Andrea Fraser, Untitled (2003)
In Untitled, the artist is seen having sex with an unidentified American collector who paid close to $20,000 to participate in this curious 60-minute work of art. Among the requirements for participation in ”Untitled” were that the artist’s potential collaborator be heterosexual, unmarried and, of course, willing to underwrite the transaction.
As the video begins, Fraser enters a hotel room, her hair swept fetchingly to one side. The setting is standard-issue Hip Hotel: the videotape was filmed, using a single overhead camera, in a room Fraser identified as being at the Royalton Hotel in Manhattan, owned by Ian Schrager. The artist is carrying two glasses, white wine in her left hand and what looks like a highball in her right. The collector enters, and then begins a filmed seduction whose detailed contractual terms were worked out in advance by the artist’s gallery.
‘Museum Highlights’ (1989)
‘Museum Highlights’ involved Fraser posing as a Museum tour guide at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1989 under the pseudonym of Jane Castleton. During the performance, Fraser led a tour through the museum describing it in verbose and overly dramatic terms to her chagrined tour group. For example, in describing a common water fountain Fraser proclaims “a work of astonishing economy and monumentality … it boldly contrasts with the severe and highly stylized productions of this form!” Upon entering the museum cafeteria: “This room represents the heyday of colonial art in Philadelphia on the eve of the Revolution, and must be regarded as one of the very finest of all American rooms.”
