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Mr. Peanut for Mayor Campaign

John Mitchell and Vincent Trasov
November 20, 1974

The idea of proposing Mr Peanut as a mayoral candidate was linked to a platform that would establish lending libraries for umbrellas and galoshes. Mitchell did the talking while Peanut shook hands and tap danced. The candidate was serenaded by a chorus line, the Peanettes, and backed up by Doctor Brute and the Brute Saxes. The strategy was to appear at all-candidates meetings (the cameras would have to pull back in order to get the enormous peanut, thereby dwarfing the competition) and tape the results off television. The media was most cooperative. During the broadcast of election night results, the Peanut ensemble once again upstaged the politicians, drawing cameras like a magnet and at one point taking control of the main stage. William Burroughs endorsed the campaign at a public reading: ‘Since the inexorable logic of reality has created nothing but insoluble problems, it is now time for illusion to take over. And there can only be one illogical candidate: Mr. Peanut.’

artist biographies

Vincent Trasov In 1974, Trasov and fellow artist John Mitchell devised a unique performance that purposefully brought art into the real world, indeed, into the very core of the political system with the ”Mr. Peanut for Mayor” campaign during the civic election. Mr. Peanut registered as a candidate, attended meetings, interacted with the public, and, through the voice of Campaign Manager Mitchell, responded to press interviews that brought him publicity and made him a celebrity in mainstream magazines such as Esquire and Andy Warhol’s Interview. This intervention of art and its fictions into a real socio-political landscape in the ”Mr. Peanut for Mayor” campaign is a landmark work of Canadian conceptual performance art. With his motto of ”elect a nut for mayor,” it also captured the public’s imagination and, remarkably, Mr. Peanut drew 3.4 per cent of the vote. MORE >