Widely regarded as the most influential curator of the second half of the twentieth century, Harald Szeemann (1933–2005) is associated with some of the most important artistic developments of the postwar era. A passionate advocate for avant-garde movements like Conceptualism and Postminimalism, he collaborated with artists such as Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, and Cy Twombly, developing new ways of presenting art that reflected his sweeping vision of contemporary culture. Szeemann once stated that his goal as an exhibition maker was to create a “Museum of Obsessions.” This richly illustrated volume is a virtual collection catalogue for that imaginary institution, tracing the evolution of his curatorial method through letters, drawings, personal datebooks, installation plans, artists’ books, posters, photographs, and handwritten notes. This book documents all phases of Szeemann’s career, from his early stint as director of the Kunsthalle Bern, where he organized the seminal Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969); to documenta 5 (1972) and the intensely personal exhibition he staged in his own apart-ment using the belongings of his hairdresser grandfather (1974); to his reinvention as a freelance curator who realized projects on wide-ranging themes until his death in 2005. The book contains essays exploring Szeemann’s curatorial approach as well as interviews with collaborators. Its more than 350 illustrations include previously unpublished installation photographs and documents as well as archival materials. This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute at the Getty Center February 6 to May 6, 2018 (a satellite show will be at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles February 4 to April 22, 2018); at the Kunsthalle Bern in Bern, Switzerland, June to September 2018; at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Düsseldorf, Germany October 2018 to January 2019; and at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Rivoli in Turin, Italy, February to May 2019.

Born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1933, Harald Szeemann was a crucial force in identifying, exhibiting, and writing about the important new movements in postwar contemporary art. This collection of seventy-four texts from the curator’s vast body of written work—which includes essays, lectures, studio notes, reviews, interviews, correspondence, and transcripts—introduces the depth of his method, insight, and inclusive artistic interests. The pieces have been translated from German and French and collected in an informed, authoritative edition, making this the first time Szeemann’s work is accessible in English. The first two sections of this volume republish Szeemann’s anthologies Museum der Obsessionen (1981) and Individuelle Mythologien (1985). The final part assembles important writings from 1986 until his death in 2005 to represent the later years of his career and round out a record of his contribution to and dialogue with later twentieth- century art and artists. The book’s publication coincides with the opening of the Getty Research Institute’s exhibition Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions and complements its catalogue, as well as a contemporaneous satellite show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, that focuses on Szeemann’s Grandfather exhibition (1974).

Harald Szeemann (1933-2005) war einer der einflussreichsten Ausstellungsmacher der letzten Jahrzehnte. Eine ganze Generation von Kuratoren hat sich von seiner unabhängigen Ausstellungspraxis und seinen emphatischen Inszenierungen der Gegenwartskunst inspirieren lassen. Szeemanns unbeirrbares Interesse am künstlerischen Einzelweg, an starker Haltung und kraftvoller Persönlichkeit erscheint im Rückblick wie vehementer Widerspruch gegen einen Kunstbetrieb der Trends und Tendenzen. Der Band beschreibt das »Prinzip Szeemann«, die Visionen eines erklärten Ausstellungskünstlers und lässt die wichtigsten Stationen seiner singulären Karriere Revue passieren - von der legendären Berner Ausstellung »When Attitudes Become Form« über die documenta 5, die großen thematischen Untersuchungen wie »Junggesellenmaschinen« und »Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk«, die Entdeckung der jungen osteuropäischen Szenen bis hin zu den Biennalen in Venedig, Lyon und Sevilla. (Englische Ausgabe ISBN 978-3-7757-1705-2) Zum Autor: Hans-Joachim Müller (*1947), Studium der Kunstgeschichte und Philosophie, in den 1980er Jahren Kunstkritiker im Feuilleton der »Zeit«, zuletzt Feuilletonchef der »Basler Zeitung«. Lebt heute als freier Autor (unter anderem für die »Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung«, die »Zeit« und das »art«-Magazin) in Freiburg im Breisgau und in Süditalien. Autor des 1992 erschienenen Filmporträts »Harald Szeemann - Verzauberung auf Zeit«. Unterstützt von Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung

Over the period of twelve months, between May 2017 and 2018, Polish-born curator and critic Anda Rottenberg has written a series of fictitious letters to legendary curator and writer Harald Szeemann (1933?2005). In these pieces, Rottenberg analyzes the art and nature of curating and reveals references and relations in the history of art. She questions female artistic positions both in the Eastern and Western Europe and so encourages new individual readings of them. Her letters express a unique rhetoric that take-up questions and polemic judgements to amalgamate individual opinion and objective knowledge into a personal history.00This is the first publication of the much acclaimed new museum foundation Muzeum Susch, an initiative of the Polish entrepreneur and art collector Gra?yna Kulczyk.

Available for a limited time, this artist’s book by renowned visual artist Tacita Dean explores her chance encounters with objects in the archives of the Getty Research Institute. As the Getty Research Institute artist in residence in 2014–15, Tacita Dean was asked to define a subject and identify a path of research. What she proposed instead was a project titled “The Importance of Objective Chance as a Tool of Research.” Her idea was to allow chance to be her guide. Dean researched randomly, picking out boxes from the collections without knowing their contents, meandering through objects and images from sources as varied as medieval alchemy books to twentieth-century artist letters. Monet Hates Me features reproductions of fifty artworks she created from Getty’s archival holdings along with enlightening texts that expand on her method of research and illustrate her encounters with the archives.

No one is more conscious of the faults of this work than the author. Therefore some self -criticism should be woven into this foreward. There are two possible methodologically pure solutions to this book's theme: a de scriptive catalog of the pictures couched in the language of natural science and accom panied by a clinical and psychopathological description of the patients, or a completely metaphysically based investigation of the process of pictorial composition. According to the latter, these unusual works, explained psychologically, and the exceptional circum stances on which they are based would be integrated as a playful variation of human expression into a total picture of the ego under the concept of an inborn creative urge, behind which we would then only have to discover a universal need for expression as an instinctive foundation. In brief, such an investigation would remain in the realm of phenomenologically observed existential forms, completely independent of psychiatry and aesthetics. The compromise between these two pure solutions must necessarily be piecework and must constantly defend itself against the dangers of fragmentation. We are in danger of being satisfied with pure description, the novelistic expansion of details and questions of principle; pitfalls would be very easy to avoid if we had the use of a clearly outlined method. But the problems of a new, or at least never seriously worked, field defy the methodology of every established subject.

"Harald Szeemann (1933-2005) is without doubt one of the most authoritative figures of contemporary curatorial practice. He has played a considerable role in the development of exhibition curating since the 1960s, and almost all art-historical books refer to [his] 'When attitudes become form' (1969). Neither a biography nor a compilation of his projects, this publication, thanks to privileged access to the archives of the Fabbrica rosa, hopes to shed light on Szeemann's curatorial methodology." -- Back cover

Hot Cold Heavy Light collects 100 writings—some long, some short—that taken together forma group portrait of many of the world’s most significant and interesting artists. From Pablo Picasso to Cindy Sherman, Old Masters to contemporary masters, paintings to comix, and saints to charlatans, Schjeldahl ranges widely through the diverse and confusing art world, an expert guide to a dazzling scene. No other writer enhances the reader’s experience of art in precise, jargon-free prose as Schjeldahl does. His reviews are more essay than criticism, and he offers engaging and informative accounts of artists and their work. For more than three decades, he has written about art with Emersonian openness and clarity. A fresh perspective, an unexpected connection, a lucid gloss on a big idea awaits the reader on every page of this big, absorbing, buzzing book.

Today the work of so-called "outsider" artists is receiving unprecedented attention. This major critical appraisal of America's 20th-century self-taught artists coincides with a major 1998 traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of American Folk Art in New York. While some of these artists have received critical recognition, others remain virtually unknown, following their muse regardless. 150 color images.

The Extreme Self is a new kind of graphic novel that shows how you've been morphing into something else. It's about the re-making of your interior world as the exterior world becomes more unfamiliar and uncertain.The sudden arrival of the pandemic pushed the world faster and further into the 21st century. Now, life is dictated by two forces you can't see: data and the virus. Are you really built for so much change so quickly?Basar/Coupland/Obrist's prequel, The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, became an instant cult classic. It's been described as, "a mediation on the madness of our media," and, "an abstract representation of how we feel about our digital world."Like that book, The Extreme Self collapses comedy and calamity at the speed of swipe. Dazzling images are sourced from over 70 of the world's foremost artists, photographers, technologists and musicians, while Daly & Lyon's kinetic design elevates the language of memes into a manifesto. Over fourteen timely chapters, The Extreme Self tours through fame and intimacy, post-work and new crowds, identity crisis and eternity. This is an eye-opening, provocative portrait of what's really happening to YOUContributor's include: Michael Stipe, Jarvis Cocker, Miranda July, Agnieszka Kurant, Amalia Ulman, Amnesia Scanner, Ana Nicolaescu, Ania Soliman, Anna Uddenberg, Anne Imhof, Asad Raza, Barry Doupé, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Cao Fei, Carsten Höller, Cécile B Evans, Chen Zhou, Christine Sun Kim, Craig Green, Dennis Kavelman, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Emmanuel Iduma, Farah Al Qasimi, Fatima Al Qadiri, GCC, Goshka Macuga, Heman Chong, Ian Cheng, Isabel Lewis, Jenna Sutela, Johannes Paul Raether, John Menick, Jürgen Klauke, Koo Jeong A, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Liam Gillick, Liam Young, Lorraine O'Grady, Lucy Raven, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Miles Gertler, Momus, Pamela Rosenkranz, Pan Daijing, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Peter Saville & Yoso Mouri, Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, Precious Okoyomon, Rachel Rose, Raja'a Khalid, Samuel Fosso, Sara Cwynar, Satoshi Fujiwara, Simon Denny, Sissel Tolaas, Sophia Al-Maria, Stéphanie Saadé, Stephanie Comilang, Suzanne Treister, Tabita Rezaire, Thomas Dozol, Thomas Hirschhorn, Trevor Paglen, Urs Lüthi, Victoria Sin, Wang Haiyang, Yaeji, Yazan Khalili, Yu Honglei, Yuri Pattison.