Art Center College of Design: Graduate Theory and Criticism Department

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Advisory Board

advisoryBoard= Comprised of an academic combination of creative professionals in the art, design, and literary fields, the advisory board acts as a practical and academic resource as well as a support system for students in the Graduate Studies, Criticism and Theory program. The advisory board assembles each year in variagated forms, the shape it has taken in its inaugural year is digital- an electronic question/answer forum between students and the board. The diversity of the members of the board reflects the interactive conversations the Critical Theory program fosters between disciplines: Dmitri Siegel is a designer who, after receiving his M.F.A. from Yale, contributed as a writer for innovative publications including Adbusters, Design Observer, Dot Dot Dot, and Emigre. Publisher of Ante a journal of contemporary art and design. He is the creative director of Anathema—a magazine dedicated to the pursuit of impossible ideas. Demitri is currently working on a history of feedback.
Anne Magnusun is a performance artist, actress, and lead vocalist for the band Bongwater. She was manager of Club 57 during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a space for artists and musicians such as Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, John Sex, Joey Arias and Fab Five Freddy. She is interviewed extensively in the documentary The Nomi Song for her contribution to the career of Klaus Nomi.
Anne Goldstein is the Senior Curator at MOCA who has copiously organized an abundance of distinguished group and single exhibitions as well as special exhibitions from MOCA’s permanent collection. She has also contributed to MOCA’s scholarly texts catalogues published in conjunction with her exhibitions.
Victor Margolin became the “first person in the United States with a PhD in design history.” He is a prolific author of books, articles and essays has also organized conferences and lecture series and is currently a part of the faculty at University of Illinois at Chicago.
Micheal Ned Holte is a recent alum of the Critical Theory Program. He is a regular contributor for Arforum.com and has written for Frieze. In addition, he has curated the show, Celine and Julie Go Boating at the Anna Helwing Gallery.
Jack Bankowsky is the former editor of artforum and current editor-at-large he has served as faculty for the Yale school of art.

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Announcements

announcements= What is on the minds of the CRT program? The potential of criticism. We asked members of advisory board to respond to questions on the subject from our students. Here are some of the answers: Advisory Q%26A Dmitri Siegel What is the nature of transgression? How is it possible today? Transgression is a moving target in any field but in design the cycle between transgression and cooptation is very rapid. A year or two ago default design-using software presets, the typeface Times, designing in Excel, and so on--was transgressive. But that graphic language has become quite acceptable and even hip. Uselessness, inefficiency and malfunction are transgressive gestures that are perhaps more today. One thing that is clear however is that there is not a strict opposition between the commercial and the transgressive in design. To remain transgressive you have to constantly crisscross with the acceptable, and in design acceptability is defined in terms of commercial distribution. If you are outside of the economy and above the mess of commerce then I really question whether the word design is relevant. So transgression has to be integrated into market somehow, which requires a constant shifting of intentions and allegiances. Muddled or contradictory commercial intentions are transgressive. Flip-flopping is transgressive. Most design magazines and blogs are very far removed from any academic rigor, with some venturing on being glorified ad-copy. There appears to be something inherently "un-academic" about the forms of criticism that seem most relevant to design today. If this is true, how can academics/ critics engage themselves in this discourse, and where would such discussions be located? I assume you meant, "...verging on being..." (Academic rigor indeed.) The promotorial nature of many design publications is no accident. To understand why you have to remember that design criticism is quite young. Less than a century ago writing about "design" would have been like writing about "air conditioner repair" today. So the first generation of magazines and journals were founded with the express intention of increasing awareness and promoting the value of design. The problem is, that mission has been accomplished beyond the wildest dreams of those early publishers and writers. The influence and cultural potency of design has vastly outpaced the evolution of design criticism. There has been some progress in this area since the end of the Internet bubble--a lot of techno-euphorists and new economy cheerleaders have been weeded out. I have been encouraged by several new design blogs. After the initial wave of "community" sites (which bore me to death) there seems to be a generation of online journals and blogs that are more rigorous. The telltale signs of their seriousness are that they do not allow comments and they are not focused on publishing every day. I've heard people complain that this means they are not "technically" blogs, but I find it difficult to be in the least bit precious about something with a name like blog. As far as where to position new design criticism I think you have to make your own location. The same kind of dance with commercialism that I described above is relevant here as well. Why aren't there articles about design in Sports Illustrated or National Geographic? To paraphrase an imaginary power-point presentation on the subject, "The penetration of design writing should match the saturation of design itself." What does it mean to have a field where the practitioners are also the writers? It seems like there are two ways of approaching this question. One possibility is that design criticism is wholly different from other forms of criticism and that it will always involve making as opposed to just writing. You can see the outlines of this kind of mutant criticism in self-initiated projects that are critical not just in their rhetoric, but in their form and their economic posture. The other is that the writer/maker represents a sort of juvenile phase in design criticism. The designer/writer can't help but to somehow justify their own work with their writing. A designer's writing is inherently compromised. People say their writing is "informed" by their practice but it's very likely that their strengths as a writer are being hampered by the dull realities of their job. And I say that as a design/writer. One positive aspect of this phase, however, is that there is not a real boundary between critics and makers. The critics don't have their own schools of thought, professional organizations and departments, and this is ultimately a very healthy condition. Eventually a body of design writing will accumulate that can sustain full-time critics. I hope that when it does they will not become completely isolated from design practitioners. What is the practice of criticism in relation to the economy or marketing of art? Criticism is kind of like a DVD extra to a work of art or design. It is an experience in and of itself and can add context and value; but it would not exist without the original work. That's not to say that it is entirely dependent on the original work.
Is there an ethics of criticism? I think ethics are a personal matter, so critics can have ethics but criticism can't. Here is a quick set of ethics I try to work by: Get to work early. Don't be boring. Check your facts. Check your spelling. Victor Margolin
What is the nature of transgression? How is it possible today? I'm not sure what you mean by transgression, which usually means a violation of norms. But what norms? The Bush administration transgresses against the norms of decency, honesty, and community. As they have shown, it is quite possible? Are we talking about transgression against sexual norms? There is plenty of that as well. The transgressions I am most concerned about are those against the liberal democratic norms of community and collective well being. Most design magazines and blogs are very far removed from any academic rigor, with some venturing on being glorified ad-copy. There appears to be something inherently "un-academic" about the forms of criticism that seem most relevant to design today. If this is true, how can academics/ critics engage themselves in this discourse, and where would such discussions be located? What does it mean to have a field where the practitioners are also the writers? I'm not sure who defines the norms of criticism. Before blogs, where anyone could post his or her views, critics had to be accepted by a publication and run a gauntlet of opinions held by a seasoned editorial staff. That is still true for many publications. Blog critics are often self-appointed and reading them is hit or miss. Some people confuse thoughtful criticism with uninformed opinion. I am all for designers being writers but good writing requires training and frequently editing. What is the practice of criticism in relation to the economy or marketing of art? Criticism, when it is independent establishes positions from which to evaluate art and design. Critical opinion should be independent of market forces but sometimes critics are directly or indirectly bought off with a free trip or even a Hershey bar. Is there an ethics of criticism? Yes. Think about William Morris. He joined designing inextricably with the ethics of living. Morris is a great model for all subsequent design critics. Ideally criticism is concerned with how art and design represent values for living. These include aesthetics, politics, labor policies, environmental policies and the like. No discourse is more important than criticism. Michael Ned Holte What is the nature of transgression? How is it possible today? I suppose, by definition, transgression is possible wherever boundaries are in place. There is no shortage of boundaries-whether explicit or implicit-in contemporary culture. Still, our culture is increasingly numb to the kind of shock tactics frequently defined as "transgressive." In a thoroughly mediated society transgression should perhaps operate more quietly, stealthily, with less of the expected bombast. The Yes Men point to this possibility, by exposing (if not opening) the seams of corporate media culture from within, and Stephen Colbert, who recently delivered the most withering attack on President Bush has received-to his face-recently proved satire remains a powerful secret weapon in an era short on humor. Most design magazines and blogs are very far removed from any academic rigor, with some venturing on being glorified ad-copy. There appears to be something inherently "un-academic" about the forms of criticism that seem most relevant to design today. If this is true, how can academics/ critics engage themselves in this discourse, and where would such discussions be located? What does it mean to have a field where the practitioners are also the writers? Design criticism is tied to use value or function, whereas art criticism determines value in the "useless." Therefore, design criticism, at least in part, must engage with questions of the public served by the design in question. Art criticism is tied to the academic discipline of aesthetics; design criticism has a less certain relationship to academia, and therefore it makes sense that it would appear, if not flourish, in blogs which are public forums. I actually think there are many good outlets for rigorous, academic design criticism. New magazines (very retrograde, I know) are emerging every year, and as museums increasingly devote attention to design, opportunity for serious research and writing will increase in kind. But, the public will always be a consideration in design, and serious criticism must account for it. What is the practice of criticism in relation to the economy or marketing of art? The realist must acknowledge that criticism takes part in the economy of art. For better or worse, the ability of a critic to ruin an artist's career seems entirely unlikely now; criticism is so easily transformed into publicity. Is there an ethics of criticism? I hope so. But, it would be difficult to define: the community served by criticism is extremely small, inbred, and overdetermined. Critics must operate on "good faith" and critical judgment must be achieved through serious engagement with the work in question. Following from my previous answer, I think "an ethics of criticism" would entail an acknowledgement of the art market and its apparatus, which includes criticism. Therefore, an ethics of criticism begins with self-criticality.

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Curriculum

curriculum= The six term curriculum promotes writing and research in relation to diverse cultural practices. It is structured to offer students choice and flexibility in exploring their interests.
The curriculum follows a three-term year ­ two full terms in spring and fall, and one short intensive seven-week term in the summer. Students are required to take 90 units for graduation ­ 15 units per term.
The fall and spring terms feature a required methods seminar that explores the history and theory of visual culture through an ongoing dialogue between two professors around a chosen theme. The summer term features a required intensive seminar with prominent guest faculty.
Other coursework is comprised of:
Writing workshop (taken every term): This intensive writing seminar is a forum where students present writing to their colleagues, allowing for general and focused feedback. Emphasis is placed on the discussion of the ideas presented, the presentation of content, as well as the structure and methods of research. Students may opt out of the writing workshop in their third term.
Interdisciplinary critiques and research: (to be taken at least twice) These courses offer the opportunity for students to have an exchange between their own developing critical and theoretical thought and the various forms of practice found within Art Center's other grad programs.
Seminars:
Various seminars addressing diverse topics are offered within the program every term. Students may also take seminars or courses offered throughout Art Center's graduate and undergraduate program, subject to approval during advising.
One-on-one tutorials: These courses allow students to structure directed readings and writing around subjects of their own choosing. They demand student initiative in conjunction with individual faculty advisement. These tutorials may be used to strengthen certain areas of knowledge, or explore specific areas of interest.
Graduate Seminar: This weekly event consists of a three-hour lecture from well-known, established or young, up and coming artists, critics, designers and theorists from various fields. Graduate seminar is mandatory but may be taken for "0"credits if needed.
Internships: Students are encouraged to explore the diverse possibilities for critical writing and research in Los Angeles cultural institutions. The program will provide assistance in this process. Internships may be part time or full time.
Course units are distributed as follows: Methods Seminar___________(3 credits) Writing Workshop___________(3 credits) Graduate Seminar___________(0 or 3 credits) Two electives______________(3 credits each)
Writing Workshop___________(3 credits) Graduate Seminar___________(0 or 3 credits) MA Thesis Tutorial_________(one per committee member for 9 credits)
In addition, faculty are available for meetings on a regular basis, and consistent discussion with faculty (beyond required meetings with core faculty) is strongly encouraged.

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Core Courses

coreCourses= Writing Workshop The writing workshop is a vital component of the CRT program where students present writing for peer and faculty critique and analysis. The goal of the seminar is to develop the overlapping skills of active, critical reading combined with the discourse of critical writing.
Graduate Seminar This course is a visiting lecture series held every Tuesday evening in conjunction with the Graduate Fine Art program. Guests include internationally recognized artists, critics, art historians, architects, filmmakers, writers from Los Angles and around the globe. The course is mandatory every term
Publishing Workshop The Publishing Workshop is a rigorous introduction to the world of publishing. It is a total immersion seminar in which students learn about the fundamental elements of book, magazines and electronic publishing through a tightly organized schedule of lectures, seminars, workshops and completing professionally evaluated assignments. Guest lecturers and professionals from different areas of the field of publishing are invited to share their experiences with the group. In addition to the lecturers, seminars and visiting professionals, the workshop concentrates on the fundamentals of preparing a piece of writing for publication. We will learn and practice the fundamentals of copyediting, proofreading and manuscript editing. These scripts will be applied to a number of ongoing projects. The publishing workshop is offered every summer term.
Methods Seminar This course explores the history and theory of visual cultures through an ongoing dialogue between two porfessors around a chosen theme. The methods seminar is offered in spring and fall. Examples of recent topics include:
Methods Seminar: Unworking Given: Design has an almost viral ability to be everywhere, all-at-once, instantaneously anything. What would it mean, then, to reevaluate unworkability and unproductivity as affirming actions? In this course we will interrogate-potentially, celebrate-what the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, appropriating Bataille, has termed désoeuvrement or unworking. Through a series of historical literary-theoretical and design issues, with crucial (un)practical examples-from Brasilia and Tati's Playtime to Situationist and punk (an)aesthetics-we will attempt to plot a course of study grappling with destabilization, sabotage, and the terroristic. When, as Avital Ronell, even our leisure activities have been turned into labor (i.e., "working out"), what would it mean to "prefer not to" be tractable or to do anything.
Methods Seminar: Ingrid Caven After a silence of almost twenty-five years, Jean-Jacques Schuhl published Ingrid Caven, the title borrowed from actress, singer, muse to Yves Saint-Laurent, wife of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Schuhl's own confidante, Ingrid Caven. We will use Schuhl's text as the spider creating a web whose parts secure themselves on various supports - post-War II European culture; film and theatrical performance; 1970s decadence and celebrity; and fashion design, among others - as a way to capture and connect some remaining vitality of literature and art in a culture ready, perhaps, to abandon it. While the course will avail itself of various modes of inquiry and require a negotiation of concerns - from text to textile, from vocality to sexuality - it will be poised and posed to address the matter, worth, and responsibility of culture after decades of counterculture and in a moment shadowed by terrorism. This is a search for a tonality for the age.
Methods: Feminism In the 1960s and 1970s the practices of women artists entered the historical arena in significant if still underrepresented form. Women entered art schools in record numbers and began to ask questions of equality and representation within the institutions of art. The result is a complex array of protest, collaboration, and production that remains relatively unresolved within the historical canon. This course will take these practices as its focus, with an eye to the broader and multifaceted discourse of feminism at large. Designed in relation to the seminal exhibition, Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution, opening at The Museum of Contemporary Art in March, this course will examine the work of women in the late twentieth century and the resultant discursive labyrinth that emerges between ideas of the female, feminine, and feminist. We will also consider issues of reception and how histories are constructed within the realm of the visual arts.
Summer Seminar This course features prominent guest faculty to anchor the Criticism and Theory program's intensive summer term. Launched in 2006, the first guest was Tirdad Zolghadr, an internationally recognized critic and curator,who is an editor of Bidoun magazine and one of the curators of Manifesta 6. Zolghadr's seminar was Radical Chic, a course which examines various ways in which contemporary art partakes in the commodification and institutionalization of radical critique, drawing on examples from the mise-en-scene of cultural difference, and, finally addressing unspoken issues of class structure in the arts. Using the example of a group exhibition in Geneva and Tehran entitled Ethnic Marketing: Art, Globalization and Intercultural Supply and Demand, we shall begin by analyzing the contradiction between the ideal of artistic autonomy and the premise that art always testifies to a sociocultural environment. This discussion allows us to broach questions of biography and the authorial voice, but also the (globalization of the) globalization debate. Here, we shall consider the implications of various traditions of site-specificity, also with regard to matters of temporality, architecture and ideologies of public space.

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Elective Courses

electiveCourses= Topics in History This course addresses various arenas in the history of art and design.
Topics in History: Unwritten Histories Why and how are some artists written into art history while other remain in the margins? To answer this question we will be "writing" and assembling an anthology of texts by and about artists whose careers or major works remain undervalued, under- or unacknowledged, or unknown. In addition to doing a class presentation on a single artist, students will assemble readings by and on artists which will them form the core of an anthology for and from the class. Class will be organized around screenings, presentations, and discussion. Artists under discussion will include: Douglas Huebler, Lee Lozano, Guy de Cointet, Sturtevant, Steven Parrino, Ree Morton, Jack Goldstein, Cady Noland, George Kuchar, Laurie Parsons, Christopher D'Arcangelo, Betty Tompkins, Robert Grosvenor, Adrian Piper, Tony Labat, Vincent Fecteau, Alex Bag.
Topics in History: Criticism and Practice in Postwar Art This course will consider various issues in the history of postwar visual culture through a close examination of the critical voices that both reflected and defined this period. We will begin by tracing the complexities of the presence of modernism in postwar America and continue into the twenty-first century. Crucial to this study will be the rise in artists' voices during this period and the shifting role of critical texts in relation to practice. The course will be arranged around various critical nodes including: minimalism, the monochrome, institutional critique, pop, the rise of feminist practice in the seventies, the recurrent death of painting, performance and video, site and installation, etc. In addition, careful attention will be granted to the historical contexts of this critical constellation. Voices that may be considered include: Bochner, Buchloh, Buren, Crow, Greenberg, Fried, Graham, Higgins, Judd, Kaprow, Krauss, Lippard, Morris, Piper, Rainer, Reinhardt, Relyea, Rosenberg, Schapiro, Schneemann, Shiff, Smithson, Steinberg, Tumlir, Crow, et al.
Topics in History: Robert Rauschenberg Overlooked Rauschenberg has revealed himself over the years to be a much more complicated and thoughtful artist than typically portrayed by many critics. The terms random, chance and creative chaos have been applied liberally to his work. The terms are misleading. Rauschenberg accumulates, sorts and selects information. The way he organizes his studio, uses expert collaborators etc. are signs that lie behind the seeming spontaneity of the art. Yet all these organizational systems are set up to capture the surface of life. The goal of the seminar is to better understand the artist's creative process and from that understanding to attempt to provide different interpretations of his work in relation to modern history.
Topics in History: Performance 101 This course will study a dozen or so key performance-based events and/or performers since the early 1960s through the 1990s as historical case studies in order to build a critical vocabulary for thinking about and through performance and performance theory. The class will use film, video, documents, journals, and manifestos in addition to critical/theoretical texts in order to consider the work of artists and performers availing themselves of dance, theater, comedy, actions, and environments to question the problems of presence, movement, being, duration, and the various dynamics of performatitivty.
Topics in History: Warhol: Theories An advanced seminar on the work and life of Andy Warhol attempting to consider all aspects of his career: painting, filmmaking, writing, collecting, business, socializing. Warhol will be put in the context of his time, exploring and complicating his relation to other artists and art movements. The aftershock of Warhol\'s work--its dystopic, entropic thrall; its \"yes\"? to life--andthe ramifications for contemporary art making will be an on-goingconcern in the course. We will devote much of thinking about Warholthrough screenings of his films and their rethinking of Hollywood and avant-garde theatrical precedents
Topics in Theory This course provides careful reading and in depth analysis of historical and contemporary theoretical texts, with an eye to how such texts might provide models of and for theoretical practice in design, writing, and art.
Topics in Theory: Hands, Touch, Tactility This course is designed to be an introduction to contemporary theory. It will not, however, be a survey. We will instead diagram the different approaches and methods of three major post-structuralist theorists to an exemplary problem: "tactility." Recent essays on Pollock by Rosalind Krauss and T.J. Clark reconsidering the theme of tactility echo periodic references in art criticism to a "return of the hand" in contemporary painting. This historical cycle-the "retreat of the hand" (Leroi-Gouhran) and its predictable "return"-may point to a complex historical and ontological readjustment of the relation between the hand and the eye that cannot be reduced to simply formal problems within the field of painting or art more generally. At the very moment Greenberg was formulating a post-painterly "reaction against the 'handwriting' and 'gestures' of painterly abstraction," the French ethnologist André Leroi-Gouhran was tying what he saw as an atrophy of the hand to the body's integration into the machinic processes of industrial capitalism and an oddly misnamed "manu-facture." It is not by chance that, a year later, one of the foundational texts of so-called "post-structuralist" theory-Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology-devoted several decisive pages to Leroi-Gouhran's analysis of the coordination of the hand and eye, touch and vision, the manual and optical.
Topics in Theory: The "Discipline" of Phenomenology This class is meant both as introduction to the "discipline" of phenomenology as well as reconsideration of what should constitute "contemporary" theory. It will consist of short, extremely close readings of key texts from the entirety of the tradition phenomenology claims for itself, beginning with Descartes, passing through Kant and Husserl, then onward from Heidegger to Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. The themes to be addressed include the problems of method (from Descartes' doubt to Husserl's "epochè"), mood or emotion, perception and praxis, the "transcendental aesthetic" (space and time) from Kant to Heidegger, the "other" and its "gaze", and the work of art.
Topics in Theory Evil Reason: Sade, Lautreamont and the Image of Cruelty How does one look at the photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib? What are the representational politics of such images? In this course, we will return to a degree zero of representations and thinking about cruelty-its power and sexual dynamics: the Marquis de Sade. The course will begin with Pasolini's Salò, Gary Indiana's study the film, and Klaus Theweleit's recent essay on sexual torture and Abu Ghraib. We will then read the entirety of Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. Three key critical texts will follow: Lacan's "Kant with Sade"; Klossowski's Sade My Neighbor; and Blanchot's Sade and Lautréamont. To conclude we will slant the focus from cruelty to evil with a close reading of Lautréamont's Maldoror and bring things into the contemporary with Gary Indiana's study of media and murder, Three Month Fever. This is an advanced level class. Weekly discussion is required in addition to a final term paper.
Topics in theory: Poust Seminar Over two terms, we will read the entirety of Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Essays by Benjamin, Beckett, Barthes, Silverman, a consideration of Proust's lesbianism, and other readings will pamper us during the journey.
Other seminars:
Film and Narrative One product of the impact of structuralism and post-structuralism on cultural studies and sociology has been a greater awareness of the significance of narrative. Narrative structure has become a topic in its own right in a way that was not at all common in pre-structuralist work. This course looks at narrative in the context of film, an area which has received a good deal of attention over the past three decades. For most of the course we shall be working with particular film narratives. However, as we become involved in this analysis you will feel the need for some background reading in film theory and narrative theory, to which end a full bibliography will be provided at the beginning of the course.
Different Critical Voices The goal of the course is to examine, and perhaps redefine different kinds of critical writing. As boundaries between genres - critical and creative writing, personal and public, argumentation and performance literary and non-literary - have merged and fused, we will re-examine the nature of the critical voice. The seminar will offer readings coupled with a writing workshop to help students explore and expand the shifting grounds of possibility for their own writing. Readings will range from Joan Didion, Elizabeth Hardwick, Cathy Acker, Dave Hickey, Wayne Koestenbaum, Richard Prince, Anne Burdick and more.
Writing the '80s Criticism, theory, artists' writings, journalism and literature: The eighties produced copious texts that have been used to define art in the 1980s By examining a number of key texts along with some that are not so well-known, the seminar will encourage students to reposition themselves in relation to the decade labeled "the Eighties".

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Upcoming Events

events= January 16th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Penny Florence
January 23rd, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Anne Collier
January 30th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Rachel Kushner
February 1st, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Tom Mitchell
February 6th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Alain Badiou
February 8, 2007
Students and Alum launch party at the Mountain
February 13th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
William Fox
February 20th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Connie Butler
February 27th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Ricky Swallow
March 6th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Jutta Koether
March 9, 2007
Walthrough of WACK! With Connie Butler
March 13th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Eric Von Lieshout
March 20th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Michael Govan
March 27th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Willem de Rooij
April 3rd, 2007
Graduate Seminar
TBD
April 4, 2007
Trisha Donnelly visits CRT
April 10th, 2007
Graduate Seminar
Violet Hopkins
May 15, 2007
Dara Birnbaum in residence
June 25, 2007
Wayne Kostenbaum in residence

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Faculty

faculty= CORE FACULTY:
Jane McFadden Director, Graduate Studies, Criticism and Theory Ph.D, University of Texas at Austin. Art Historian of modern and contemporary art whose work focuses on the interdisciplinary practices of the 1960s. Writer, various publications on modern and contemporary art.
Bruce Hainley Associate Director Graduate Studies, Criticism and Theory Ph.D. Yale University. Contributing editor, Artforum. Author, Foul Mouth (2nd Cannons, 2006); and, with John Waters, Art – A Sex Book (Thames and Hudson, 2003). Writer, Frieze, Parkett, and other publications on contemporary art and culture. Curator, “Warhol on Screen,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in conjunction with American Cinematheque, Los Angeles. Co-curated, “Mise-en-Scéne: New L.A. Sculpture,” Santa Monica Museum of Art.
Rosetta Brooks PhD London University. Art critic, curator and publisher. Formerly founder and editor of the London-based art and cultural magazine, ZG. Authored the survey essay on Richard Prince for the Phaedon Press monograph series, 2003. Written numerous articles for art magazines (Artforum, Frieze, Parkett, Flash Art) and has written major catalogue essays for the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, The National Art Gallery in Washington DC, MOCA in Los Angeles, the Victoria and Albert in London, the Kunstalle in Dusseldorf.
Amy Gerstler M.F.A., Bennington College. Writing seminars, Bennington College. Writer of poetry, journalism, nonfiction. Previous or current instructor: USC, UC Irvine, University of Utah, California Institute of the Arts, Pitzer College, Antioch West, Bennington College. Exhibition catalog essays, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles). Former Artforum contributor. Publications: 13 books, including Medicine, Ghost Girl, and Bitter Angel. Awards: National Book Critics Circle Award, California Book Award in poetry.
ADJUNCT FACULTY:
Jason Smith Ph.D. University of California, Irvine. Published texts on Jean-Luc Nancy, Henri Lefebvre and Louis Althusser. Presently writing a book-length manuscript on Derrida's relation to Marxism. Interests include post-Kantian continental philosophy, French and American literature. Previous instructor at UC-Irvine and Occidental College. (Stat)
Mark Breitenberg Ph.D., University of California, San Diego. Dean of Undergraduate Education at Art Center. Member of the Executive Board of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). Author of Anxious Masculinity (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and many scholarly articles on Shakespeare, gender and sexuality, literary history, and Reformation poetics, as well as articles on design education and pedagogy. (as is)
Peter Lunenfeld B.A. Columbia University, M.A. SUNY at Buffalo, Ph.D. UCLA. Writer/critic specializing in the history and theory of media technologies. Founder, Mediawork: The Southern California New Media Working Group. Director, Institute for Technology and Aesthetics (ITA). Author: USER: InfoTechnoDemo (2005), Snap to Grid: A User's Guide to Digital Arts, Media and Cultures (2000). Editor, The Digital Dialectic: New Essays in New Media (1999). He is the editorial director of the highly designed Mediawork pamphlet series for the MIT Press. These "theoretical fetish objects" cover the intersections of art, design, technology, and market culture http://mitpress.mit.edu/mediawork.
Eva Forgacs Ph.D., Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Critic, essayist, art historian. Author, Between Worlds. Central European Avant-Gardes 1910-1930 (The MIT Press, 2002), The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics (CEU Press, 1995). Numerous essays and reviews in edited volumes and journals. Former professor, Hungarian Academy of Crafts and Design, UCLA, College of Santa Fe. Former editor, Ars Decorativa. Former curator, Hungarian Museum of Decorative Arts. Guest curator, Getty Research Institute, Lyndon House Art Center, Georgia.
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe NDD (Painting,) Tunbridge Wells; ATC, London; MFA, Florida State Profession Artist, Critic Exhibitions (Selected) Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo; Museo Barjolo, Gijon; Bronx Museum; Dade County Museum; ICA, Boston; ICA, London; Lincoln Center; Long Beach Museum; MoCA; P.S.1; Phillips Collection; Portland Center for the Visual Arts; Queens Museum; Gallerie Rahmel, Cologne; San Francisco Museum. Gallery representation Lightbox, L.A.; Gray-Kapernikus, N.Y. Major Publications Immanence and Contradiction (1986); Beyond Piety (1995); Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime (2000); Frank Gehry, The City and Music (2001) Awards Francis Greenberger Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts; Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art or Architectural Criticism Fellowships Guggenheim Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts Tutor Royal Academy, London Board Member IAWIS Contributing Editor Bomb Magazine
William Jones M.F.A.,California Institute of the Arts. Films: Finished, Massillon, Selected videos: “Is It Really So Strange.” Numerous exhbitions
Dmitri Siegel M.F.A., Yale University. Writer for various publications including Adbusters, Design Observer, Dot Dot Dot, and Emigre. Publisher of Ante a journal of contemporary art and design. Creative director of Anathema-a magazine dedicated to the pursuit of impossible ideas. Currently working on a history of feedback.

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory:Links

links= .COMmentary.com
A bi-monthly newsletter of visual, literary %26 cultural criticism.
Art Center Graduate Studies

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Relevant Links

publications= Jane McFadden
essays in books: “Earthquakes, Photoscapes, and Oz: Walter de Maria’s Conceptual Practice,” Alison Green and Lucy Soutter, eds., The C-Word, Or Why We Should Care About Conceptual Art (forthcoming 2007) “Los Angeles: Here and There, Then and Now,” LA Artland. London: Black Dog Publishers, 2005 articles in journals: “Towards Site” (forthcoming Grey Room 2007) magazines: “On Museums Handling History.” X-tra: Contemporary Art Quarterly. Vol.7, No.1 (Fall 2004) museum publications: Monique Van Genderen, UCLA Hammer Museum, 2006 “Manny Farber.” Twentieth Century American Art. Austin: Blanton Museum of Art, 2004 lectures/panels Co-organizer (with Andrew Perchuk and John Welchman), The Aesthetics of Risk, The Getty Institute and the Southern California Consortium of Art Schools (SoCCAS), April 2006 “Hearing Process, Tuning Space: Thoughts on Minimalisms in the 1960s,” Minimalist Jukebox: From Intonation to Collaboration, Getty Research Institute, March 2006 Moderator, State of the Independents, Beyond Baroque, March 2006 “Towards Site,” Art Institute of Chicago/De Paul University, Chicago, Illinois, October 2005 “Writing and Criticism for the Fields of Art and Design,” Art Institute of Chicago, October 2005 Moderator, “Partnerships at the Intersection of Art, Design and Science,” Culture Jam: Grantmakers in the Arts 2005 Symposium, CalTech, October 2005 “From the Desert to the Digital: Sites of Practice in the Visual Arts,” International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, August 2005
Bruce Hainley
books Foul Mouth. 2nd Cannons, 2006 Art—A Sex Book. Co-authored with John Waters. Thames and Hudson, 2003. magazine articles “Just Say Yes (on Liza With A ‘Z’).” Artforum. March 2006. “Over and Out.” Parkett, #77, 2006. catalogue essays “No Child Left Behind.” In Whitney Biennial 2006 catalogue. Whitney Museum of American Art, 2006. “Daniel Buren’s It Rains, It Snows, It Paints by Kate Moss.” In Anselm Reyle: Ars Nova. Kunsthalle Zurich, 2006. panels Keynote Address. “The Critical Condition.” Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, Canada, 2006. “I’m Not Hard Yet.” Panel on Destricted (Artists Make Porn). Tate Modern, London, 2006.
Rosetta Brooks
book essays “Sighs and Whispers in Bloomingdales” (fashion photographs by Guy Bourdin for Bloomingdale’s lingerie dept.) pubd. In The Power of Fashion: About Design and Meaning, ArtEZ Press, 2005 “From History to Memory: The Missing Link”. Introduction and essay in Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia by Richard Prince, pubd. by Minneola Press magazine articles “Round the Block Once or Twice: A conversation with Robert Rauschenberg”, pubd. In Modern Painters Dec.2005/Jan. 2006 “A Fine Disregard: the art of Sharon Lockhart”, pubd in Afterall, # 8,2003 catalogue essays “Keeping it Real” pubd. in Kienholz, Works 1963 -2004, Baltic Museum, UK in association with Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney “The Gluts: Robert Rauschenberg”, introduction for exhibition in association with presentation of Julio Gonzalez prize, pubd. by IVAM, Valencia, Spain “Rip It Up, Cut It Out, Rend It Asunder”. Catalogue essay for Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years, Barbican Art Gallery, London, June, 2007 (forthcoming) panels “Don’t Piss on My Shoe and Call it Rain”, paper presented at a panel entitled The Pathology of Criticism, Newcastle upon Tyne University, England, 2005 Moderator on panel entitled “Constructing Youth” at Otis College of Art and Design, 2003
Amy Gerstler
books: Ghost Girl. Penguin, 2004. Medicine. Penguin, 2000. art catalog essays: “Marnie Weber’s Intimate Immensities.” In Marnie Weber: From the Dust Room. Luckman Gallery, Cal State Los Angeles, 2005. “Whither This Golden Glow?” In Lee Mullican: An Abundant Harvest of Sun. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 2005. magazine articles: “Man in Motion: Video Artist Doug Aitken.” In Los Angeles Magazine, November, 2000. “Jim Shaw.” In Artforum, April 1998. essays: Introduction to: Light and Shade by Tom Clark. Coffee House Press, 2006. “A Eulogy of Sorts” in The Seneca Review. Vol. XXIX, #2. October, 1999.

Art Center College of Design: MA Criticism and Theory: Reading List

readinglist=
Download PDF Version
Recommended Reading (Alphabetical Order)
Alberro, Alexander, ed. RECORDING CONCEPTUAL ART: EARLY INTERVIEWS with BARRY, HUEBLER, KALTENBACH, LeWITT, MORRIS, OPPENHEIM, SIEGELAUB, SMITHSON, and WEINER by PATRICIA
NORVELL. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2001.
Als, Hilton. THE WOMEN. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.
Augé, Marc. NON-PLACES: INTRODUCTION TO AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF SUPERMODERNITY. New York: Verso, 1995.
Ashbery, John. SELECTED PROSE. Ed. Eugene Richie. Ann Arbor: The Univeristy of Michigan Press, 2004.
[great American poet writes clear whip smart pieces about French writers and filmmakers, fellow poets, art, etc.]
Bachelard, Gaston. THE POETICS OF SPACE. Beacon Press, April 1969.
[gorgeous dreamy classic with section titles like: “the house from cellar to garret, the significance of the hut”, “nests”, “shells”, “miniature,” “drawers, chests and wardrobes.”]
Badiou, Alain. THE CENTURY. Trans. Alberto Toscano. Cambridge: Polity, Forthcoming.
Banham, P. Reyner. SCENES IN AMERICA DESERTA. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989. [First published in 1982 by Gibbs M. Smith.]
Barthes, Roland. A LOVER'S DISCOURSE--FRAGMENTS. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978.
CAMERA LUCIDA: REFLECTIONS ON PHOTOGRAPHY. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981.
THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.
ROLAND BARTHES. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
Bataille, George. EROTISM, DEATH and SENSUALITY. Trans. by Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986.
Literature and Evil. Trans. by Alastair Hamilton. London: Marion Boyars, 1989.
Beckett, Samuel. KRAPP’S LAST TAPE. The Grove Press, 1960.
PROUST. New York: The Grove Press, 1957.
Benjamin, Walter. THE ARCADES PROJECT. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1999.
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility.”
Bishop, Elizabeth. THE COMPLETE POEMS 1927-1979. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983.
Blanchot, Maurice. THE GAZE OF ORPHEUS AND OTHER LITERARY ESSAYS.
Preface by Geoffrey Hartman, Trans. by Lydia Davis. Edited with an afterword by P. Adams Sitney. Barrytown: Station Hill Press, 1981.
“Two Versions of the Imaginary.” From THE SPACE OF LITERATURE. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
THE WRITING OF THE DISASTER. Trans. by Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
Boltanski, Luc and Gregory Elliott. THE NEW SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM. Trans. by Eve Chiapello. London: Verso, 2006.
Broyard, Anatole. WHEN KAFKA WAS THE RAGE. Clarkson Potter, 1993.
[portrait of a milieu: an amazingly written memoir from the trenches at the height of Greenwich village art scene in the late 1940s which was an intense happening time, man.]
Bydler, Charlotte. GLOBAL ARTWORLD, INC.: ON THE GLOBALIZATION OF CONTEMPORARY ART. 2004.
Cage, John. SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.
Calvino, Italo. INVISIBLE CITIES. Italian edition (original title: Le città invisibili), Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., 1972. English edition translated by William Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1974.
Carson, Anne. GLASS, IRONY AND GOD. New York: New Directions, 1995.
ECONOMY OF THE UNLOST (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Clark, T. J. FAREWELL TO AN IDEA: EPISODES FROM A HISTORY OF MODERNISM. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999.
Cooper, Dennis. GOD JR. New York: Black Cat, 2005.
Davis, Lydia. BREAK IT DOWN. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.
THE END OF THE STORY. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.
De Certeau, Michel. THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Translated by Steven Rendall. [Originally published 1974.]
De Cervantes, Miguel. DON QUIXOTE. Countless editions.
Deleuze, Gilles. NEGOTIATIONS. Trans. Martin Joughen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Derian, James Der, ed. THE VIRILIO READER. London: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.
Dick, Phillip K. THE SIMULACRA (1964). New York: Vintage Press, 2002.
Didion, Joan. DEMOCRACY. New York, 1984.
Slouching Toward Bethlehem. New York: Dell, 1.
The White Album. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.969.
Dyer, Geoff. THE ONGOING MOMENT. New York: Pantheon, 2005.
[brilliant brit goes on gaga riffs about photography.]
Ellman, Richard, ed. THE ARTIST AS CRITIC: CRITICAL WRITINGS OF OSCAR WILDE. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1998 (reprint).
Foucault, Michel. ETHICS: AESTHETICS, METHOD, and EPISTEMOLOGY: ESSENTIAL WORKS OF FOUCAUT, 1954-1984. Volume 2. Paul Rabinow, series editor. New York: New Press, 1997-2000.
Frampton, Hollis. CIRCLES OF CONFUSION: FILM PHOTOGRAPHY VIDEO: TEXTS 1968-1980. Rochester: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1983.
Fried, Michael. ART AND OBJECTHOOD: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Gass, William. ON BEING BLUE. Boston: David R. Godine, 1976.
[slim book length poeticmeditation on the color and state of being of blue by wild minded philosophy professor, essayist and fiction writer.]
Genet, Jean. FRAGMENTS OF THE ARTWORK. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy. BEYOND PIETY: CRITICAL ESSAYS ON THE VISUAL ARTS, 1986-1993. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Greenberg, Clement. ART AND CULTURE. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.
Groys, Boris and Zdenka Badovinac, Barbara Vanderlinden. BORIS GROYS: THE ART JUDGEMENT SHOW. Brussels: Roomade, 2002.
Hardwick, Elizabeth. AMERICAN FICTIONS. New York: Modern Library, 2001.
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS. New York: New York Review Books, 2003 (reprint).
Harris, Jonathan. THE NEW ART HISTORY: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. Florence, KY: Routledge, 2001.
Harrison and Wood, editors. ART IN THEORY. Blackwell Publishers, 2000.
[super hefty compendium of all kinds of art theory documents that can lead to further researches]
Hertz, Richard. JACK GOLDSTEIN AND THE CALARTS MAFIA. Ojai: Minneola Press, 2003.
Hickey, Dave. AIR GUITAR Los Angeles: Art Issues. Press, 1997.
Hickey, Dave. THE INVISIBLE DRAGON: FOUR ESSAYS ON BEAUTY. Los Angeles: Art Issues, Press, 1993.
Hoberman, J. and Edward Leffingwell, eds. WAIT FOR ME AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL: THE WRITINGS OF JACK SMITH. New York and London: High Risk Books, 1997.
Kelley, Mike. FOUL PERFECTION. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
Kincaid, Jamaica. MY BROTHER. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.
Kluge, Alexander. LEARNING PROCESSES WITH A DEADLY OUTCOME. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
Koestenbaum, Wayne. ANDY WARHOL. New York: Viking/Penguin, 2001.
CLEAVAGE: ESSAYS ON SEX, STARS, and AESTHETICS. New York: Ballentine Books, 2000.
Krauss, Rosalind E.. THE ORIGINALITY OF THE AVANT-GARDE AND OTHER MODERNIST MYTHS. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.
Lawrence, D. H. STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE. New York: Penguin (reprint), 1991.
[strange, hyper intelligent, authorative, idiosyncratic essays on Melville, and DH’s take on what being American is.]
Loos, Adolf. ORNAMENT AND CRIME: SELECTED ESSAYS. California: Ariadne Press, 1995. (originally published 1908).
Lopate, Phillip, ed. AMERICAN MOVIE CRITICS. Library of America, 2006.
[essay master collects a history of American film writing fromits beginnings to the current moment, terrific selections and intros.]
THE ART OF THE PERSONAL ESSAY. New York: Doubleday, 1997.
[indispensable essay collection from antiquity till modern times, packed with classics and gems—a personal essay bible.]
MacCannell, Dean. THE TOURIST: A NEW THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS. New York: Schocken Books, 1976.
Malcolm, Janet. “Profiles: A Girl of the Zeitgeist.” (Parts I and II), New Yorker October 20, 1986, 1986 + October 27, 1986.
Marcus, Greil. LIPSTICK TRACES: A SECRET HISTORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Marias, Javier. TOMORROW IN THE BATTLE THINK OF ME. Trans. Margaret Jull Costa. New York: New Directions, 2001.
McDonald, Boyd. CRUISING THE MOVIES: A SEXUAL GUIDE TO "OLDIES" ON TV. New York: Gay Presses of New York, 1985.
Miller, John. THE PRICE CLUB: SELECTED WRITINGS (1977-1998). Geneva/Dijon: JPR Editions, 2000.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, vol 6. no.5, 1976.
Nabokov, Vladimir. LECTURES ON LITERATURE. Fredson Bowers, ed. New York: Harcourt, 2003 (reprint).
[Russian genius weighs in on great literature.]
Nairne, Sandy. THINKING ABOUT EXHIBITIONS. Florence, KY: Routledge, 1996.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. THE GROUND OF THE IMAGE. Trans. Jeff Fort. NY, NY: Fordham University Press, 2006.
Nelson, Cary and Lawrence Grossberg, ed. MARXISM AND THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURE. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Nesbit, Molly. ATGET'S SEVEN ALBUMS. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993.
THEIR COMMON SENSE. London: Black Dog Press, 2000.
Nyman, Michael. EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC AND BEYOND. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Olson, Charles. CALL ME ISHMAEL. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 (reprint).
Owens, Craig. BEYOND RECOGNITION. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992.
Orwell, George. A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS. New York: Harcourt, 1970 (reprint).
[one of the elemental granddaddies of the English essay: a model of lucidity.]
Ronell, Avital. CRACK WARS: LITERATURE ADDICTION MANIA. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska Press, 1992.
STUPIDITY. Urbana and Chicago: U. of Illinois Press, 2002.
Rosen, Philip (ed.). NARRATIVE, APPARATUS, IDEOLOGY: A FILM THEORY READER. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Ross, Kristin. THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL SPACE: RIMBAUD AND THE PARIS COMMUNE. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Said, Edward W. ORIENTALISM. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Schimmel, Paul, ed. OUT OF ACTIONS: BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND THE OBJECT, 1949-1979, exh. cat. Los Angeles: MOCA, 1998.
Schuyler, James. THE MORNING OF THE POEM. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980.
Sitney, P. Adams. VISIONARY FILM: THE AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE 1943-2000. Third Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
ed. FILM CULTURE READER. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1970.
Smith, Duncan. THE AGE OF OIL. New York, Slate Press, 1987.
Smithson, Robert. THE COLLECTED WRITINGS. Edited by Jack Flam. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.
Solnit, Rebecca. RIVER OF SHADOWS. New York: Viking, 2003.
Sondheim, Alan. INDIVIDUALS: POST-MOVEMENT ART IN AMERICA. New York: E.F. Dutton and Co., 1977.
Sontag, Susan. A SUSAN SONTAG READER. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982.
WHERE THE STRESS FALLS. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
ed. A BARTHES READER. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982.
Stark, Frances. COLLECTED WRITINGS: 1993-2003. London: Bookworks, 2003.
Stein, Gertrude. A STEIN READER. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996.
Stiles, Kristine and Peter Selz, ed. THEORIES AND DOCUMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART: A SOURCEBOOK OF ARTISTS’ WRITINGS. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
[giant book of artists’ writings, a useful mixed bag.]
Stockhausen, Karlheinz. STOCKHAUSEN ON MUSIC: LECTURES AND INTERVIEWS. Compiled by Robin Maconie. London and New York: Marion Boyars, 1989.
Szymborska, Wislawa. NONREQUIRED READING: PROSE PIECES. New York: Harcourt, 2002.
[Nobel prize winning Polish poet uses oddball books as an excuse to write small, thoughtful, gemlike essays on a variety of topics.]
Töteberg, Michael and Leo A. Lensing. THE ANARCHY OF THE IMAGINATION: Interviews, Essays, Notes—RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER. Trans. Krishna Winston. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Trow, George W. S. WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF NO CONTEXT. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1981.
WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF NO CONTEXT. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997.
MY PILGRIM'S PROGRESS: MEDIA STUDIES, 1950-1998. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.
Venturi, Robert; Steven Izenour; Denise Scott Brown. LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1972.
Virilio, Paul. WAR AND CINEMA: THE LOGISTICS OF PERCEPTION. Trans. Patrick Camiller. London: Verso, 1989. see also: Derain, James der.
Vogel, Amos. FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2006.
Wallace, David Foster. A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I’LL NEVER DO AGAIN. New York: Little Brown, 1997.
CONSIDER THE LOBSTER. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. [postmodern large cerebrumed essay god traverses various subjects, in pages heavily adorned with rich copious footnotes the way some women wear all their jewels at once on special occasions---the footnote is levated to new heights by Wallace.]
Warhol, Andy. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
Woolf, Virginia. A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN. New York: Harvest Books, 1989 (reprint).
[beautiful book length essay on women and writing from one of the finest minds the planet has produced.]

ARTIST’S WRITING - INTERVIEWS / THEORY
Alberro, Alexander, ed. RECORDING CONCEPTUAL ART: EARLY INTERVIEWS with BARRY, HUEBLER, KALTENBACH, LeWITT, MORRIS, OPPENHEIM, SIEGELAUB, SMITHSON, and WEINER by PATRICIA NORVELL. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 2001.
Cage, John. SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITINGS. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.
Frampton, Hollis. CIRCLES OF CONFUSION: FILM PHOTOGRAPHY VIDEO: TEXTS 1968-1980. Rochester: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1983.
Genet, Jean. FRAGMENTS OF THE ARTWORK. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy. BEYOND PIETY: CRITICAL ESSAYS ON THE VISUAL ARTS, 1986-1993. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Harrison and Wood, editors. ART IN THEORY. Blackwell Publishers, January 2000.
[super hefty compendium of all kinds of art theory documents that can lead to further researches]
Halpern, Daniel: Editor. WRITERS ON ARTISTS. North Point Press, January, 1988.
[collection of “belle letreistic” off the beaten path pieces about art and artists by literary writers such as Hemingway, Stein, Genet, Ralph Ellison, etc.]
Hertz, Richard. JACK GOLDSTEIN AND THE CALARTS MAFIA. Ojai: Minneola Press, 2003.
Hoberman, J. and Edward Leffingwell, eds. WAIT FOR ME AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL: THE WRITINGS OF JACK SMITH. New York and London: High Risk Books, 1997.
Kelley, Mike. FOUL PERFECTION. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
Loos, Adolf. ORNAMENT AND CRIME: SELECTED ESSAYS. California: Ariadne Press, 1995. (originally published 1908).
Miller, John. THE PRICE CLUB: SELECTED WRITINGS (1977-1998). Geneva/Dijon: JPR Editions, 2000.
Nyman, Michael. EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC AND BEYOND. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Smithson, Robert. THE COLLECTED WRITINGS. Edited by Jack Flam. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.
Sondheim, Alan. INDIVIDUALS: POST-MOVEMENT ART IN AMERICA. New York: E.F. Dutton and Co., 1977.
Sorrentino, Gilbert. SPLENDIDE-HOTEL. Illinois: Dalkey Archive, 1984.
Stark, Frances. COLLECTED WRITINGS: 1993-2003. London: Bookworks, 2003.
Stiles, Kristine and Peter Selz, ed. THEORIES AND DOCUMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART: A SOURCEBOOK OF ARTISTS’ WRITINGS. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
[giant book of artists’ writings, a useful mixed bag.]
Stockhausen, Karlheinz. STOCKHAUSEN ON MUSIC: LECTURES AND INTERVIEWS. Compiled by Robin Maconie. London and New York: Marion Boyars, 1989.
Töteberg, Michael and Leo A. Lensing. THE ANARCHY OF THE IMAGINATION: Interviews, Essays, Notes—RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER. Trans. Krishna Winston. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Venturi, Robert; Izenour, Steven; Brown, Denise Scott. LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972.
Warhol, Andy. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
Wittig, Monique. THE STRAIGHT MIND AND OTHER ESSAYS. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY / THEORY
Als, Hilton. THE WOMEN. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.
Barthes, Roland. A LOVER'S DISCOURSE--FRAGMENTS. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978.
CAMERA LUCIDA: REFLECTIONS ON PHOTOGRAPHY. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981.
ROLAND BARTHES. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
Broyard, Anatole. WHEN KAFKA WAS THE RAGE. Clarkson Potter, 1993.
[portrait of a milieu: an amazingly written memoir from the trenches at the height of Greenwich village art scene in the late 1940s which was an intense happening time, man.]
Didion, Joan. SLOUCHING TOWARD BETHELEM New York: Dell, 1969.
THE WHITE ALBUM. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.
Hickey, Dave. AIR GUITAR Los Angeles: Art Issues. Press, 1997.
Kincaid, Jamaica. MY BROTHER. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.
Koestenbaum, Wayne. CLEAVAGE: ESSAYS ON SEX, STARS, and AESTHETICS. New York: Ballentine Books, 2000.
Sontag, Susan, ed. A BARTHES READER. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982.
Trow, George W. S. WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF NO CONTEXT. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1981.
WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF NO CONTEXT. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997.
MY PILGRIM'S PROGRESS: MEDIA STUDIES, 1950-1998. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.

FICTION / NON-FICTION / POETRY / THEORY
Ashbery, John. SELECTED PROSE. Ed. Eugene Richie. Ann Arbor: The Univeristy of Michigan Press, 2004.
[great American poet writes clear whip smart pieces about French writers and filmmakers, fellow poets, art, etc.]
Beckett, Samuel. KRAPP’S LAST TAPE. The Grove Press, 1960.
PROUST. New York: The Grove Press, 1957.
Bishop, Elizabeth. THE COMPLETE POEMS 1927-1979. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983.
Calvino, Italo. INVISIBLE CITIES. Italian edition (original title: Le città invisibili), Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., 1972. English edition translated by William Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1974.
Carson, Anne. GLASS, IRONY AND GOD. New York: New Directions, 1995.
ECONOMY OF THE UNLOST (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Cooper, Dennis. GOD JR. New York: Black Cat, 2005.
Davis, Lydia. BREAK IT DOWN. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.
THE END OF THE STORY. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.
De Cervantes, Miguel. DON QUIXOTE. Countless editions.
Dick, Phillip K. THE SIMULACRA (1964). New York: Vintage Press, 2002.
Didion, Joan. DEMOCRACY. New York, 1984.
Dyer, Geoff. THE ONGOING MOMENT. Pantheon, 2005.
[brilliant brit goes on gaga riffs about photography.]
Ellman, Richard, ed. THE ARTIST AS CRITIC: CRITICAL WRITINGS OF OSCAR WILDE. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1998 (reprint).
Gass, William. ON BEING BLUE. Boston: David R. Godine, 1976.
[slim book length poetic meditation on the color and state of being of blue by wild minded philosophy professor, essayist and fiction writer.]
Halpern, Daniel: Editor. WRITERS ON ARTISTS. North Point Press, January, 1988.
[collection of “belle letreistic” off the beaten path pieces about art and artists by literary writers such as Hemingway, Stein, Genet, Raph Ellison, etc.]
Hardwick, Elizabeth. AMERICAN FICTIONS. New York: Modern Library, 2001.
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS. New York: New York Review Books, 2003 (reprint).
Kluge, Alexander. LEARNING PROCESSES WITH A DEADLY OUTCOME. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
Lawrence, D. H. STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE. New York: Penguin, 1991 (reprint).
[strange, hyper intelligent, authorative, idiosyncratic essays on Melville, and DH’s take on what being American is.]
Lopate, Phillip, ed. AMERICAN MOVIE CRITICS. Library of America, 2006.
[essay master collects a history of American film writing from its beginnings to the current moment, terrific selections and intros.]
THE ART OF THE PERSONAL ESSAY. New York: Doubleday, 1997.
[indispensable essay collection from antiquity till modern times, packed with classics and gems—a personal essay bible.]
Marias, Javier. TOMORROW IN THE BATTLE THINK OF ME. Trans. Margaret Jull Costa. New York: New Directions, 2001.
Nabokov, Vladimir. LECTURES ON LITERATURE. Fredson Bowers, ed. New York: Harcourt, 2003 (reprint).
[Russian genius weighs in on great literature.]
Olson, Charles. CALL ME ISHMAEL. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 (reprint).
Orwell, George. A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS. New York: Harcourt, 1970 (reprint).
[one of the elemental granddaddies of the English essay: a model of lucidity.]
Schuyler, James. THE MORNING OF THE POEM. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980.
Sontag, Susan. A SUSAN SONTAG READER. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982.
WHERE THE STRESS FALLS. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
Sorrentino, Gilbert. SPLENDIDE-HOTEL. Illinois: Dalkey Archive, 1984.
Stein, Gertrude. A STEIN READER. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996.
Szymborska, Wislawa. NONREQUIRED READING: PROSE PIECES. New York: Harcourt, 2002.
[Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet uses oddball books as an excuse to write small, thoughtful, gemlike essays on a variety of topics.]
Wallace, David Foster. A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I’LL NEVER DO AGAIN. New York: Little Brown, 1997.
CONSIDER THE LOBSTER. New York: Little, Brown, 2005.
[postmodern large cerebrumed essay god traverses various subjects, in pages heavily adorned with rich copious footnotes the way some women wear all their jewels at once on special occasions---the footnote is elevated to new heights by Wallace.]
Woolf, Virginia. A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN. New York: Harvest Books, 1989 (reprint).
[beautiful book length essay on women and writing from one of the finest minds the planet has produced.]

(ART) HISTORY / THEORY
Augé, Marc. NON-PLACES: INTRODUCTION TO AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF SUPERMODERNITY. New York: Verso, 1995.
Badiou, Alain. THE CENTURY. Trans. Alberto Toscano. Cambridge: Polity, Forthcoming.
Benjamin, Walter. THE ARCADES PROJECT. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1999.
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility.”
Boltanski, Luc; and Gregory Elliott. THE NEW SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM. Trans. by Eve Chiapello. London: Verso, 2006.
Bydler, Charlotte. GLOBAL ARTWORLD, INC.: ON THE GLOBALIZATION OF CONTEMPORARY ART. 2004.
Clark, T. J. FAREWELL TO AN IDEA: EPISODES FROM A HISTORY OF MODERNISM. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999.
Fried, Michael. ART AND OBJECTHOOD: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Greenberg, Clement. ART AND CULTURE. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.
Groys, Boris and Zdenka Badovinac, Barbara Vanderlinden. BORIS GROYS: THE ART JUDGEMENT SHOW. Brussels: Roomade, 2002.
Harris, Jonathan. THE NEW ART HISTORY: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. Florence, KY: Routledge, 2001.
Koestenbaum, Wayne. ANDY WARHOL. New York: Viking/Penguin, 2001.
Krauss, Rosalind E.. THE ORIGINALITY OF THE AVANT-GARDE AND OTHER MODERNIST MYTHS. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.
MacCannell, Dean. THE TOURIST: A NEW THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS. New York: Schocken Books, 1976.
Malcolm, Janet. “Profiles: A Girl of the Zeitgeist.” (Parts I and II), New Yorker October 20, 1986, 1986 + October 27, 1986.
McDonald, Boyd. CRUISING THE MOVIES: A SEXUAL GUIDE TO "OLDIES" ON TV. New York: Gay Presses of New York, 1985.
Marcus, Greil. LIPSTICK TRACES: A SECRET HISTORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, vol 6. no.5, 1976.
Nelson, Cary and Lawrence Grossberg, ed. MARXISM AND THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURE. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Nairne, Sandy. THINKING ABOUT EXHIBITIONS. Florence, KY: Routledge, 1996.
Nesbit, Molly. ATGET'S SEVEN ALBUMS. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993.
THEIR COMMON SENSE. London: Black Dog Press, 2000.
Owens, Craig. BEYOND RECOGNITION. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992.
Rosen, Philip (ed.). NARRATIVE, APPARATUS, IDEOLOGY: A FILM THEORY READER. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Ross, Kristin. THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL SPACE: RIMBAUD AND THE PARIS COMMUNE. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Said, Edward W. ORIENTALISM. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Schimmel, Paul, ed. OUT OF ACTIONS: BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND THE OBJECT, 1949-1979, exh. cat. Los Angeles: MOCA, 1998.
Sitney, P. Adams. VISIONARY FILM: THE AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE 1943-2000. Third Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
ed. FILM CULTURE READER. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1970.
Smith, Duncan. THE AGE OF OIL. New York, Slate Press, 1987.
Solnit, Rebecca. RIVER OF SHADOWS. New York: Viking, 2003.
Virilio, Paul. WAR AND CINEMA: THE LOGISTICS OF PERCEPTION. Trans. Patrick Camiller. London: Verso, 1989.
Vogel, Amos. FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2006.

PHILOSOPHY / THEORY
Bachelard, Gaston. THE POETICS OF SPACE. Beacon Press, April 1969
[gorgeous dreamy classic with section titles like: “the house from cellar to garret, the significance of the hut”, “nests”, “shells”, “miniature,” “drawers, chests and wardrobes.”]
Bataille, George. EROTISM, DEATH and SENSUALITY. Trans. by Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986.
Literature and Evil. Trans. by Alastair Hamilton. London: Marion Boyars, 1989.
Barthes, Roland. THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975.
Blanchot, Maurice. THE GAZE OF ORPHEUS AND OTHER LITERARY ESSAYS.
Preface by Geoffrey Hartman, Trans. by Lydia Davis. Edited with an afterword by P. Adams Sitney. Barrytown: Station Hill Press, 1981.
“Two Versions of the Imaginary.” From THE SPACE OF LITERATURE. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
THE WRITING OF THE DISASTER. Trans. by Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
De Certeau, Michel. THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Translated by Steven Rendall.
[Originally published 1974.]
Deleuze, Gilles. NEGOTIATIONS. Trans. Martin Joughen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
Derian, James Der, ed. THE VIRILIO READER. London: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.
Foucault, Michel. ETHICS: AESTHETICS, METHOD, and EPISTEMOLOGY: ESSENTIAL WORKS OF FOUCAUT, 1954-1984. Volume 2. Paul Rabinow, series editor. New York: New Press, 1997-2000.
Hickey, Dave. THE INVISIBLE DRAGON: FOUR ESSAYS ON BEAUTY. Los Angeles: Art Issues, Press, 1993.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. THE GROUND OF THE IMAGE. Trans. Jeff Fort. NY, NY: Fordham University Press, 2006.
Ronell, Avital. CRACK WARS: LITERATURE ADDICTION MANIA. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska Press, 1992.
STUPIDITY. Urbana and Chicago: U. of Illinois Press, 2002.
Wittig, Monique. THE STRAIGHT MIND AND OTHER ESSAYS. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.