Boris Arvatov: Art and Production (1926–) [Russian, English]

“Boris Arvatov‘s Art and Production is a classic of the early Soviet avant-garde. Now nearing a century since its first publication, it is a crucial intervention for those seeking to understand the social dynamic of art and revolution during the period.

Derived from the internal struggles of Soviet Constructivism, as it confronted the massive problems of cultural transformation after ‘War Communism’, Arvatov’s writing is a major force in the split that occurred in the revolutionary horizons of Constructivism in the early 1920s. Critical of early Constructivism’s social-aesthetic process of art’s transformation of daily life – epitomised in studio-based painting, photography and object making – Arvatov polemicises for the devolution of artistic skills directly into the relations of production and the factory.

Whilst acknowledging the problems of a pure factory-based Productivism, Arvatov remains overwhelmingly committed to a new role and function for art outside the conventional studio and traditional gallery. Addressing issues such as artistic labour and productive labour, the artist as technician, art and multidisciplinarity and a life for art beyond ‘art’ – finding new relevance amidst the extensive social turn of contemporary participatory art – Art and Production offers a timely and compelling manifesto.”

Publisher Proletkult, Moscow, 1926
132 pages

English edition
Edited by John Roberts and Alexei Penzin
Introduction by John Roberts
Afterword by Alexei Penzin
Translated by Shushan Avagyan
Publisher Pluto Press, London, 2017
ISBN 9780745337364, 0745337368
160 pages

Reviews: Celluloid Liberation Front (Brooklyn Rail, 2017), Noel Halifax (Socialist Review, 2018).

Publisher (EN)
WorldCat (EN)

Iskusstvo i proizvodstvo (Russian, 1926, 45 MB)
Art and Production (English, 2017, EPUB; PDF, added 2020-8-6)

Mike Kelley: Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism / Minor Histories: Statements, Conversations, Proposals (2003-2004)

Collected writings Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley. The first volume contains his critical writings and commentary, the latter focuses on his own work.

“The work of artist Mike Kelley (1954-2012) embraced performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture. Drawing distinctively on high art and vernacular traditions, including historical research, popular culture, and psychology, Kelley came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of sculptures composed of craft materials. His more recent work offered dialogues with architecture and with repressed memory syndrome, and a sustained inquiry into his own aesthetic and social history. The subjects on which Kelley wrote are as varied as his artistic media. They include the work of fellow artists, sound, caricature, the uncanny, UFOlogy, and gender-bending.

While the first volume, Foul Perfection, contains thematic essays and writings about other artists; the second collection concentrates on Kelley’s own work, ranging from texts in ‘voices’ that grew out of scripts for performance pieces to expository critical and autobiographical writings.”

Edited by John C. Welchman
Publisher MIT Press, 2003 and 2004
Writing Art series
ISBN 9780262112703, 0262112701 (1), 9780262112772, 0262112779 (2)
xx+238 and xxv+431 pages

Publisher (1)
Publisher (2)
WorldCat (1)
WorldCat (1)

Volume 1
Volume 2

Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective (1987)

“In 1985, Ana Mendieta died tragically. During her 36 years of life she produced a tremendous amount of work covering a range of activities that included performance, installation, and sculpture. Her death cut short her prolific career and left the art world and those who knew her void of a feisty, political, and passionate human being.

After Mendieta’s death, her sister and estate executer, Raquel Mendieta Harrington, formed an art advisory committee comprised of Mendieta’s friends to insure that her work would be compiled, catalogued, and exhibited. John Perreault and Petra Barreras del Rio were chosen to curate a retrospective exhibition of important selections representing a full range of work that had never before been presented together. The result was an exhibition held at the New Museum in New York City, November 1987 through January 1988. Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective affirmed the abundance, strength, and significance of Mendieta’s work.”

With essays by Petra Barreras del Rio and John Perrault.

Publisher New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1987
ISBN 0915557614, 9780915557615
85 pages

Exh. review: Michael Brenson (New York Times, 1987).

Exhibition
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (45 MB)