Between 1971 and 1973, Eleanor Antin travelled to various places in California and New York with 100 rubber boots that she installed in different places along the way. Arranged in a line, a circle, queuing, on the branches of a tree and in other spatial configurations, she recorded them photographically in black and white (the photographs were taken by Philip Steinmetz) and produced a postcard, which she sent to friends and famous people, such as Judy Chicago and Allan Kaprow. Up to a thousand people and institutions from all over the world received postcards of the travelling boots. While the series – a combination of mail art, installation and action – was titled 100 Boots, Antin gave a descriptive title to each of the specific actions: 51 actions and 51 postcards that bear witness to the boots’ journey between the Pacific and MoMA in New York, with titles such as 100 Boots at the Bank, 100 Boots on the Way to Church, 100 Boots in the Market, 100 Boots Parking, 100 Boots on Vacation and 100 Boots Facing the Sea, among others. Most of the actions were carried out in the state of California, where Antin lived, with the exception of the final few, executed in New York in June 1973, in well-known spaces such as the corner of Herald Square, the pavement outside MoMA , The Egyptian Gardens, Central Park and the Upper Harbor.

For Antin, this was a way of questioning the fact that the exhibition space for art is limited to galleries and museums. While she initially envisioned the journey as a re-enactment of Mark Twain’s picaresque novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and also Jack Kerouac’s legendary On the Road, as the project grew, she saw it as being closer to the famous 1914 melodramatic film series The Perils of Pauline, about a woman adventurer. Consequently, Antin built the series as a narrative, the first postcard being 100 Boots at the Bank, where the first murder is supposed to have been committed, since when, fleeing justice, the boots have reached New York. The series ends at MoMA, with 100 Boots enter the Museum: the rubber boots forming a line at the entrance. The work was finally exhibited in this museum.

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As found on MACBA’s website.