Richard Hambleton - R. Dick Trace It Perpetual Cyclic Calendar To The Year 2000

This early, hand-made conceptual project by Richard Hambleton is intended as an ironic statement about the artist as a corporation. This body of work flows from of Richard Hambleton’s Investigation Department ID’s Mr. ReeeeSearch theme. Hambleton meticulously charts his own creative output starting in 1973 and projects into the year 2000. His mechanical images of wheels, graphs and shafts symbolize the organic flow of life and the erratic flow of creativity. It is a wry comparison between base sexuality and market production. The artist’s life is a business in which he seems to have no control.

The Perpetual Cyclic Calendar operates as a slide ruler. An inner shaft can be moved in and out to predict the future of the artist. The phallic shaft is fully extended in peak years of productivity, retreating post-coitus style during the slump years. A major thrust in creativity was anticipated in 1984, 2000, 1982-1983, 1983-1988. To drive the point home, the rise and fall of Hambleton’s creativity is plotted in stylized graphs and charts, like the projected profits and losses of a corporation.