Few figures have had an impact as important on our understanding of artistic production after the turn of the millennium as Wade Guyton, whose practice has widely prompted reconsiderations of longstanding models of medium-specificity, appropriation, and critical engagement--and, perhaps more provocatively, performativity and readymade gesture--in art.This volume takes stock of critical perspectives on Guyton's work over the course of the artist's career, assembling both expansive, scholarly essays and more concise, journalistic assessments by an international array of authors including Daniel Baumann, Kirsty Bell, Bettina Funcke, Tim Griffin (editor), and John Kelsey.Just as significantly, this book holds up a mirror to the rapidly changing context for Guyton's work, which in a few short years shifted from discussions of the widespread use of modernist motifs in art during the early 2000s to others revolving around the artwork, anticipating its continuous circulation as digital media became ubiquitous in art and culture alike.Published with the Kunsthalle Z�rich. This book is part of the JRP Ringier Documents series.

Wade Guyton, Petzel, New York, 1.16.14 - 2.22.14 is the long-awaited volume that documents a one night only performance hosted at Petzel Gallery as part of Guyton’s seminal 2014 exhibition, in which the artist made long horizontal black paintings stretched to precisely fit the gallery walls. In 2007, Guyton showed a series of black paintings made with his Epson 9600 printer and covered the gallery’s concrete floor with a facsimile of his studio’s plywood floor. For the 2014 exhibition, he made five new works on linen using the same digital file from 2007, this time enlarged to accommodate the increased width of an Epson 11880. The works were turned on their sides, hung horizontally and stretched to fit the gallery walls. Two of them were jammed in a corner. In addition to the five paintings, he presented a new wood and concrete sculpture that took its form from the coat check counter at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, where concurrently he had installed four paintings for the International. On February 17, 2014 the gallery hosted performances by James Campbell, I.U.D., and Blondes. Wade Guyton, Petzel, New York, 1.16.14 - 2.22.14 features over 400 illustrated pages of documentary footage from that performance and includes an essay by art historian Bettina Funcke entitled “Guyton’s Rooms.” The book was designed by Wade Guyton, Joseph Logan, and Zach Steinman.

Founded in 2004, Guyton\Walker--the artist duo of Wade Guyton (born 1972) and Kelley Walker (born 1969)--is a partnership that has remained virtually without parallel in contemporary art, in that both artists work and exhibit individually. This volume examines all facets of their output, both singly and together. Essays by Sam Pulitzer and Quinn Latimer discuss individual authorship and joint techniques, while Jack Bankowsky's text examines Guyton\Walker within a broad art-historical context. Yilmaz Dziewior's introductory essay outlines the distinctive concept of the Kunsthaus Bregenz exhibition this book accompanies, and addresses the relationship between individual and joint artistic practices. Each section on the three artistic positions features photographs of the installation in Kunsthaus Bregenz.

This catalogue was produced on the occasion of the exhibition Wade Guyton at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 4, 2012-February 2013.

How is art criticism to be understood within an expanding artistic field? A look at its history and its manifestations within globalized conditions shows the variety of the genre, of the criteria and of the styles of writing. This reader is an attempt to bring a diverse range of art-critical voices and perspectives into conversation with each other, with texts from the 18th century to the present. The editors Beate Söntgen and Julia Voss have invited colleagues from various geographical and intellectual backgrounds to present and discuss the art critics of their choice, choosing one example from their respective bodies of work to comment upon. How have these writers approached art criticism? Which styles do they employ? What makes them extraordinary? What can we learn from their writings today, and why is it important in its contemporary context? BEATE SÖNTGEN (*1963) is professor of art history at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She studied art history, philosophy, and modern German literature in Marburg and Berlin. She is director of the DFG Research Training Group "Cultures of Critique: Forms, Media, Effects" and co-director of the program "PriMus - Doctoral Studies in Museums." JULIA VOSS (*1974) is an honorary professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She studied art history, modern German literature, and philosophy in Berlin and London. She is herself an art critic and journalist and was deputy head of the arts section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Using five case studies of contemporary art, this book uses ideas of systems and dispersion to understand identity and experience in late capitalism. This book considers five artists who exemplify contemporary art practice: Seth Price; Liam Gillick; Martin Creed; Hito Steyerl; and Theaster Gates. Given the diversity of materials used in art today, once-traditional artistic mediums and practices have become obsolete in describing what artists do today. Francis Halsall argues that, in the face of this obsolescence, the ideas of system and dispersion become very useful in understanding contemporary art. That is, practitioners now can be seen to be using whatever systems of distribution and display are available to them as their creative mediums. The two central arguments are first that any understanding of what art is will always be underwritten by a related view of what a human being is; and second that these both have a particular character in late capitalism or, as is named here, the Age of Dispersion. The book will be of interest to scholars and students working in art history, contemporary art, studio art, and theories of systems and networks.

This year's Best American Magazine Writing features articles on politics, culture, sports, sex, race, celebrity, and more. Selections include Ta-Nehisi Coates's intensely debated "The Case For Reparations" (The Atlantic) and Monica Lewinsky's reflections on the public-humiliation complex and how the rules of the game have (and have not) changed (Vanity Fair). Amanda Hess recounts her chilling encounter with Internet sexual harassment (Pacific Standard) and John Jeremiah Sullivan shares his investigation into one of American music's greatest mysteries (New York Times Magazine). The anthology also presents Rebecca Traister's acerbic musings on gender politics (The New Republic) and Jerry Saltz's fearless art criticism (New York). James Verini reconstructs an eccentric love affair against the slow deterioration of Afghanistan in the twentieth century (The Atavist); Roger Angell offers affecting yet humorous reflections on life at ninety-three (The New Yorker); Tiffany Stanley recounts her poignant experience caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's (National Journal); and Jonathan Van Meter takes an entertaining look at fashion's obsession with being a social-media somebody (Vogue). Brian Phillips describes his surreal adventures in the world of Japanese ritual and culture (Grantland), and Emily Yoffe reveals the unforeseen casualties in the effort to address the college rape crisis (Slate). The collection concludes with a work of fiction by Donald Antrim, exploring the geography of loss. (The New Yorker).

Postscript is the first collection of writings on the subject of conceptual writing by a diverse field of scholars in the realms of art, literature, media, as well as the artists themselves

The monochrome - a single colour of paint applied over the entirety of a canvas - remains one of the more contentious modernist artistic inventions. But whilst the manufacture of these 'pictures of nothing' was ostensibly straightforward, their subsequent theorisation has been anything but. More than a history, Monochrome: Darkness and Light in Contemporary Art is the first account of the monochrome's lively role in contemporary art. Liberated from the burden of representation, the monochrome first stood for emancipation: an ideological and artistic impulse that characterised the avant-garde of the early twentieth century. Historically, the monochrome embodied the most extreme form of abstraction and pure materiality. Yet more recently, adaptations of the art form have focused on a broader range of cultural and interpretive contexts. Provocative, innovative and timely, this book argues that the latest artistic strategies go beyond stylistic concerns and instead seek to re-engage with ideas around authorship, process and the conditions of the visible as they are given and understood through both light and darkness. Discussing works by artists such as Katie Paterson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tom Friedman, Bruno Jakob, Sherrie Levine and Ceal Floyer, the book shows that the debates around an artwork's form and its possibility for meaning that the monochrome first engendered remain very much alive in contemporary visual culture.