Do you need outstanding names to enjoy art?

Artists have always used pseudonyms – think of El Greco, Le Corbusier or, more recently, Banksy. Fictitious artists go a step further: they not only invent a name, but also a completely new identity. M has devoted a group exhibition to precisely this subject: ‘Alias’.

‘Alias’ is curated by Valerie Verhack, head of the contemporary art department at M.

“The seed for ‘Alias’ was planted in 2017. I’d stumbled upon a publication about Vern Blosum. He – or at least someone who used that moniker – made Pop Art paintings in the 1960s. Leo Castelli, his gallery owner, even managed to sell one to MoMA in New York. Everything was fine until they read his biography: it was so implausible that they realised they’d been duped. The museum relegated his work to the stores, and Blosum disappeared into obscurity. In 2017, his gallery announced that he’d died, and even today, only a handful of intimates know his identity.”

“After delving into Vern Blosum, I wondered if fictional artists also existed in Belgium. Which of course they did. Meaning that we can show Belgian examples in ‘Alias’ alongside international ones.”

Wael Shawky © M Leuven (photo: Sanne Delcroix)

‘Homage to Ivan K.’, Vern Blosum 1963. Courtesy of the estate of Vern Blosum and Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York

Great Zwanze

“Fictional artists are a fairly recent phenomenon, but there are precursors. In 1870, the photographer Louis Ghémar opened a temporary museum in Brussels with works by non-existent artists, many of whom lashed out at the art system. The paintings and sculptures were in fact made by Ghémar and several friends. Still in Brussels, a bit later, you had the Great Zwanze Exhibitions. These poked fun at the ‘official’ art from the Salons – exhibitions that only included works that followed academic rules. Many works from this period have been lost, unfortunately. But the basic premise – that you should view the artwork separately from the artist and not try to explain it via their biography – would become the norm in the twentieth century. Just think of Marcel Duchamp.”

“Fictional artistry gained momentum in the 1960s and 1970s. Lynn Hershman-Leeson, for example, worked under her own name, but also had a public persona called Roberta Breitmore. A fictional character with an independent identity, right down to a driving licence and credit card. Hershman-Leeson saw the project as a statement against the narrow, deterministic view of what it meant to be a woman. At M, we’re showing ‘From Lynn to Roberta’, amongst other works, a short film in which you see Hershman-Leeson transform into Roberta.”

“These kinds of artists create a fictional alter ego as a way of transcending gender stereotypes. Others do it, for example, as a form of social critique, or to question the art world. Maybe they want to disappear as an artist or to promote themselves, pure and simple. We’re exhibiting a work by Jakup Auce at M: a painting on which he has stencilled his real name, John Gillis. He has placed a punching bag before the work. Does it mean that he sees himself as some kind of art world martyr? Or is it a clever piece of self-promotion?”

‘Our comedies are nothing to be laughed at’, Jakup Auce, 2015. Courtesy the artist and CINNAMON Gallery. Photo: Lotte Stekelenburg

Ready-made

“We’re also showing work by Bruce Conner. An American who had always worked under his own name until he retired in 1999. After that date, he continued to make work under various alter egos: Anonymous, Anonymouse, Emily Feather ... He has an interesting take on the phenomenon. He points out that the cult of the artist is much more recent than we think – the link between artwork and specific creator is only around 600 years old at most. One might wonder if this focus on the maker has not come at the expense of the work: after all, it can only represent itself.”

“‘Alias’ also includes work by Philippe Thomas. A case apart, since this is his real name, but much of his work relies on fictional strategies. He established a public relations agency in 1987: ‘ready-mades belong to everyone®’. If you bought one of his artworks via the agency, you were immediately officially recognised as its creator. It means that your own name goes down in art history, while that of Philippe Thomas slowly disappears from the record.”

Zaalzicht 'Alias', 2024, M Leuven, foto: © Eline Willaert voor M Leuven

Unknown, unloved?

“‘Alias’ spans six rooms, each with its own theme. For instance, one gallery is entirely taken up by the showroom with the art collection of French artists Yoon-Ja Choi and Paul Devautour: a collection of some thirty works created by their various alter egos. In another room, you can then see how certain fictional artists situate their work in the past. In this space, we have ‘reconstructed’, amongst other things, the studio of the early twentieth-century fictional artist, Florence Hasard.”

“We’ve deliberately opted to communicate the fictitious names. I realise that they won’t mean much to the visitors, but it’s also a means of challenging the audience. After all, ‘Alias’ asks a very pertinent question: ‘do you need outstanding names to enjoy art?’”

The ‘Alias’ exhibition features some eighty works by national and international fictional artists. Here’s a small selection to pique your curiosity:

Claire Fontaine

‘Headless Man’, 2016

The fictional artist Claire Fontaine took her name from Marcel Duchamp’s iconic ready-made – the famous urinal with the French title ‘Fontaine’ – and the French stationery brand, Clairefontaine. She critiques the capitalist system through her sculptures, painting, videos and text-based works. Fontaine considers her creative strategy to be a form of restitution: she assigns a different use value to the artworks she quotes and transforms.

‘Headless Man’ is inspired by the street performers in tourist hot spots. It is a portrait of a beggar who erases his own humanity and transforms himself into a headless ‘thing’. The work thus becomes a ‘performing object’: an object pretending to be a subject pretending to be an object.

‘Headless Man’, Claire Fontaine, 2016, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin, photo: Guillaume Vieira

Henry Codax

‘Racer Car’, 2012

Fictional artist Henry Codax began exhibiting identically-sized monochrome paintings in renowned galleries in New York, Los Angeles and Switzerland in 2011. They were consummate examples of everything the contemporary art world demands of a ‘professional’ artist – only there was no Henry Codax. He only existed on paper: as a caricature of the American monochrome painter – silent, radical, calculating, virile – who appeared in the novel ‘Reena Spaulings’ (2004). The book was written by the anonymous artists’ collective Bernadette Corporation, which posed as a business to criticise global consumer culture.

‘Racer Car’, Henry Codax, 2012. Courtesy Office Baroque. Photo: Koen De Wael

Vern Blosum

‘Forty Minutes’, 1963

In many ways, Vern Blosum is the ultimate fictional artist. He takes his anonymity to radical extremes: his identity is known only to a handful of intimates. A concise biography is available but it lacks credibility. This places greater emphasis on the work, on cultivating a formal recognisability, as opposed to the name. Blosum’s paintings started to infiltrate the art market in the 1960s. They are unique and distinctive: a rigid system of Pop Art-inspired images of simple objects, combined with a single line of text.

‘Forty Minutes’, Vern Blosum 1963. Courtesy of the estate of Vern Blosum and Maxwell Graham Gallery, New York

John Dogg

‘John Not Johnny’, 1987

“The work of John Dogg can only exist when the artist’s intention or personal biography is disregarded.” So proclaimed the press release accompanying one of his first exhibitions at American Fine Arts Co., the New York gallery owned by Colin de Land. According to the accompanying CV, the artist had studied philosophy and linguistics and participated in American land-art projects – an amalgam of fact and fiction based on the experiences and interests of the artists behind Dogg. However, his most recent CV, published in 2021 by the gallery Venus Over Manhattan, calls John Dogg a “pseudonym used by Richard Prince (born 1947, Panama Canal Zone), active from 1986 to the present”. Prince’s then-boyfriend Colin de Land was presumably also involved in the John Dogg ruse.

The work ‘John Not Johnny’ is a white metal tyre casing that references car culture. Mounted on the wall, it resembles a perfectly finished spare wheel, a ready-made sculpture containing a playful allusion to the artist’s name.

‘John Not Johnny’, John Dogg, 1987. Courtesy of Venus Over Manhattan

Brian O’Doherty

‘Five Identities’, 2002

Brian O’Doherty, as editor of ‘Aspen Magazine’ in 1967, was the first to publish Roland Barthes’ essay ‘The Death of the Author’. As an artist, O’Doherty assumed various authorships in – or as – his work. ‘Five Identities’ is a 2002 group portrait in which he poses (far left) on an equal footing with the four fictional artists he created, who were long considered real. From left to right: William Maginn, Patrick Ireland, Sigmund Bode and Mary Josephson (seated).

‘Five Identities’, Brian O’Doherty, 2002. Courtesy Galerie Thomas Fischer. Photo: Anthony Hobbs

Oksana Pasaiko

'Short sad text (based on the borders of 14 countries)', 2004-2005

The catalogue to Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian (2004) reads: ‘In accordance with the artist’s wishes, no details are published about her life’. It just mentions that Oksana Pasaiko was born in 1982 in ‘Ruthenia’ – not an official state but an historical territory in the border region of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine. This would indicate that she attaches more importance to her ethnicity than her nationality. The 2004-2005 work ‘Short Sad Text (Based on the borders of 14 countries)’ consists of a bar of soap on which six black human hairs have been embedded in the pattern of seven contested land borders. Pasaiko recently added seven more pieces of soap to her 2004-2005 work – a necessity, given the troubled political state of the world.

‘Short Sad Text (Based on the borders of 14 countries)’, Oksana Pasaiko, 2004 - 2005. Collection S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent. Photo: Dirk Pauwels

Roberta Breitmore

‘Roberta’s Construction Chart #2’, 1975

Lynn Hershman Leeson started to create performances under the alter ego Roberta Breitmore in 1973. These entered art history as a feminist critique of society’s restrictive image of what it meant to be a woman. In Roberta’s first performance, she arrived in San Francisco by bus and checked into the Dante Hotel. She undertook several other activities in subsequent years: opening a bank account, visiting a psychologist, and placing ads in local newspapers to find a roommate. Roberta had her own clothes, make-up, gestures, way of speaking and handwriting. Her work is documented in drawings and surveillance photos, as well as cheques, credit cards and a driver’s licence. The Roberta Breitmore project concluded with a symbolic exorcism in 1978.