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Dear ARLIS-L list,
ARTISTS' SESSIONS AT STUDIO 35 (1950)
In April of 1950, about two dozen of the artists who came to be known as the “Abstract Expressionists” met for a series of discussions about their own work as well as the contemporary scene. Nearly 60 years after the actual meetings took place, the transcript of “Artists Sessions at Studio 35 (1950)” still pulses with the heated discussions around basic artistic issues like titling, process, relationship to history, community, and professionalism. This series of closed meetings allows readers fly-on-the-wall access to the artists' discussions.  

COLLECTIVE ACTIONS: AUDIENCE RECOLLECTIONS FROM THE FIRST FIVE YEARS, 1976-1981
Translated and Edited by Yelena Kalinsky
Active in Moscow since 1976, the Collective Actions group played a key role in the development of performance art in the Soviet Union. Inspired by the work of John Cage, the organizers invited audiences to take part in minimal, outdoor actions in fields and forests on the edges of the city; over time, the actions produced a great variety of documentary material. Collective Actions: Audience Recollections from the First Five Years, 1976-1981 presents, for the first time in English, subjective recollections composed by several of Collective Actions’ regular audience members, that share the author-participants’ idiosyncratic attempts to remember and give narrative to their own experiences of actions.  

HENRY AT HOME
“Houses and interiors have played a huge role in my life. Though they’ve taken a lot of my time, working on them has been a vital part of my art work. They’ve taught me a great deal about space and light and color... about about looking. My houses have been laboratories where I’ve had visual encounters that I wouldn’t have had any other way. Henry comes out of that experience." - Nancy Shaver.

Henry at Home presents photographs of objects from Henry—a shop in Hudson, NY, run by artist Nancy Shaver—as they appear in the homes of the people who purchased them.  

REFRESH
On October 5, 2007, Kristin Lucas became the most current version of herself when she succeeded in legally changing her name from Kristin Sue Lucas to Kristin Sue Lucas in a Superior Court of California courtroom. Refresh presents transcripts of courtroom discussions between Lucas and the presiding judge that enter into philosophical territory as they debate change, its perceived meaning, and its relation to law.  

SCOTT BURTON: COLLECTED WRITINGS ON ART AND PERFORMANCE, 1965-1975
Edited by David J. Getsy
Before gaining widespread recognition for his sculpture and public art, Scott Burton produced a substantial body of art writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet, his role as an artist-critic has rarely been discussed. Scott Burton: Collected Writings on Art and Performance, 1965–1975 brings together for the first time Burton’s essays and unpublished manuscripts from these years, tracing his work as an art critic as well as his early statements on performance. This collection offers rich new context for Burton’s sculptural work and reveals him as an important voice in the rapidly changing art world of the 1960s and 1970s.  

JUST PUBLISHED:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE ARTIST: WRITINGS BY ROBERT GOODNOUGH, 1950-1965
Edited by Helen A. Harrison
Foreword by Irving Sandler

The absence of traditional subject matter was a primary issue for painters in mid-twentieth-century America whose imagery lacked representational references; it was also a problem for those struggling to understand modern art. Robert Goodnough (1917–2010), then a New York University graduate student and an artist deeply involved with these issues, responded to the situation in a 1950 research paper, “Subject Matter of the Artist: An Analysis of Contemporary Subject Matter in Painting as Derived from Interviews with Those Artists Referred to as the Intrasubjectivists.” Previously unpublished, Goodnough’s paper constitutes the first scholarly work on the artists who became known as the Abstract Expressionists and includes interviews with William Baziotes, Willem de Kooning, and Adolph Gottlieb to name a few alongside related writings.

THE WALDORF PANELS ON SCULPTURE (1965)
In the spring of 1965, dozens of New York artists met for the two-part, invitation-only Waldorf Panels on Sculpture. Organized by sculptor and publisher Phillip Pavia, the discussions touch on a wide range of sculptural issues ranging from the status of found objects to thoughts on spontaneity vs. design to the expanding definition of sculpture to perspectives on Surrealism and Pop Art.... These transcripts, reprinted for the first time since their 1965 original publication, convey a strong sense of a genre--and an artworld--in transition.