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| Jean-Pierre Houël Antique Statue - Island of Gozo ca. 1776-79 gouache Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Classical Fragments - Catania ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"In her 1969 'Maintenance Art Manifesto' performance artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles divided human labor into two categories: development and maintenance. She writes: Development: pure individual creation; the new; change; progress; advance; excitement; flight or fleeing. Maintenance: Keep the dual off the pure individual creation; preserve the new; sustain the change; protect progress; defend and prolong the advance; renew the excitement; repeat the flight. Ukeles' manifesto insists that ideals of modernity (progress, change, individual creation) are dependent on the denigrated and boring labor of maintenance (activities that make things possible – cooking, cleaning, shopping, child rearing, and so forth). Incisively, Ukeles does not refer to maintenance as domestic labor, or housework, for it is evident that such labor is not confined solely to the spaces of domesticity. Included in this manifesto was a proposal that Ukeles live in the museum and perform her maintenance activities; while the gallery might look 'empty', she explained that her labor would indeed be the 'work'. Her offer went unaccepted."
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Classical Fragments with Bust of Ceres ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Bas-relief Tullia Ciceronis and Clodia Metelli ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"In 1973, however, the Wadsworth Atheneum agreed to the Maintenance Art Performances. In Hartford Wash: Washing Tracks, Maintenance Inside, Ukeles scrubbed and mopped the floor of the museum for four hours. In Hartford Wash: Washing Tracks, Maintenance Outside, she cleaned the exterior plaza and steps of the museum. She referred to these activities as 'floor paintings'. In Transfer: The Maintenance of the Art Object, she designated her cleaning of a protective display case as an art work – a 'dust painting'. Normally the vitrine was cleaned by the janitor; however, once Ukeles' cleaning of the case was designated as 'art' the responsibility of the cleaning and maintenance of this case became the job of the conservator. The fourth performance, The Keeping of the Keys, consisted of Ukeles taking the museum guards' keys and locking and unlocking galleries and offices, which when locked were subsequently deemed to be works of 'maintenance art'. In each performance Ukeles' role as 'artist' allowed her to reconfigure the value bestowed upon these otherwise unobtrusive maintenance operations, and to explore the ramifications of making maintenance labor visible in public."
– from House Work and Art Work by Helen Molesworth, excerpted in The Everyday, edited by Stephen Johnstone and published by Whitechapel Gallery (2008) in the series Documents of Contemporary Art
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Classical Bas-reliefs - Catania ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Classical Torso - Malta ca. 1776-79 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Classical Fragments ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Classical Fragments ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Classical Fragments - Malta ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Classical Fragments - Malta ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Ancient Building - Cefalu ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Ancient Building - Cefalu ca. 1776-79 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Ancient Building - Cefalu ca. 1776-79 gouache Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Pierre Houël Greek House - Malta ca. 1776-79 gouache Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |