to the avant-garde poetry the artist wasimmersed in at Greenwich Village's JudsonChurch before his move to Los Angeles in1963,The kind of "arbitrary directives inthe script and aleatory effects" Oldenburgascribed to the performers' bodies as wellas to the automobiles, suggesting a punon the "autobodys" ofthe tide, might alsohave been inspired by the performances ofthe Judson Dance Theater and the workofYvonne Rainer that Oldenburg wouldalso have seen before traveling vrest (176).Whiting's primary aim here, however, is toread Oldenburg's performance in a parkinglot as an opportunity for the audience toreconceive ofthe car and the banal, emptylot as a site of theater.

Throughout the book Whiting success-fully demonstrates that this wide variety ofwork can best be understood through itsrelationship to the locations and spatialcontexts in which it was produced.Tliis isespecially evident in the way she takes intoaccount the building and the location inwhich Judy Chicago and the participantsin ihe Cal Arts Feminist Art Program choseto establish their creative headquarters.Womanhouse.The group renovated aseven teen-room, seventy-five-year-old,abandoned house on North MariposaAvenue (not Mariposa Street as it appearsin the text) in Hollywood to provide meet-ing and exhibition spaces, far from thenew suburban Cal Arts campus in Valencia.California. Wbiting sees Womanhouse notonly as a much-needed venue for the exhibi-tion of feminist art in this period, but as achallenge to the kind of boosterist view ofdie city promoted by the architectural histo-rian Reyner Banham in his popular bookLos Anyeles.Thf Architecture of Four Ecologies and bymuch ofthe cultural establishment at tlietime. As Whiting articulates it, "by locatingthemselves In a neglected and marginal cor-ner ofthe city and granting visibility to adilapidated mansion, the group not onlyquestioned Banham's ceiebration of'a giantcity, which has grown almost simultaneouslyall over,' but also claimed space for a femi-nist art project far from the galleries on LaCienega Boulevard, LACMA [Los AngelesCounty Museum of Art], and Pasadena ArtMuseum" (r92).TIie institutions and galleryscene that Whiting refers to here constitutedthe local arts estabhshment at the time.Whiting's claims about artists such as

Foulkes, Celmins, and Chicago, who wereexcluded in different ways from this net-work, would be more legible, however, ifshe were to discuss in more detail the powerthese galleries and museums wielded in thepostwar Los Angeles art world.

Overaii, however, my criticisms herepale in comparison to the pioneering con-tribution Whiting has made to the scholar-ship on this topic. Pop L.A is a well-written,highly readable book, and Whiting's detailedreadings of art objects as well as the public-ity material that often accompanied them(her analysis of a Vogue article about Hockneystands out here) add much to the literatureon the individual artists she discusses. In thebreadth of art she covers ajid her focusedarguments about their relationships to thespaces and local liistories of Los Angeies,Wliiting's project will be central to anyfurther work on West Coast art in the post-war period.

Ken Allan is an assistant professor of art historyac Seattle University and a contributing editor forX-tro; Contemporary Art Quarterly. He received hisPhD from the University of Chicago in 2005 andis working on a book about artistic practice, socialspace, and spectatorship in 1960s Los Angeles.

1. James Meyer, "Another Minimalism," A MinimalFuture? An as Object 1958-1968 (Los Angeles:Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004), 33-49.2. Robert Frank's book The Americans was. how-ever, one of Ruscha's major influences early in hiscareer See Silvia Wolf, Ed Ruscha and Photography(New York: Whitney Museum of AmericanArt/SteidI Veriag, 2004), 270-71.3. For a historiographic study of this approach inche discipline of art history, see Thomas DacostaKaufmann. Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Gego: Exploding theFieldMonica Amor

Nadja Rottner and Peter Weibel, eds.Gego (957-/988:Thinking the Line.Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2oo6, 240 pp.,

62 color ills,, tit b / w . $55 paper.

Mari Carmen Ramirez, Catherine deZegher, Robert Storr, and JosefinaManrique. Gego: Between Transparencyand the /nvisib/e. Houston: Museum uf FineArts, and New Haven:Yale University Press,2006. 256 pp., 85 color ills.. 25 b/w. S^opaper.

The number of publications devoted to thework of the Venezuelan artist Gego (GetrudGoldschmidt, I9r2-i994) in the last fiveyears has suddenly repositioned her as afigure to reckon with in the 6elds of post-war drawing and sculpture. Her presencein group exhibitions, the recent surveysdevoted to the artist, and her increasingappearance in classrooms all pose impor-tant questions about canon formation andabout the idiosyncratic dynamics of a fieldexposed to the uneven dial<:)gues between anentrenched conservatism, still pronouncedin certain areas such as academia, and prac-tices open to artistic and aesthetic paradigmsthat deviate from mainstream art-historicalnarratives. La.st year alone, four exhibitionsand corresponding catalogues higlilighcingspecific areas of Gego's artistic productionappeared: Gego s-^gy-s^Sfi.ThmkmQ the Line,curated by Nadja Rottner and Peter Weibel(which paired Gego's work with that ofartist Ruth Vollmer); Gego; Between Traiuparencyand the Invisible, curated by Mari CarmenRamirez (which emphasized the artist's ded-ication to drawing); Gejjo: Defying Structures,curated by mysetl" and Bartomeu Mari(which focused on her second, most impor-tant environmental work, the Chorros oftheearly 1970s); and G«go;Arehitecl, curated byHannia Gomez (devoted to Gego's publicworks and architectural background). Here,I will address the first two publications,which follow the classical format of exhibi-tion catalogues, with essays by guest writers,a section of plates, a chronology, and abibliography on the artist. Thinking the linealso includes interviews and criticism by

IOS artjournal

contemporaries of Gego, sufficient to givethe reader a taste ofthe local reception ofher work, but not enough to make thissection representative ofthe enthusiasticresponses Gego generated in the Venezuelanintelligentsia. This gesture of inclusion,though, is crucial, as it gives voice to impor-tant interpreters of Gego s work whosewords, in the recent literature, tend to beobsctired by Alfred H. Barr, Jr.'s one-time(unrecorded) comment on Gego's "parallac-tical charm."'

Bruno Bosteels opens Thinking the Linewith a text that attends to issues of inclusionand exclusion. His Introduction summarizesdebates of the 1990s that emphasize the pit-falls of geographic categorization in the artsand problematizes the linguistic/conceptualhierarchies in which Latin American art isinscribed—the latter always rendered themarked term ofthe unmarked/markedbinary and therefore implicitly consideredincomplete or lesser. Bosteels's excursuson modernity, colonialism, and the politicsof neoliberalism concludes with doubtsregarding Gego's public-art works, situatedas they are (or were) in banks, shoppingmalls, "and other monuments to the worldof global marketing and finance" (24).Abruptly, Bosteels decides not to addressthese works—-which among Gego's criticshave received httle or no attention, presum-ably because many of these criucs havenever been to Caracas to see them in situ,or because they indeed are sometimes radi-cally different from her more vulnerable andradical environments and drawings. Insteadhe turns to Gegos best-known works (theseries Reticuldreas, Trunks, Sircams, Drawingswithout Paper, and others) which he evokesin tandem with various theoretical tropes:"purport" (Louis Hjelmslev). "diagram,""rhizome," and "immanence" (Deleuze),"disclphne" and "control" (Foucautt,Deleuze}, and "suture." (Jacques-AlainMiller). These are provocative suggestions,no doubt, but instead ofleading to a closeand elaborated reading of specific works,Bosteels dwells on three major themes treatedrepeatedly in the literature on Gego: the rhi-zomatic, the organic and constructivist mod-els, and the status ofthe subject/viewer.'These references echo arguments rehearsedby a host of international critics who havepaid httle attention to the local or contem-porary reception ofthe work, raising, in

passing, questions about amnesia and obht-eration in the canonization of noncanonical

figures and their concomitant cultural andgeographical contexts.

In the same catalogue, Juan Ledezmatakes up the issue ofthe medium in Gego'swork to assert the artist's materialist drive

and ponder the collective dimension pro-duced by her work. He does this throughthe lens of prewar constructivism by track-ing themes relevant to Gego's work suchas the organic and constructivist models(again), the engagement with architeccuralspace, and the viewer's interaction with thework (one in which the spectator's momentof recognition or conceptual clarity, pro-duced in the viewing of classic constructivistworks such as Aleksandr Rodchenko's SpatialConstructions, is frustrated). Yet the prewarconstructivist practices tliat are Ledezma'sframe of reference—aesthetic and produc-tive models that in dialogue with a revolu-tionary culture redefined the art object interms of functionality—are at odds with theingrained "failure" (from a Utopian stand-point) inscribed in Gego's Reticuldreas andDrawings without Paper. To be fair, Ledezmaattends to the public dimension of Gego'swork, an element which can indeed be com-pared to constructivism's emphasis on col-lective reception, as long as historical differ-ences are kept under check. Furthermore,through an allusion to the formative role oftransrational language in constructivism,Ledezma makes alterity, defamiliarization,and the suspension of conventions the foun-dation of a new pubhc space common to

constructivism and Gego's work.Thisemphasis on a public, sodal reading ofGego's work, associated with the stams ofthe suhject in it. is one of the characteristictraits ofthe recent literature on Gego. Itimplies a displacement from tectonics to an"expanded field" that alters our traditionalunderstanding of the effect and affect ofworks of art.

This expanded social field also concernsKaira Marie Cabanas's argument in hercontribution to the catalogue. To her, thephenomenological dimension ofthe 1969environmental Reticularea is intimately relatedto Gego's "doing" of geometry—whichsuggests that rather than using geometryand mathematics as models, Gego's work isinvested in a situated materiality that "enactsa spatio-temporal negotiation, which ftmc-tions in tandem with the collaborativeproduction of a social space" (74).To sup-port her claim. Cabanas indexes the 1969Reticuidreu's photographic record, wherein thework is always pictured with people—anobservation that has to be credited to thephotographer Peter Honig who in 1982. onthe occasion of Reticuldrea's installation inGermany, wrote to Gego that he could notconceive the work without people, withouttaking into account the close relationshipbetween ohserver and work.' This conclu-sion is preceded by a discussion of the dif-ferences between Gego's phenomenologicalwork and kinetic art's optical manipulations(a model of visuality tbat Cabanas problem-atically conflates with Rosalind Krauss'sdiagnosis of Greenbergian opticahty, anassociation that fails to account for Krauss'swell-known rejection of any possible affini-ties between the models of perception pre-scribed by Op and kinetic art and modernistopticahty).'* While Cabanas's analysis addsto Luis Enriquez Perez Oramas's take on thedifferences between Gego and kinetic art,her discussion of Jesiis Soto's work as notaddressing "a real empirical body" (asGego's work does) immediately calls tomind the hyperhaptic Pfnetrable.s of Soto,the first of which, like Gego's RetictiMreo.was made in the late 1960s, and in wliichohserver and work literally become one.^There is no doubt that among those interest-ed in assessing Gego's oeuvre vis-a-vi.s tliatof Soto, this environmental, ludic, and hap-tic crux will have to be accounted for. Acomplex theoretical detour weaves these

106 WINTER 1007

main arguments. By alluding to Jean-Frangois Lyotard's "paralogy" (as he charac-terizes a postmodern science concernedwith "instability," "openness," and "distur-bance"), Cabaiias divorces Gego's use ofgeometry from any idealized analyticalmodel, be it empirical or rational. Fromparalogy to enunciative performativity, andfrom there to social space, the argumentdoes not always roll smoothly, but theauthor's emphasis on Gego's "doing" ofgeometry nicely holds the terms of herdiscussion together.

Two contrasting articles, one by HannahFeldman arguing for a multinational readingof Gego's work, and another by JuhetaGonzalez favoring its association with itssocial local context, complement the textsdiscussed above. The first rehearses ideas setforth by Marta Traba concerning Venezuelangeometric abstraction's apparent disregardfor the country's social ills and concomitantquest for cultural and infrastructural moder-nity While Feldman describes these works'unwillingness to deal with their "mess[y]historical circumstances" (6i), Gego usedthe word messj' (in English) in her sketchesto define some of the pieces that made upthe Reticularea. Of course this line of thoughtdoes not indicate a desire to deal directlywith social context, but it suggests Gego'sdistance from the technosdentific orienta-tions of kineticism—a distance that criticscontemporaneous to the work and morerecent local reviewers have been at pains todescribe.* Feldman rightly notes that Gego'swork calls for a layered and complex readingthat takes into account her experiences ofdisplacement, exile, and,! would add, other-ness (let's not forget that in addition to herstatus as immigrant, she was a woman, andnot a young one when she produced hermost successful work). Aren't these condi-tions what trigger such strong affinitiesbetween Gego's work and the projects ofemigre artists such as Mira Schendell, EvaHesse,Yayoi Kusama, and (as the exhibitionfrom which this catalogue ensues suggests)Ruth Vollmer? Signaled by the experienceof displacement, these works seem to beengaged in a poetics of unhomehness. afiight from the certainty of medium-specificity and spatial monumentahty,toward an aesthetic practice of materialvulnerability, and, as Bosteels and Cabanassuggest, of immanence. But I cannot agree

with Feldman's assertion that "the effortsmade to assert Gego's national identity asseamlessly Venezuelan reflect not only theconcems of market economies, but also, andprecisely, the discomfort that indeterminatecategories of being arouse in societies con-ditioned to subsume difference" (65).Traba,

for one. was happy to define Gego's work asEuropean, while in my own writings I haveforcefully argued for what bas been called a"local" reading ofthe work—! prefer to des-ignate it an architectonic reading that nei-ther excludes a nomadic one nor allies itselfwith the national.' As notes from her teach-ing indicate, Gego was an attentive observerof her urban surroundings, so it was the dis-ruptive and precarious logic of the work,along with Gego's emphasis on basic shel-tering, that led me to read her work as a fig-uration of the urban disarray of the city andthe shantytowns that border it.**

Finally, a series of poetic commentson Gego's knotting and linking procedures,written by Luis Enrique Perez Oranias,wraps up this well-rounded publication,fully illtistrated with Gego's by now well-known works.The book is, no doubt, a seri-ous contribution to the hterature on Gegoby a group of young scholars genuinelyinterested in understanding tlie specificityof this artist's work and its situation withinthe history of postwar art.

While physically and structurally verysimilar 10 Thinking the Line, the catalogueBetween Transparenc)' and the InvisiWe is a very dif-ferent kind of publication. The main text, bythe curator Mari Carmen Ramirez, investi-

gates the theme of transparency to proposea detailed formal reading of Gego's work,particularly her drawings. In Ramirez'saccount, Gego's drawings and constructionsoscillate between the illusion of lines "float-ing in layers of thin air" and that of'"three-dimensional structures that read, in space,like two-dimensional drawings" (23),Thisproduces an oscillation that Ramirez callsthe "in-between dimension," indicative oftheartist's understanding of art as piercing "thestrata ofthe visible world to point out theveiled components of a bigger totality thatis invisible to the eye" (24). As she notes,"The ability to suggest this alt-encompassingentity represented by the invisible, in turn,required carefully establishing the relationsbetween its parts" (24). In a way this is avery faithful reading ofthe work. Not onlydoes Ramirez rely heavily on Gego's ownnotes and writings (collected recendy in aposthumous pubhcation), but like Traba.who back in 1977 defined Gego's work asorganic because it corresponded "to theinternal order that is verified in nature,the adequate relations of the parts to thewhole," she underlines the idea of structureand wholeness, a sort of cosmic communionbetween work and universe that, as Ramirezacknowledges, also informs Uie crilic GuyBrett's recent approach to Gego's work.'

One can detect here a divide in thehterature on the artist, since this "cosmic"reading is at odds with the fragmented,disruptive, "rhizomatic," and materialisticinterpreutions tliat emphasize the situation-al dimensions of Gego's work, how it inter-acts with the viewer bypassing contempla-tive models of .spectatorship. Instead, forRamirez, "Gego's art stresses permanenceand contemplation of the infinite possibili-ties of making visihle the multiple layers ofspace" (33).This essay represents the mostsustained look at Gego's drawings, withouta doubt foundational to the artist's work,and Ramirez is attentive to close readingsand illuminating pairings (between Gego'sworks and those of Paul Klee and JosefAibers. for example) that befit her curatorialtalents. Her detailed account howeverneglects any attempt to group or systematizethe mad array that constitutes Gego's two-dimensional work—a challenging task thatremains to be done.

This curators' publication (which con-trasts with the young scholars' catalogue

107 art journal

discussed first) also includes essays by

Catherine de Zegher and Robert Scorr.

Within the small but growing circle of

Gego's connoisseurs, de Zegher is known

for having introduced Gego's work to an

internadonal audience in ber seminal 1996

book and exhibition Inside iheVisible.'iAn Elliptical

Traverse of 2oih Century Art in, of, and from the

Feminine. The lauer proposed a provocative

and parallel trajectory for modern and con-

temporary art that took into account tbe

feminine as a site of singular aesthetic pro-

duction. Here, de Zegber opens her essay

with some heavy paternal figures (Alexander

Calder, Rodchenko, Umbeno Boccioni,

Pablo Picasso, Georges Vantongerloo, Marcel

Duchamp) to address the notion of drawing

in space—a historically grounded pursuit

that she does not account for aiid wliich

remains to be addressed as a backdrop

against which Gego's work operates. Her

contemporary references instead include

surprises such as tbe fascinating work of the

Czech artist Karel Malich (wbom Rottner

and Weibel thought of pairing witb Gego

before setding on Volhner), but this sugges-

tive association, despite die two beautiful

works by the artist illtistrated in the essay, is

not elaborated. Tbere is not mucb of a con-

crete argument here. De Zegher provides a

rough summary of Gego's work trajectory

and then suggests several intriguing paths of

investigation tbat draw little on dose read-

ings of tbe art but rely instead on various

other interpretations and sources. The effect

is patcby and scattered, despite tbe introduc-

tion of tbemes relevant to Gego's work such

as "weaving" as medium and process, and

the "informe." De Zegher's grand conclusion

is that Gego's work "inspires social change

and political commitment on a global scale"

{73), an assertion tbat is not properly quali-

fied in the essay In addition, de Zegher's

text problematically draws on translations,

descriptions, and archival materials import-

ed from recently published work on Gego

that are nonetheless not cited in ber essay."

Storr closes tbe publication's essays witb

a panoramic overview of the sculptural sce-

nario of tbe postwar period and the status of

geometric abstraction in the United States.

He too relates Gego's work to prewar con-

structivism, but instead of engaging in tbe

bistoricist account Ledezma details, he

underlines formal correlations, processes,

and use of materials. Comparisons are tbe

backbone of Storr s essay, and while sugges-

tive, they at times seem to respond more

to Storr's own interests (Tony Smith, Brice

Marden) than to a sustained analysis of the

work. Pieces sucb as Kusama's Infinile Nets

from the i96os seem more pertinent in a

discussion of Gego's webs, an often-over-

looked association that 1 was happy to see

here Storr too lingers on Gego's drawings

and linear manipulations, and his beautiful

descriptions attest to bis admiration for the

work. Specifically, be refers to the Drawings

wiihoul Paper (doue in the 1970s and 1980s)

and how diey distance themselves from

traditional notions of gestiu-e, autbor, atid

subject despite their artisanal nature. He is

closer to a materialist reading of the works:

tbeir "figurations and 'markings' are there-

fore able to foreground their own material

reality against the equally material back-

ground of the wall" (93). The latter, he con-

cludes, is one of the "least appreciated but

most graceful, surprising, and open-ended

artistic enterprises of the second half of the

twentieth-century" (93).This catalogue also

dehvers a detailed, illustrated chronology,

with notations on Gego's technical develop-

ments, life, and statements regarding her

work, compiled by Josefina Manrique,

wbich is of great value. Tbe volume's plates

expand our enjoyment of Gego's work, since

tbey include numerous two-dimensional

works that are little known and bave never

been reproduced.

Both publications will contribute sig-

nificantly to a fuller appreciation of Gego's

work, especially since tbey complement eacb

other in tbeir distinctive approaches and in

the material covered.They propose venues of

invesdgation tliat challenge well-established

patterns of research in the field of contem-

porary art of the r96os and 1970s. It remains

to be seen what art history does with these

deviatiom from the norm.

Monica Amor is assistant professor of modernand contemporary art at the Mar/land InstituteCollege of Art. She recently curated a survey ofGego's work for the Serralves Foundation inPorto and has been working on the archiiecturall/inflected work of artists in contemporary art.

I. Often cited in the literature on Gego, Barr'sphrase "parailactical charm" was first quoted byHanni Ossott in fier important analysis, written indose collaboration with the artist, of Gego'swork. However, the author never provides a bib-liographical reference. We might assume that it

was Gego who gave Ossott that information,Hanni Ossott, Gego (Caracas: Museo de ArteContemporaneo. 1977). 14.2. The Deleuzian rhizome was first associated toGego's work in a letter to the artist written by theGerman architect Christian Thiel, who assistedher in the installation of her Reticuldrea at theAlte Oper in Frankfurt in 1982; Thiel, letter toGego, November 12. 1983. Personal Archives,Gego Foundation. Caracas. The or;ganic-naturalmetaphor in Gego's work was posited by theArgentinean critic Marta Traba back in 1977;Traba. Gego (Caracas: Museo de Arte Contem-poraneo de Caracas, 1977), n. p. The tensionbetween the sensuous (or organic) and the con-structive was explicitly treated in Ossott, 6. Theviewer's fusion with the work, specifically herRetJcularea, was carefully described by RobertoGuevara in 1969; Guevara, "Reticularea deGego," HNoc/onol (Caracas), June 10, 1969.

3. Peter Honig, letter to Gego, December 17,1982, Personal Archives, Gego Foundation,Caracas.4. Rosalind Krauss, "Afterthoughts on Op." ArtWernot/ono/9, no. 5 (June 1965).5.1 myself also suggested the clear dividebetween the work of Soto and Gego in a lecturedelivered at Harvard in the fall of 2003 by alludingto Soto's classical kinetic work and was remindedby Yve-Alain Bois of die playfulness and tactility ofthese works by Soto which relate to rather thancontrast with Reticuiarea.6. OssDtt and Traba both insisted on the differ-ence between Gego's and the kineticists' project.More recently Luis Enrique Perez Oramas haswritten the most thorough account on the sub-ject. See, for example, his "Gego and the AnalyticContext of Cinetismo," in Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde An in Latin America, ed. Mari CarmenRamirez and Hector Olea (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2004), And, as previously men-tioned. Cabanas attempts the same in her essaydiscussed above.7. Traba, n.p.8. This emphasis on sheltering surfaced in herclasses to architecture students at the CentralUniversity. See Gego, '"Programacion de unascharlas durante el ler semestre Febrero-Mayo1965," typewritten document. Personal Archives,Gego Foundation, Caracas, I address this point inmy dissertation "Defying Structures: Gego and theCrisis of Geometric Abstraction in the Americas"(Graduate School and University Center of theCity University of New York, New York, 2002),and in my essay, "Another Geometry: Gego'sReiicuiersa 1969-1982," October I 13 (Summer2005): 120-25.9. Gego. Sabiduras ar\<i Other Texts: Writingsby Gego. ed. Maria Helena Huizi and JosefinaManrique (New Haven and London: YaleUniversity Press. 2005). Traba, Gego, n.p. GuyBrett. "Gego's Force Fields," in Mari CarmenRamirez et al.. Questioning the LJr\e: Gego inContext (Houston: International Center for theArts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts,Houston, 2003).10,1 must note here a handful of striking coinci-dences between my 2005 text "Another

2007

Geome«7: Gego's Reticularea 1969-1982" (seen, 8) and de Zegher's, Some involve the use o lexactly the same translation (made by me fromthe Spanish) of a newer-published statement byGego and of archival material not available inEnglish, which de Zegher cites using the samenomenclature 1 devised in my research. Otherinstances involve the importation of the sameterms or words to describe the Reticuldrea. aswhen ) write: "Indeed, the dispersed body of theReticu/drea is woven into space itself.,,. Theviewer, too, is woven into the ftet/cu/orea and thesurrounding space . . . " ( I I 4 ) . And de Zegher:"The undetermined and dispersed body ofRetkularea seems woven into space, and theviewer appears woven into It as well as into itssurrounding space" [67). Elsewhere I note: "Localreviewers also emphasized the enveloping qualityof the environment, which could not be appre-hended as a definite whole but instead had to beexpenenced. The operation was one of fusionwith the work rather than analytical observation ofthe work" (114). De Zegher writes: "Enveloped bythe environment of Reticulareo, the experience isone of sensuous apprehension and of fusion withthe work rather than merely optical, analyticalobservation of it" (73).

After the Neo-Avant-Garde? New-GenreConceptual Art and theInstitution of Critique

Godfre Leung

Alexander Alberro and SabethBuchmann, eds. Art after Conceptual Art.Cambridge, MA, and Vienna: MIT Press/Geiierali Foundation, 2006. 240 pp., 75 b/wills, $30 paper.

John C. Welchman, ed. InstitutionalCritique and After. Ziirich: JRP/Ringier,2007. 400 pp,, 76 b/w ills. I25 paper.

The new voltnnes Art after Concepiual Art andInstitutionai Critique ond After speaJc to a presentcrisis in writing on critical art. Predictably,the nattire of this crisis is harcUy coherent,neither within the individual vnltimes norbetween them. Both seek to revise the canonof critical postwar art that the emerginggeneration of art historians encountered ijicollege syllabi as getiealogies of avant-gardemovements. At certain points, this projectseems to arise from a paradigm shift in artis-tic production and, at others, merely from agenerational shift among critics. Indeed, theo/lers in Ait after Conceptual Art and InstitutionolCriti<jue and After refer as much to the reigningdefinilions of conceptual art and institution-al critique as they do to a historical break,whetlier real or imaginary, with these artmovements.

For many contributors, the object of cri-tique has shifted. Issues such as globalizationand the demand for art to address localizedaudiences necessitate a rethinking of theprevailing definitions of critical art, whichare generally tmderstood in relation to aes-thetic and institutional concerns. Some ofthese positions look to new strategies ofartistic practice that have come to promi-nence in the last fifteen years, associatedwith the models of new-gerye pubhc artand relational aesthetics, identifying in themrelevant, new directions to engage with thereoriented object of critical art. Others citetlie current art's mode of critique. For pro-ponents of tliis position, the emergence ofnew media presents new aesthetic criteriathat problematize the genealogies of theavant-garde that have come to stand in forhistories of critical art.

A less radical position supposes institu-tional critique's obsolescence now that it hasachieved "oflicial" critical art status in boththe museum and the academy. Against suchclaims, some contributors recuperate theprevailing narratives, positioning recentartistic strategies as part of an unbrokentrajectory of the postwar neo-avant-garde;what comes after institutional critique, then,is an evolution of it. We also encounter cri-tiques of these artistic strategies, arguing forthe continued relevance of the traditionalmodel of institutional criiique in the present.

An afier Concepiual Art is divided into threesections. Three older and well-known essaysby established scholars of conceptual art makeup the bulk of the first section. These essays,by Benjamin H, D. Bucliloh (1982).ThomasCrow (1995), atid Helen Molesworth(2000), prefigure the debates in the twoensuing sections by revising acceptednotions of conceptual art and its subgenreof institutional critique from their respectivehistorical moments. The second section takesan art-bistorical tack, mounting argumentstoward a rewriting of the history of concep-tual art. Luiza Nader works through earlyconceptualism s engagement with languageto conclude that the Polish artist JaroslawKozlowski's books must be understoodwithin tlie context of their production incold war-era Poland. Unlike the better-known work of Joseph Kosuth and MelBochner, Nader argues, Kozlowski's critiqueof representation was not merely self-refer-entia!; it presented a resistance to the Polishstate and its institutionalization of sociahstreahsm as its official art, Gregor Stemmrichand Helmut Draxler situate canonical worksof institutional critique in relation to specificmedia practices. Stemmrich identifies inMichael Asher and Dan Graham's work anattention to cinema and television, respec-tively, and reorients the focus of their cri-tiques from the institutions of art to the ide-ological work of the media sphere. Draxlerrevisits Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, DanielBuren, Hans Haacke, and John Knight topropose a subversive use of advertising anddesign in their work, argtiing that designprovided a critical tool with which to workthrough art's own complex imbrication withcapitalism. The volume ends with essays byEdit Andras, Elizabetli Ferrell, and HenrikOlesen that identify emergent discourses inthe art of the present. These essays representthe volume's most valuable contribution to

109 art jaiirna!