Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings

Front Cover
University of California Press, 1996 - Art - 1003 pages
Ambitious 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
Index
983
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