Product Description

Dan Graham is among the most influential of the Conceptual artists who emerged in America during the mid 1960s. A pioneer in performance and video art in the 1970s, Graham later turned his attention to architectural projects designed for social interaction in public spaces, among them The Children's Pavilion (1989) with Jeff Wall. Writing has always been a major aspect of Graham's work. His texts range from early Conceptual art pieces inserted in mass-market magazines, to writing on his fellow artists, to analyses of popular culture, from Dean Martin to the post-Punk era. Well-known also among architects and urban theorists, during the 1990s Graham has been offered major public commissions throughout North America and Europe. London-based curator Mark Francis discusses with the artist how his public participation-based work has evolved. Brussels-based critic Birgit Pelzer draws on her extensive knowledge of Graham's work and writings. New York-based architectural theorist Beatriz Colomina focuses on Graham's Alteration to a Suburban House (1978). The artist has chosen an extract from the science fiction novel Ubik by Philip K Dick, whose writings were a formative influence. A substantial Artist's Writings section, key to understanding Dan Graham, completes the book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1401981 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Birgit Pelzer (Survey) is a widely-respected curator and critic who has been active since the late 1960s. Her publications include Gerhard Richter 100 Paintings (1998) and Michael Asher (1991) Her important writings on Conceptual art have been anthologized in Rewriting Conceptual Art (1999), ed.s Michael Newman and Jon Bird. Mark Francis (Interview) is a curator and critic, currently the director of the fig-1 project in London. He was previously the founding director and chief curator of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and has been a curator at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. He has organized exhibitions and written on Dan Graham's work since 1978. Beatriz Columina (Focus), one of the world's best known and most innovative architectural theorists, is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at Princeton University. She is the author of Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (1994), Sexuality and Space (editor, 1992), and Architecture Production (editor, 1988). She is currently working on a book on the post-war American house and the relationships between domesticity and war. For his Artist's Choice Graham has selected an extract from the science fiction novel Ubik by American Philip K. Dick (1928-82), widely held to be one of the greatest science fiction novelists of the twentieth century. Ubik is considered one of his finest novels, where philosophical and existential questions of human life and ethics are played out by half-human, half-robotic characters. Dan Graham is well known for his prolific writings, which he views as part of his art practice. Highly influential, Graham's essays have been described by American critic Donald Kuspit as 'milestones in the study of the postmodern fusion of everyday culture and esoteric art into academic spectacle.' Graham was born in Urbana, Illinois in 1942 and lives and works in New York.