Working in 1970s Italy, a group of artists—namely Ugo La Pietra, Maurizio Nannucci, Francesco Somaini, Mauro Staccioli, Franco Summa, and Franco Vaccari—sought new spaces to create and exhibit art. Looking beyond the gallery, they generated sculptural, conceptual, and participatory interventions, called Arte Ambientale (Environmental Art), situated in the city streets. Their experiments emerged at a time of cultural crisis, when fierce domestic terrorism aggravated an already fragile political situation. To confront the malaise, these artists embraced a position of artistic autonomy and social critique, democratically connecting the city's inhabitants through direct art practices.
The definitive guide on everything one needs to know about commissioning contemporary art In an age of blockbuster exhibitions and public art projects, the most exciting artworks are often those that have been specially commissioned for a specific site or event. This invaluable guide reveals and demystifies every stage of the commissioning process—from the initial invitation to an artist and the financing of a project to the final installation of works. Combining theoretical and conceptual considerations with practical ones, the text is supplemented with copious quotations and insights from some of the best-known artists, curators, commissioners, and museum directors of today. It is an essential guide for anyone involved in the process of commissioning new art—private collectors, foundations, public bodies, museums, galleries, and artists themselves—as well as those fascinated by the inner workings of the contemporary art world.
The revised and expanded BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors presents 256 private collections of contemporary art accessible to the public—large and small, famous and still undiscovered. Succinct portraits of the collections with countless color illustrations take the reader to more than forty countries, often to regions or urban districts that are off the beaten path. This practical guide is a collaborative publication stemming from the partnership between BMW and Independent Collectors, the international online network for collectors of contemporary art. Collectors, gallerists, artists, and journalists assisted in the extensive research and revision of this unique standard work. To date, neither the internet nor any book has ever contained a comparable assembly of international private collections, including several that have opened their doors to art lovers and connoisseurs for the first time. (German edition ISBN 978-3-7757-4144-6) Collections featured (selection): Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), White Rabbit – Contemporary Chinese Art Collection, Lyon Housemuseum, Museum Liaunig, Maison Particulière, Vanhaerents Art Collection, Herbert Foundation, Verbeke Foundation, Inhotim – Instituto de Arte Contemporânea & Jardim Botânico, Rennie Collection at Wing Sang, M Woods, Collection Lambert, Peyrassol – Parc de Sculptures, La Maison Rouge, Rosenblum Collection, Museum Frieder Burda, Sammlung Boros, Sammlung Barbara und Axel Haubrok - Haubrokprojects, Sammlung Hoffmann, Museum Biedermann, Julia Stoschek Collection, Sammlung Goetz, The Walther Collection, Schauwerk Sindelfingen, Sammlung Schroth, Sammlung Grässlin – Kunstraum Grässlin & Räume für Kunst, Das Maximum - KunstGegenwart, Jupiter Artland, Saatchi Gallery, Zabludowicz Collection, Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Devi Art Foundation, Il Giardino dei Lauri, Collezione Gori – Fattoria di Celle, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, La Colección Júmex, Art Stations Foundation, The Hess Art Collection, Fundació Suñol, Centro de Artes Visuales Fundación - Helga de Alvear, Fondation Beyeler, Nesrin Esirtgen Collection, Pizzuti Collection, Girls' Club, The Menil Collection, de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Rubell Family, Collection and Contemporary Arts Foundation
This book provides insight into the significant area of public art and memorials in Berlin. Through diverse selected examples, grouped according to their basic character and significance, the most important art projects produced in the period since World War II are presented and discussed. Both as a critical theoretical work and rich photo book, this volume is a unique selection of Berlin’s diverse visual elements, contemporary and from the recent past. Some artworks are very famous and are already symbols of Berlin while others are less well known. Public Art and Urban Memorials in Berlin analyzes the connections created by public art on one hand, and urban space and architectural forms on the other. This volume considers the Berlin works of iconic artists such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Daniel Libeskind, Dani Karavan, Bernar Venet, Keith Haring, Christian Boltanski, Richard Serra, Peter Eisenman, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Brüggen, Wolf Vostell, Gerhard Richter, Eduardo Chillida, Jonathan Borofsky, Olaf Metzel, Sol LeWitt, Frank Gehry, Max Lingner, Bernhard Heiliger, Frank Thiel, Juan Garaizabal and more. The reader is led through seven chapters: Creative City Berlin, Introduction to Public Art, Public Art in Berlin, the Celebration of Berlin’s 750th Anniversary in 1987, Temporary public art, Socialist Realism in Art, and Urban Memorials. The chapter Public Art in Berlin discusses selected projects, Bundestag Public Art Collection, Public Art at Potsdamer Platz and The City and the river – a renewed relationship. The chapter on urban memorials discusses: Remembering the Divided City and Holocaust Memorials in Berlin. The book delivers nine interviews with artists whose Berlin work is revealed through this volume (Bernar Venet, Hubertus von der Goltz, Dani Karavan, Juan Garaizabal, Susanne Lorenz, Kalliopi Lemos, Frank Thiel, Karla Sachse and Nikolaus Koliusis).
“A fascinating, detailed and moving account on the life and work of a truly genius artist. A must read for anyone interested in Art.” —João Leonardo, artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007), one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, upended traditional practices of how art is made and marketed. A key figure in minimalism and conceptualism, he proclaimed that the work of the mind is much more important than that of the hand. For his site-specific work—wall drawings and sculpture in dozens of countries—he created the idea and basic plan and then hired young artists to install the pieces. Though typically enormous and intricate, the physical works held no value. The worth was in the pieces of paper that certified and described them. LeWitt championed and financially supported colleagues, including women artists brushed aside by the bullies of a male-dominated profession. Yet the man himself has remained an enigma, as he refused to participate in the culture of celebrity. Lary Bloom’s book draws on personal recollections of LeWitt, whom he knew in the last years of the artist’s life, as well as LeWitt’s letters and papers and over one hundred original interviews with his friends and colleagues, including Chuck Close, Ingrid Sischy, Philip Glass, Adrian Piper, Jan Dibbets, and Carl Andre. This absorbing chronicle brings new information to our understanding of this important artist, linking the extraordinary arc of his life to his iconic work. Includes twenty-eight illustrations. “An insightful and intimate portrait of the artist, the man and his times.” —Saul Ostrow, Founder of Critical Practices Inc.
Robert Morris, a leading figure in postwar American art, is best known as a pioneer of minimalist sculpture, process art, and earthworks. Yet Morris has resisted affiliation with any one movement or style. An extraordinarily versatile artist, he has produced dances, performance pieces, prints, paintings, drawings, and installations, working with materials including plywood, felt, dirt, aluminum, steel mesh, fiberglass, and encaustic. Throughout his career, Morris has written influential critical essays, commenting on his own work as well as that of other artists, and exploring through text many of the theoretical concerns addressed in his artwork—about perception, materiality, space, and the process of artmaking. Have I Reasons presents seventeen of Morris’s essays, six of which have never been published before. Written over the past fifteen years, the essays, along with the volume’s many illustrations, provide an invaluable record of the recent thought of a major American artist. The writings are arranged chronologically, beginning with “Indiana Street,” a vivid autobiographical account of the artist’s early years in Kansas City, Missouri. Have I Reasons includes reflections on Morris’s own site-specific installations; transcripts of seminars he conducted in conjunction with exhibitions; and the textual element of The Birthday Boy, the two-screen video-and-sound piece he installed at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy, on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of Michelangelo’s David. Essays range from original interpretations of Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings and Jasper Johns’ early work to engagements with one of Morris’s most significant interlocutors, the philosopher Donald Davidson. Have I Reasons conveys not only Morris’s enduring deep interest in philosophy and issues of resemblance and representation but also his more recent turn toward directly addressing contemporary social and political issues such as corporate excess and preemptive belligerence.
Sculpture parks and gardens, whether woodland sanctuaries or urban retreats, sprawling sites or intimate oases, offer sculpture lovers and artists alike unique ways to experience the outdoors, sculpture, and the intersections between nature and culture. Since the mid-20th century, these venues have become important tourist destinations and essential aspects of public life in cities such as Chicago, Minneapolis, and Seattle and regions such as Yorkshire in England and the Hudson Highlands in New York. Landscapes for Art: Contemporary Sculpture Parks surveys a wide range of sculpture parks and gardens that focus on contemporary art--from well-established, museum-type institutions to small-scale, non-collecting, experimental programs. The book includes profiles of sculpture parks in the U.S., U.K., Japan, Australia, Lithuania, China, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, India, Latvia, Sweden, and Finland (among others). There are articles on key topics by art critics, landscape architects, and sculpture park professionals and interviews with Isamu Noguchi, Martin Friedman, and Alfio Bonanno.
"The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art lies by the Øresund ('the Sound'), the narrow strait between Denmark and Sweden, with the corridors and galleries of the buildings extending towards the sea. The Sculpture Park is between the building and the coast, and underscores the interaction of art, architecture and landscape"--From introduction.
Drawing on the exciting developments that have occurred in the anthropology of art over the last twenty years, this study uses ethnographic methods to explore shifts in the art market and global contemporary art. Recognizing that the huge diversity of global phenomena requires research on the ground, An Anthropology of Contemporary Art examines the local art markets, biennials, networks of collectors, curators, artists, patrons, auction houses, and museums that constitute the global art world.Divided into four parts – Picture and Medium; World Art Studies and Global Art; Art Markets, Maecenas and Collectors; Participatory Art and Collaboration – chapters go beyond the standard emphasis on Europe and North America to present first-hand fieldwork from a wide range of areas, including Brazil, Turkey, and Asia and the Pacific.With contributions from distinguished anthropologists such as Philippe Descola and Roger Sansi Roca, this book provides a fresh approach to key topics in the discipline. A model for demonstrating how contemporary art can be studied ethnographically, this is a vital read for students in anthropology of art, visual anthropology, visual culture, and related fields.
