The Art Guys Agree on Painting, 1983
Next Saturday, December 7, will mark the final event of the Art Guys’ 12 Events, the duo’s yearlong celebration of “thirty years of collaboration, commitment, confusion.” Beginning with January’s event, “Signing Ceremony,” in which Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing spent National Handwriting Day signing their names for eight straight hours at the Houston Public Library, performances included July’s “Never Not Funny” at Houston’s notsuoH bar, eight straight hours of telling some version of the same joke; September’s “Intersection,” eight straight hours of crossing Houston’s busiest intersection; and November’s “Loop,” 24 hours driving around the 610 Loop.
At 3 pm on Saturday, the guys will present “an anti-elaborate psuedo-recreation” of their very first piece, “The Art Guys Agree on Painting.” In 1983, Galbreth and Massing stuck their hands in buckets of paint and shook hands, prompting Massing to remark, “I guess now we’re the Art Guys.” The name and the collaboration stuck (and the photograph from that piece was used as the signature image for the 1995 exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Art Guys: Think Twice). In honor of their thirty years, Saturday’s recreation is titled “The Art Guys Agree On Painting, Again, This Time From 30 Feet Up.”
