Reading List?

by ruth barker, 20 May 2009

Hello,

Yesterday I met with my friend Allison, who is hoping to co-ordinate or curate a public project involving a small group of artists and an area of ground which is slated for furture redevelopment.

I waxed lyrical about the power of public art, and in particular the legacy of invention and non-conformity gifted by the work of many feminist, black, and gay artists in 1960s and ‘70s America. Many of these artists, who felt disenfranchised by the gallery systems of the time, moved out into the public realm as a response to that, starting a lineage of practice that we have inherited today. Of course, that’s not the only history of public art – we also have to think about the history of civic sculpture and memorial, and other histories of marking and inhabiting public spaces – but at least it’s somewhere to start.

Anyway, I said I would post a list of texts that I’d found influential or helpful or interesting somehow (even if I didn’t wholly agree with them). If anyone’s seeking but not finding these titles, I would recommend trying Aye Aye Books. Check them out online or in person in the CCA Foyer on Fridays and Saturdays. If they don’t have what you’re looking for in stock you can contact them and they’ll try to get it in for you. And they’re dead nice.

Here goes:

Decadent: Public Art – Contentious Term and Contested Practice
David Harding and Pavel Buchler
Glasgow School of Art
Link to davidharding.net

The Lure of the Local: The Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society
Lucy Lippard
The New Press
Link to Lucy Lippard info.

Public Sculpture of Glasgow
Ray McKenzie
Liverpool University Press
Read here.

Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies
Sanford Levinson
Duke University Press
Read here.

Remove Not the Ancient Landmark: Public Monuments and Moral Values
Donald Martin Reynolds
Routledge
Read here.

Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage, 1870-1997
Sergiusz Michalski
Reaktion Books
Read here.

The Society of the Spectacle
Guy Debord
Rebel Press, London
Read here.

The Practice of Everyday Life
Michel de Certeau
University of California Press
Read here.

The Production of Space
Henri Lefebvre
Willy Blackwell
Read here.

Invisible Cities
Italo Calvino
Vintage
Link to essay

Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art
Grant Kester
University of California Press
Read here

Relational Aesthetics
Nicolas Bourriaud
Les Presse Du Reel
Link to Glossary

Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life
Allan Kaprow
University of California Press
Read here.

One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity
Miwon Kwon
MIT Press
Read here.

Aesthetics and Politics
Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukacs
Verso Books
Read here.

The Politics of Aesthetics
Jacques Ranciere
Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Verso Books
Read here.

Image-Music-Text
Roland Barthes
Fontana Press
some extracts here.

Regarding the Pain of Others
Susan Sontag
Penguin
Observer Review.

The Poetics of Space
Gaston Bachelard
Beacon Press
Inevtitable Amazon link here.

The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now
Rudolf Frieling & Boris Groys
Thames & Hudson
Link to original exhibition.

Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader
Will Bradley & Charles Esche
Tate Publishing / Afterall
Link to Afterall.

So good luck Allison! There’s lots in there – tons of interesting ideas, and many arguable arguments. If anyone’s got any other suggestions, stick ‘em in a comment. It’s kind of an endless list, I guess…

More later,
R