ART

If it causes controversy it's culture; if it matches the couch it's art--Robert Williams

ART JOURNAL. FALL 1990. (Issue devoted almost exclusively to computer art. Includes history of technique and technology. Xerox or buy the whole issue)

BENJAMIN, WALTER. ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION. (Essay. Look for it in the library in any book of his essays. Foresaw many of the issues raised by computer art. Quoted extensively in Leonardo magazine and by other computer artists, though he was talking about photography. Proto-Situationist from the Frankfurt School, which also included Erich Fromm, Theodore W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer.)

BERGER, JOHN. WAYS OF SEEING. (In storage. Description coming soon). DORFLES, GILLO, ed. KITSCH (Hardcover. Out of print. 1960's European study of cheesy, mass-produced art, including Nazi and Fascist "culture." Also worth checking out is a new book called DROWNING IN KITSCH. I don't know who wrote it)

FOSTER, HAL. RECODINGS: ART, SPECTACLE, CULTURAL POLITICS. Well-written essays on the art industry of the '80s.

THE GORILLA GIRLS. GUILTY CONSCIENCE (1995). Documented humorously the pale, stale, male & Yale world of art in the '80s and '90s via stickers, billboards, and the occasional press conference. Became an international group, all anonymous to this day. HOGARTH, WILLIAM. ENGRAVINGS. Dover. Mid-18th-century engravings lampooning the everyday life and pretensions of England. Includes The Rake's Progress, The Harlot's Progress, Beer Street & Gine Lane and a satirical look at Methodists.

LAJER-BURCHARTH, EWA. URBAN DISTURBANCES, ART IN AMERICA, NOV 1987 (About Krzysztof Wodiczko, who projects his art onto darkened buildings like slideshows and invented tools like the Speaking Staff for urban nomads (i.e., homeless). Neat idea for temporary graffiti. The Wodicszko exhibit "Public Address" was shown in Houston in June 1993. The catalog for it is available in used bookshops.

LEONARDO MAGAZINE (Computer art. Read this at the library and xerox articles you like. Especially the 1989 supplemental issue covering the SIGGRAPH '89 art show.)

SEMIOTEXT(e). ARCHITECTURE. very wide format picture book I'm still trying to plow through (1993). In 1998 I still have barely cracked it. And in 2000, I'm waiting to get it out of storage.

PENNY, NICHOLAS. PIRANESI (Works of Giovanetti Piranesi (18th cent) artist, famous for fantastic, massively-scaled interiors of Roman prisons (carceri). Look for it in used-book stores).

PHOTOSTATIC/RETROFUTURISM MAGAZINE (Magazine put out by audio collage artists The Tape Beatles, who doubled as the Copyright Violation Squad. Issue #13 came with 7" EP. Look for it in cool record stores. $10 bought a 4-issue subscription jam packed with manifestoes and the like from a slew of noxious, entertaining media-wise art groups. The Drawing Legion, PO Box 227, Oakdale, IA 52244 address may be defunct. By chance, I met Tape-Beatle John Heck in Prague on 1 or 2 June 1994. He had a copy of Retrofuturism that had a pamphlet of mine printed in it. I had a copy of the pamphlet.)

SERAFINI, LUIGI. CODEX SERAFINIANUS. Abbeville. Coffeetable book illustrating aspects of life in a fantastic world, where things ain't lak they wuz here. He did cover art for a Monks of Doom record.

UNEXPECTED JOURNEYS: THE ART AND LIFE OF REMEDIOS VARO. by Janet Kaplan. Varo was a Mexican Surrealist who died in 1963. Her work was semi-autobiographical and set in a ghost world as fragile as singed paper. Frequent themes were imprisonment, escape, and demon lovers

UP THEY RISE! THE INCOMPLETE WORKS OF JAMIE REID (The guy who did the Sex Pistols' graphics came from the British Situationist scene of the 1960s).

VARIOUS. HANS HAACKE: UNFINISHED BUSINESS - ESSAYS. NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND MIT (Hans Haacke did installations detailing cozy arrangements like those between artist and society and between artist and corporation). Noteworthy in an era of corporate-funded blockbuster art shows.

WILLIAMS, ROBERT. ZOMBIE MYSTERY PAINTINGS. Hot-rod surrealism with a psychological angle. The psychology is mostly of the 1950s, Margaret Mead-meets-Mondo-Cane-sort of anthropology that Russ Myers and others used to get his movies past the censors, but the paintings still hold up.


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