"Transit, transitional, transition: Dalia Judovitz catches Marcel Duchamp on the run with his art in a suitcase and his thought all boxed and ready to go. . . . She demonstrates how the theme of transition, reappearing from work to work, makes each piece reproduce some other piece, while all continue to exemplify an original which can no longer be found and which has no creator."—Jean-François Lyotard

Francophiles and Paris buffs will find something new and fascinating in this timeless guidebook, filed with sites, passageways, hotels, shops, and more What if—walking around Paris—instead of seeing only the Paris of 2017, you glimpsed Paris in Revolutionary times? Or Paris when it was home to 80,000 horses; or Paris lit by gaslight; or medieval Paris? What if—walking down a block in Paris—you recognized the signs, mosaics, pieces of hardware, and architectural details as relics of many centuries that have stories to tell of past eras? This is what Curiosities of Paris reveals. Each of the book’s 800 photos of unique locations and architectural oddities—as well as utilitarian objects whose functions have long been obscured with the passage of time—discloses a previously unnoticed city. Even those who know Paris well might never have registered the thousands of details on every street that testify to the enduring presence of the past: the solar cannon at Invalides, street signs with the word “saint” and all fleur-de-lys removed; the unique features of Parisian street lighting. You’ll never look at an elm tree the same way again. And, with Curiosities of Paris as your guide, you’ll feel very in-the-know as you walk down the Champs-Élysées past all the auto dealerships. Organized by subject—including fountains and wells; centuries-old shop signs; vestiges of wars and ancient Egypt; hotels of legend; remarkable trees; sundials and meridians; equestrian Paris; romantic ruins; unusual tombs, stairways, and passageways; religious relics; mosaics; public barometers and thermometers; and hundreds more urban elements and anachronisms—the book also includes three themed walks (along the city’s ancient walls, in the steps of Quasimodo, and through the French Revolution), as well as an index of street names. This absorbing compendium is an essential addition to the library of the armchair traveler and flâneur alike.

Watching her daughter attempt some jazz steps in her ballet school on a snowy afternoon in New York reminds Catherine of her own childhood in Paris, where she and her rather mysterious father lived happily together.

Influential writings by the legendary art critic and theorist Jack Burnham—a pioneer in new media systems aesthetics and an early advocate of conceptualism. Jack Burnham is one of the few critics and theorists alive today who can claim to have radically altered the way we think about works of art. Burnham's use of the term “system” (borrowed from theoretical biology) in his 1968 essay “System Aesthetics” announced the relational character of conceptual art and newer research-based projects. Trained as an art historian, Burnham was also a sculptor. His first book, Beyond Modern Sculpture (1968), established him as a leading commentator on art and technology. A postformalist pioneer, an influential figure in new media art history, an early champion of conceptual and ecological art, and the curator of the first exhibition of digital art, Burnham is long overdue for reevaluation. This book offers that opportunity by collecting a substantial and varied selection of his hard-to-find texts, some published here for the first time. Although Burnham left the art world abruptly in the 1990s, his visionary theoretical ideas have only become more relevant in recent years. This collection seeks to restore Burnham to his rightful place in art criticism and theory, reestablishing his voice as crucial to critical conversations of the period. It gathers his early writing on sculpture, his essays on systems art and conceptualism, his views of the New York art world, and his later occult work—including an unorthodox interpretation of Marcel Duchamp's work that draws on the Kabbalah.

With an introduction by Robert Motherwell and an appreciation by Jasper Johns "Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneer artists, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art. . . "In the 1920s Duchamp gave up, quit painting. He allowed, perhaps encouraged, the attendant mythology. One thought of his decision, his willing this stopping. Yet on one occasion, he said it was not like that. He spoke of breaking a leg. 'You don't mean to do it,' he said. "The Large Glass. A greenhouse for his intuition. Erotic machinery, the Bride, held in a see-through cage-'a Hilarious Picture.' Its cross references of sight and thought, the changing focus of the eyes and mind, give fresh sense to the time and space we occupy, negate any concern with art as transportation. No end is in view in this fragment of a new perspective. 'In the end you lose interest, so I didn't feel the necessity to finish it.' "He declared that he wanted to kill art ('for myself') but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, 'a new thought for that object.' "The art community feels Duchamp's presence and his absence. He has changed the condition of being here."--Jasper Johns, from Marcel Duchamp: An Appreciation

Last winter, a man tried to break Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain sculpture. The sculpted foot of Michelangelo’s David was damaged in 1991 by a purportedly mentally ill artist. With each incident, intellectuals must confront the unsettling dynamic between destruction and art. Renowned art historian Dario Gamboni is the first to tackle this weighty issue in depth, exploring specters of censorship, iconoclasm, and vandalism that surround such acts. Gamboni uncovers here a disquieting phenomenon that still thrives today worldwide. As he demonstrates through analyses of incidents occurring in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and Europe, a complex relationship exists among the evolution of modern art, destruction of artworks, and the long history of iconoclasm. From the controversial removal of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc from New York City’s Federal Plaza to suffragette protests at London’s National Gallery, Gamboni probes the concept of artist’s rights, the power of political protest and how iconoclasm sheds light on society’s relationship to art and material culture. Compelling and thought-provoking, The Destruction of Art forces us to rethink the ways that we interact with art and react to its power to shock or subdue.