Ekaterina Degot, Vadim Zakharov (eds.): Moscow Conceptualism (2005) [Russian]

“This book collects more than 150 works of twenty leading artists and groups of Moscow conceptual circle, including Ilya Kabakov, Andrey Monastyrsky, Komar & Melamid, Inspection Medical Hermeneutic, and many others. Many installations, art objects and documentations of performances are published for the first time.”

Essays by Vadim Zakharov, Ekaterina Degot, Andrey Monastyrsky, Boris Groys, a.o.
Works by Yuri Albert, Nikita Alexeev, Sergey Anufriev, Ivan Chuikov, Collective Actions Group, Donskoy–Roshal–Skersis Group, Ilya Kabakov, Yuri Leiderman, Igor Makarevich & Elena Elagina, Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, Komar & Melamid, Andrey Monastyrsky, Sabina Hänsgen & Andrey Monastyrsky, Mukhomor Group, Nikolay Panitkov, Pavel Pepperstein, Victor Pivovarov, Dmitry Prigov, Lev Rubinstein, SZ Group, Vadim Zakharov.

Moskovskii kontseptualizm, a special issue of the World Art Музей (WAM) journal, 15/16
Publisher WAM, Moscow, 2005
ISSN 1726-3050
415 pages
via Conceptualism-Moscow.org

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Claes Oldenburg: Store Days: Documents from The Store, 1961, and Ray Gun Theater, 1962 (1967)

““I’d like to get away from the notion of a work of art as something outside of experience, something that is located in museums, something that is terribly precious,” Oldenburg declared. In 1961 he presented a new body of work whose subject matter he had culled from the clothing stores, delis, and bric-a-brac shops that crowded the Lower East Side. The earliest Store sculptures, which debuted in spring 1961 at the Martha Jackson Gallery, at 32 East Sixty-Ninth Street, are wall-mounted reliefs depicting everyday items like shirts, dresses, cigarettes, sausages, and slices of pie. Oldenburg made them from armatures of chicken wire overlaid with plaster-soaked canvas, using enamel paint straight from the can to give them a bright color finish. At the gallery, the reliefs hung cheek by jowl, emulating displays in low-end markets.

In December 1961, Oldenburg opened The Store in the rented storefront at 107 East Second Street that served as his studio, which he called the Ray Gun Manufacturing Company. A fully elaborated manifestation of the project that he had begun months earlier, The Store conflated two disparate types of commerce: the sale of cheap merchandise and the sale of serious art. Oldenburg packed more than one hundred objects into the modestly sized room, setting previously exhibited reliefs alongside new, primarily freestanding sculptures. Everything was available for purchase, with prices starting at $21.79 up to $499.99. After The Store closed, on January 31, 1962, Oldenburg used the space to stage a series of performances collectively titled Ray Gun Theater.” (Source)

Selected by Claes Oldenburg and Emmett Williams
Photographs by Robert R. McElroy
Publisher Something Else Press, New York, 1967
152 pages
via penfold

2013 exhibition at MoMA

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Richard J. Powell: Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century (1997)

“The African diaspora—a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade and Western colonialism—has generated a wide array of artistic achievements in our century, from blues to reggae, from the paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner to the video installations of Keith Piper. This study of 20th-century black art is the first to concentrate on the art works themselves, and on how these works, created during a major social upheaval and transformation, use black culture both as subject and as context.

From musings on the “the souls of black folk” in early twentieth-century painting, sculpture, and photography to questions of racial and cultural identities in performance, media, and computer-assisted arts in the 1990s, the book draws on the works of hundreds of artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Lois Mailou Jones, Wifredo Lam, Jacob Lawrence, Spike Lee, Archibald Motley, Jr., Faith Ringgold, and Gerard Sekoto; biographies of more than 160 key artists provide a unique and valuable art historical resource.

Richard Powell discusses the philosophical and social forces that have shaped a black diasporal presence in 20th-century art. Placing its emphasis on black cultural themes rather than on black racial identity, this book is an important exploration of the visual representations of black culture throughout the twentieth century.”

Publisher Thames & Hudson, London, 1997
World of Art series
ISBN 0500202958, 9780500202951
256 pages

Reviews: Deborah Kempe (Art Documentation 1997), Steven Nelson (Art Journal 1998), Kymberly N. Pinder (Art Bulletin 1999), Elizabeth Harney (Nka 1999), Donna Seaman (Booklist).

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