Douglas Crimp

Douglas Crimp. Photo: Dorothea Tuch.
Born	August 19, 1944(1944-08-19) Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, United States
Died	July 5, 2019(2019-07-05) (aged 74) New York City, United States
Web	Aaaaarg, Academia.edu, Wikipedia, Open Library

Douglas Crimp (1944-2019) was an art critic and Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History and Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. He was the curator of the landmark Pictures exhibition at Artists Space, New York, in 1977 and, from 1977-1990 an editor of the quarterly journal October. With Lynne Cooke, he organized the exhibition Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices 1970s to the Present for the Reina Sofía in Madrid in the summer of 2010, and he was a member of the curatorial team for the 2015 Greater New York exhibition at MoMA PS1.

Publications

Monographs

• with Adam Rolston, AIDS Demo Graphics, Seattle: Bay Press, 1990, 141 pp, OL.

• On the Museum’s Ruins, MIT Press, 1993, xix+348 pp. With photographs by Louise Lawler.
  • Auf den Ruinen des Museums. Über Photographie, das Museum und die Postmoderne, trans. Rolf Braumeis, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1996, 440 pp. (German)
  • Sobre as ruínas do museu, trans. Fernando Santos, São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2005, 303 pp. (Brazilian Portuguese)
  • Na ruinakh muzeya, trans. Ivan Aksenov and Karen Sarkisov, Moscow: V-A-C Press, 2015, 431 pp. (Russian)

• Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics, MIT Press, 2002, 319 pp. Essays challenging the increasing denial of the AIDS crisis and the rise of conservative gay politics.

• Imágenes, trans. Victor Manuel Rodriguez, Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia-Sede Bogotá, 2003, 188 pp. (Spanish)

• Posiciones críticas: ensayos sobre las políticas de arte y la identidad, intro. Jesús Carrillo, trans. Eduardo García Agustín, Madrid: Akal, 2005, 201 pp. (Spanish)

• "Our Kind of Movie": The Films of Andy Warhol, MIT Press, 2012, xv+171 pp, ARG. Collection of Crimp's essays on Warhol's films.

• Pictures: s'approprier la photographie, New York 1979-2014, ed. Gaëtan Thomas, trans. Nicolas Paul and Gaëtan Thomas, Cherbourg-Octeville: Le Point du Jour, 2016, 208 pp. Introduction, ARG. Includes essays "Pictures", "On the Museum's Ruins" etc. [1] (French)

• Before Pictures, University of Chicago Press, 2016, 288 pp. tells the story of Crimp’s life as a young gay man and art critic in New York City during the late 1960s through the 1970s; part biography and part cultural history. [2]

Editor

• editor, Pictures, New York: Artists Space, 1977, 30 pp.
• editor, October 43: "AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism", MIT Press, 1987. Introduction.
• editor, with Lynne Cooke, Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present, Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2010, 304 pp. Crimp's essay in Spanish. [3] (English)/(Spanish)

Book chapters, papers, essays

• "Pictures", in Pictures, ed. Douglas Crimp, New York: Committe for the Visual Arts, 1977, pp 3-29; repr. in Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation, ed. Brian Wallis, New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Boston: D.R. Godine, 1984, pp 175-187; repr. in X-tra 8:1 (Fall 2005), pp 17-30, HTML.

• "Positive/Negative: A Note on Degas's Photographs", October 5: "Photography", Summer 1978, pp 89-100.

• "Pictures", October 8, Spring 1979, MIT Press, pp 75-88. "The following essay takes its point of departure from the catalogue text for Pictures; but it focuses on different issues and addresses an aesthetic phenomenon implicitly extending to many more artists than the original exhibition included." [4]

• "On the Museum's Ruins", October 13, Summer 1980, MIT Press, pp 41-57; repr. in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster, Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983, pp 43-56; repr. in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 44-64. [5]

• "The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism", October 15, Winter 1980, pp 91-101; repr. in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 108-125.

• "The End of Painting", October 16: "Art World Follies", Spring 1981, pp 69-86; repr. in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 84-107.

• "Richard Serra: Sculpture Exceeded", October 18, Autumn 1981, pp 67-78.

• "Fassbinder, Franz, Fox, Elvira, Erwin, Armin, and All the Others", October 21: "Rainer Werner Fassbinder", Summer 1982, pp 62-81.

• "Appropriating Appropriation", in Image Scavengers: Photography, ed. Paula Marincola, Institute of Contemporary Art/University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982, pp 27-34; repr. in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 126-137.

• "The Art of Exhibition", October 30, Autumn 1984, pp 49-81; repr. in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 236-281.

• "Serra's Public Sculpture: Redefining Site Specificity", in Richard Serra/Sculpture, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1986, pp 40-56; repr. as "Redefining Site Specificity", in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 150-198. [6]

• "The Postmodern Museum", Parachute 46, 1987, pp 61-69; repr. in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 282-331. [7]

• "How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic", October 43: "AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism", Winter 1987, pp 237-271.

• "The End of Art and the Origin of the Museum", Art Journal 46(4): "The Political Unconscious in Nineteenth-Century Art", Winter 1987, pp 261-266.

• "This is Not a Museum of Art", Marcel Broodthaers, Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, and New York: Rizzoli, 1989, pp 71-92; repr. in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 200-235. [8]

• "Mourning and Militancy", October 51, Winter 1989, pp 3-18.

• "The Museum's Old/The Library's New Subject", in The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton, MIT Press, 1989, pp 3-14; repr. in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 66-83.

• "The Boys in My Bedroom", Art in America, 1990; repr. in Crimp, Melancholia and Moralism, 2002, pp 151-163.

• "Right On, Girlfriend!", Social Text 33, 1992, pp 2-18.

• "Photographs at the End of Modernism", in Crimp, On the Museum's Ruins, 1993, pp 2-31.

• "Getting the Warhol We Deserve", Social Text 59, Summer 1999, pp 49-66.

• "Face Value", in About Face: Andy Warhol's Portraits, ed. Nicholas Baume, Wadsworth Atheneum/Andy Warhol Museum, 1999, pp 110-125.

• "Mario Montez, For Shame", in Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory, eds. Stephen M. Barber and David L. Clark, Routledge, 2002, pp 57-70.

• "Yvonne Rainer, Muciz Lover", Grey Room 22, Winter 2006, pp 48-67.

• "Alvin Baltrop: Pier Photographs, 1975-1986", Artforum, Feb 2008, pp 262-273.

• "The Risk of Coming Together: Ronald Tavel's Screenplays for Andy Warhol's Films", in Aesthetics of Risk: SoCCAS Symposium Vol. III, ed. John C. Welchman, Zürich: JRP Ringier, 2008. [9]

• "Dancers, Artworks, and People in the Galleries: Douglas Crimp on Merce Cunningham", Arforum, Oct 2008, 346-355, 407.

• "Spacious", October 132, MIT Press, Spring 2010, pp 5-24.

• "You Can Still See Her: Douglas Crimp on Trisha Brown", Artforum, Jan 2011, pp 154-160.

• "Tacet", in Tacita Dean: Seven Books Grey, Vienna: Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, and Göttingen: Steidl, 2011, pp 31-37. On Tacita Dean's Merce Cunningham films.

• "El día y la noche de Cindy Sherman / Cindy Sherman Day and Night", in 1000 caras, 0 caras, 1 rostro / 1000 Faces, 0 Faces, 1 Face: Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff, Frank Montero, Madrid: Fundación Telefónica & La Fábrica, 2011, pp 17-34. (Spanish)/(English)

• "Yvonne Rainer: Lehrreiches vaudeville / Pedagogical Vaudevillian", in Yvonne Rainer: Space, Body, Language, Bregenz: Kunsthaus, and Cologne: Museum Ludwig, 2012, pp 247-263.

• "Indirect Answers: Louise Lawler's Why Pictures Now?, 1981", Artforum, Sep 2012, pp 502-505.

• "Relocating Rosas", in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Work/Travail/Arbeid, vol. 3, ed. Elena Filipovic, Brussels: Mercatorfonds, Wiels, 2015, pp 81-103.

Interviews

Given

• "There Is No Final Picture: A Conversation between Philipp Kaiser and Douglas Crimp", in Painting on the Move, Basel: Kunsthalle Basel, 2002, pp 171-179.
• Tina Takemoto, "The Melancholia of AIDS: Interview with Douglas Crimp", Art Journal 62:4, Winter 2003, pp 80-90.
• Mathias Danbolt, "Front Room Back Room: An Interview with Douglas Crimp", Trikster: Nordic Queer Journal 2, 2008.
• "Catherine Opie in Conversation with Douglas Crimp", in Aesthetics of Risk: SoCCAS Symposium Vol. III, ed. John C. Welchman, Zürich: JRP Ringier, 2008. [10]
• "Douglas Crimp with Jarrett Earnest", The Brooklyn Rail, 4 Oct 2016.

Taken

• "The New French Culture: An Interview with Guy Hocquenghem", October 19, Winter 1981, pp 105-117.
• with Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, "A Conversation with Hans Haacke", October 30, Autumn 1984, pp 23-48.
• with Rosalyn Deutsche and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, "A Conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko", October 38, Autumn 1986, pp 23-51.
• "The Second Epidemic: Amber Hollibaugh, Mitchell Karp, and Katy Taylor Interviewed by Douglas Crimp", October 43: "AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism", Winter 1987, pp 127-142.
• "Prominence Given, Authority Taken: An Interview with Louise Lawler", Grey Room 4, Summer 2001, pp 70-81. [11]

Literature

• Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, "Warhol's Subject? A Response to Douglas Crimp", October 132, MIT Press, Spring 2010, pp 25-29. Response to Crimp's "Spacious".
• Lutz Hieber, Zur Aktualität von Douglas Crimp: Postmoderne und Queer Theory, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2013. (German)
• Masha Gessen, "The Beautiful Uncertainty of Douglas Crimp", The New Yorker, 9 Jul 2019.
• Rosalind E. Krauss, "Between the Book and the Lamp", October 171, MIT Press, Winter 2020, pp 142-146.
• Joan Copjec, "Period Piece", October 171, MIT Press, Winter 2020, pp 147-149.
• Sherrie Levine, "For Douglas Crimp", October 171, MIT Press, Winter 2020, pp 150-151.
• Nick Mauss, "On Douglas Crimp", October 171, MIT Press, Winter 2020, pp 152-154.
• Johanna Burton, "Pictures of You", October 171, MIT Press, Winter 2020, pp 155-158.
• David Joselit, "An Appreciation of Douglas Crimp", October 171, MIT Press, Winter 2020, pp 159-160.
• Louise Lawler, "What Would Douglas Crimp Say?", October 171, MIT Press, Winter 2020, p 161.

See also

• Pictures (exhibition)

Links

• Profile on U Rochester
• Before Pictures: New York City 1967-1977 exhibition, 2016
• Obituary: Artforum.