ENO, Brian

1996

Corian box with 100 printed cards

1 7/8 x 6 x 5 1/8"

In 1975, theBritish musician, producer, and visual artist, Brian Eno, together with the late English painter Peter Schmidt, addressed the challenge of breaking out of creative roadblocks by writing a series of phrases they dubbed "worthwhile dilemmas." These phrases, which suggest approaches from another direction, became known as Oblique Strategies. Originally published as a deck of cards in an austere format, they became an underground hit and sold out in three revised editions and were part of the Norton Christmas Gift. In 1996, as the Strategies were long out of print, Mr. Norton suggested to Eno a "fourth, yet again revised, and more universal edition." Norton edited the newly revised phrases and commissioned their translation into the six languages collectively spoken (English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic). Artist Pae White was commissioned to turn the cards' plain black-and-white format into an extravagantly colored format and housed in a Corian container that is known separately as "Bill's Bad Bone." These strategy cards have found widespread use in dozens of countries, at writers' desks, in artists' studios, and even in boardrooms.

1996

ENO, Brian

British, b. 1948 (lives in the United States)

Anonymous Gift

2001.26