Thomas McEvilley: The Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post-Modernism (2005)

“From roughly 1965 to 1980, Conceptual Art and Performance Art took center stage throughout the western world, introducing new and complex ideas to the practice of contemporary art which reverberate to this day. Thomas McEvilley’s The Triumph of Anti-Art not only explains the origins of these controversial and compelling art forms, but also uncovers many relatively unrecognized yet indisputably important artists, American and European. He guides the reader through a thicket of seemingly arcane meanings of these nonrepresentational art form, and brings clarity to the intentions and agendas of these artists, as well as to their real world contexts. The long-term effects of “anti-art,” and the development of the pluralistic situation known as post-Modernism, are described in vivid detail.

From the Greek philosopher Diogenes, through the 19th-century German romantic tradition, to the modern art critic Clement Greenberg, McEvilley traces philosophical ideas and political impulses that temporarily led to a toppling of painting and sculpture in the decades right after World War II. Following an overview of Modernism and Marcel Duchamp’s influence, a chapter on Yves Klein sets the state for surveys of Conceptual Art and its practitioners, including Bernar Venet, John Baldessari, and Francis Alys. McEvilley then gives equal focus to Performance Art with chapters on Andy Warhol, Brian O’Doherty, and Marina Abramovic and Ulay, among others. At the end of the volume the “triumph” of “anti-art” is explored in depth, as are the origins of the terms, practices, and politics of global art history.”

Publisher McPherson & Co., Kingston, N.Y., 2005
ISBN 0929701674, 9780929701677
391 pages

Reviews: Publishers Weekly (2005), Lisa Paul Streitfeld (NY Arts, 2006).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (73 MB)

Sarah E.K. Smith: General Idea: Life & Work (2016) [English, French]

“Provocateurs General Idea (active 1969–1994) invented their history and made it reality: ‘We wanted to be famous, glamourous and rich. That is to say we wanted to be artists and we knew that if we were famous and glamourous we could say we were artists and we would be. … We did and we are. We are famous, glamourous artists.’ The group—comprised of AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal—met in Toronto in the late 1960s and went on to live and work together for twenty-five years. General Idea ceased activities in 1994, with the untimely deaths of Partz and Zontal from AIDS-related causes.”

Publisher Art Canada Institute, 2016
Open access
ISBN 9781487100926
138 pages

Publisher

English: PDF, PDF (28 MB), HTML (includes videos)
French: PDF, PDF (28 MB), HTML (includes videos)

Dan Graham: For Publication (1975)

“For Publication reproduces a series of Dan Graham’s projects carried out between 1965 and 1969 that both drew from and were made to be inserted into the mass media. His Schema deal with quantifying linguistic and stylistic information from magazine articles; Detumescence was one of many projects that Graham deployed in paid advertising space of various magazines, as was Dan Graham Inc. and Likes: A Computer-Astrological Dating-Placement Service. Income Piece and the proposal for Aspen Magazine are reproduced as is Homes For America, originally published in Arts Magazine from Dec 1966-Jan 1967. In a section on Information, Graham situates his data-organization practices in the context of Ramon Lull, Borges, Marshall McLuhan, Mallarmé and Roy Lichtenstein.”

Catalog of exhibition held at the Gallery of the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County.

Publisher Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, 1975
[32] pages
via sarah

WorldCat

PDF