ROBERT KUDIELKA ON BRIDGET RILEY

Essays and Interviews 1972-2003

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ROBERT KUDIELKA ON BRIDGET RILEY

Essays and Interviews since 1972

Since meeting Bridget Riley in 1967, British art historian and critic Robert Kudielka remains her keenest observer. For over 40 years, Kudielka has documented her career progress and artistic development from an academic as well as personal perspective. This newly revised and expanded edition collates a substantial body of his essays on and interviews with the artist. Moving from an analysis of Riley’s iconic 1960s black-and-white paintings to her more recent wall drawings, Kudielka explores the unpredictable changes of direction throughout Riley’s career. Accompanied by over 80 full-color illustrations, biographical notes and a bibliography, the texts—expanded from his first volume provide a unique insight into Riley’s working methods and styles. Robert Kudielka on Bridget Riley is another excellent addition to the growing published archive on this inconic contemporary British artist.

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ROOM 225-6

A Novel

Karsten Schubert

From the author of the best-selling The Curator’s Egg comes an idiosyncratic novel interweaving fantasy and reality. Setting the novel in the famous Claridge’s Hotel in London, Karsten Schubert recounts an art dealer’s recuperation from major surgery. Incorporating multilayered voices and devices, the distinctive narrative introduces the reader to a memorable host of characters including the “The Political Prisoner,” “The Little Mondrian” and “The Protagonist,” who hosts art-world gatherings and visits a multitude of local galleries and stores around the Mayfair district. In this surprising tale filled with the humor of observation and incident, a frightening yet extraordinary period in one man’s life is brought to life. Schubert, also well known as YBA art dealer, publisher and cofounder of Ridinghouse, has written a novel at once honest, satirical, absurd and bold.

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ROEE ROSEN

Live and Die as Eva Braun and Other Intimate Stories

Edit Molnár & Marcel Schwierin (Eds.)

Live and Die as Eva Braun and Other Intimate Stories is a compilation of short writings by Israeli artist, writer and filmmaker Roee Rosen (b. 1963), following his exhibition, Live and Die as Eva Braun (1995–97), in which the viewer is led through a virtual-reality scenario in the role of Hitler’s lover. The project stirred public and political controversy when first shown in Israel and was later recognized by many as a watershed work concerning the representation of trauma, Nazism and the Holocaust. At the heart of this collection are three provocative texts by Rosen, at the intersections of reality and fiction, speculative narrative and historicalpolitical critique, and humor and eroticism. The three texts are complemented by three of Rosen’s short political-aesthetic essays, chosen to reflect the theoretical underpinnings of his approach. The catalog concludes with a conversation between the artist and historian and co-curator Moshe Zuckermann, an insightful critique of the political instrumentalization of the Holocaust. Published on the occasion of Rosen’s first survey exhibition in Germany at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, Oldenburg.

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CLÉMENT ROSSET

Joyful Cruelty: Toward a Philosophy of the Real

This classic collection of essays by French philosopher and essayist Clément Rosset follows another Free Association title in the same format, Werner Herzog’s travel journal, Of Walking on Ice. The publisher is dedicated to finding worthy essays and other texts that have either been out of print or were never made available in English – especially seeking out works that have remained popular, at least among a small, devoted group, over the years. This work, out of print for 20 years, is the first and only work by the Paris-based Rosset (born 1939) to be translated into English. Rosset has written some 30 short books, many of which reference his important influence, Schopenhauer. “Joy is the necessary condition,” writes Rosset, “if not of life in general at least of life lived consciously and with full awareness.”

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ROTTERDAM DIALOGUES

The Critics, The Curators, The Artists

Zoë Gray, Miriam Kathrein, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Monika Szewczyk & Ariadne Urlus

This book documents three large-scale symposia at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Structured to establish a lively platform for debate and exchange, these symposia explore the practice of three of the protagonists of the contemporary art world: the critic, the curator and the artist. Are they still the people who decide what art is made, what is seen, and whether it is “good”? The book includes transcripts from workshops and dialogues, and also contains spirited contributions that arrived from participants in the months after the dialogues took place. Bringing together the cross-generational experience of the attendees, this compendium offers insights from some of the most renowned and promising figures in their fields.

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STEVE RUSHTON

Masters of Reality

Vanessa Ohlraun (Ed.)

Steve Rushton’s research is an investigation into feedback, social control, and the contemporary culture of “self-performance,” developing a thorough analysis of the techniques and processes of information management and subjectivization in Western society since the second half of the twentieth century. This book, second in a series inaugurated by the Piet Zwart Institute, articulates a clear relationship between diverse subjects, drawing from a broad range of archival materials from military experiments in social psychology to works by Don DeLillo and Ant Farm. It includes texts on art and media linked to theories of cybernetics, Rushton’s collaborative projects with Rod Dickinson and Thomson & Craighead and fictional and allegorical texts, giving these observations narrative form.

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SANDING DOWN GRAVESTONES

Lars Mørch Finborud

Sanding Down Gravestones is a myriad of texts wherein everything from Stig Sæterbakken’s literature recommendations and John Cage’s passion for mushrooms to Joseph Goebbels’s jazz orchestra and the history of Norwegian Christian rock is investigated and presented in new light. Lars Mørch Finborud (b. 1980) works as a curator at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway and also runs the record companies Plastic Strip Press and Prisma Records, besides contributing to literary magazines such as Vinduet and Morgenbladet. His first novel, The Black Signs (published by Broken Dimanche Press), received great acclaim. Sanding Down Gravestones comprises short stories, essays and poetry, sharply written with Finborud’s usual black humor. As the iconoclastic title suggests, the book is not about promoting the established canon, but rather about defining a unique and personal relation to the history of art.

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SCANDALOUS

A Reader on Art and Ethics

Nina Möntmann (Ed.)

Recent encounters between art and real life, the ubiquity of images of violence and humiliation in visual culture and the media, and the persistence of controversial debates on public and participatory art projects are raising fundamental questions about the importance of ethical decisions in art and curating. How far can provocation in art go, before it becomes cynical and abusive? Does “good censorship” exist? Are ethical decisions seen as more urgent in participatory art?

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SCHOOL

A Recent History of Independent Art Schools

Sam Thorne

What are the possibilities and limits of self-organized art education in the 21st century? What can be borrowed from traditional academies, and what should be jettisoned? A substantial survey of self-organized art schools and alternative education initiatives, School presents a range of projects in London, Los Angeles, Berlin, Lagos, Mexico City, Ramallah and St. Petersburg, among others. Founding artists, curators and educators map the fertile but contested territory of student debt, the MFA system, the “pedagogical turn,” and the future of art schools. Includes Ahmet Ögüt—founder of The Silent University, organized by migrant academics and political refugees, a multilingual, nomadic institution in Germany—Tania Bruguera, Chto Delat, Ryan Gander and Wael Shawky. Sam Thorne, director of Nottingham Contemporary, UK, and regular contributing editor of Frieze.org and other international publications including Tate Etc, is founding director of Open School East, a free art school located in a former public library in East London.

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