Writings Interviews

One of the most important sculptors of this century, Richard Serra has been a spokesman on the nature and status of art in our day. Best known for site-specific works in steel, Serra has much to say about the relation of sculpture to place, whether urban, natural, or architectural, and about the nature of art itself, whether political, decorative, or personal. In interviews with writers including Douglas and Davis Sylvester, he discusses specific installations and offers insights into his approach to the problem each presents. Interviews by Peter Eisenman and Alan Colquhoun elicit Serra's thoughts on the relation of architecture to contemporary sculpture, a primary component in his own work. From essays like "Extended Notes from Sight Point Road" to Serra's extended commentary on the Tilted Arc fiasco, the pieces in this volume comprise a document of one artist's engagement with the practical, philosophical, and political problems of art.

Barnett Newman's writings reveal him to be an impassioned and articulate analyst of art and society who never hesitated to make his views known and always stood by them. To understand Newman's unique place in the culture of the twentieth century, we must know both his paintings and his words--a knowledge made possible by this long-awaited volume. "Barnett Newman [1905-1970] was a thinker who chose to develop his ideas both in painting and in writing. He was also a citizen who made his acts of painting and writing political. And he was an artist."--Richard Schiff, from the Introduction Barnett Newman's writings reveal him to be an impassioned and articulate analyst of art and society who never hesitated to make his views known and always stood by them. To understand Newman's unique place in the culture of the twentieth century, we must know both his paintings and his words--a knowledge made possible by this long-awaited volume. "Barnett Newman [1905-1970] was a thinker who chose to develop his ideas both in painting and in writing. He was also a citizen who made his acts of painting and writing political. And he was an artist."--Richard Schiff, from the Introduction

Philip Glass, composer of symphonies, operas (Einstein on the Beach, Akhnaten, Orphe), film scores (Kundun, Mishima, Koyaanisqatsi), songs, and music for dance is a musician who determined early on that he wanted to compose independently, apart from institutions. That decision has made him a controversial figure among academic musicians, in spite of his rigorous training at Juilliard, and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Richard Kostelanetz has gathered a lively and varied collection of writings about Philip Glass's work, along with several interviews and a conversation between Glass and sculptor Richard Serra. The chronology of the works and discography have been updated for the paperback edition. Philip Glass, composer of symphonies, operas (Einstein on the Beach, Akhnaten, Orphe), film scores (Kundun, Mishima, Koyaanisqatsi), songs, and music for dance is a musician who determined early on that he wanted to compose independently, apart from institutions. That decision has made him a controversial figure among academic musicians, in spite of his rigorous training at Juilliard, and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Richard Kostelanetz has gathered a lively and varied collection of writings about Philip Glass's work, along with several interviews and a conversation between Glass and sculptor Richard Serra. The chronology of the works and discography have been updated for the paperback edition.

An anthology of writings, interviews, and images by artist Ed Ruscha. Ed Ruscha is among the most innovative artists of the last forty years. He is also one of the first Americans to introduce a critique of popular culture and an examination of language into the visual arts. Although he first made his reputation as a painter, Ruscha is also celebrated for his drawings (made both with conventional materials and with food, blood, gunpowder, and shellac), prints, films, photographs, and books. He is often associated with Los Angeles as a Pop and Conceptualist hub, but tends to regard such labels with a satirical, if not jaundiced, eye. Indeed, his work is characterized by the tensions between high and low, solemn and irreverent, and serious and nonsensical, and it draws on popular culture as well as Western art traditions. Leave Any Information at the Signal not only documents the work of this influential artist as he rose to prominence but also contains his writings and commentaries on other artistic developments of the period. The book is divided into three parts, each of which is arranged chronologically. Part one contains statements, letters, and other writings. Part two consists of more than fifty interviews, some of which have never before been published or translated into English. Part three contains sketchbook pages, word groupings, and other notes that chart how Ruscha develops ideas and solves artistic problems. They are published here for the first time. The book also contains more than eighty illustrations, selected and arranged by the artist.

Much has been made of the image of writers in Paris—romanticized and idealized in fiction and on screen, these émigré artists in sidewalk cafés spark our imagination with unusual force. But rarely do the real-life figures speak to us directly to comment on their work, their lives, and their reasons for choosing to live and work in Paris. In these striking interviews, E. M. Cioran, Julio Cortázar, Brion Gysin, Eugène Ionesco, Carlos Fuentes, Jean-Claude Carrière, Milan Kundera, Nathalie Sarraute, and Edmund Jabès do just this as they speak out on the risks they've taken, on their struggles and discoveries, on tradition, challenge, and their near-unanimous status as émigrés. A consummate interviewer, Jason Weiss spoke in depth with these pathbreaking artists regarding their lives, their craft, and their very special relationship to Paris. Their writings were naturally the main focus of investigation, but Weiss' concern was always to build on previous interviews, to deepen certain lines of inquiry and open new ones, to contribute fresh material to the ongoing record. The result is a series of invigorating, detailed portraits that go beyond personality, habits, and pleasures to examine some of the causes and effects in the unique relationship of place and temperament. Writing at Risk suggests that there is more than we suspect binding writers of such disparate cultures and genres...perhaps their attitudes toward writing, perhaps their common attraction to risk. Readers will relish the immediacy of these interviews and will want to (re)discover the work of these exceptional artists.

The first ever book on American composer and sound-art pioneer Maryanne Amacher, with letters, manifestos, notes and more elucidating her eclectic thinking on sound and perception Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009) was a composer of large-scale fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of perception, sound spatialization and aural architecture. She is frequently cited as a pioneer of what has come to be called "sound art," although her thought and work challenges assumptions about the limitations of that genre. Maryanne Amacher: Selected Writings and Interviewsrepresents the first ever book-length collection devoted to the composer, whose life and work are as vast as they are as yet unknown. From personal notes and letters to program notes, manifestos and unrealized project proposals, the documents are framed by longer interviews with Amacher that discuss corresponding periods of her life. Because Amacher worked across nearly every imaginable media format, this book will be of tremendous interest to theorists and practitioners in media and communications, urban design, contemporary art history, music studies, sound studies, film, radio, art criticism and performance studies.

Text by Sally Yard. Interview by Harold Rosenberg, James T. Valliere.

Gathered writings from the seminal 20th-century Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti Alberto Giacometti's early Surrealist and Cubist forms, compact volumes inspired by Africa and the Cyclades, eventually led this seminal twentieth-century Swiss artist to acknowledge a formal void that he would spend the balance of his career filling with the human figure. In the mid-1930s, influenced by the terrible social and political changes that were taking place across Europe, Giacometti began to develop heads and nudes in a signature style--they were universally elongated, skeletal, haunting, solitary and above all, transcendent. Giacometti's written testimony and reflections on his change of perspective, and on his artistic ideas and goals, are remarkable for their aptness and poetic quality. In his writings, gathered here, the artist pours out his doubts, his suffering and his creative hopes as very few artists have been capable of doing before or since.

Reviews, art criticism, theoretical texts, interviews, catalog statements, notecards, magazine interventions, and other writings on art and art in the form of writing by a leading conceptual artist; many pages reproduced in facsimile. Artist Mel Bochner became a writer, he says, almost by accident. In 1965, as a young artist in New York, he was out of a job; Arts Magazine paid him $2.50 for every review he turned in, whether they published it or not; a month of review-writing paid his rent—$28.00 a month. His reviews and articles provoked a range of unexpected reactions. “At that time, artists who wrote were looked at suspiciously, as if writing somehow tainted their visual practice,” he writes. A painter friend attacked him publicly for “joining the enemy.” Bochner soon began testing the boundary between writing-as-criticism and writing-as-visual-art. Solar System & Rest Rooms collects both Bochner's writings on art and his writings as art, offering more than fifty pieces—reviews, art criticism, theoretical texts, interviews, catalog statements, notecards, and his groundbreaking “magazine interventions”—many reproduced in facsimile. Bochner is a leading figure in conceptualism; his 1966 installation at the School of Visual Arts Gallery Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art is considered to be the earliest exhibition of conceptual art. Solar System & Rest Rooms chronologically documents the work and ideas of this important artist over a span of forty years, as well as providing a unique perspective on the conceptual and post-minimal art scene in New York. This book offers a rare insight into what it means to be an artist whose visual practice is inseparable from the sustained practice of writing. Mel Bochner has lived and worked in New York City since 1964. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in major museum collections throughout the world.