Spice Chess
Encyclopedia
Artist's multiple
Artist's multiple is a series of identical art objects produced or commissioned by artist according to his idea, usually a signed limited edition made specifically for selling....
by the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese artist Takako Saito
Takako Saito
Takako Saito is a Japanese artist, born in Sabae-Shi, Fukui Province in Japan in 1929. Closely associated with Fluxus, the international collective of avant-garde artists that was active primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, she currently lives in Düsseldorf in Germany...
, whilst she was resident in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Originally manufactured winter 1964-65, and offered for sale March 1965 , the work is one of a famous series of disrupted chess sets referred to as Fluxchess or Flux Chess, made for George Maciunas'
George Maciunas
George Maciunas was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers...
Fluxshop
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
at his Canal Street
Canal Street (Manhattan)
Canal Street is a major street in New York City, crossing lower Manhattan to join New Jersey in the west to Brooklyn in the east . It forms the main spine of Chinatown, and separates it from Little Italy...
loft, SoHo
SoHo
SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and later through his Fluxus Mail-Order Warehouse .
"Takako Saito engaged with Duchamp's practice but also with masculinist cold war metaphors by taking up chess as a subject of [her] art. Saito's fluxchess works... question the primacy of vision to chess, along with notions of perception and in aesthetic experience more generally.... Her "Smell Chess," "Sound Chess" and "Weight Chess" reworked the game of chess so that players would be forced to hone non-visual perception, such as the olfactory sense, tactility, and aurality, in order to follow chess rules." Claudia Mesch
The set follows the normal rules of chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
, but replaces the traditional pieces with identically-shaped transparent plastic vial
Vial
A vial is a relatively small glass vessel or bottle, especially used to store medication as liquids, powders or in other forms like capsules. They can also be sample vessels; e.g., for use in autosampler devices in analytical chromatography.The glass can be colourless or coloured, clear or amber...
s filled with different spices for each of the different pieces. The set includes white pawns
Pawn (chess)
The pawn is the most numerous and weakest piece in the game of chess, historically representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins the game with eight pawns, one on each square of the rank immediately in front of the other pieces...
made of Cinnamon
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that is used in both sweet and savoury foods...
, white rooks
Rook (chess)
A rook is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. Formerly the piece was called the castle, tower, marquess, rector, and comes...
of Nutmeg
Nutmeg
The nutmeg tree is any of several species of trees in genus Myristica. The most important commercial species is Myristica fragrans, an evergreen tree indigenous to the Banda Islands in the Moluccas of Indonesia...
, the white knights
Knight (chess)
The knight is a piece in the game of chess, representing a knight . It is normally represented by a horse's head and neck. Each player starts with two knights, which begin on the row closest to the player, one square from the corner...
are Ginger
Ginger
Ginger is the rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale, consumed as a delicacy, medicine, or spice. It lends its name to its genus and family . Other notable members of this plant family are turmeric, cardamom, and galangal....
, black bishops
Bishop (chess)
A bishop is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen...
, Cumin
Cumin
Cumin is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae, native from the east Mediterranean to India. Its seeds are used in the cuisines of many different cultures, in both whole and ground form.-Etymology:...
and the Black King
King (chess)
In chess, the king is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that its escape is not possible . If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must remove the threat of capture on the next move. If this cannot be...
made of Asafoetida
Asafoetida
Asafoetida , alternative spelling asafetida, is the dried latex exuded from the living underground rhizome or tap root of several species of Ferula, which is a perennial herb...
. The white Queen
Queen (chess)
The queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess, able to move any number of squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of the first rank next to the king. With the chessboard oriented correctly, the white queen starts...
is Anise
Anise
Anise , Pimpinella anisum, also called aniseed, is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae native to the eastern Mediterranean region and Southwest Asia. Its flavor resembles that of liquorice, fennel, and tarragon.- Biology :...
, the black Cayenne pepper
Cayenne pepper
The cayenne pepper—also known as the Guinea spice,cow-horn pepper, aleva, bird pepper,or, especially in its powdered form, red pepper—is a red, hot chili pepper used to flavor dishes and for medicinal purposes. Named for the city of Cayenne in French Guiana, it is a cultivar of Capsicum annuum...
. The board is also made of transparent plastic. To start the game, both players have to familiarise themselves with each of the 12 smells involved, instead of the more normal reliance on sight.
Ay-O and George Maciunas
As a 'basically untrained' artist in TokyoTokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Saito's opportunities to exhibit work were severely limited . After taking English lessons, Saito arrived in New York in 1963 on a work visa as an assistant textile wholesaler, 'vaguely [dreaming] of engaging herself in the unknown New York avant-garde' . Unaware of Fluxus, she concentrated on her own work for a few months before meeting George Maciunas through a mutual friend, Ay-O
Ay-O
is a Japanese artist, who has been associated with Fluxus since its international beginnings in the 1960s.-From Democrato to Fluxus:Probably, the best reference to understand the early years of Ay-O is the autobiographical retrospective book in the references "Ay-O, Over the Rainbow, Ay-O...
. An admirer of Japanese art, Maciunas asked Saito if she could make boxes similar to the Paulownia
Paulownia
Paulownia is a genus of from 6 to 17 species of plants in the monogeneric family Paulowniaceae, related to and sometimes included in the Scrophulariaceae. They are native to much of China, south to northern Laos and Vietnam, and long cultivated elsewhere in eastern Asia, notably in Japan and Korea...
boxes he owned, which had been made to protect expensive ceramics. Her skill exceeded expectations, leading him to write that 'her craftmanship springs from Japanese tradition for perfection and is unmatched among contemporary artists working in wood and paper.'
Fluxchess
Maciunas revered Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, and 'found it amusing that both Duchamp and he were chess fanatics.' As a homage to Duchamp's assertion that 'all chess players are artists' , Maciunas asked Saito to create a series of artworks based on chess in late 1964. The series she created relegated or removed the dominant visual aspect of the game, replacing it with sets that relied upon the honing of other senses to play.
'In Saito's chess, strategy is undermined by the physical need to utilize the five senses...by involving senses that were normally unrelated to the traditional game, Saito transformed the ultimate conceptual game into a play of sensuous interactions.'
As well as Spice Chess, the series includes Sound Chess (different objects hidden in identical sealed boxes), Grinder Chess (a series of tactile drill bit polishers), Weight Chess (different weights hidden in sealed boxes), Nut & Bolt Chess (the only known example having been lost ), Jewel Chess, (made from different fake jewels) and Smell Chess (different liquids in vials). All of these sets were advertised for sale in Maciunas' Fluxus shop in SoHo, March 1965.
"When I gave all the chess sets to George, I said, 'he can use them as fluxus chess without mentioning my name." Takako Saito
Maciunas was said to be so delighted by Spice Chess that he 'even took credit for it on occasion.'
Later Fluxchess sets and Yoko Ono's White Chess Set
Other Fluxchess sets were made by Maciunas (Color Balls in Bottle Board Chess, March 1966 and Time Chess made of sand timers, May 1966) and by Yoko OnoYoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
, (Pieces Hidden In Look-a-Like Containers intended for the Fluxfest April 1970 Saito added Chess Board Door to the series in 1973, in which a chess board was to be attached to a toilet door allowing for a game to continue whilst one of the players was on the loo, and Liquor Chess, 1975 (see http://cms.ifa.de/en/exhibitions/exhibitions-abroad/bk/fluxus/ausgewaehlte-werke/takako-saito/) in which players have to taste various different drinks to ascertain each piece's value. Wine Chess and Book Chess have been added to the series since Maciunas' death.
The most famous of these disrupted sets, Yoko Ono's White Chess Set (see Yoko Ono's Myspace), in which all the pieces are white on a totally white board (with a brass plaque underneath reading 'Chess Set for playing as long as you can remember where all your pieces are' ) was originally made for Ono's exhibition at Indica Gallery
Indica Gallery
Indica Gallery was a counterculture art gallery in Mason's Yard , St. James's, London, England during the late 1960s, in the basement of the Indica Bookshop co-owned by John Dunbar, Peter Asher and Barry Miles...
, London, 1966, and was never produced as a Fluxus edition.
'Yoko Ono's White Chess Set, in which the opponents' pieces, all white, sit on each side of an all-white board, [make] the warring factions indistinguishable from one another. This elegantly placed anti-war statement, particularly taken in the context of the Vietnam War...[draws] attention to the deeply militaristic metaphors embedded in... games by conscientiously objecting to their implicit narratives of combat and enmity.'
The piece has been reconfigured a number of times, including an edition of 20 produced by Bag Productions, UK, 1970, and as Play It By Trust, a white table with ten sets and twenty white chairs laid out at the Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York, 1991.
Editions
The sets were originally sold through Maciunas' newly opened Fluxshop in unsigned, unattributed and unnumbered editions. At least one set, Grinder Chess, was remade in an edition of 19 signed and numbered in 1990 as part of the Reflux editions series .Before Hendrick's seminal Fluxus Codex was published in 1989, there was a general confusion concerning dates and authorship of the key Fluxus pieces, since few were ever sold, and even fewer were signed or dated. Despite still not being mentioned on Fluxus Debris , Saito's place within the group has gradually become more established, and the playing of Fluxchess has become an integral part of a number of recent Fluxus exhibitions. An original example of Spice Chess is one of a number of Fluxchess sets held in the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, Detroit, Michigan.