Everybody's Object

Twenty-nine people wanted fur. But they didn't get it, because 46 people wanted rubber. And they didn't get it, because 49 people wanted aluminum. What everybody got was Hybrid, the consensus objet d'art of 1965. It is the result of what two young British artists, Gerald Laing, 30, and Peter Phillips, 26, called an "art-consumer research project."

Equipped with sample kits, Laing and Phillips began a year ago to interview people from Los Angeles to London, asking what they wished Hybrid, the logical extreme of making art pop, to be. Categories included color, material, pattern, finish, size, as well as choices between closed or open form, two or three dimensions, a figurative or nonfigurative objet. The interviews with 137 artists, critics and collectors were then tabulated by computer. Results:

Hybrid came out as a sculpture 52.2 inches high; 23.6% brass, 17% plastic, 28.6% aluminum and 30% Plexiglas; colored red, white and blue, of which 28.5% must be expressed in light.

Last week, Manhattan's Kornblee Gallery put on display the first Hybrids, their neon tubing aglow as they rotated on turntables like new cars on display. The full-scale models sell for $1,100; compact, desk-sized versions cost $150. Blueprints are available to those who want to build one themselves. There are no plans to come out with a 1966 model.

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