Over the course of its five-year run (1973 to 1978), the New York-based magazine Art-Rite published hundreds of interviews, statements, and reviews, documenting the eclectic community of post-conceptual, post-minimalist, performance, and video artists. Produced on a shoestring and edited by Joshua Cohn, Edit Deak, and Walter Robinson, the magazine rejected the academic language that dominated contemporary art writing in favor of a more irreverent and punchy style. As Deak recalled in a conversation with David Frankel for Artforum:

“An important aspect of ‘Art-Rite’ was a whole new tone and attitude. It was unheard of to have a sense of humor at the time, or not to be talking about ‘the problem’ of art – the problem of this, the problem of that. A few years later the punk magazines came along, and I realized that’s what I’d wanted – I loved those fanzines. That’s not what we were, we were much more formalist, but we were a very different sound than what was around us.” (Artforum, January 2003)

Each thematic issue featured a cover designed by an artist, including Joseph Beuys, Ed Ruscha, Rosemary Mayer, Robert Ryman, and Dorothea Rockburne. For the inaugural issue (no. 1), Les Levine created a text-and-image cover centered on an anecdote about finding a small, smiling gold object on the street. The chance encounter becomes a meditation on Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, artistic selection, coincidence, and the unpredictable connections between art and everyday life:

“On my way back from Peggy's Cove, as I was walking out the airport terminal door, I saw a tiny object sparkling on the floor. I have always believed that it is lucky to find things so I bent down and picked it up. It was a little gold smile. I inspected it. I couldn't tell whether it was a tie pin or an earring. On the back of it, it had stamped the words: 14-K gold filled. So I put it in my pocket and I began to think -- found object, but you can't make a found object. Marcel Duchamp has made that, but I do not go around trying to find objects. I just found this object and it was like finding a smile. Duchamp went around finding objects and he didn't find every object. He selected objects so maybe they should have been called ‘connoisseured objects’. I didn't connoisseur this object. I just found it and I wasn't trying to find it. And then I thought what if my mother had called me Marcel. That would make me Marcel Levine. But my mother was a hairdresser so she probably would have called me Marcel Wave. But her sense of humor wasn't like that. One day my mother met my Aunt Katie in downtown Dublin. And my Aunt Katie said to my mother, ‘Nelly buried her husband last week.’ And my mother answered, ‘Well, of course, you have to once they're dead. It's the law.’ And when I told someone about my mother's joke they said she must have read James Joyce, but they were wrong. James Joyce had listened to my mother. And then I thought there's an artist named Jack Levine and there's a film producer named Joseph E. Levine and I have made a few films myself. And then I finally thought being born is not too original. It happens to the best and worst of us.”

The eight-page inaugural issue features contributions by Alan Suicide and Bill Bollinger, along with short exhibition reviews and aphoristic reflections on art by artists, critics, and art dealers.