Art nature politics : now! : "On sale at the Fondation Maeght" : Hans Haacke's un-American performance art

Hans Haacke's "On sale at the Fondation Maeght" (1970), a performance created four months earlier, anticipates and embodies Gregory Battcock's prescriptions. He executed "On sale" for critic and curator Dore Ashton's "L'art vivant aux États-Unis" (July-September 1970), an exhibition of then-contemporary American art held at the Fondation Maeght in St. Paul-de-Vence, France. Striking a markedly different position in relation to poetics from the majority of other artworks, "On sale" disrupted the established, naturalized order of the institution and mounted critiques of various kinds of empires--respectively those of the art dealer Aimé Maeght and of the United States.