GERMAN FOR ARTISTS

Stine Marie Jacobsen

Danish artist Stine Marie Jacobsen reflects on the philosophical aspects of the German language in this critical, yet also hilarious linguistic guide to the throbbing and international cultural scene of Berlin. Aspiring artists and curators will find useful advice for making themselves understood in various typical professional, social and practical situations in Berlin. Others might find interesting insights into the paralinguistic enclave of international cultural actors in a city known as the cultural nerve center of Europe. Jacobsen—herself an immigrant artist—has lived and worked for several years in Berlin, where she taught German grammar and language to fellow artists. In German for Artists she shares her linguistic and anthropological knowledge of Berlin’s intriguing artists’ scene. Jacobsen has exhibited and performed extensively internationally with shows in Germany, Denmark, Turkey, Finland and China.

Add to your order

GO TO RECEPTION AND ASK FOR SARA IN RED FELT TIP

Holly Pester

Artist Holly Pester’s stories, poems and literary fragments are deliberately anecdotal, gossipy and fantastical. In the artist book Go to Reception …, a project co-sponsored by the Women’s Art Library in 2014 and the Feminist Review in association with Whitechapel Gallery, Pester uses anecdotes to generate a deftly observed and humorous collection of critical fictions, poems and partial images. Written in response to a project on the history of the WAL, the stories borrow from the library’s archive of personal correspondence, artists’ slides, administrative papers and posters documenting the 1980s feminist art movements from around the world. Poet, performance writer, sound artist and practice- based researcher and critic, Pester’s speech-based compositions captured in this unique publication retain their aural/audio shape, playing on themes of linguistic algorithms and error, everyday speech and humor. Housed at Goldsmiths, University of London, and founded in the early 1980s to collect documentation of women artists’ work, the WAL now includes materials from thousands of international artists.

Add to your order

GOLDIN+SENNEBY

The Exquisite Corpse of August Nordenskiöld

Goldin+Senneby & Kim Einarsson (Eds.)

In the ancient art of alchemy, some elements can change to other states of matter while others cannot—at least not without magic and a touch of trickery. Eighteenth -century Utopian alchemist August Nordenskiold, whose goal was to create gold from inferior metals in order to permanently abolish the tyranny of money, caught the attention of Stockholm-based collaborative artists, Goldin+Senneby and inspired their project, The Exquisite Corpse of August Nordenskiöld, which explores juridical, financial and spatial constructs in performative and virtual projects. This petite book borrows from the surrealist parlor game cadavre exquis in that each of the book’s seven essays, written in turn by a historian of ideas, a sociologist of finance, a literary and cultural historian, a stage magician, an artist, an anthropologist and a poet—responds directly to the preceding essay only. The magic is in the discovery of a storyline performed in near darkness—with little knowledge of what came before and even less of what will follow. Contributions by Ronny Ambjörnsson, Mara Lee, Donald MacKenzie, Malin Nilsson, Mary Poovey, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Michael Taussig.

Add to your order

KIM GORDON

Is it My Body? Selected Texts

Ranging from neo-conceptual artworks to cultural analyses, the writings collected in this new title from the popular Institut für Kunstkritik series chart Kim Gordon’s trajectory from art student to cofounder of the influential rock group Sonic Youth. Furthermore, they are compelling for their contribution to the discourse surrounding art, architecture, film, fashion and rock music that catalyzed art scenes from Los Angeles to Cologne at the end of the 20th century. A graduate of the Otis College of Art and Design, Gordon has curated exhibitions or shown her own work at several New York art galleries, including the 2013 show Design Office with Kim Gordon at White Columns. Gordon casts a critical eye on current trends in contemporary art, whether the revival of Pop Art strategies, the persistence of formalist modernism or the vicissitudes of institutional critique.

Add to your order

LAWRENCE GOWING

Selected Writings on Art

Sarah Whitfield (Ed.)

Four decades of writings on art by English artist Lawrence Gowing (1918–1991) have been brought together for the first time, edited and introduced by art historian and curator Sarah Whitfield, in this substantial publication. Gowing was first recognized as a portrait and landscape painter and later rose to prominence as an educator, writer and curator. His still-lauded monographs on Vermeer, Turner, Cézanne, Matisse and Bacon among others brought him recognition as a writer who combined his experience as a painter with a meticulous historical perspective. Though largely self-taught as a student of art history, Gowing became a leading critical voice on art of the postwar years, combining a passion for close visual involvement with formidable literary skills. His exhibitions curated for the Tate, London, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, famously helped reshape public perceptions of the period.

Add to your order

DONATIEN GRAU

The Age of Creation

In the past 200 years, “art” has become one of the most fetishized concepts in Western civilization. The idea, according to which certain people—also known as artists—would provide the world with their inner visions, is a modern myth but has proved to be a contemporary reality. Today, this post-Romantic conception is challenged by recent geographical and demographic explosions. Being an artist is often seen as an activity, a position or even a “job”—contrary to its first definition at the beginning of the 19th century. The Age of Creation analyzes the entrance of art into culture at large. These critical writings by Proust scholar Donatien Grau are an exciting new addition to the long-standing and highly regarded White Pocketbook series. With forewords by Maurizio Cattelan, Douglas Coupland and Carsten Höller.

Add to your order

More from the White Pocketbook Series

Isabelle Graw

High Price
Art Between The Market and Celebrity

During almost any conversation about art, the elephant in the room – whether it’s mentioned or not – is money. Paradoxically, in a world in which the global art market often plays the role of final arbiter on artistic matters, art history is still required as an insurance policy. For just as market success is now able to generate cultural relevance in the long term, it also depends on the kind of symbolic meaning for which art history and criticism are still decisively responsible. German writer, curator and academic Isabelle Graw, a founder of the respected Berlin-based journal Texte zur Kunst, tackles this quandary in a stimulating book for our times. Translation from the German by Nicholas Grindell.

Add to your order

BORIS GROYS

Particular Cases

Particular Cases is not a theory about artists and artwork, but a response to art. Philosopher, art critic and media theorist Boris Groys responds to 20th-century artworks and artists that have pushed his thinking and writing in a new direction. His striking, original and lucid arguments do not look for an artwork’s singular content or message but treat art as a mind-changing practice—as if contemporary artists can inspire a sort of conversion in the soul of the spectator. Focusing on artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, David Fischli/Peter Weiss, Olga Chernysheva and Pawel Althamer, Groys writes about topics ranging from the readymade to (digital) video art and Soviet and post-Soviet artistic practices. A Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at NY U and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, Germany, Groys has authored several books including the e-flux publication Moscow Symposium (2010).

Add to your order

GUESS WHO IS THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN TOWN

Susi Wyss

Illustrated with over 1,000 images, Guess Who Is the Happiest Girl in Town is the first memoir by Swiss-German party girl Susi Wyss (b. 1938). The 40-year history begins in the 1970s with Wyss studying fashion design in Zürich, where at 18 years old she was initiated into the fast-moving life of the European jet set, a world revolving around the elite names in the international music and fashion scene. A regular model for Helmut Newton, the young Wyss enjoyed the company of noted celebrities ranging from Dennis Hopper and Iggy Pop to J. Paul Getty. After years of partying with rock-n-roll royalty she became one of Paris’s top madams and finally, in her early 60s, a writer. This intimate autobiography / photographic diary is a fascinating record capturing a time when the world of drugs, sex, and rock and roll was at its zenith.

Add to your order

MARIANNE HEIER

Surplus

Solveig Øvstebø & Steinar Sekkingstad (Eds.)

What characterizes the value of art compared with the concept of value in the global market economy? What can be translated? Although Marianne Heier abandons traditional exhibition spaces in connection with her projects, “Art” is still always measured against other social constructs. Heier looks at the typical features of the economies of given fields and how they overlap and collide. With this approach, Heier turns the focus on distinctions between cultural and economic capital, which are further problematized inasmuch as her physical works or interventions often end up as gifts to institutions. The gift economy as a phenomenon and theoretical entity is therefore central to Heier’s art production. Hylland Eriksen, Ranjit Hoskote, and Solveig Øvstebø, and others, have contributed reflections on Heier’s practice.

Add to your order