100 Boots,

1971–73

I bought fifty pairs of boots, big men’s boots, in the Army-Navy surplus. I think they cost $200 in those days for all of them. Now they would cost a fortune. It was six cents for a postage stamp, for a first-class postcard. In the middle of the piece, it became eight cents. I didn’t like that. I was indignant.

But I put together a mailing list. When I had a pretty big one, I started mailing out my 100 Boots and I didn’t have to leave town. . . . Suddenly they hit all over the place. . . . Like The Washington Post did this interesting thing. They’d print a different Boot image on each page. . . . Then people would write to the paper and ask if Eleanor Antin would put them on her mailing list. The paper forwarded the letters to me and I’d add the names to my mailing list. . . .

Some people, when they’d move would let me know their new mailbox, their new address. . . . Other people wouldn’t and when their cards were returned, they were removed. The piece went on for two-and-a-half years.

Eleanor Antin, from an “Oral History interview with Eleanor Antin,” by Judith Olch Richards, May 8–9, 2009, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution