Download or read book Cutting Matta Clark written by Mark Wigley and published by Lars Muller Publishers. This book was released on 2018 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the many shows at the fabled 112 Greene Street gallery - an artistic epicenter of New York's downtown scene in the 1970s - the Anarchitecture group show of March 1974 has been the subject of the most enduring discussion, despite a complete lack of documentation about it. Anarchitecture has become a foundational myth, but one that remains to be properly understood. Stemming from a series of meetings organised by Gordon Matta-Clark and refl ecting his long-standing interest in architecture, the Anarchitecture exhibition was conceived as an anonymous group statement in photographs about the intersection of art and building. But did it actually happen? It exists only through oblique archival traces and the memories of the participants. Cutting Matta-Clark investigates the Anarchitecture group as a kind of collective research seminar, through extensive interviews with the protagonists and a dossier of all the available evidence. The dossier includes a collection of Matta-Clark's aphoristic "art cards," the 96 photographs that were produced by the various participants for possible inclusion in the exhibition, and images from a recently unearthed video of Matta-Clark's now famous bus trip to see Splitting in Englewood, New Jersey. 150 illustrations

Download or read book Gordon Matta Clark written by Frances Richard and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing a poet’s perspective to an artist’s archive, this highly original book examines wordplay in the art and thought of American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978). A pivotal figure in the postminimalist generation who was also the son of a prominent Surrealist, Matta-Clark was a leader in the downtown artists' community in New York in the 1970s, and is widely seen as a pioneer of what has come to be known as social practice art. He is celebrated for his “anarchitectural” environments and performances, and the films, photographs, drawings, and sculptural fragments with which his site-specific work was documented. In studies of his career, the artist’s provocative and vivid language is referenced constantly. Yet the verbal aspect of his practice has not previously been examined in its own right. Blending close readings of Matta-Clark’s visual and verbal creations with reception history and critical biography, this extensively researched study engages with the linguistic and semiotic forms in Matta-Clark’s art, forms that activate what he called the “poetics of psycho-locus” and “total (semiotic) system.” Examining notes, statements, titles, letters, and interviews in light of what they reveal about his work at large, Frances Richard unearths archival, biographical, and historical information, linking Matta-Clark to Conceptualist peers and Surrealist and Dada forebears. Gordon Matta-Clark: Physical Poetics explores the paradoxical durability of Matta-Clark’s language, and its role in an aggressively physical oeuvre whose major works have been destroyed.

Download or read book Gordon Matta Clark The Beginning of Trees and the End written by Gordon Matta-Clark and published by David Zwirner Books. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documenting the artist’s extraordinary accomplishments as a draftsman, this publication originates from the 2015 solo presentation at David Zwirner, New York, entitled Energy & Abstraction, organized in close collaboration with Jane Crawford and Jessamyn Fiore from the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. Well known for his radical “anarchitectural” interventions throughout the 1970s, Gordon Matta-Clark was always deeply, though less publicly, committed to drawing. His works on paper—which span three-dimensional reliefs, calligraphy, and notebook entries—capture the interdisciplinary spirit that defined the art world in the 1970s. Intricate and concise, they testify to his interest in the crossovers between visual and performance arts, as well as the broader integration within his oeuvre of the natural and built environment. This catalogue presents in vibrant detail selections from Matta-Clark’s Cut Drawings, Energy Rooms, Energy Trees, and his own “calligraphy,” many of which have never been published. Perhaps the best known of the group, the Cut Drawings explore parallel, smaller-format versions of his physical interventions in architecture; slicing meticulously through several layers of paper, gesso, or cardboard, Matta-Clark created sculptural flat works that emphasized the voids created by the extraction of matter. Drawings with his own “calligraphy” emphasize the medium of drawing as an independent form. Abstract letters make up a code that remains indecipherable, but points toward a visionary longing to invent new languages and structures of experience. Some of the most elaborate and colorful compositions include trees, several of which refer explicitly to Matta-Clark’s Tree Dance performance at Vassar College in upstate New York in 1971. In full-color plates, the reader can see the physical structure of his trees “dissolving” into kinetic energy and, in some drawings, becoming reduced to a multitude of arrows. Near-abstract tree shapes also incorporate his calligraphic marks, with branches constructed from imaginary letters, again emphasizing the importance of language to a new visual experience. Matta-Clark’s notebooks, which he often insisted on completing in a single sitting, are presented in elegantly curated groups. Combining elements of Surrealist automatic drawing with an interest in choreography, these works appealed to performance artists at the time—including Laurie Anderson and Trisha Brown. This unparalleled presentation of Matta-Clark’s drawings is accompanied by new and exciting scholarship by Briony Fer, as well as a conversation between Jessamyn Fiore and contemporary artist Sarah Sze; it marks a major contribution to the literature on this highly influential artist.

Download or read book Gordon Matta Clark written by Antonio Sergio Bessa and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revealing book looks at the groundbreaking work of Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978), whose socially conscious practice blurred the boundaries between contemporary art and architecture. After completing a degree in architecture at Cornell University, Matta-Clark returned to his home city of New York, where he initiated a series of site-specific works in derelict areas of the South Bronx. The borough's many abandoned buildings, the result of economic decline and middle-class flight, served as Matta-Clark's raw material. His series 'Bronx Floors' dissected these structures, performing an anatomical study of ther ravaged urban landscape. Moving from New York to Paris with 'Conical Interserct', a piece that became emblematic of artistic protest, Matta-Clark applied this same method to a pair of seventeenth-century row houses slatted for demolition as a result of the Centre Pompidou's construction. This compelling volume grounds Matta-Clark's practice against the framework of architectural and urban history, stressing his pioneering activist-inspired approach, as well as his contribution to the nascent fields of social practice and relational aesthetics.

Download or read book Gordon Matta Clark written by Bruce Jenkins and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark work byGordon Matta-Clark, examined as an ldquo;act of communicationrdquo; aboutsustainability and the public role of art.

Download or read book Object to Be Destroyed written by Pamela M. Lee and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-08-24 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first critical account of Matta-Clark's work, Pamela M. Lee considers it in the context of the art of the 1970s—particularly site-specific, conceptual, and minimalist practices—and its confrontation with issues of community, property, the alienation of urban space, the "right to the city," and the ideologies of progress that have defined modern building programs. Although highly regarded during his short life—and honored by artists and architects today—the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78) has been largely ignored within the history of art. Matta-Clark is best remembered for site-specific projects known as "building cuts." Sculptural transformations of architecture produced through direct cuts into buildings scheduled for demolition, these works now exist only as sculptural fragments, photographs, and film and video documentations. Matta-Clark is also remembered as a catalytic force in the creation of SoHo in the early 1970s. Through loft activities, site projects at the exhibition space 112 Greene Street, and his work at the restaurant Food, he participated in the production of a new social and artistic space. Have art historians written so little about Matta-Clark's work because of its ephemerality, or, as Pamela M. Lee argues, because of its historiographic, political, and social dimensions? What did the activity of carving up a building-in anticipation of its destruction—suggest about the conditions of art making, architecture, and urbanism in the 1970s? What was one to make of the paradox attendant on its making—that the production of the object was contingent upon its ruination? How do these projects address the very writing of history, a history that imagines itself building toward an ideal work in the service of progress? In this first critical account of Matta-Clark's work, Lee considers it in the context of the art of the 1970s—particularly site-specific, conceptual, and minimalist practices—and its confrontation with issues of community, property, the alienation of urban space, the "right to the city," and the ideologies of progress that have defined modern building programs.

Download or read book 112 Greene Street written by and published by David Zwirner Books. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 112 Greene Street was more than a physical space—it was a locus of energy and ideas that with a combination of genius and chance had a profound impact on the trajectory of contemporary art...its permeable walls became the center of an artistic community that challenged the traditional role of the artist, the gallery, the performer, the audience, and the work of art. — Jessamyn Fiore 112 Greene Street was one of New York’s first alternative, artist-run venues. Started in October 1970 by Jeffrey Lew, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Alan Saret, among others, the building became a focal point for a young generation of artists seeking a substitute for New York’s established gallery circuit, and provided the stage for a singular moment of artistic invention and freedom that was at its peak between 1970 and 1974. 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970–1974) is the culmination of an exhibition by the same name that was on view at David Zwirner in New York in 2011. This extensively researched and historically important book brings together a number of works that were exhibited at the seminal space (including works by Gordon Matta-Clark, Vito Acconci, Tina Girouard, Suzanne Harris, Jene Highstein, Larry Miller, Alan Saret, and Richard Serra); extensive interviews with many of the artists involved in the space; a fascinating timeline of all the activity at 112 Greene Street in the early years; and installation views of the 2011 exhibition. The interviews in the book have been prepared by the exhibition’s curator, Jessamyn Fiore, and Louise Sørensen, Head of Research at David Zwirner, has contributed an introductory text that illuminates the space’s significance and critical reception during the prime years of its operation, as well as commentary on individual works in the show.

Download or read book Gordon Matta Clark written by Corinne Diserens and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book DIY on the Lower East Side written by Andrew Strombeck and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The severe financial austerity imposed on New York City during the 1975 fiscal crisis resulted in a city falling apart. Broken windows, crumbling walls, and piles of bricks were everywhere. While, for many, this physical decay was a sign that the postwar welfare state had failed, for others, it represented a site of risky opportunity that could stimulate novel forms of creativity and community. In this book, Andrew Strombeck explores the legacy of this crisis for the city's literature and art, focusing on one neighborhood where changes were acutely felt—the Lower East Side. In what became a paradigmatic example of gentrification, the Lower East Side's population shifted from working-class people to Wall Street traders and ad agents. This transformation occurred, in part, because of high-profile local artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, and Kiki Smith, but Strombeck argues that neighborhood writers also played a role. Drawing on archival research and original author interviews, he examines the innovative work of Kathy Acker, David Wojnarowicz, Miguel Piñero, Sylvère Lotringer, Lynne Tillman, and others and concludes that these writers still have much to teach us about changes in the nature of work and the emergence of a do-it-yourself ethos. DIY on the Lower East Side shows how place and politics shaped literature, and how New York City policies adopted at the time continue to shape our world.

Download or read book The Architecture of Deconstruction written by Mark Wigley and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By locatingthe architecture already hidden within deconstructive discourse, Wigley opens up more radical possibilities for both architectureand deconstruction.

Download or read book Art Rite written by Walter Robinson and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This facsimile edition collects all 19 issues of 'Art-Rite' magazine, edited by art critics Walter Robinson and Edit DeAk from 1973 to 1978. Robinson, DeAk and a third editor, Joshua Cohn, met as art history students at Columbia University, and were inspired to found the magazine by their art criticism teacher, Brian O'Doherty. 'Art-Rite', cheaply produced on newsprint, served as an important alternative to the established art magazines of the period. 'Art-Rite' ran for only five years, and published only 19 issues. But in that time the magazine featured contributions from hundreds of artists, a list that now reads like a who's-who of 1970s art: Yvonne Rainer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Alan Vega (Suicide), William Wegman, Nancy Holt, Jack Smith, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Morris, Adrian Piper, Laurie Anderson, Carolee Schneemann and Carl Andre; critics such as Lucy Lippard contributed writing. Through its single-artist issues and its thematic issues on performance, video and artists' books, 'Art-Rite' championed the new art of its era.

Download or read book Models of Integrity written by Joan Kee and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Models of Integrity examines the relationship between contemporary art and the law through the lens of integrity. In the 1960s, artists began to engage conspicuously with legal ideas, rituals, and documents. The law—a primary institution subject to intense moral and political scrutiny—was a widely recognized source of authority to audiences inside the art world and out. Artists frequently engaged with the law in ways that signaled a recuperation of the integrity that they believed had been compromised by the very institutions entrusted with establishing standards of just conduct. These artists sought to convey the social purpose of an artwork without overstating its political impact and without losing sight of how aesthetic decisions compel audiences to see their everyday world differently. Addressing the role that law plays in enabling artworks to function as social and political forces, this important book fills a gap in the field of law and the humanities, and will serve as a practical “how-to” for contemporary artists.

Download or read book Breaking the Surface written by Douglass Whitfield Bailey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Breaking the Surface, Doug Bailey offers a radical alternative for understanding Neolithic houses, providing much-needed insight not just into prehistoric practice, but into another way of doing archaeology. Using his years of fieldwork experience excavating the early Neolithic pit-houses of southeastern Europe, Bailey exposes and elucidates a previously under-theorized aspect of prehistoric pit construction: the actions and consequences of digging defined as breaking the surface of the ground. Breaking the Surface works through the consequences of this redefinition in order to redirect scholarship on the excavation and interpretation of pit-houses in Neolithic Europe, offering detailed critiques of current interpretations of these earliest European architectural constructions. The work of the book is performed by juxtaposing richly detailed discussions of archaeological sites (Etton and The Wilsford Shaft in the UK, and Magura in Romania), with the work of three artists-who-cut (Ron Athey, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lucio Fontana), with deep and detailed examinations of the philosophy of holes, the perceptual psychology of shapes, and the linguistic anthropology of cutting and breaking words, as well as with cultural diversity in framing spatial reference and through an examination of pre-modern ungrounded ways of living. Breaking the Surface is as much a creative act on its own-in its mixture of work from disparate periods and regions, its use of radical text interruption, and its juxtaposition of text and imagery-as it is an interpretive statement about prehistoric architecture. Unflinching and exhilarating, it is a major development in the growing subdiscipline of art/archaeology.

Download or read book Gordon Matta Clark written by James Attlee and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important new book that considers the life and work of American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) whose influence, despite his tragically short career, is ever more pervasive. Central to the explosion of creativity in New York's SoHo in the 1970s, Matta-Clark turned his focus on the city itself, slicing through abandoned buildings to create works that were at once large-scale sculptural environments, social commentary and urban performance pieces.

Download or read book Site written by Steve Womersley and published by Images Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A useful source and reference to some of the greatest architecture of our time. This title also offers a diverse international portfolio.

Download or read book Foreclosed Rehousing the American Dream written by and published by The Museum of Modern Art. This book was released on with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book White Walls Designer Dresses written by Mark Wigley and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1995 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work attempts to provide a new understanding of the historical avant-garde by analyzing the "clothing" of modern architecture. The author examines the relationships between architectural surfaces and clothing fashions and colour.