Buren’s work is immediately recognisable by its familiar stripe motif, invariably with a width of 8.7 cm. He calls these stripes his ‘outil visuel’ (visual tool) and has made them his trade mark.
Daniel Buren usually designs his works specifically for a particular place or exhibition and often executes them himself in situ. But, like Sol LeWitt’s wall drawing, in this case Buren did not install the works in S.M.A.K. himself. In and Out of the Frame (1970), the installation using wallpaper, has been reproduced by members of S.M.A.K.’s staff. The two paintings, Peinture Acrylique (1969 & 1971), already existed as objects in their own right, but had to be installed in the museum rooms. All this was done in accordance with the instructions written by the artist. A degree of variation is possible within the restrictions of these instructions: the dimensions of the room and how the instructions are interpreted by those who carry them out help determine how the work will look and feel each time it is done.
The essential point in this approach is that the principles of the artist and the work are respected. In 1979 Daniel Buren made 65 copies of Numéroté – Déchiré – À Coller as an edition for the Friends of the S.M.A.K. By executing the work – by sticking it to the wall following the artist’s instructions – one immediately destroys it too. This fact is inseparably linked to the character of the work. The Friends of the S.M.A.K. still have one original numbered copy and have decided to keep it. For this reason the work was not produced, but you will find documentation of it in the display case.
Daniel Buren shows his work not only in museums, but also in everyday surroundings: in shop windows, on buses and trams, and on advertising panels. He makes the boundaries between studio, gallery, museum and the outside world into a subject of discussion. By exhibiting his stripe motif everywhere, he demonstrates that a work of art never exists alone, but is shaped by and receives meaning from the context in which it is shown. The critical approach to the museum as an institution and the questioning of the status of art are threads that run throughout his oeuvre.
Like Claude Rutault, Daniel Buren’s work is related to European Fundamental Painting, which was a reaction against American Minimal Art. Fundamental Painting shatters the modernist myth of painting: development and variation within an oeuvre, the painter’s personal touch, and the painting as a rendering of an existing subject. In 1966, together with Mosset, Parmentier and Toroni, Buren founded the BMPT group. In addition to the publication of several manifestoes, each of these four painters decided to continue always repeating the same painting. Employing a depersonalised technique, they consistently endeavoured to reduce painting to simple actions and neutral forms: in Buren’s case this means the invariable repetition of his stripe motif.
