Richard Kostelanetz: Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993–)

“This book elucidates, celebrates, enumerates, and sometimes obliterates achievers and achievements in the avant-garde arts. Although it runs from A to Z, it could as easily have been written from Z to A (or in any other order you might imagine) and may be read from front to back, back to front, or point to point. It is opinionated, as all good dictionaries should be, but it is also inclusive, because there can never be just one avant-garde.

Blake • Rimbaud • Apollinaire • Stein • Cage • Lichtenstein • Tatlin • Keaton • Captain Beefheart • Hologram • Text-Sound Texts • Strobe Light • Grotowski • Soho • Micropress • Electronic Music • Reinhardt • Pound • Performance • Postmodern • Duchamp • Fuller • Oldenberg • Paik • Armory Show • Reich • Cunningham • Copy Culture • Pattern Poetry • Bread and Puppet Theatre” (from the back cover)

With contributions by Richard Carlin, Geof Huth, Gerald Janecek, Katy Matheson, H.R. Brittain, John Robert Colombo, Ulrike Michal Dorda, Charles Doria, and Robert Haller.

Publisher A Capella Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press, 1993
ISBN 1556522029
246 pages

PDF
2nd edition (2000, 47 MB, added on 2020-3-18)
New additions (2011) selected for Soanyway by Derek Horton (HTML)

Jean-François Lyotard: Miscellaneous Texts, I-II: Aesthetics and Theory of Art & Contemporary Artists (2012) [EN/FR]

“The first volume, which is itself the fourth of six in the series devoted to Lyotard’s writings on contemporary art and artists published by Leuven University Press, presents nine essays on general aesthetics and the theory of art. Most of these texts, preserved in the Lyotard archives of the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris, are published here for the first time. They do not reveal ‘another Lyotard’ than the one whom we know through his major writings. Nevertheless, they cover the whole period of his production, from 1969 to 1997; and they make the development of his philosophy of art explicit. After the ‘libidinal’ conception of art in his early writings, the ‘Kantian twist’ of around 1980 places his view on art under the aegis of the sublime.

The second volume brings together thirty-nine essays by Lyotard that deal with twenty-seven artists: Luciano Berio, Richard Lindner, René Guiffrey, Gianfranco Baruchello, Henri Maccheroni, Riwan Tromeur, Albert Ayme, Manuel Casimiro, Ruth Francken, Barnett Newman, Jean-Luc Parant, François Lapouge, Sam Francis, André Dubreuil, Joseph Kosuth, Sarah Flohr, Lino Centi, Gigliola Fazzini, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Henri Martin, Michel Bouvet, Corinne Filippi, Stig Brøgger, François Rouan, Pierre Skira, and Béatrice Casadesus. Some of these texts were originally written as contributions to catalogues, others were published in now-inaccessible journals.”

Textes dispersés I: esthétique et théorie de l’art; II: artistes contemporains
Edited by Herman Parret
With epilogues by Jean-Michael Durafour (I) and Dolorès Lyotard (II)
Translated by Vlad Ionescu, Erica Harris and Peter W. Milne
Publisher Leuven University Press, 2012
Jean-François Lyotard: Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists series, 4/I+II
ISBN 9789058677914 & 9789058678867
264 and 720 pages

Publisher

Volume I (watermarked, updated on 2022-5-16)
Volume II (watermarked, updated on 2022-5-16)

Gyorgy Kepes: Language of Vision: Painting, Photography, Advertising-Design (1944–) [EN, ES, DE]

Noted painter, designer, theoretician Gyorgy Kepes analyzes the effect of visual language on the structure of human consciousness, in particular how the elements of line and form are perceived and how innovative types of perspective can lead to more dynamic representations in art. Over 300 photographs, drawings and illustrations.

With introductory essays by Siegfried Giedion and Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa
First published in 1944
Publisher Paul Theobald, Chicago, 1969
228 pages

Commentary: Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller (1999), Leigh Anne Roach (Ph.D. dissertation, 2010).

Language of Vision (English, 1944/1969, 33 MB, no OCR)
El Lenguaje de la visión (Spanish, trans. Enrique L. Revol, 1969, added on 2017-6-21 via Valericke)
Sprache des Sehens (German, trans. Renate Pfriem and Almut v. Wulffen, 1971, 20 MB, added on 2019-12-3 via ARCH)