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This Month: Isaac Julien, Conceptual Art, Chris Evans, Gerhard Richter, Degenerate Art, Doug Aitken, Tauba Auerbach, Jennifer Higgie, Josephine Meckseper, Francis Alys
Acclaimed artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien produced a new book documenting his two latest films True North and Fantôme Afrique. Texts by Christina Albu, Eveline Bernasconi, Lisa Bloom, and Mark Nash accompany lush poetic stills from the works. Both films continue to explore the prominent themes in Julien’s work: race, global politics, and the Africa diaspora. True North was shot on location in Iceland and Northern Sweden, and its narrative is based on the expedition writings of the African-American explorer Matthew Henson. Fantôme Afrique, in striking contrast, is set in urban African city of Ouagadougou and rural Burkina Faso. Fans of Isaac Julien should also check out the New Museum’s Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image project. The groundbreaking 11 DVD box set of video art includes an original piece by Julien in its impressive roster of commissioned works.
MIT Press’ newly released Art After Conceptual Art is, undoubtedly, required reading on the important legacy of Conceptual Art and its resonance in the work of today’s artists. This meaty volume argues that the movement spurned different and often-contradictory forms of art practice that both contested commonplace assumptions of what art is and served to buttress those beliefs. The editors present a selection of original and innovative essays exploring topics as diverse as the interrelationships between Conceptualism and institutional critique, neoexpressionist painting, design and commodity culture and identity politics. Contributors include: Alexander Alberro, Edit András, Ricardo Basbaum, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Sabeth Buchmann, Thomas Crow, Helmut Draxler, Elizabeth Ferrell, Isabelle Graw, Helen Molesworth, Luiza Nader, Henrik Olesen, and Gregor Stemmrich.
Chris Evans, whose work could certainly fall under the header of conceptualism, has published a new book with the Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum Bureau. Available in a limited edition of 600, Militant Bourgeois documents Evans’ project ‘Militant Bourgeois – An Existentialist Retreat’, founded during his residency at the Bureau. In response to a request to develop a project exploring ‘community art’, Evans built a shack in a major thoroughfare of the Sloterdijk district. Evans furnished the shack with a bed, a desk, a wood burning stove, and one sole copy of J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island (1974)offering up a retreat for other artists-in-residence seeking a more genuine experience from which to draw inspiration. Fellow artist Stuart Bailey designed the book, which contains essays by Alex Farquharson, Robert Garnett, and Nina Power.
The Degenerate Art Book proposes another unique and valuable entry into art practice. Based on the premise that writing or being written about legitimizes all forms of art and their underlying political ideas, the format of the book itself is open and incomplete, carefully sidestepping its own participation in this phenomenon. The title makes reference to the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition, a showcase organized by the Nazi party to demote modern art. Matt Hawthorne’s text, "Degenerate Art – Haunting Contemporary Culture", reveals echoes of this logic in contemporary culture and proposes a critical framework for this argument. Contributors include: Paul Granjon, Juliet Robson, Jordan McKenzie, Roddy Hunter, Glyn Davis Marshall, Ailith Roberts, John Dummett, Kira O’Reilly, and Doran George.
Francis Alys’ stellar new catalog The Green Line, masterfully explores the relationship of art and politics. Published in conjunction with his current exhibition SOMETIMES DOING SOMETHING POETIC CAN BECOME POLITICAL AND SOMETIMES DOING SOMETHING POLITICAL CAN BECOME POETIC at David Zwirner, the book includes a map and DVD of The Green Line (a film Alys directed in collaboration with Julien Devaux examining the Arab/Israeli conflict). In the film, Alys is shown carrying a can of dripping green paint along the boundary that Moshe Dayan marked with green pencil after Israel’s War of Independence ended in 1948.
Doug Aitken’s spectacular Sleepwalkers now has its own book documenting the project that graced the exterior walls of MoMA this past January and February. Aitken took inspiration from the dense midtown environment surrounding the space, focusing on five characters as they navigated New York at night. The book includes image stills from Sleepwalkers as well as conversations between Aitken and a variety of artists, architects, writers and performers about different elements of city life.
Josephine Meckseper, a New York-based artist who has held exhibitions at the Whitney, Tate Modern, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, White Columns, Haunch of Venison, Greene Naftali, and MUSAC, recently published a gorgeous new catalog. Meckseper uses department store display cases and sales ephemera in her work in order to incite discussion about the consumption of both politics and art. Her carefully styled and composed displays, which pull a disparate array of objects together from designer lamps to toilet rolls to political pamphlets- aesthetically recalls elements of minimalism. An essay by the acclaimed writer, art critic, and editor of Semiotexte Sylvère Lotringer accompanies the catalog.
The beauty of symbols is the focal point for emerging artist Tauba Auerbach, who debuts her first book this month entitled How to Spell the Alphabet. A trained sign painter, Auerbach looks at the arbitrary shape of letters rather than their ability to express a language. The book connects the dots between graphic design, contemporary art, and semiotics, and would certainly be relevant to any or all of these subjects.
Jennifer Higgie, co-editor and staff writer of Frieze magazine and editor of Whitechapel Art Gallery’s Art and Humor, has written a novel inspired by the life of Richard Dadd, one of the greatest Victorian painters and an inmate of Bethlem Hospital – more commonly known as Bedlam. This fictional examination into the story behind Dadd’s eventual admittance to Bedlam, which involves a grand tour of Europe and the Middle East, an introduction to Egyptian mythology, and the violent murder of his father, is greatly informed by Higgie’s background as a contemporary art writer and editor. The book is a compelling read for 19th century buffs and contemporary art aficionados alike.
And absolutely not to be missed … Gerhard Richter’s Atlas. At almost 1,000 pages long, with a collection of more than 5,000 photographs, drawings, and sketches dating from 1962 until the present, the book serves as a paramount record of Richter’s career. Organized by year, Atlas is a fantastic and invaluable reference tool.
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