Book Description
Photography has become an increasingly pervasive medium of choice in contemporary art practice and is even employed at times by artists who do not necessarily consider themselves to be photographers. How did this come to be? The Last Picture Show will address the emergence of this phenomenon of artists using photography by tracing the development of conceptual trends in postwar photographic practice from its first glimmerings in the 60s in the work of artists such as Bernd & Hilla Becher, Ed Ruscha and Bruce Nauman, to its rise to art-world prominence in the work of the artists of the late 70s and early 80s including Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman. Intended as a major genealogy of the rise of a still-powerful and evolving photographic practice by artists, the checklist will include a wide array of works examining a range of issues: performativity and photographic practice; portraiture and cultural identity; the formal and social architectonics of the built environment; societal and individual interventions in the landscape; photography's relationship to sculpture and painting; the visual mediation of meaning in popular culture; and the poetic and conceptual investigation of visual non-sequiturs, disjunctions and humorous absurdities. Bringing together a newly commissioned body of scholarship with reprints of important historical texts, The Last Picture Show seeks to define the legacy that has produced a rich body of photographic practice in the art world today. Pictures by Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Giovani Anselmo, John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Sarah Charlesworth, Bruce Conner, Jan Dibbets, Valie Export, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Yves Klein, Imi Knoebel, Sylvia Kolbowski, Barbara Kruger, David Lamelas, Sherrie Levine, Sol Lewitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta Clark, Ana Mendietta, Mario Merz, Nasreen Mohamedi, Bruce Nauman, Hélio Oiticica, Dennis Oppenheim, Giuseppe Penone, Giulio Paolini, Sigmar Polke, Adrian Piper, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Robert Smithson, Ger van Elk, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, James Welling and Hannah Wilke Edited by Douglas Fogle.~Essays by Douglas Fogle, Kate Bush, Richard Flood, Geoffrey Batchen, Stefan Gronnert and Pamela Lee. ~Foreword by Kathy Halbreich. Hardcover, 8 x 10.5 in./304 pgs / 160 color 40 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20188
The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960-1982 FROM THE PUBLISHER
In 1976 critic Nancy Foote wrote that "for every photographer who clamors to make it as an artist, there is an artist running a grave risk of turning into a photographer." Traversing the fine line between artists who are photographers and artists who use photography, The Last Picture Show traces the development of Conceptual trends in postwar photographic practice from their first glimmerings in the 1960s in the work of artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Bruce Nauman, and Edward Ruscha to their rise to art world prominence in the work of the Picture Theory artists of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Silvia Kolbowski, Richard Prince, and Cindy Sherman. Intended as a major genealogy of the rise of a still-powerful and evolving photographic practice by artists, the exhibition includes a wide array of works by Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Gilbert & George, Yves Klein, Barbara Kruger, Gordon Matta-Clark, Charles Ray, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and others.
Art & Photography
Book Info
