X for Cancellation

Alexandra Grant has confessed that she has an infinity for the letter X and even named the vanity press publishing company with X for X artists Books. Here's an X by Bruce Conner called Cancellation. A powerful statement.

A description on the meaning behind the X from the Norton Simon website:

https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/P.1967.20.074

This print, one of the earliest examples of conceptual printmaking, reflects Bruce Conner’s somewhat strained fellowship at Tamarind. Its subject refers to Tamarind’s editioning conventions, which insisted, among other stipulations, that once a stone had been cancelled, it could not be used to make any more impressions, and that each print had to be signed (Conner opted to use his thumbprint instead). When Conner wanted to edition a cancelled lithograph, Calvin Goodman, a business consultant who was overseeing the shop while June Wayne was abroad, stopped production. Goodman was clearly ill equipped to handle Conner’s conceptual explorations, allegedly confronting the artist by exclaiming, “What is this crap you’re trying to put over here?” When Wayne returned, she was amused and respectful of the artist’s boundary-pushing, and she immediately ordered production to continue.