James Lee Byars piece

James Lee Byars, an American conceptual installation and performance artist, visited the National Gallery in my time there, quite what for I can't remember. He presented Alistair Smith, one of the curators, with a piece of his art, and Alistair promptly handed it on to me. The work was (is) unsigned, and consisted of a large sheet of black tissue paper folded several times down to around A5 size. I think it was a "sketch" for a larger installation. Its title, or perhaps the event for which the actual work was planned, is Four Continent Documenta (maybe done for the Documenta VII in Kassel in 1982). For the last twenty years it's been sitting in an envelope in a file at home. To frame the thing somehow seems all wrong; I know it's there, which is about all a piece of conceptual art really needs.