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Endnotes
1. The Artforum series included: Amuse Us, Artforum, vol. 22, no. 5 (January 1984), 92; We’re Desperate: We Want to Buy Our Way Into a Show, Artforum, vol. 22, no. 7 (March 1984), 112; Yoko Ono Be Our Patron, Artforum, vol. 22, no. 8 (April 1984), 94; Your Ideas May Already be Worth a Clock, Artforum, vol. 22, no. 10 (Summer 1984), 107; Brilliant New Work by United Art Contractors, Artforum, vol. 23, no. 1 (September 1984), 16; United Art Contractors Ride Andy Warhol’s Coattails to Success, Artforum, vol. 23, no. 3 (November 1984), 118; You Get What You Pay For: “No Talents Buy Their Way In,” Artforum, vol. 23, no. 5 (January 1985), 31; Your Ideas May Already Be Worth a Clock, Artforum, vol. 22, no. 10 (Summer 1985); Please Tell Us How Pretty We Look, Artforum, vol. 24, no. 1 (September 1985), 46; We Caused the Shuttle Disaster, Artforum, vol. 25, no. 1 (September 1986), 62; We Can’t Get Our Hair Right, Artforum, vol. 26, no. 3 (November 1987), 179; Grand Lawyering: A Legacy of Understated Elegance, Artforum, vol. 28, no. 3 (November 1989), 179; and Still Wet Your Pants at Age 40?, Artforum, vol. 28, no. 5 (January 1990), 166. Another series of advertising works ran in the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 1986 and 1987. At least one piece ran in the East Bay Express in Emeryville, California in 1987. Many of the advertisement works were also issued as mail pieces (postcards and folded posters), and some mail works were not published as magazine advertisements.
2. United Art Contractors. Amuse Us, Artforum vol. 22, no. 5 (January 1984), 92. [advertisement]. The Contractors, in their previous incarnation as Sam’s Café, had produced mail pieces as well as print advertisements as early as 1970. Their Starving Children Contest, published as an advertisement in the Daily Californian on May 1, 1970, for example, offered $200 in cash prizes for contestants who sent Sam’s Café the most blank letters. “You could write 25 words or less on how much you sympathize with starving children, but why bother.”
3. United Art Contractors Legal Division. Use My Brain Use My Law Degree [postcard], Sacramento, CA: United Art Contractors (February 1985).
4. Famine Artists, reproduced in: Tucker, Marcia. Choices: Making Art of Everyday Life. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986. Exhibition catalog. February 1 – March 30, 1986. 115.
5. Reproduced in: George Draper, “The Phony $76.40 Bills: Critique Today by Hoaxers,” San Francisco Chronicle (March 19, 1971).
6. Cited in: Draper, “The Phoney $76.40 Bills.”
7. Draper, “The Phoney $76.40 Bills.”
8. Draper, “The Phoney $76.40 Bills.”
9. Jerry Belcher, “‘You Owe $76.40’—Hoax Sweeps City,” San Francisco Examiner (March 17, 1971).
10. Quoted in: George Draper, “Hoaxers Arrested on U.S. Charges,” San Francisco Chronicle (March 20, 1971).
11. “$76 Bill Hoaxers Face U.S. Arrest,” San Francisco Examiner (March 19, 1971).
12. Thomas Albright. “Visuals: Art Conceptual, Media, Process and Forced . . . on a
bun . . . no relish,” Rolling Stone, RS85 (June 24, 1971), 40. Among the friends videotaping the press conference were members of Ant Farm. In an email communication with the author on December 30, 2004, Chip Lord indicated that the tape no longer exists, likely lost in a 1978 fire.
13. Larry Dum, “The Sam’s Café Put-On: Behind the Phony Bill Caper,” San Francisco Examiner (March 18, 1971).
14. “$76 Bill Hoaxers Face U.S. Arrest,” San Francisco Examiner (March 19, 1971).
15. “$76 Bill Hoaxers Face U.S. Arrest.”
16. “Obscenity Charges: Bill Hoaxers Free on Bond,” San Francisco Examiner (March 20, 1971).
17. “Grand Jury Indicts 3 in $76.40 Hoax,” San Francisco Chronicle (April 15, 1971).
18. Jerome Tarshis. “San Francisco,” Artforum, vol. 9, no. 10 (June 1971), 94.
19. Tarshis, 94.
20. Thomas Albright, “Art for Decay’s Sake: Oh, Dem Rotten Apples,” San Francisco Chronicle (December 31, 1969).
21. Albright, “Art for Decay’s Sake.”
22. Trial Transcript: In the United States District Court, Northern District of California, Before: Hon. Alfonso J. Zirpoli, Judge, United States of America, plaintiff VS. Marc McMain Keyser, Terri Helene Keyser, David Stanley Shire, defendants. Reporter’s Transcript October 12, 1971; Cr. No. 71-790 AJZ. Eldon N. Rich, Official Reporter, U.S. District Court, San Francisco. For Plaintiff: Jerry K. Cimmet, Assistant United States District Attorney. For Defendants: Dennis J. Roberts. 12.
23. Telephone interview with Terri Keyser-Cooper (June 25, 2003).
24. Cited in Dum.
25. Telephone interview with Terri Keyser-Cooper (June 25 2003).
26. Carol Matzkin, “Acceptable Dirt,” Daily Californian (February 2, 1970). Sam’s Café are quoted as saying: “The show was one way of making art out of potentially every situation. Everyone has dirty thoughts, everyone can express those thoughts. We were even able to make an artistic work of the potential for getting busted. We let the police express their dirty art, too.” The exhibition was not juried and was open to anyone. Some of the works deemed obscene by the police officer were voluntarily removed by Sam’s Café; others were covered with paper bags.
27. Marc [Keyser], Letters: Ballad of a Sad Café,” Berkeley Barb (March 6-12, 1970), 4.
28. Don Mitor, “Sam’s Cop-In Cop-Out,” Berkeley Barb (February 27-March 5, 1970), 2-17.
29. Trial transcript, 14.
30. Trial transcript, 15.
31. Trial transcript, 24.
32. Trial transcript, 25.
33. Trial transcript, 26. The reference to “no marble, paint, or canvas” in the United Art Contractors’ Amuse Us piece seems to have originated with this testimony—effectively a legal definition of conceptual art.
34. Trial transcript, 26–27.
35. Trial transcript, 28.
36. Trial transcript, 33.
37. Trial transcript, 34.
38. William Cooney, “3 ‘Sam’s Café’ Artists Acquitted,” San Francisco Chronicle (October 13, 1971).
39. Terri Keyser-Cooper. E-mail communication to the author, February 6, 2004. The University of California Berkeley Art Department was not able to locate any records to confirm this, but in a telephone conversation with the author on or about February 7, 2004, former faculty member Karl Kasten confirmed the basic facts of Keyser’s account.
40. Telephone interview with Terri Keyser-Cooper (June 25, 2003).
41. United Art Contractors. “We’re Desperate: We Want to Buy Our Way into a Show.” Artforum, vol. 22, no. 7 (March 1984), 112, [advertisement].
42. You Get What You Pay For: “No Talents Buy Their Way In”, Artforum, vol. 23, no. 5 (January 1985), 31.
43. Telephone interview with Terri Keyser-Cooper (June 25, 2003).
44. Telephone interview with Terri Keyser-Cooper (June 25, 2003). 
Actionable Art: From Sam’s Café to United Art Contractors
Endnotes
Acknowledgements