Bob & Bob

Bob & Bob were a Los Angeles-based performance art duo formed in 1974 by artists Francis Shishim (born 1953), known as The Dark Bob, and Paul Velick (born 1953), known as The Light Bob.^[1] They utilized various forms of multimedia for their projects, which include paintings, drawings, sculptures, dioramas, videos, improvised happenings, recordings, and installations that employ ironic humor to critique contemporary culture, the art world, high society, consumerism, and politics.^[2]

Shishim and Velick first met in 1974 at the ArtCenter, where they were both students in Llyn Foulkes's painting class. However, instead of painting, they began to orchestrate performances related to the class. In one instance, they staged a citizen's arrest, handcuffing Foulkes and removing him from the classroom, only to return and dismiss the class. They then dropped the charges and released Foulkes, giving him the day off. They chose to call themselves Bob & Bob because it sounded like the most generic and banal everyman name, fitting their concept to focus on the experience and the audience, rather than on themselves as individual artists. On one occasion, they organized a class field trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, claiming they would meet and interview famous artists. There, they would approach unsuspecting museum-goers as though they were the notable artists they had identified to the class. They would then ask generic questions to the participant relevant to the artist they were unknowingly representing. Answering earnestly, the museum-goer was none the wiser concerning their participation in the performance ruse.^[3]

After graduating from Art Center, Bob & Bob established their art practice as a business in a Beverly Hills office space, where they wore suits to work.^[3] They created drawings of bankers, copied from photos found in the annual reports of banks and large corporations. They explain that "These poor bankers have spent their whole lives in classrooms and offices, and all they have to show for it is money and wrinkles. We wanted to turn them into art."^[4] The duo also documented their street happenings in this affluent area, which meant to expose its contradictions and seductive allure.^[2] These performances included activities such as barging into spaces with doors marked "Private" or "Do Not Enter", sunbathing on Rodeo Drive, and being removed from La Scala for being unable to pay.^[5]

Bob & Bob adopted the persona of a couple of “idiots, innocent, just in from the Midwest,”^[5] using a self-conscious media hype, they promoted their numerous performances and exhibitions with satirical marketing techniques, such as parodying the Beatles by calling themselves the “Fab Two”. Establishing themselves as the artwork, stating, “Here we are with our product and our product is Bob and Bob. Bob and Bob is to us what the soup can was to Andy Warhol. They’re our iconography”.^[6] Bob & Bob had become the packaging, and the packaging was the product.^[2]

Bob & Bob became the art on the wall at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA) in their seminal work, Sex is Stupid (1979), suspended inside a frame wearing their trademark suits and masks of their own faces. They hung for five hours, intermittently engaging each other in absurdities, accompanied by dance music; free drinks were served to attendees. Lining the gallery walls were twenty-five of their original artworks, each bearing an image of their faces and featuring a different style of painting. They were sold at the bargain price of $25 each.^[5] The performance duo's gallery show was an experimental event that critiqued the very art system it engaged with. They developed a distinctive motif, orchestrated a highly attended event, and ultimately sold out the show.^[5]

Forget Everything You Know, a 12-hour-long Bob & Bob happening hosted by LAICA, which had secured an empty warehouse in downtown LA. filling it with a dump truck full of popcorn. The aroma of the knee-deep popcorn filled the space, and the walls were lined with a hundred feet of blank canvas. Gallons of paint and hundreds of brushes were supplied to the large crowd, who spent the entire night getting drunk and painting to a futuristic live band of five synthesizers and a drummer. Bob & Bob sat precariously on a small platform built into the rafters and were painted gold and silver. Their voices, amplified, chanted to the crowd to forget everything they knew about everything and anything. After 12 hours, the walls, the popcorn, and the out-of-control crowd were covered in paint; everything had become a work of art.^[7]

After more than a decade of public performances, staged happenings, and object creation, Bob & Bob embarked on separate artistic journeys in 1984. This division into the Dark Bob and the Light Bob was not the result of ideological differences, but rather a geographic separation. Following the recording of an album with PolyGram/Polydor Records in New York City, the Light Bob chose to remain there, and the Dark Bob returned to the West Coast. Currently, they continue their individual art practices as the Dark Bob and the Paul Bob, formerly known as the Light Bob, and occasionally collaborate as Bob & Bob on projects.^[3]

• 1983 INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL, Rotterbobs, (representing the United States was Bob & Bob, Chris Burden, Johanna Went, and James Lee Byers), Rotterdam, HOLLAND.^[8]
• 1981 WPA (Washington Project for the Arts), Across America, Washington, D.C.TORTUE GALLERY, Across America, Los Angeles, CA^[8]
• 1980 L.A.C.E. GALLERY, Here’s the News, Los Angeles, CAWEST HUBBARD GALLERY, Nature’s Perfect, Animals are Perfect, What are Humans?, Chicago, IL, ON THE BOARDS, Discotak, Seattle, WA, LA MAMELLE, INC., Russia Needs Help, San Francisco, CA ^[8]
• 1979 THE KITCHEN, The Fab Two, New York, NY LOS ANGELES INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART,^[8] Forget Everything You Know 1978 LOS ANGELES INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, Sex Is Stupid^[5]
• 1977 RUTH S. SCHAFFNER GALLERY, Brace Yourself For Action, Los Angeles, CA 1976 LOS ANGELES^[8] INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, The Fab Two^[9]
• 1975 LOS ANGELES INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, F.B.I. Bobs^[8]
• 1978-75 – Various unannounced performances in the streets. Notably: Club d’ Arte (1975),^[6] Rodeo Beach (1976), Oh Great, Now What? (1976), Deals (1976 through’78),^[6] It’s All Over (1977), We Must Be In The Wrong Place (1977), Just In From The Midwest (1977).^[6]

• WE KNOW YOU’RE ALONE b/w WE’VE BEEN SEEING THINGS,^[10] 12 in.EP and cassette. Produced by PolyGram/Polydor Records, New York, NY. 1983
• ACROSS AMERICA,^[11] 12 in. LP, M.I.T.B. Records, 1981
• BOB & BOB – THEIR GREATEST HITS,^[12] 12 in. LP, M.I.T.B. Records, 1976
• SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE,^[13] 12 in. LP, M.I.T.B. Records, 1978
• WE’RE ALL LUCKY,^[14] Cassette. Produced by Steve Rathe for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angele, curated by Julie Lazar. Limited Edition MOCA Cassette, 1984

• BOB & BOB: THE FIRST FIVE YEARS,^[1] by Linda Frye Burnham. Introduction by Llyn Foulkes. 100pp. with 40 color reproductions. Published by Astro Artz, Inc., Los Angeles, 1980
• BOB & BOB: A RETROSELECTIVE 1975-1986, Text by Kristine McKenna, Peter Frank, and Adolpho Nodal. Published by Otis/Parson, 1986
• BOB & BOB: 40 MONTHS/40 STORIES,^[2] Essay Andrew Berardini, Notes Llyn Foulkes, MITB Press/Artbook@Hauser Wirth, 2016
• PERFORMANCE ANTHOLOGY,^[3] Edited by Carl Loeffler and Nancy Frank. Published by Contemporary Arts Press, San Francisco, CA, 1985.
• YOUNG TURKS, by Stephen Seemayer, published by Astro Artz Inc., Los Angeles, 1981
• PERFORMANCE ARTISTS TALKING IN THE EIGHTIES,^[4] compiled by Linda M. Montano. Published by University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000
• CATALOG L.A. BIRTH OF AN ART CAPITAL 1955-1985,^[5] Edited by Catherine Genier. Published by Chronicle Books, LLC, San Francisco, CA, 2007, and Editions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, 2006
• L.A. RISING,^[6] Edited by Lyn Kienholz. Bob & Bob Essay by Matt Groening. Published by California International Arts Foundation, Los Angeles, 2010
• UNDER THE BIG BLACK SUN: CALIFORNIA ART 1974-1981,^[7] Edited by Lisa Gavrielle Mark and Paul Schimmel. Published by Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and DelMonico Books, Munich/London/New York, 2011
• LIVE ART IN LA PERFORMANCE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 1970-1983,^[8] Edited by Peggy Phelan. Published by Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, London, New York with the assistance of the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, 2012

• Bob & Bob, official website
• Bob & Bob, Pandemic Oral History Project, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution 2020
• Who Are Bob and Bob? 8mm film, 1979
• BOB & BOB - What Are Humans, 8mm film, 1979
• Dark Bob, official website
• The Dark Bobs YouTube videos