If you intend to go out drinking beer with friends tonight or over the weekend, then you are engaging in “the highest form of art,” according to California-based conceptual artist Tom Marioni. If you do it with Tom Marioni, you’ll be taking part in a piece of ongoing conceptual art that has been happening at specified times and places since 1970. He can do it anyplace he likes; all he has to do is let a gallery know that he intends to host a night of beer and art—“I send plans and they build a bar,” he says. He’s done it in places like Vienna, Paris, and Bristol, England.

Often, at these events, he draws a large circle on a blank wall, in front of which he tells a few jokes, similar to like the famous brick wall at the Improv, while his guests quaff bottles of Pacifico, which he favors “because I like the yellow label.” The full title of this expansive work of art—the events, the drinking, the conviviality, the comedy—is “The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends Is the Highest Form of Art.” It also sometimes bears the name “FREE BEER.”

He has turned half of his studio into a piano bar, and has designated the shade of yellow, probably related to the label used by Pacifico, he likes to use “Marioni Yellow.” He first used the alcoholic beverage in his art in 1970, when he staged a beery event at the Oakland Museum of California. He invited sixteen friends to join him at the museum after hours; the curator supplied the beer, and everyone “drank and had a good time.” The empty beer bottles and the tables and chairs were left in place for the duration of the exhibition. That was a one-time thing, but since 1973 Marioni has been hosting a weekly salon, making “The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends Is the Highest Form of Art” an ongoing artwork that is still not complete.
 

 
Marioni’s ongoing art salon/beerfest represent just a beginning of his forays into hops-fueled expression. One work, Golden Rectangle Beer, consists of seven shelves of Marioni’s beloved Pacifico beer bottles arranged in a rectangle with the “golden” 1:1.6 ratio (approximately) widely believed to represent an innately pleasing proportion for visual forms. Such was the name given to the 2000 artwork featured at the Hammer Museum at UCLA, but according to the video embedded below, that is the name he also gave to a similar artwork of a Samsung TV screen tilted on its side and displaying slushy footage of a golden, frothy substance immediately identifiable as beer. In 2004 Marioni published a manifesto of sorts bearing the insouciant title of Beer, Art, and Philosophy. In addition to everything else he is the founder of San Francisco’s Museum of Conceptual Art.
 

 
Basically, the affable Marioni has found a way to turn his life’s work, art, into an easygoing and enjoyable pursuit not without its share of high pedigree. It may be accessible and frivolous art, but that doesn’t make it not conceptual art.

Here’s an entertaining look at a typical Marioni salon event:
 

 
via Glasstire