Felix Gonzalez-Torres
 (American, b. Cuba 1957–1996)

Through works crafted from common materials that involve the viewer and are based on ideas relevant to contemporary life, Felix Gonzalez-Torres disrupts notions about art’s preciousness and remoteness from our own lives.

About the artist

Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Photo by John Gruen, 1995
Born in Cuba in 1957, Felix Gonzalez-Torres grew up in Puerto Rico and moved to New York City when he was twenty-two. There he earned his undergraduate degree in photography from Pratt Institute and his graduate degree from the International Center of Photography. He waited tables before he became well known, making art late at night after his shifts had ended.

Though he focused on photography while in school, Gonzalez-Torres eventually expanded his interests and began to incorporate a variety of ordinary materials in his work—objects and materials recognizable by all segments of the population rather than traditional art materials bought at an art supply store. Likewise, he preferred working in his own dining room to having a professional artist’s studio. By making works crafted from common materials that involve the viewer and are based on ideas relevant to every-day life, Gonzalez-Torres hoped to break down the barriers in the art world that separate the privileged from the average person. Much of his art addresses social issues such as gay rights, AIDS, and violence. Gonzalez-Torres died of AIDS in 1996.


"Untitled" (The End), 1990
"Untitled" (The End), 1990
Offset prints on paper
22 x 28 x 22 in.
Restricted gift of Carlos and
Rosa de la Cruz; and Bernice and Kenneth Newberger Fund
1995.111
 Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. ©The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.
From a distance, this work looks like a solid rectangular box, not unlike minimalist sculptures with their simple geometry. The work actually consists of individual sheets of paper stacked on the floor. Viewers are invited to take a sheet. You could take it home and save it forever as an artwork, make an airplane from it, write a letter on it, or recycle it. In this work, Felix Gonzalez-Torres questions traditional ideas about art. Usually only very wealthy people can buy an original artwork. Often artworks are made of expensive materials. But "Untitled" consists of a stack of offset prints on paper, and since all visitors to the museum may take a sheet, many can become “owners” of the artist’s work. This type of artwork emphasizes the idea of the artwork over the actual material, and is called conceptual art.

Notice that all of the paper looks alike, and all of it is white with a black edge around it. The words “The End” in the title gives us a clue that the black edge represents death. Death is the border of life, just as the black edge borders the white paper. As a person with AIDS, the conundrum of life and death was very apparent to the artist. The stack of paper is continually replaced by the museum as people take away the sheets so that it remains at a tombstone height. What looks to be solid and finished turns out to be ephemeral, fluctuating, and delicate. And, just as a person leaves behind memories and mementos, "Untitled" (The End) leaves the viewer with an actual part of itself.


Ideas for activities
Art
Have students create a “stack” of some inexpensive material that they can give away, that is meaningful to them and relates to their interests and ideas. Then have the class put the “stacks” around the classroom and have a gallery show, inviting the students to take from each other’s stacks.

Language arts
After doing the above exercise, have students write an essay about what they did with their pieces from the class stacks. Or, if they went to the MCA and took a sheet from Gonzalez-Torres’s stack, they can write about their reactions to that experience.

Social Studies
Like many artists, Gonzalez-Torres was concerned with history in his art. He made a giant billboard in New York City that memorialized important dates in the history of gay rights. Have each student create their own memorial of historical dates for an issue or idea.



Math
Break students into teams and have them create word problems based on the Gonzalez-Torres stacks to be solved by other groups in the class.

Examples:
• If a stack created by Gonzalez-Torres in the museum has 300 sheets of paper, and if 225 people come to see his show and a third of those take a sheet of paper away with them, then how many sheets are left in the stack? (225 sheets)

• If 5,000 people come to the show, and 3/5 of those take a sheet, how many times does the museum staff need to replenish the whole stack? (10 times)
 



Questions for looking and discussion

Additional work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres