We present the sixth issue of S.M.S, a magazine created in 1968 in Manhattan as a collaborative space for artists, characterised by the heterogeneity of the artistic mafiestations it collects, and that advocate for the freedom of the author and for the fight against the mercantilist conception of art.
Since March 10, 2023
The Image (With) Text cycle connects the Library with the Helga de Alvear Collection through a cycle of exhibitions where backgrounds are revealed characterised by being a meeting place between disciplines, editions in which the word and the image are brought together. The connections between the two will run from more traditional publications, books where the image accompanies the text as an illustration, to those more daring ones, which place one of their main values in the tension between both domains and in the contribution to erase the borders that separate them.
S.M.S magazine was created in 1968 in Manhattan as a collaborative space for artists, characterised by the heterogeneity of the artistic mafiestations it collects, and that advocate for the freedom of the author and for the fight against the mercantilist conception of art, to which the expression hidden behind the acronyms of his name referred (Shit Must Stop).
In the late sixties, a modern loft on the Upper West Side of Manhattan owned by the artist, collector and dealer William Nelson Copley, became the S.M.S Studio.
With the aim of finding new places and ways of exhibition, in 1968 they created the magazine halfway between periodical publication and the work of art, it was understood by its promoters as “a collection of multiple originals” that took the magazine format to its own limits.
Between the months of February and December 1968, six issues conceived as six floders were published, with a circulation of 200 copies, which were distributed bimonthly to subscribers for just over 100 dollars. In total, 73 artistic collaborations whose heterogeneity reflects the generational diversity, fame and aesthetic interests of the participating artists.
In each folder it is possible to find drawings, photographs, stickers, posters, sound works, objects, unexecuted projects, poems, texts… gathered with the intention of erasing any boundary between disciplines. Some works were easily subjected to mechanical reproduction techniques; others required additional manual work.
María Jesús Ávila
Born in Cáceres (1966), she has a PhD in Art History from the University of Extremadura. Since 2008, she has been Coordinator of the Foundation Helga de Alvear and the Museum of the same name that she manages.
Previously, she has been a curator at the Museu do Chiado-National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon (1994-2007), responsible for the collection of the Culturgest, Lisbon (2008) and associate professor of the Department of Art History of the University of Extremadura (1995-1999) and of the Universidade Nova of Lisbon (2005-2006).
She has curated exhibitions on artists and modern and contemporary art: Más que espacio (2001), S.M.S. Un espacio de encuentro (2021) ...y el tiempo se hizo (2015), Arte Moderno en Portugal (Salamanca, Madrid y Badajoz, 2007-2008), A cor como experiência (2006), Primeiros Modernismos em Portugal (2005) o Surrealismo em Portugal 1934-1952 (Badajoz, Lisboa y Madrid (2001-2002). Among the artists curated Mitsuo Miura (2018), Jürgen Klauke (2017), Jean-Marc Bustamante. Espacios transitorios (2016), Heim Semke (2005), Sá Nogueira (1998), Ana Hatherly (1997) y Mário Eloy (1996). She has been a member of the curational team of the Foro Sur fair, Cáceres (2003 and 2007-2011).
She is the author of the first two reasoned catalogues made in Portugal: Joaquim Rodrigo (1999) y Julião Sarmento. Edições numeradas (2006), of the three volumes of the collections of the Museu do Chiado (2011-2013), author of the book Ortega Muñoz and has collaborated with articles in numerous catalogues and art magazines.
At the same time, she participates in research projects related to museography and conservation of contemporary art: director member of the Domentação da Arte Contemporânea project team, financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, member of the Scientific Committee of the MIDAS magazine, direction of Course on Production of temporary exhibitions of the Portuguese Network of Museums (2002-2005) and The contemporary art, a multidisciplinary educational tool (2013-2014), articles in specialised magazines and congresses, such as museology.pt, APHA magazine, Studies in conservation, Modern Paints Uncovered (Getty, 2006) o ICOM-CC (2011) o MDPI (2020), and co-director of reserach, master's degrees and doctotal theses (currently co-directs the Thesis Conservation and valorisation of Ângelo de Sousa's Collection of photography and video).
Toby Mussman
Betty Dodson
Adrian Nutbeam
Jean Reavey
Claes Oldenburg
Mischa Petrow
Bernar Venet
Ronaldo Ferri
Paul Steiner
Ed Bereal
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