My first thoughts about the artworks in Nina Katchadourian’s “Special Collections Revisited” series, was that it was just another instance of found art, pedestrianly-done.  True, there are many visual poets doing much more inspired art but not getting it into New York galleries–or the Akron Art Museum that Katchadourian’s series got into.  But on reflection (nudged by a note I got from Tim Willette) I applaud Katchadourian for  her choice of books as subject-matter, specifically book-titles.  Certainly it’s hard for one encountering them not to do more with them than can be done with the dead-headedly politically-predictable aphorisms that made Holzer famous.

The following, a wry take on foundness in culture by Tim Willette, which Tim wrote me “sprang from a Federal Circuit opinion in Springs Windows Fashions v. Novo Industries,” in which the second company used an invention of the first company “de novo” (i.e., “over again”), is an order of rank superior to Katchadourian’s juxtapositions, I think–because you don’t just see it, read it and agree or disagree with it, but see it, reflect on it,–and find it.

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serious relationship