The James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, is pleased to present James Lee Byars: Back in Detroit. The exhibition took place on April 5 through July 5, 2019. The exhibition included weekly performances of Byars’ Two in a Hat.

This exhibition focuses on the formative years of the Detroit-born artist James Lee Byars. After attending Wayne State University in the 1950s, Byars went on to gain worldwide acclaim, and his work has only grown more relevant over time. Byars’ unique approach and nomadic life allowed him to flourish: he crossed boundaries between disciplines and cultures, striving for – and ultimately achieving – a truly global art form.

Byars is known for his extraordinary letters to curators, colleagues, and friends worldwide. The earliest letters to his WSU teacher Olga Constantine, in delicate handwriting on precious handmade Japanese paper, however, have never before been exhibited. The exhibition also includes seven early works in stone, wood, and on paper, which are proof of his quest for a universal visual language, in exchange with Japanese culture as well as contemporary movements like minimal art, pop art, conceptual art, and Fluxus. A selection of documented performances is offered, including the recently retrieved and digitized The Holy Ghost. Visitors can enjoy a half-hour documentary containing an interview with the then thirty-seven-year-old artist and highlighting one of his plural-garment performances. Works from his mature period demonstrate the power of Byars’ art, rooted in his Detroit experiences.
 
James Lee Byars: Back in Detroit is curated by Els Hoek, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and organized in collaboration with the Estate of James Lee Byars / Michael Werner Gallery, Märkisch-Wilmersdorf, London, and New York.
 
This exhibition has been made possible through cooperation with the following partners: De Appel arts centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Argos, centre for art and media, Brussels, Belgium; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Flor & Lieve Bex-Dedeyne and Christiaan Goyvaerts, Antwerp, Belgium; Angelica Cardazzo, Venice, Italy; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; Wendy Dunaway, Santa Fé, New Mexico; Urs Egger, Berlin, Germany; Dolores Hart, Shelby Charter Township, Michigan; Sandra Lang and Robert Landsman, New York; Michael Werner Gallery, Märkisch-Wilmersdorf, London, and New York; University of Udine, Italy. 

Curatorial Statement 

This exhibition focuses on the formative years of the Detroit-born artist who gained worldwide attention and whose work has only become more relevant over time. Byars flourished in the second half of the twentieth century; his work is related to contemporary developments (minimalism, mail art, pop art, Fluxus, conceptual art), but his perspective was unique. Leading a nomadic life, Byars was able to cross boundaries between disciplines, cultures and even times. He strove for a truly global art, and therefore mostly stuck to a simple vocabulary of forms (cube, pyramid, sphere) and colors (black and white, pink and red, and gold). At the same time, Byars never neglected the specific features of the location and listened thoughtfully to what occupied the people with whom he collaborated. Every twenty-first-century art student, and anyone interested in art as a positive and connecting force, should know Byars’ story and what he accomplished. 
 
James Lee Byars, born in Detroit, Michigan on April 10, 1932, spent his youth in the city and it is the place where his art is rooted. In 1956, at twenty-four years old, Byars decided to study art education at Wayne State University (WSU). From the first moment, it was clear that Byars was different from other art students. G. Alden Smith, head of the Art Department at WSU, described him in 1960 as: ‘a simple person in love with the little things and elements of nature.’ By then Byars was on the verge of starting a nomadic lifestyle, first traveling back and forth between the United States and Japan and, from 1969 onward, between the United States and Europe. At the end of 1988, Byars spent time in North Africa studying death within Egyptian culture. On another trip nearly a decade later, near the great pyramids in the city of Cairo, his life came to an end.
 
At WSU Byars developed a special bond with Olga Constantine, one of his teachers only three years his senior. He wrote her a series of romantic letters and cards from Japan, which Constantine treasured throughout her life. After her death on December 23, 1997, exactly seven months after Byars, Robert Wilbert, another WSU teacher, donated the correspondences to the Archives of American Artists in the Smithsonian, Washington, DC. Although Byars wrote many extraordinary letters to people around the world with whom he worked, these earliest examples to Constantine – in delicate handwriting on precious handmade Japanese paper – have not been used by researchers nor shown in any Byars exhibition before. The James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History is proud to exhibit them back in Detroit.
 
James Lee Byars entered the 1960s as an unworldly student with enormous ambitions, transformed into a young artist with Zen Buddhist characteristics, and eventually emerged as anything but ‘zen.’ In his native country, he came into contact with art that reflected the interests of his work. A geometric vocabulary of black, white, and grey and the principles of repetition were characteristic of the emerging minimalism. The separation between idea and execution was the core of the new conceptual art movement. Byars is often compared to the artists of Fluxus in his endeavor to break down the barriers between disciplines. The exhibition shows his quest with seven early works in stone, wood, and on paper, as well as slides of six works that have probably been lost. 
 
Byars’ life was not the only thing gaining momentum in the sixties: the whole world seemed to be turning faster than it ever had before. The new sense of life had to do with the rise of mass media and the associated democratization of the provision of information. A youth culture came into being, activist movements arose, and at the same time, technological developments offered a view on forms of artificial intelligence and the exploration of the universe, with the landing on the moon as a milestone in July 1969. 
 
At the end of the sixties, film and video were widely used, either as an independent form of artistic media or to document transient forms of art, like Byars’ solo and group performances. James Lee Byars: Back in Detroit offers a selection of documented performances including the recently retrieved and digitized The Holy Ghost. Visitors can enjoy a half-hour documentary made during Byars’ premiere European exhibition in Antwerp, Belgium. Filmed during the spring of 1969, the documentary contains an interview with the then thirty-seven-year-old artist and highlights one of his plural-garment performances. The exhibition also presents Byars’ experiments with the moving image, as well as The World Question Center, an hour-long segment that was filmed and broadcast live on Belgian national television. Works from his mature period demonstrate the power of Byars’ art, rooted in his Detroit experiences.