The first complete catalog of Broodthaers' rebus-like poetical plaques Industrially fabricated as vacuum-formed plastic plaques, the Industrial Poemsof Marcel Broodthaers (1924-76) express the enduring fruitfulness of poetry as a paradigm in the poet-turned-artist's witty, language-oriented brand of conceptualism. These works draw on the popular visual language of commercial signage, incorporating symbols, images, letters, words and punctuation that often refer to earlier poems and artworks. As mass-manufactured signs produced in a popular material such as plastic, the Industrial Poemspartake of a visual and material clarity that belies the strongly enigmatic character of their associative semantic functioning. This 400-page volume compiles for the first time a comprehensive inventory of all the Industrial Poems. These are supplemented by a selection of Broodthaers' own writings and his "open letters," along with essays that situate the Industrial Poemsin relation to each other and the artist's oeuvre generally.

Eighteen essays written by Buchloh over the last twenty years, each looking at a single artist within the framework of specific theoretical and historical questions. Some critics view the postwar avant-garde as the empty recycling of forms and strategies from the first two decades of the twentieth century. Others view it, more positively, as a new articulation of the specific conditions of cultural production in the postwar period. Benjamin Buchloh, one of the most insightful art critics and theoreticians of recent decades, argues for a dialectical approach to these positions.This collection contains eighteen essays written by Buchloh over the last twenty years. Each looks at a single artist within the framework of specific theoretical and historical questions. The art movements covered include Nouveau Realisme in France (Arman, Yves Klein, Jacques de la Villegle) art in postwar Germany (Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter), American Fluxus and pop art (Robert Watts and Andy Warhol), minimalism and postminimal art (Michael Asher and Richard Serra), and European and American conceptual art (Daniel Buren, Dan Graham). Buchloh addresses some artists in terms of their oppositional approaches to language and painting, for example, Nancy Spero and Lawrence Weiner. About others, he asks more general questions concerning the development of models of institutional critique (Hans Haacke) and the theorization of the museum (Marcel Broodthaers); or he addresses the formation of historical memory in postconceptual art (James Coleman). One of the book's strengths is its systematic, interconnected account of the key issues of American and European artistic practice during two decades of postwar art. Another is Buchloh's method, which integrates formalist and socio-historical approaches specific to each subject.

Marcel Broodthaers's (Belgian, 1924-1976) extraordinary output across mediums placed him at the center of international activity during the transformative decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout his career, from early objects variously made of mussels, eggshells, and books of his own poetry; to his most ambitious project, the Musée d'Art Moderne. Département des Aigles; and the Décors made at the end of his life, Broodthaers occupied a unique position, often operating as both innovator and commentator. Setting a precedent for what we call installation art today, his work has had a profound influence on a broad range of contemporary artists, and he remains vitally relevant to cultural discourse at large. Published to accompany the artist's first museum retrospective in New York, Marcel Broodthaers examines the artist's work across all mediums. Essays by the exhibition organizers Christophe Cherix and Manuel Borja-Villel, along with a host of major scholars, including Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Jean François Chevrier, Thierry de Duve, and Doris Krystof provide historical and theoretical context for the artist's work. The book also features new translations of many of Broodthaers's texts.

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

A leading critic’s inside story of “the photo boom” during the crucial decades of the 1970s and 80s When Andy Grundberg landed in New York in the early 1970s as a budding writer, photography was at the margins of the contemporary art world. By 1991, when he left his post as critic for the New York Times, photography was at the vital center of artistic debate. Grundberg writes eloquently and authoritatively about photography’s “boom years,” chronicling the medium’s increasing role within the most important art movements of the time, from Earth Art and Conceptual Art to performance and video. He also traces photography’s embrace by museums and galleries, as well as its politicization in the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. Grundberg reflects on the landmark exhibitions that defined the moment and his encounters with the work of leading photographers—many of whom he knew personally—including Gordon Matta-Clark, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Mapplethorpe. He navigates crucial themes such as photography’s relationship to theory as well as feminism and artists of color. Part memoir and part history, this perspective by one of the period’s leading critics ultimately tells a larger story about the crucial decades of the 70s and 80s through the medium of photography.

Close readings of ostensibly “blank” works—from unprinted pages to silent music—that point to a new understanding of media. In No Medium, Craig Dworkin looks at works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent, writing critically and substantively about works for which there would seem to be not only nothing to see but nothing to say. Examined closely, these ostensibly contentless works of art, literature, and music point to a new understanding of media and the limits of the artistic object. Dworkin considers works predicated on blank sheets of paper, from a fictional collection of poems in Jean Cocteau's Orphée to the actual publication of a ream of typing paper as a book of poetry; he compares Robert Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning Drawing to the artist Nick Thurston's erased copy of Maurice Blanchot's The Space of Literature (in which only Thurston's marginalia were visible); and he scrutinizes the sexual politics of photographic representation and the implications of obscured or obliterated subjects of photographs. Reexamining the famous case of John Cage's 4'33”, Dworkin links Cage's composition to Rauschenberg's White Paintings, Ken Friedman's Zen for Record (and Nam June Paik's Zen for Film), and other works, offering also a “guide to further listening” that surveys more than 100 scores and recordings of “silent” music. Dworkin argues that we should understand media not as blank, base things but as social events, and that there is no medium, understood in isolation, but only and always a plurality of media: interpretive activities taking place in socially inscribed space.

Distinguished critic and scholar Geoffrey Hartman explores the usefulness of Derrida's style of close reading for English and American scholarship and establishes its relevance to the division that has arisen between European and Anglo-American critical approaches. In addition, he discusses Derrida's exegesis in relation to theological commentary.