Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' WritingsAmbitious and interdisciplinary, this long-awaited collaboration is a landmark presentation of the writings of contemporary artists. These influential essays, interviews, and critical and theoretical comments provide bold and fertile insights into the construction of visual knowledge. Featuring a wide range of leading and emerging artists since 1945, the collection--while comprehensive and authoritative--offers the reader some eclectic surprises as well. Included here are texts that have become pivotal documents in contemporary art, along with writings that cover unfamiliar ground. Some are newly translated, others have never before been published. Together they address visual literacy, cultural studies, and the theoretical debates regarding modernism and postmodernism. The full panoply of visual media is represented, from painting and sculpture to environments, installations, performance, conceptual art, video, photography, and virtual reality. Thematic concerns range from figuration and process to popular culture, art and technology, and politics and the media. Contemporary issues of gender, race, class, and sexuality are also addressed. Kristine Stiles's general introduction is a succinct overview of artists' theories in the evolution of contemporary discourse around art. Introductions to each chapter provide synopses of the cultural contexts in which the texts originated and brief biographies of individual artists. The text is augmented by outstanding photographs, many of artists in their studios, and vivid, contemporary art images. Reflecting the editors' shared belief that artists' own theories provide unparalleled access to visual knowledge, this book, like its distinguished predecessors, Hershel Chipp's Theories of Modern Art (with Peter Selz and Joshua Taylor) and Joshua Taylor's Nineteenth-Century Theories of Art, will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in contemporary art. "In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote 'in advance of the broken arm.' It was around that time that the word 'readymade' came to mind to designate this form of manifestation."--Marcel Duchamp (1961) "Women have always collected things and saved and recycled them because leftovers yielded nourishment in new forms. The decorative functional objects women made often spoke in a secret language, bore a covert imagery. When we read these images in needlework, in paintings, in quilts, rugs and scrapbooks, we sometimes find a cry for help, sometimes an allusion to a secret political alignment, sometimes a moving symbol about the relationships between men and women."--Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer (1978) "I want to create a fusion of art and life, Asia and America, Duchampiana modernism and Levi-Straussian savagism, cool form and hot video, dealing with all of those complex problems, spanning the tribal memory of the Nomadic Asians who crossed over the Bering Strait over 10,000 years ago."--Shigeko Kubota (1976) "Black for me is a lot more peaceful and gentle than white. White marble may be very beautiful, but you can't read anything on it. I wanted something that would be soft on the eyes, and turn into a mirror if you polished it. The point is to see yourself reflected in the names. Also the mirror image doubles and triples the space."--Maya Lin (1983) "Artists often depend on the manipulation of symbols to present ideas and associations not always apparent in such symbols. If all such ideas and associations were evident there would be little need for artists to give expression to them. In short, there would be no need to make art."--Andres Serrano (1989) |
Contents
GESTURAL ABSTRACTION II | 11 |
JACKSON POLLOCK Guggenheim Application | 22 |
HELEN FRANKENTHALER Interview with Henry Geldzahler | 28 |
CY TWOMBLY Comments by Heiner Bastian | 34 |
LOUISE BOURGEOIS Interview with Donald Kuspit | 38 |
ALFRED H BARR The New American Painting | 42 |
LUCIO FONTANA Manifesto blanco | 48 |
WILLI BAUMEISTER The Unknown in Art | 54 |
INSTALLATIONS ENVIRONMENTS AND SITES | 499 |
by Octavio Paz | 509 |
CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI Interview with Démosthènes Davvetas | 515 |
Interview with Luis Peña | 522 |
MAYA LIN Untitled Statements | 527 |
ROBERT SMITHSON The Spiral Jetty | 530 |
NANCY HOLT Sun Tunnels | 536 |
ALAN SONFIST Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments | 545 |
GEOMETRIC ABSTRACTION | 63 |
MAX BILL Concrete Art 74 2222 | 74 |
YVES KLEIN Ritual for the Relinquishment of the Immaterial Pictorial | 81 |
ELLSWORTH KELLY Notes of 1969 | 92 |
The Journal of an Artist | 99 |
JOSEF ALBERS The Origin of Art | 107 |
FRANK STELLA The Pratt Lecture | 113 |
CARL ANDRE Preface to Stripe Painting | 124 |
BRICE MARDEN Statements Notes and Interviews | 138 |
ALFRED JENSEN Untitled Statement | 149 |
FIGURATION | 168 |
FERNAND LÉGER The Human Body Considered as an Object | 176 |
PAUL TILLICH Each Period Has Its Peculiar Image of Man | 183 |
Interview with | 195 |
Interview with David Sylvester | 197 |
CONSTANT NIEWENHUYS Manifesto | 204 |
WILLEM SANDBERG When Young | 210 |
ROMARE BEARDEN Interview with Henri Ghent | 216 |
DAVID HOCKNEY and LARRY RIVERS Beautiful or Interesting | 222 |
MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO Plexiglass | 229 |
RICHARD ESTES Interview with Herbert Raymond | 237 |
Interview with Jeanne Siegel | 244 |
GEORG BASELITZ Pandemonic Manifesto 1 2d Version | 254 |
FRANCESCO CLEMENTE Interview with Robin White | 261 |
JOHN PITNAM WEBER Murals as Peoples Art | 269 |
MATERIAL CULTURE AND EVERYDAY LIFE | 282 |
RICHARD HAMILTON Letter to Peter and Alison Smithson | 296 |
ÖYVIND FAHLSTRÖM Take Care of the World | 304 |
DANIEL SPOERRI Trap Pictures | 310 |
ION GRIGORESCU Politics Religion and Art Facing Crime | 319 |
TONY CRAGG Untitled Statement | 321 |
BRUCE CONNER Interview with Mia Culpa | 326 |
GEORGE BRECHT Project in Multiple Dimensions | 333 |
Untitled Statements | 340 |
An Interview with James Rosenquist | 347 |
RAY JOHNSON What Is a Moticos? | 356 |
ART AND TECHNOLOGY | 384 |
NICOLAS SCHÖFFER The Three Stages of Dynamic Sculpture | 397 |
TAKIS Untitled Statement | 406 |
LAURIE ANDERSON Interview with Charles Amirkhanian | 420 |
Amplified Body Laser Eyes and Third Hand | 427 |
DOUGLAS DAVIS Manifesto | 437 |
SHIGEKO KUBOTA Video Poem | 443 |
WILLIAM WEGMAN Interview by David Ross | 450 |
GORDON MATTACLARK Remembrance by Susan Rothenberg | 557 |
RICHARD LONG Five Six Pick Up Sticks | 563 |
Notes Toward a Conditional Art | 572 |
PROCESS | 577 |
Notes and Nonsequiturs | 588 |
NANCY GRAVES Conversation with Emily Wasserman | 597 |
RICHARD SERRA Rigging | 600 |
ROBERT RYMAN Untitled Statements | 607 |
SAM GILLIAM JR The Transformation of Nature through Nature | 615 |
MIERLE LADERMAN UKELES Maintenance Art Manifesto | 623 |
MARK THOMPSON A House Divided | 632 |
FRANZ ERHARD WALTHER Contrasting Pairs and Distinctions in the Work | 644 |
Description of an Installation | 652 |
GERMANO CELANT Introduction to Art Povera | 662 |
MARIO MERZ Untitled Statements | 671 |
PERFORMANCE ART | 679 |
JIRŌ YOSHIHARA The Gutai Manifesto | 695 |
SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL Definitions | 702 |
GUY DEBORD Report on the Construction of Situations and on | 704 |
ALLAN KAPROW Untitled Guidelines for Happenings | 709 |
CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN From The Notebooks | 714 |
A Manifesto | 722 |
GEORGE MACIUNAS Letter to Tomas Schmit | 726 |
YOKO ONO To the Wesleyan People | 736 |
JERZY BERÉS Untitled Statement | 744 |
Manifesto | 750 |
ULRICKE ROSENBACH Untitled Statement | 757 |
CHRIS BURDEN Untitled Statement | 768 |
TOM MARIONI Out Front | 775 |
LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS | 804 |
MARCEL DUCHAMP The Richard Mutt Case | 817 |
MEL BOCHNER Book Review | 828 |
DAN GRAHAM Three Projects for Architecture and VideoNotes | 833 |
ROBERT BARRY Untitled Statement | 839 |
ZORAN POPOVIĆ For SelfManagement Art | 847 |
VICTOR BURGIN Looking at Photographs | 853 |
STANLEY BROUWN A Short Manifesto | 861 |
MARCEL BROODTHAERS Ten Thousand Francs Reward | 868 |
KLAUS STAECK Interview with Georg Jappe | 881 |
JOHN BALDESSARI What Thinks Me Now | 890 |
Bibliography | 913 |
Illustration Credits | 957 |
983 | |
Other editions - View all
Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings Kristine Stiles,Peter Selz No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
abstract abstract art action activity aesthetic American Andy Warhol architecture arte povera artist Auto-destructive art Barry Flanagan beautiful become body canvas color communication concept conceptual art construction create creative critical culture Décollage elements environment Eva Hesse excerpts exhibition exist experience expression fact feel film Fluxus gallery Giacometti Happening human idea important interested Interview involved kind landscape light Lightning Field living look material means Modern Art move movement Museum nature never objects painter painting participants performance person photographs physical picture piece political Pop Art possible problem production reality Rebecca Horn Reichstag relation relationship Richard Serra sculpture sense shape situation social space structure surface symbol theory there's things thought tion tradition transformation ture Unitary urbanism Untitled Statement values viewer visual wall Walter De Maria women York