighties, as well as the name of an influential art magazine published by the same gallery between 1968 and 1989.-The gallery:...

, artists are invited to create an in situ installation and edition through the EIDIA House studio. Also, currently in production is their film "1-2-3" documents the censoring of artists in the Bush era.

Collections / Collectors

EIDIA has exhibited nationally and internationally. Their work is held in numerous museum, library, and private collections. To name a few: Bettina Bancroft and Andrew Klink, Thomas P. Basile, Peter Carlson, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Ronald Feldman, Ronald Feldman Gallery, Lea Freid, Lombard Fried Fine Arts, Peter Grass, Agnes Gund, Al Hansen, Craig Hatkoff, Paul Judelson, Gerome Kamrowski, Jeffery Lew, Vera List, Jane Lombard, Robert Mahoney, The Peter Michaelson Foundation, Peter and Eileen Norton, Ruth and Marvin Sackner, Satprakash, Willoughby Sharp, Rodney Sur, Marcia Tucker, Tom Warren, Bob Witz.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Banff Art Center Library, The Cleveland Institute of Art, CAM, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Harvard University Fogg Museum Library, Illinois State University, Normal, The Institute of Contemporary Art, London, Michigan State University, New York University Bobst Library, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, The Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery, Washington D.C., The New Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rutgers University, San Antonio Art Institute, Stedlelijk Museum of Modern Art, Toledo Museum of Art, University of California Los Angeles Art Library, The Walker Art Center, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The Whitney Museum of Art, Yale University Library, and many others.

Awards and Honors

In 2011, EIDIA received a Fellowship Residency, exhibition, and Research Affiliation status from the University of Sydney for their DECONSUMPTIONIST project. Other accolades include a Residency and Scholarship at the Santa Fe Art Institute (2006), The Nathan Cummings Foundation (2000), Open Society Institute, Soros Documentary Fund Fellowship (1997 and 1999), Individual Artist Grant from New York Kunsthalle (1996), Citizens Exchange Council / International ArtsLink Fellowship for Collaborative Projects (1994), Artists Space Individual Artists' Grant (1989), New York Foundation for the Arts Video Fellowship (1987), Best Non-Narrative Video at the San Francisco International Film Festival (1986), and The Kitchen’s Media Bureau Grant and artist residency Experimental Television Center in Owego, New York (1985 and 1984).

Influences

EIDIA cites: Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Constantin Brancusi, Frank Loyd Wright, Ai Weiwei, Noam Chomsky, William Rodriguez

William Rodriguez

William Rodríguez was a janitor at the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 attacks and was in the basement of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building. After the attacks he received several awards for heroism for helping in the...

, Pierre Bourdieu, Le Corbousier, Rem Koohaus, Frank Gehry, Immanuel Kant, Plato, Soctrates, Bertolt Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Charles Bukowski, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Broodthaers, Louise Bourgeois, Julian Assange, Diego Rivera, David Smith, Ilya Kabakov, Piet Mondrian, Yves Klein, Kazimir Malevich, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Sergei Eisenstein, Stanley Kubrick, Marina Abramović

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović is a Belgrade-born New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and...

, Alexander Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova....

, Piet Mondrian, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert & George, Charles Burchfield and Jean Luc Godard.

Books

• Paul Lamarre, Everything I Do Is Art. My Life Is Not My Own. (April 11 - May 6, 1989), essay by Robert Mahoney, exhibition catalog, Barbara Braathen Gallery, New York.
• The Starving Artists' Cookbook, Paul Lamarre and Melissa P. Wolf (1991), introduction by Stephen Westfall, EIDIA Books, editor and publisher, ISBN 0-9619-0211-6.
• We Apologize (2004) designed by Charwei Tsai and Noel Acosta in collaboration with EIDIA, ISBN 0-9619-0214-0
• "Domestic Bliss", Paul Lamarre and Melissa Wolf, Gallery LOK, NY, (exhibition catalogue) March 24-April 17, 1993.

External links

• EIDIA website.
• Excerpts from Chelsea Tapes Video Project/The Starving Artists’ Cookbook by EIDIA