Liz Kotz: Words To Be Looked At: Language in 1960s Art (2007)

“Language has been a primary element in visual art since the 1960s—whether in the form of printed texts, painted signs, words on the wall, or recorded speech. In Words to Be Looked At, Liz Kotz traces this practice to its beginnings, examining works of visual art, poetry, and experimental music created in and around New York City from 1958 to 1968. In many of these works, language has been reduced to an object nearly emptied of meaning. Robert Smithson described a 1967 exhibition at the Dwan Gallery as consisting of “Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read.” Kotz considers the paradox of artists living in a time of social upheaval who used words but chose not to make statements with them.

Kotz traces the proliferation of text in 1960s art to the use of words in musical notation and short performance scores. She makes two works the “bookends” of her study: the “text score” for John Cage’s legendary 1952 work 4’33”—written instructions directing a performer to remain silent during three arbitrarily determined time brackets—and Andy Warhol’s notorious a: a novel—twenty-four hours of endless talk, taped and transcribed—published by Grove Press in 1968. Examining works by artists and poets including Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, George Brecht, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Jackson Mac Low, and Lawrence Weiner, Kotz argues that the turn to language in 1960s art was a reaction to the development of new recording and transmission media: words took on a new materiality and urgency in the face of magnetic sound, videotape, and other emerging electronic technologies. Words to Be Looked At is generously illustrated, with images of many important and influential but little-known works.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2007
ISBN 0262113082, 9780262113083
333 pages

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PDF (42 MB, updated on 2016-10-10)

Painful But Fabulous: The Lives & Art of Genesis P-Orridge (2002)

Genesis P-Oridge, the legendary musician and artist from Manchester, opens his files to show the world never before seen texts, photos, artwork and magic. P-Orridge, whose Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV set the stage for modern industrial, punk and alternative music, comes clean on many of the issues surrounding his life, work and mystique. From the 1960s, when his art group the COUM Transmission set England on its ear, to his long career in music to the creation of his religion-as-a-joke-as-a-religion, Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth, this book covers it all.

With Foreword by Douglas Rushkoff
With an Introduction by Carl Abrahamsson
Publisher Soft Skull Shortwave, a division of Soft Skull Press, New York, 2002
ISBN 1887128883, 9781887128889
200 pages

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David Antin: i never knew what time it was (2005)

“In this series of intricately related texts, internationally known poet, critic, and performance artist David Antin explores the experience of time—how it’s felt, remembered, and recounted. These free-form talk pieces—sometimes called talk poems or simply talks—began as improvisations at museums, universities, and poetry centers where Antin was invited to come and think out loud. Serious and playful, they move rapidly from keen analysis to powerful storytelling to passages of pure comedy, as they range kaleidoscopically across Antin’s experiences: in the New York City of his childhood and youth, the Eastern Europe of family and friends, and the New York and Southern California of his art and literary career. The author’s analysis and abrasive comedy have been described as a mix of Lenny Bruce and Ludwig Wittgenstein, his commitment to verbal invention and narrative as a fusion of Mark Twain and Gertrude Stein. Taken together, these pieces provide a rich oral history of and critical context for the evolution of the California art scene from the 1960s onward.”

Publisher University of California Press, 2005
ISBN 0520243048, 9780520243040
175 pages

Review: Ernest Larsen (Boston Review).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-6-27)

Antin on UbuWeb (includes PDF edition of Autobiography and full text of In Place of a Lecture: Three Musics for Two Voices from Talking)