Main entry:

Harrison, Charles, 1942-2009.

Title & Author:

Essays on art & language / Charles Harrison.

Edition:

1st MIT Press ed.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2001.

Description:

xxiii, 302 pages : illustrations ; 27 cm

Notes:
Originally published as Essays on art & language. Oxford, UK : B. Blackwell, 1991.
Companion v. to: Conceptual art and painting. 2001. 2001.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-295).
A kind of context: Modernism in two voices -- A culture of art -- Critical resources -- Epilogue: Modernism and the postmodern -- A corrective note -- Conceptual art and the suppression of the beholder: Abstraction and abstractionism -- Minimalism and the post-minimal -- Conceptual art and art & language -- Postscript -- Indexes and other figures: The index as art-work -- A logical implosion -- The conditions of problems -- Background: Conditions of work -- The position of the work -- The artist as author -- Some methodological upshots -- Foreground: Proceedings -- Local history -- Place of work as possible work -- Worlds apart -- Means of survival -- On 'A Portrait of V.I. Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollack': Readings and readers -- A monstrous detente -- Black propaganda -- An essay, a conjecture and an exhibition -- The orders of discourse -- 'Seeing' and 'Describing': the artists' studio -- The studio genre -- Painting and expression -- Some functions of allegory -- The transformation of the index -- On the surface of painting: Surface -- Contingency -- Change -- Erasure -- Reading the Museum: 'Incidents in a Museum' -- Index: Incident in a Museum VIII -- Index: Incident in a Museum XVI -- Index: Incident in a Museum XXV -- Unit cure, unit ground -- On pictures and paintings: A work in process -- The moment of criticism -- Potential and loss -- 'Hostages' 1: Painting as cure -- 'Hostages' 2: Some other sense.

Summary:

These essays by art historian and critic Charles Harrison are based on the premise that making art and talking about art are related enterprises. They are written from the point of view of Art & Language, the artistic movement based in England -- and briefly in the United States -- with which Harrison has been associated for thirty years. Harrison uses the work of Art & Language as a central case study to discuss developments in art from the 1950s through the 1980s. According to Harrison, the strongest motivation for writing about art is that it brings us closer to that which is other than ourselves. In seeing how a work is done, we learn about its achieved identity: we see, for example, that a drip on a Pollock is integral to its technical character, whereas a drip on a Mondrian would not be. Throughout the book, Harrison uses specific examples to address a range of questions about the history, theory, and making of modern art -- questions about the conditions of its making and the nature of its public, about the problems and priorities of criticism, and about the relations between interpretation and judgment.

ISBN:

0262083000 (hc ; alk. paper)
9780262083003 (hc ; alk. paper)
0262582414
9780262582414

Subject:

Art & Language (Group)
Art & Language (Organisation)
Conceptual art England.
Modernism (Art)
Art, Modern 20th century.
Art, Modern.
Art conceptuel Angleterre.
Modernisme (Art)
Art 20e siècle.
Conceptual art
Conceptuele kunst.
Kunstenaarsgroepen.
Art & Language.
Conceptual art Great Britain.
England
Arte conceptual Inglaterra.
Art & Language (grupo)
Modernismo.
Arte moderno Siglo XX.

Added entries:

Harrison, Charles, 1942-2009. Essays on art & language.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 219899
Call No.: N6768.5.C63 H37 2001
Status: Available