Category Archives: exhibition
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology
Lawrence Weschler (1995)
In the non-Aristotelian, non-Euclidean, non-Newtonian space between the walls of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles exist bats that can fly through lead barriers, spore-ingesting pronged ants, elaborate theories of memory, and a host of other off-kilter scientific oddities that challenge the traditional notions of truth and fiction. Lawrence Weschler’s book, expanded from an article for Harper’s, is, at turns, a tour of the museum, a profile of its founder and curator, David Wilson, and a meditation on the role of imagination and authority in all museums, in science and in life. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder is an exquisite piece of “magic realist nonfiction” that will prove utterly captivating.
Posted in art, biography, consciousness, exhibition, philosophy, science
Forest Of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation
Ann Goldstein, Mary Jane Jacob, Anne Rorimer, Howard Singerman, and Richard Koshalek (1989)
The thread of representation ties together the work of the 30 artists included in the book, encompassing such issues as allegory, appropriation, and commodification, the role of the artist, and the functions of authorship and originality in vesting meaning in art. Much of the work is provocative, challenging the way we look at art, the way we talk about it, where we see it, and how we buy it.
Posted in art, culture, exhibition, history, language, photography, semiotics, theory
Printmaking in America: Collaborative Prints and Presses, 1960-1990
Edited by Trudy Hansen (1995)
Curators Hansen, Joann Moser, David Mickenberg, and Barry Walker chronicle the growth of American printmaking from early utilitarian works through the establishment of printmaking as a fine art. The work describes developments in technique but more importantly addresses the complex, cooperative process that was born in innovative printshops such as the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles. Mickenberg’s chapter on nonprofit and university-affiliated workshops provides refreshing insight into how the financial support of large foundations helped found the nonprofit printshops. Not only did such workshops pool the talents of printmakers, but they helped create new markets for what had previously been considered a dying art. The authors also attribute the rebirth of printmaking in the United States to several women and minority artists and printers; however, the most recognized prints, created by the likes of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, have not been overlooked.
Posted in art, education, exhibition, history, printmaking
Bauhaus, 1919-28
Edited by Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius, and Ise Gropius (1938)
Over seventy years after its foundation in Weimar, the Bauhaus has become a concept all over the world. The respect which it commands is associated above all with the design it pioneered, one which we now describe as “Bauhaus style”. The teachers at the Bauhaus included the leading artists of the times, among them Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, and Oscar Schlemmer. The teaching strategies developed were adopted internationally into the curriculum of art and design institutes.
Posted in architecture, art, design, education, exhibition, history
Design Culture Now
By Ellen Lupton and Donald Albrecht (2000)
This is the first-ever survey of American design that cuts across the four disciplines of architecture, product design, graphic design, and new media. Put together by the National Design Museum surveys the up-to-the-minute trends in American design from architecture to product and graphic design to new media. This comprehensive survey catalogs the best in architecture, interiors, environments, landscapes, products, furniture, fashion, objects, typefaces, posters, publications, film and TV graphics, and interactive media from the last three years.
Posted in architecture, art, culture, design, exhibition, media, technology, typography
Being & Time: The Emergence of Video Projection
Marc Mayer (1996)
One of the first catalogues to examine seriously the growing use of video in contemporary art practice. It features the work of established masters of the field such as Gary Hill, Bruce Nauman and Bill Viola as well as Diana Thater and Willie Doherty.
Posted in art, cinema, exhibition, history, media, technology
Sexual Politics
Version 1.0.0Edited by Amelia Jones (1996)
Completing a trilogy begun with Chicago’s Beyond the Flower and The Dinner Party, this volume is the actual catalog of the reappearance of Chicago’s peripatetic icon of feminist art. But “The Dinner Party” is only one of about 100 other feminist artworks, created by 55 women artists, that were put on display at the Armand Hammar Museum to bring 1970s feminist art into perspective.
Posted in art, exhibition, history, theory
Searchlight: Consciousness at the Millennium
Edited by Lawrence Rinder (1999)
This book is an unprecedented exploration of the nature of consciousness and its embodiment in many forms of contemporary art including painting, sculpture, installation, video, film, and computer media. At what is possibly the most portentous moment in recent history–the turn of the millennium–Searchlight reveals the threads of a new aesthetic, reaching from the early nineteenth century through its extraordinary fulfillment in the art of the present. Consciousness is the bedrock of all experience, the foundation of all perception and interaction, the source of meaning. As such, it may be said to have been the primary subject of art for the past 125 years, ever since the Modernist revolution of the nineteenth century shifted artists’ goals from the direct representation of the seen world to the expression of felt experience. As art increasingly focused on the perceiver rather than the perceived, the consciousness of the artist and the viewer moved to the foreground of the artistic event.
Posted in art, consciousness, exhibition, philosophy, science, theory
Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz (1896-1981)
Ashley Callahan (2003)
Ilonka Karasz’s career spanned several decades and media, including textiles, furniture, ceramics, wallpaper, and graphic design. She produced over 150 covers for The New Yorker. Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz (1896-1981) is the first book dedicated to the life and work of the artist.
Posted in art, biography, design, exhibition, history