Books
Books
Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS | 2017
During the mid-twentieth century, Latin American artists working in several different cities radically altered the nature of modern art. Reimagining the relationship of art to its public, these artists granted the spectator an unprecedented role in the realization of the artwork. The first book to explore this phenomenon on an international scale,Abstraction in Reverse traces the movement as it evolved across South America and parts of Europe.
Alexander Alberro demonstrates that artists such as Tomás Maldonado, Jesús Soto, Julio Le Parc, and Lygia Clark, in breaking with the core tenets of the form of abstract art known as Concrete art, redefined the role of both the artist and the spectator. Instead of manufacturing autonomous art, these artists produced artworks that required the presence of the spectator to be complete. Alberro also shows the various ways these artists strategically demoted regionalism in favor of a new modernist voice that transcended the traditions of the nation-state and contributed to a nascent globalization of the art world.
“Abstraction in Reverse offers an urgently needed postcolonial perspective for the study of Latin American art and provides new concepts for exploring visual culture at the crossroads of modernity and globalization.” — Andrea Giunta, author of Avant-Garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties
“Alberro’s impressive approach to post-Concrete Latin American art sets the stage for a new understanding of modernity as it demonstrates how artists, by reconceiving the spectatorial functioning of abstraction, critically dismantled the modern myth of art autonomy.” — Luis Pérez-Oramas, Latin American Art Curator, The Museum of Modern Art
“Abstraction in Reverse deftly traces South American cultural processes and their ties to European traditions without neglecting the specifics of their individual trajectories. This is a compelling read.” — María Amalia García, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
“Engaging and accessible, Abstraction in Reverse astutely explores the question of art’s place in society and the surprising extent to which seemingly speculative debates about the framing of modern art can impact the political agenda of the revolutionary Left.” — Bruno Bosteels, author of Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror
“Abstraction in Reverse is a must-read for anyone interested in abstract art, its histories, and the different narratives we tell when faced with an increasingly global world.” — Kaira M. Cabañas, author of Off-Screen Cinema: Isidore Isou and the Lettrist Avant-Garde
"This book nuances the history of modernist abstraction...the art reproduced is wonderful to see. Recommended." — Choice
"In this stimulating book Alexander Alberro mines fields well known to scholars of modern Latin American artists in a way that sheds new light. . .Alberro’s book is an invigorating refresher course for those deeply immersed in this material and of immense use to the neophyte in matters of mid-twentieth-century art in the Americas." — The Burlington Magazine
“It has no doubt changed the art world, and for the better in many cases.” — Amy Ione, Leonardo Reviews
Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity
THE MIT PRESS | 2003
An examination of the origins and legacy of the conceptual art movement.
Conceptual art was one of the most influential art movements of the second half of the twentieth century. In this book Alexander Alberro traces its origins to the mid-1960s, when its principles were first articulated by the artists Dan Graham, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, and others. One of Alberro's central arguments is that the conceptual art movement was founded not just by the artists but also by the dealer Seth Siegelaub. Siegelaub promoted the artists, curated groundbreaking shows, organized symposia and publications, and in many ways set the stage for another kind of entrepreneur: the freelance curator. Alberro examines both Siegelaub's role in launching the careers of artists who were making "something from nothing" and his tactful business practices, particularly in marketing and advertising.
Alberro draws on close readings of artworks produced by key conceptual artists in the mid- to late 1960s. He places the movement in the social context of the rebellion against existing cultural institutions, as well as the increased commercialization and globalization of the art world. The book ends with a discussion of one of Siegelaub's most material and least ephemeral contributions, the Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, which he wrote between 1969 and 1971. Designed to limit the inordinate control of collectors, galleries, and museums by increasing the artist's rights, the Agreement unwittingly codified the overlap between capitalism and the arts.
“A valuable contribution to the literature on conceptual art.” — Michael Dashkin, Library Journal
“Alberro does a surprisingly good job of putting into perspective and recording the Conceptual Art movement.” — Gina Vivinetto, St. Petersburg Times
“This is in many ways a bold and suggestive book.” — Peter Osborne, Artforum
“This scholarly text on a little-examined topic draws fascinating parallels between the art world and postindustrial capitalism and telecommunications.” — Gregg Sapp, Library Journal
“This is the most rigorous history of conceptual art in print, and an important addition to the literature on postwar art.” — Pamela Lee, Stanford University
“Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity offers a detailed account of the complex relationship between the official Conceptual Art movement in New York City and the concomitant social and economic pressures of burgeoning late capitalism. Through clear prose and precise arguments, Alberro traces the intricate links among the conceptual artists and the entrepreneurs who marketed their work, thoughtfully exploring the contradictions these relationships entailed. Most importantly, the book demystifies the movement by pointing to the paradoxical dependence of dematerialized 'idea art' on the machinations of a voracious art market that made the works available for consumption while promoting them as resistant to the forces of institutionalization.” — Amelia Jones, University of California, Riverside
“This book brings thorough and original scholarship to a relatively neglected field. Alberro's work is presented with an impressive breadth of cultural, political and historical awareness. His command of wide-ranging sources is remarkable and his deployment of them revealing.” — Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Edited Books
Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke
THE MIT PRESS | 2016
Texts by Hans Haacke that range from straightforward descriptions of his artworks to wide-ranging reflections on the relationship between art and politics.
Hans Haacke's art articulates the interdependence of multiple elements. An artwork is not merely an object but is also its context—the economic, social, and political conditions of the art world and the world at large. Among his best-known works are MoMA-Poll (1970), which polled museumgoers on their opinions about Nelson Rockefeller and the Nixon administration's Indochina policy; Gallery-Goers' Birthplace and Residence Profile (1969), which canvassed visitors to the Howard Wise Gallery in Manhattan; and the famously canceled 1971 solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, which was meant to display, among other things, works on two New York real estate empires.
This volume collects writings by Haacke that explain and document his practice. The texts, some of which have never before been published, run from straightforward descriptions to wide-ranging reflections and full-throated polemics. They include correspondence with MoMA and the Guggenheim and a letter refusing to represent the United States at the 1969 São Paulo Biennial; the title piece, “Working Conditions,” which discusses corporate influence on the art world; Haacke's thinking about “real-time social systems”; and texts written for museum catalogs on various artworks, including GERMANIA, in the German Pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennial; DER BEVÖLKERUNG (To the Population) of 2000 at the Berlin Reichstag; Mixed Messages, an exhibition of objects from the Victoria and Albert Museum (2001); and Gift Horse, unveiled on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2015.
“Indispensable” — The New York Times
“Hans Haacke's singular distinction is of the hard won, genuine kind, an eminent isolation shared in the twentieth century perhaps only by John Heartfield and Piero Manzoni (two figures of greatest importance for his own formation). Since the late 1960s, he diagnosed contexts of culture that nobody had seen (e.g., the necessary politics of ecology), and was the single voice in analyzing the economies of corporate culture nobody wanted to see. Equally blocked from American institutional recognition as he was isolated from art historical contexts (neither accepted as Minimalist nor as Conceptual artist), Haacke is now all the more distinguished by the impact his works and his writings have had on two generations of artists who have followed his models of critical analysis and cultural contestation, ranging from Martha Rosler to Allan Sekula, from Louise Lawler to Mark Lombardi, from Walid Raad to Hito Steyerl.” — Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Harvard University
“Haacke is undoubtedly an essential figure in the art of the last half century. For him, artistic practice, politics, and the institution are inextricably linked, and cannot be understood in isolation from each other. He has been among the artists who have reflected most penetratingly on the artist's conditions of production. This book, an exhaustive compilation of his writings, provides a unique insight into his work, and so illuminates our era.” — Manuel Borja-Ville, Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
“With this book, we now have a full collection of Haacke's crucial statements, allowing the span of his career from systems art to institutional critique to be fully assessed. As pithy as they are indispensable, Haacke's writings capture the fierce ethics that he has always brought to his practice—now summarized in a useful introduction by Alex Alberro.” — Caroline A. Jones, MIT
“This comprehensive collection of Haacke's trenchant writings demonstrates the full breadth of his concerns–from postformalism to urbanism, ecology to labor relations–as well as the full range of theoretical positions he has drawn on to articulate them, from systems theory to sociology. It also features a number of important, previously unpublished texts, including an early critique of kinetic art and a recent one of speculative property development. An indispensable resource as well as a testament to Haacke's long, politically committed career.” — Luke Skrebowski, University of Manchester
“I have often asked myself, What would Hans Haacke do? For over half a century, Haacke has served as the artistic, ethical, and political compass of the art field. This long-overdue collection of his writings will serve as an indispensible guide for artists, curators, critics and historians for generations to come.” — Andrea Fraser, performance artist, UCLA
Luis Camnitzer in Conversation With/En Conversación con Alexander Alberro
FUNDACIÓN CISNEROS | 2015
Luis Camnitzer in conversation with/en conversación con Alexander Alberro is the eighth book in the Conversaciones/Conversations series. In this volume Camnitzer explores his unique approach to Conceptualism and art as pedagogy with Latin American art scholar Alexander Alberro. The book also includes an introductory essay by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro.
German-born Uruguayan, Luis Camnitzer (b. 1937) has been an influential artist, theorist, teacher, and curator for nearly five decades. He was at the vanguard of 1960s Conceptualism, working in printmaking, sculpture installation, and other media. Camnitzer’s work challenges our perception of reality and the status quo, and is characterized by its humorous, often politically charged use of language to underscore issues of power and commodification.
John Miller: The Ruin of Exchange
JRP|RINGIER | 2013
Spanning 1989 to 2009, this anthology collects the influential writings of American artist, musician and critic John Miller (born 1954), which have been lauded by Bruce Hainley in Artforum as “a pungent intervention into the ideologies of beauty, representation and looking.” Ranging from reviews and cultural essays to theory and artist's statements, Miller's writings distinguish themselves from other styles of art criticism insofar as they relate to his larger artistic concerns with the social context of the art object and its sociopolitical ramifications as a commodity (as the title of this volume implies); they are also deeply informed by Miller's vast knowledge of art history and popular culture. More recently, Miller has entered into close dialogue with Dan Graham, Bob Nickas and Nicolas Guagnini. Many of the essays collected here--such as his contributions to the German magazine Texte zur Kunst--appear in English for the first time.
¿Qué es arte contemporáneo hoy? What Is Contemporary Art Today?
UNIVERSIDAD PÚBLICA DE NAVARRA | 2012
¿Qué significa hoy "arte contemporáneo"? ¿Se trata de un nuevo tipo de producción artística? ¿De un nuevo tipo de actitud por parte del espectador? ¿Es "arte contemporáneo" el nombre de un período de la historia del arte que ha sucedido al moderno? ¿O es solo un tipo de arte moderno que ha sobrevivido a su tiempo?
What does “contemporary art” mean today? Is it a new kind of artistic production? A new tipe of spectatorship? Is “contemporary art” the name of an art historical period that has succeeded modernism? Or is it a kind of modernism that has outlived its time?
Edición bilingüe (en castellano e inglés) correspondiente al simposio internacional homónimo celebrado por la Cátedra Jorge Oteiza en mayo de 2010, con la colaboración de Fundación Ankaria.
Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings
THE MIT PRESS | 2009
An anthology of writings and projects by artists who developed and extended the genre of institutional critique.
"Institutional critique” is an artistic practice that reflects critically on its own housing in galleries and museums and on the concept and social function of art itself. Such concerns have always been a part of modern art but took on new urgency at the end of the 1960s, when—driven by the social upheaval of the time and enabled by the tools and techniques of conceptual art—institutional critique emerged as a genre. This anthology traces the development of institutional critique as an artistic concern from the 1960s to the present by gathering writings and representative art projects of artists from across Europe and throughout the Americas who developed and extended the genre. The texts and artworks included are notable for the range of perspectives and positions they reflect and for their influence in pushing the boundaries of what is meant by institutional critique. Like Alberro and Stimson's Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology this volume will shed new light on its subject through its critical and historical framing. Even readers already familiar with institutional critique will come away from this book with a greater and often redirected understanding of its significance.
Artists represented include Wieslaw Borowski, Daniel Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel, Hans Haacke, Robert Smithson, John Knight, Graciela Carnevale, Osvaldo Mateo Boglione, Guerilla Art Action Group, Art Workers' Coalition, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Michael Asher, Mel Ramsden, Adrian Piper, The Guerrilla Girls, Laibach, Silvia Kolbowski, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson, Mark Dion, Maria Eichhorn, Critical Art Ensemble, Bureau d'Études, WochenKlausur, The Yes Men, Hito Steyerl, Andreas Siekmann.
“This is a long overdue anthology that brings together a judicious selection of canonical artists' writings, while expanding this established frame to consider episodes in South America and Eastern Europe. Alberro and Stimson cover a variety of critical modalities, including the exhibition as a frame, the economic circulation of art, and approaches to audience. The final section controversially inscribes recent tactical media projects into this history as the contemporary iteration of Institutional Critique. This will be essential reading for, and generative of further criticism by, artists, curators, and art historians invested in the legacy of this practice.” — Claire Bishop, CUNY Graduate Center, New York
Art After Conceptual Art
THE MIT PRESS | 2006
Art After Conceptual Art tracks the various legacies of conceptualist practice over the past three decades. This collection of essays by art historians from Europe and the Americas introduces and develops the idea that conceptual art generated several different, and even contradictory, forms of art practice. Some of these contested commonplace assumptions of what art is; others served to buttress those assumptions. The bulk of the volume features newly written and highly innovative essays challenging standard interpretations of the legacy of conceptualism and discussing the influence of conceptualism's varied practices on art since the 1970s. The essays explore topics as diverse as the interrelationships between conceptualism and institutional critique, neoexpressionist painting and conceptualist paradigms, conceptual art's often-ignored complicity with design and commodity culture, the specific forms of identity politics taken up by the reception of conceptual art, and conceptualism's North/South and East/West dynamics. A few texts that continue to be crucial for critical debates within the fields of conceptual and postconceptual art practice, history, and theory have been reprinted in order to convey the vibrant and ongoing discussion on the status of art after conceptual art. Taken together, the essays will inspire an exploration of the relationship between postconceptualist practices and the beginnings of contemporary art.
Distributed for the Generali Foundation, Vienna.
“The pointed differences of opinion and radical departures from established theory considered here instead offer a fresh perspective on the implication of working in a conceptual mode in the global arena of the 21st century. This is an important prompt to a developing discussion.” — Canadian Art
Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser
THE MIT PRESS | 2007
Essays, criticism, and performance scripts written between 1985 and 2003 by an artist whose artistic practice investigates and reveals the social structures of art and its institutions.
Andrea Fraser's work, writes Pierre Bourdieu in his foreword to Museum Highlights, is able to “trigger a social mechanism, a sort of machine infernale whose operation causes the hidden truth of social reality to reveal itself.” It often does this by incorporating and inhabiting the social role it sets out to critique—as in a performance piece in which she leads a tour as a museum docent and describes the men's room in the same elevated language that she uses to describe seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Influenced by the interdisciplinarity of postmodernism, Fraser's interventionist art draws on four primary artistic and intellectual frameworks—institutional critique, with its site-specific examination of cultural context; performance; feminism, with its investigation of identity formation; and Bourdieu's reflexive sociology. Fraser's writings form an integral part of her artistic practice, and this collection of texts written between 1985 and 2003—including the performance script for the docent's tour that gives the book its title—both documents and represents her work. The writings in Museum Highlights are arranged to reflect different aspects of Fraser's artistic practice. They include essays that trace the development of critical “artistic practice” as cultural resistance; performance scripts that explore art institutions and the public sphere; and texts that explore the ambivalent relationship of art to the economic and political interests of its time. The final piece, “Isn't This a Wonderful Place? (A Tour of a Tour of the Guggenheim Bilbao),” reflects on the role of museums in an era of globalization. Among the book's 30 illustrations are stills from performance pieces, some never before published.
“These transcripts, along with the other essays in Museum Highlights, are a testament to Fraser's forcefulness as a writer, one for whom the act of writing and by necessity reading and researching is indivisible from her practice as an artist.” — Pamela M. Lee, Artforum
“The publication of this anthology marks a welcome occasion to reconsider the interweaving themes of Fraser's practice in relation to each other.” — Kirsi Peltomaki, Afterimage
“See the global culture industry laid bare with wit, erudition, and, above all, action.” — Kieran Long, Icon Magazine
“Andrea Fraser has crafted an exemplary artistic practice devolving from institutional critique. Central to her work from its beginnings are texts that assume diverse guises—research, analysis, theory—and diverse voices—witty, dry, affecting, clinical. This much-anticipated compendium richly demonstrates her singular ability to nullify normative distinctions between the work of art and analytic commentary, between the psychoanalytic and the fictive, as she mines the interwoven desires of the principal players in the art world—museums, artists, and audiences.” — Lynne Cooke, Curator, Dia Art Foundation
“A stunning book—Andrea Fraser turns the art museum inside out, time and again, in her incisive and mercilessly witty deconstructions. A rare combination of committed artistic practice working hand-in-hand with the insights of cultural theory.” — Tony Bennet, University of Manchester
Recording Conceptual Art
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS | 2001
Recording Conceptual Art features a highly provocative series of previously unpublished interviews conducted in early 1969 with some of the most dynamic, daring, and innovative artists of the tumultuous 1960s. The nine individuals—eight artists and one art dealer—are now known as major contributors to Conceptual art. These fascinating dialogues, conducted by Patricia Norvell, provide tantalizing moments of spontaneous philosophizing and brilliant insights, as well as moments of unabashed self-importance, with highly imaginative and colorful individuals.
“Essential reading for scholars for contemporary art, artists working with conceptually-based practices, and anyone interested in the art of the 1960s. . . . Exceptionally profitable for comparing the intentions of each artist early in his career to their mid-career and present-day work. . . . The scope of this book is exhilarating for the reader.” — Christopher Howard, The Art Book
“Reading the interviews gathered by Patricia Norvell more than thirty years ago is like opening one of the time capsules Steven Kaltenbach made at around the same time and discusses here. It makes one feel nostalgic for these uncompromising times-so much has changed, so fast! One should be immensely grateful to Norvell for her undertaking and, paradoxically, for the long delay in the publication of these conversations: nothing could have better highlighted the candor and commitment of the artists who participated in this project than their willingness, long after the fact, to let their youthful voices be heard unedited. This is a precious document that casts a fresh light on the early history of Conceptual art, revealing all the doubts and uncertainties its practitioners had to overcome.” — Yve-Alain Bois, Harvard University
“These interviews, full of the rich texture and confusion of an art movement at its inception, began as a "process piece" in mid-1969 when formalism still seemed worth defeating. The artists, tired of talking about turpentine, struggle to extend the rhetoric of form, and as they do so, reveal their roles as theorists and philosophers of a newly cerebral art, Conceptualism. Alberro's helpful introduction frames both Norvell's provocative questions and the surprising responses in a useful book that continues the process of historicizing 20th century art.” — Caroline Jones, author of Machine in the Studio
Two-Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art
THE MIT PRESS | 1999
Essays charting the diverse works of renowned conceptual artist Dan Graham.
The internationally renowned artist Dan Graham is widely acknowledged as one of the leading members of the 1960s conceptual art movement. However, his subsequent work in photography, performance, film, video, and the fusion of art and architecture, though well known in Europe and Japan, is less well known in English-speaking countries.
In Rock My Religion (MIT Press, 1993), Graham explored mainly the work of other artists. In this collection, he articulates the rationale behind his own art. The broadly accessible essays, which include his most canonical texts, are organized both thematically and chronologically. They chart his career from conceptual art for magazine pages of the 1960s, to work integrating video, television, architecture, film, and performance of the 1970s, to his pavilion sculptures of the 1980s and 1990s. The book also features an essay by Jeff Wall and interviews with Graham that address the art historical references and theoretical principles underlying his work.
Published in association with the Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
“Dan Graham's critical stance is refreshing, rigorous, original, and essential.” — David Ross, Director, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
“Like his artwork, Graham's writings have become site-specific monuments, and their publication here provides a textual mini-mall in which we are invited to peruse the predicament of our culture.” —Mary Kelly, UCLA
Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology
THE MIT PRESS | 1999
This landmark anthology collects for the first time the key historical documents that helped give definition and purpose to the conceptual art movement.
Compared to other avant-garde movements that emerged in the 1960s, conceptual art has received relatively little serious attention by art historians and critics of the past twenty-five years—in part because of the difficult, intellectual nature of the art. This lack of attention is particularly striking given the tremendous influence of conceptual art on the art of the last fifteen years, on critical discussion surrounding postmodernism, and on the use of theory by artists, curators, critics, and historians.
This landmark anthology collects for the first time the key historical documents that helped give definition and purpose to the movement. It also contains more recent memoirs by participants, as well as critical histories of the period by some of today's leading artists and art historians. Many of the essays and artists' statements have been translated into English specifically for this volume. A good portion of the exchange between artists, critics, and theorists took place in difficult-to-find limited-edition catalogs, small journals, and private correspondence. These influential documents are gathered here for the first time, along with a number of previously unpublished essays and interviews.
Contributors Alexander Alberro, Art & Language, Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Gregory Battcock, Mel Bochner, Sigmund Bode, Georges Boudaille, Marcel Broodthaers, Benjamin Buchloh, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, Luis Camnitzer, John Chandler, Sarah Charlesworth, Michel Claura, Jean Clay, Michael Corris, Eduardo Costa, Thomas Crow, Hanne Darboven, Raúl Escari, Piero Gilardi, Dan Graham, Maria Teresa Gramuglio, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Roberto Jacoby, Mary Kelly, Joseph Kosuth, Max Kozloff, Christine Kozlov, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Lee Lozano, Kynaston McShine, Cildo Meireles, Catherine Millet, Olivier Mosset, John Murphy, Hélio Oiticica, Michel Parmentier, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Mari Carmen Ramirez, Nicolas Rosa, Harold Rosenberg, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Jeanne Siegel, Seth Siegelaub, Terry Smith, Robert Smithson, Athena Tacha Spear, Blake Stimson, Niele Toroni, Mierle Ukeles, Jeff Wall, Rolf Wedewer, Ian Wilson
“This is an extraordinary work of archeology in conceptual art, full of surprises. The book brings back to life an incredible array of discussions about rich cultural issues that developed in the West from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. A challenging 'idea' book for our 'visual' times.” — Serge Guilbaut, University of British Columbia
“Here is an anthology whose editors have aimed to innovate as well as to compile. The result is substantive and far-ranging, as oriented to Europe and Latin America as to the United States; its readers will immediately be launched far beyond familiar orthodoxies and local disputes into vital contact with conceptualism's key debates and thinkers. That the collection contact with conceptualism's key debates and thinkers. That the collection recognizes how many of the latter were women only makes it more tonic and timely—such inclusions mean that Alberro and Stimson succeed in representing their subject more accurately and provocatively than does any other collection to date.” — Anne Wagner, University of California
“Concepts: Core Readings fills an important need for a set of recording that covers the study of concepts from a cognitive-science perspective. The readings in this collection represent an important resource for those who want to understand how current debates about the nature of concept arose from philosophical and psychological traditions and how they have increasingly converged in recent years. This volume will prove highly useful for advanced undergraduate seminars and serve as a convenient reference collection for scholars.” — Frank Keil, Yale University
