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The Frankfurt am Main Staedelschule, and its gallery Portikus, form a leading international center for experimental contemporary art. The Staedelschule was founded in 1817 by Johann Friedrich Staedel for the purpose of introducing students to his prodigous art collection. This publication is authored by contemporary Staedelschule professors and visiting lecturers,(...)
Art Theory
March 2008, Frankfurt, Cologne, Manchester, New York
Kunst lehren / Teaching art : Staedelschule Frankfurt/Main
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The Frankfurt am Main Staedelschule, and its gallery Portikus, form a leading international center for experimental contemporary art. The Staedelschule was founded in 1817 by Johann Friedrich Staedel for the purpose of introducing students to his prodigous art collection. This publication is authored by contemporary Staedelschule professors and visiting lecturers, including Pamela Lee, Niklas Maak, Jan Verwoert and Okwui Enwezor, who discuss what teaching art means in the context of a contemporary academy, and at what point the art market should be introduced in a student's education. It serves as an example of the kind of discourse available to Staedelschule students, as there is always in residence an impressive international cast of artworld practitioners. This volume is not only functional, however; it also includes a series of new photographs, produced especially for this project, by Wolfgang Tillmans.
Art Theory
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Originally published in Swedish in 1992, this book examines the enigmatic relation of melancholia to an early kind of cannibalism, which psychoanalysis, in particular, stressed. It contains reading of, amongst others, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Sigmund Freud, G. W. F. Hegel, and the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf. The authors also quote Goethe and Rabelais,(...)
Art Theory
October 2008, Berlin, New York
As a weasel sucks eggs, an essay on melancholy and cannibalism
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Originally published in Swedish in 1992, this book examines the enigmatic relation of melancholia to an early kind of cannibalism, which psychoanalysis, in particular, stressed. It contains reading of, amongst others, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Sigmund Freud, G. W. F. Hegel, and the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf. The authors also quote Goethe and Rabelais, for whom food is a cosmic principle, the soil of fertility, on which all creation is based. In a transferred sense, food also plays that same role for the melancholiac he who questions the normal order of things, who creates an other unknown food, with a variety of meanings. The authors trace the desire for this other food through the ages, and scrutinize its relationship to both primitive sacrificial rites as well as contemporary anthropology, philosophy, and linguistic theory.
Art Theory
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The significance of Jean-François Lyotard's innovative 1985 exhibition Les Immatériaux and the “curatorial turn” in critical theory. In 1985, the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard curated Les Immatériaux at Centre Georges Pompidou. Though widely misunderstood at the time, the exhibition marked a “curatorial turn” in critical theory. Through its experimental layout and(...)
Museums and Universal Exhibitions
March 2020
Spacing philosophy: Lyotard and the idea of the exhibition
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The significance of Jean-François Lyotard's innovative 1985 exhibition Les Immatériaux and the “curatorial turn” in critical theory. In 1985, the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard curated Les Immatériaux at Centre Georges Pompidou. Though widely misunderstood at the time, the exhibition marked a “curatorial turn” in critical theory. Through its experimental layout and hybrid presentation of objects, technologies, and ideas, this pioneering exploration of virtuality reflected on the exhibition as a medium of communication and anticipated a deeper engagement with immersive and digital space in both art and theory. In Spacing Philosophy, Daniel Birnbaum and Sven-Olov Wallenstein analyze the significance and logic of Lyotard's exhibition while contextualizing it in the history of exhibition practices, the philosophical tradition, and Lyotard's own work on aesthetics and phenomenology. Les Immatériaux can thus be seen as a culmination and materialization of a life's work as well as a primer for the many thought-exhibitions produced in the following decades.
Museums and Universal Exhibitions
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How did art escape the deadlock of the Situationists' anti-art refusal? Did the relational artists, with their repetitions of Situationist slogans and techniques, outline a sustainable, micro-political alternative to Guy Debord's dream of surpassing art and realizing philosophy? Looking back at some of the Situationists' confrontations with the museum, this book traces a(...)
Life on Sirius: the Situationist International and the exhibition after art
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How did art escape the deadlock of the Situationists' anti-art refusal? Did the relational artists, with their repetitions of Situationist slogans and techniques, outline a sustainable, micro-political alternative to Guy Debord's dream of surpassing art and realizing philosophy? Looking back at some of the Situationists' confrontations with the museum, this book traces a path beyond the tragedy of negativity and the litany of recuperation. At the center is the concept of play; originally adopted as the principle of reconciled life, it returns as the lever of instrumentalization. But in the extraterrestial wasteland of the present, spaces of ludic coexistence and experimentation may remain possible, provided that pessimism can be adequately organized.
Art Theory
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By many art history accounts, the art of the twentieth century was decided by Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. In these versions, Picasso stands for prolific production, a fierce expressionism, endless research of the picture plane and a sense of voracious creativity; whereas Duchamp stands for cerebral brilliance, rejection of optical pleasure and a subtle but(...)
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By many art history accounts, the art of the twentieth century was decided by Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. In these versions, Picasso stands for prolific production, a fierce expressionism, endless research of the picture plane and a sense of voracious creativity; whereas Duchamp stands for cerebral brilliance, rejection of optical pleasure and a subtle but all-pervasive conceptual sabotage and irony. (Of course, they shared as many traits, including an appetite for provocation and the recognition of eros as a fundamental, animating life principle.) So who was right? This volume, published for a show at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, argues for both sides of the coin, looking at various aspects of both oeuvres, including Picasso’s fascination with the Minotaur and Duchamp’s Rrose Selavy alter ego. The book is appropriately divided in two halves separated by a reverse binding.
Art Theory
Olafur Eliasson
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Né au Danemark, Eliasson travaille aujourd hui à Berlin. Il reconstitue dans l'espace de la galerie les fragments d'une contrée lointaine et transforme en sculptures des sensations immatérielles ou des phénomènes invisibles. Une simple ouverture circulaire au plafond d'une galerie de Los Angeles, par exemple, suffit à donner l'illusion d'un pâle soleil scandinave et à(...)
Contemporary Art Monographs
June 2007, Paris
Olafur Eliasson
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Né au Danemark, Eliasson travaille aujourd hui à Berlin. Il reconstitue dans l'espace de la galerie les fragments d'une contrée lointaine et transforme en sculptures des sensations immatérielles ou des phénomènes invisibles. Une simple ouverture circulaire au plafond d'une galerie de Los Angeles, par exemple, suffit à donner l'illusion d'un pâle soleil scandinave et à fabriquer un cadran solaire géant, évoquant à la fois les découpes architecturales de Gordon Matta-Clark et l'oculus du Panthéon de Rome. Les ouvres sereines et magnifiques d'Eliasson, inspirées par les thèmes de la nature, de la solitude et de l'introspection, ont été présentées dans les grandes manifestations internationales d'art contemporain, dont la Biennale de Venise en 1999. Dans son essai, la conservatrice Madeleine Grynsztejn étudie la démarche singulière d un artiste qui mêle l'innovation technologique à son art. Le critique et conservateur Daniel Birnbaum s'entretient avec l'artiste de l'implantation des ouvres et de leur environnement immédiat, dans et à l'extérieur du musée. Dans «Focus», le théoricien de l'architecture Michael Speaks se penche sur l'intervention d'Eliasson «Green river» (1998), qu'il compare au film tourné par Antonioni en 1964, «Le Désert rouge». L'artiste a choisi un extrait de L'Évolution créatrice d'Henri Bergson (1907) qui traite de notre rapport subjectif et visuel à la nature, thème également central de son art. Les écrits d'Olafur Eliasson rassemblent un essai sur le plus banal des sujets, le temps qu il fait, et une lettre ouverte intitulée «Chers tous», adressée à tous les spectateurs de ses ouvres sensuelles et sophistiquées.
Contemporary Art Monographs
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Under Pressure gathers together the contributions to the same-titled conference held at the "Institut fuer Kunstkritik from 2006 to 2007". Can "exit" and "disobedience", as envisioned by Virno, be considered as options from an artistic point of view? And what would an insistence on "status" or long-term projects as invoked by Boltanski/Chiapello look like if artists(...)
Art Theory
January 1900, Berlin, New York
Under pressure : pictures, subjects, and the new spirit of capitalism
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Under Pressure gathers together the contributions to the same-titled conference held at the "Institut fuer Kunstkritik from 2006 to 2007". Can "exit" and "disobedience", as envisioned by Virno, be considered as options from an artistic point of view? And what would an insistence on "status" or long-term projects as invoked by Boltanski/Chiapello look like if artists were to take on this strategy? How much can one count on pictures alone, as Mitchell seems to do? And, can pictures really change the "ways of worldmaking"?
Art Theory
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In 1936, an ornithologist called James Bond released the definitive taxonomy of birds found in the Caribbean, titled Birds of the West Indies. Ian Fleming, an active bird watcher living in Jamaica, subsequently appropriated the name for his novel’s lead character. This co-opting of names was the first in a series of substitutions that would become central to the(...)
Taryn Simon : birds of the West Indies
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In 1936, an ornithologist called James Bond released the definitive taxonomy of birds found in the Caribbean, titled Birds of the West Indies. Ian Fleming, an active bird watcher living in Jamaica, subsequently appropriated the name for his novel’s lead character. This co-opting of names was the first in a series of substitutions that would become central to the construction of the James Bond narrative. In a meticulous and comprehensive dissection of the Bond films, artist Taryn Simon inventoried women, weapons and vehicles, constant elements in the films between 1962 and 2012. The contents of these categories function as essential accessories to the narrative’s myth of the seductive, powerful and invincible western male.
Contemporary Art Monographs
Chronology
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“It has never been my ambition to treat artworks as illustrations of philosophical doctrines. Rather, I believe that the works explored give rise to their own set of concepts.” A philosophical essay on time, phenomenology and beyond, Daniel Birnbaum’s Chronology was recently reviewed in the April 2006 issue of frieze as a “compelling and sophisticated take on the(...)
Chronology
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“It has never been my ambition to treat artworks as illustrations of philosophical doctrines. Rather, I believe that the works explored give rise to their own set of concepts.” A philosophical essay on time, phenomenology and beyond, Daniel Birnbaum’s Chronology was recently reviewed in the April 2006 issue of frieze as a “compelling and sophisticated take on the common theme of Deleuzian immanence.” Whereas many theoretical books littering the bookshops of art institutions are laudations of excess, Birnbaum’s convictions presented in Chronology cut a way through the “caesuras of non-meaning and blankness into the thick web of sense.” The works of artists such as Stan Douglas, Eija-Liisa Athila, Doug Aitken, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tacita Dean, Darren Almond, Tobias Rehberger, Pierre Huyghe, and Philippe Parreno are scrutinized as so many attempts to capture the very dialectic of time itself. As Brian Dillon writes in frieze, “Birnbaum’s notion of an art of unpredictable becoming … has its aporias too. A brief aside apropos Matthew Barney – to the effect that his art is all meaning, all of the time – is quite telling.” Daniel Birnbaum is Rector of the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and Director of its Portikus gallery. A contributing editor of Artforum, he is the author of a number of texts on art and philosophy.
Architectural Theory
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This publication gathers the interior photographs of Amy Simon. Like the apartment depicted in these images, the places where Simon works hold special significance for her, attuned as she is to the mood and suggestiveness of interiors. Further exploring Simon's engagement with issues of domesticity, the book features a series of new drawings and wallpaper designs recently(...)
Amy Simon: a different state of mind
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This publication gathers the interior photographs of Amy Simon. Like the apartment depicted in these images, the places where Simon works hold special significance for her, attuned as she is to the mood and suggestiveness of interiors. Further exploring Simon's engagement with issues of domesticity, the book features a series of new drawings and wallpaper designs recently exhibited at the Venice Biennale.
Photography monographs