Aspen Art Museum

In the year 2015, legendary filmmaker, artist and educator, James Benning decided to make 31 works of art for 31 friends. He produced a book which recounted the story of each friendship and illustrated the works created with each of them in mind. Some of the works referenced work by other artists—including Andy Warhol, Henry Darger, Henry David Thoreau, Cady Noland, Robert Smithson, Jasper Johns—inferring yet another set of (imagined) friends.

In the summer of 2016, these works were exhibited together along with the publication at the Marfa Book Company in Marfa, Texas. At the show’s closing event, the artworks were removed from the walls and given to each of the friends for whom they’d been made. The works then traveled to places near and far— Texas, Germany, Australia, New York, Los Angeles and beyond…

The third chapter of this project was created for the exhibition at O-Town House in 2018, a new gallery in Los Angeles at the time. This installment of Thirty-one Friends consists of the photographs James asked each friend to send him of his gifted artwork in situ in their homes, offices and studios. Together again, despite their disparate geographic locations, Benning’s Thirty-one Friends represents a self-professed exercise in prioritizing the mechanisms in art that foster genuine examples of community.

Thirty-one Friends is now again on view at the Aspen Art Museum, after being generously donated by James Benning and O-Town House for ArtCrush. The work was sold outside of the auction with the stipulation that it be donated to a public institution in Los Angeles. James Benning’s work, despite his legendary status within the arts community in Los Angeles, has (until this moment) not been represented in the collection of Los Angeles Museums. We are so pleased that Thirty-one Friends will soon be a part of the Hammer Museums collections following its acquisition from ArtCrush.

James Benning’s Thirty-one Friends is about the creative potential and power drawn from community. The ‘gift economy’ that this project represents is inspiring and a critical element to a sustainable system of art production, exhibition, and collection. The very fact that a generous Aspen patron purchased this work from the walls of the Aspen Art Museum and then donated it directly to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is also a poignant testament to how these ideas of community can be built upon for the future.

Aspen Art Museum is thrilled to be a part of a larger network of art institutions that support each other and work together to foster and champion great ideas in art.

Photographs by (gift recipients):

Thom Andersen (Valencia, CA), Julie Ault (Joshua Tree, CA), Martin Beck (Joshua Tree, CA), Rhonda Bell (Oklahoma City), Sadie Benning (Brooklyn), Juliette Blightman (Berlin), Bob Danner (Milwaukee), Anna Faroqhi (Berlin), Jake Fuller (Milwaukee), Maia Gianakos (Berlin), Dick Hebdige (Joshua Tree), Alex Horwath (Vienna), Peter Hutton (Tivoli, NY), Jon Jost (Butte, MT), John Knecht (Hubbardsville, NY), Rachel Kushner (Los Angeles), Steve Lemon (East Hampton, NY), Les LeVeque (Tivoli, NY), Rickhard Linklater (Bastrop, TX), Sharon Lockhart (Los Angeles), Scott MacDonald (New Hartford, NY), Gary Mairs (Sherman Oaks, CA), Sarinah Masukor (Sydney), Zorona Musikic (Berlin), Michael O’Brien (Chicago), Peter Pakesch (Graz), Werner Ruzicka (Duisburg), LeeAnne Schmitt (Valencia, CA), Deborah Stratman (Chicago), Joanna Swan (Los Angeles), Danh Vo (Mexico City).