Writings 1973-1983 on Works 1969-1979

Writings 1973-1983 on Works 1969-1979 PDF Author: Michael Asher
Publisher: Halifax, N.S. : Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
ISBN:
Category : Art, American
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Writings 1973-1983 on Works 1969-1979

Writings 1973-1983 on Works 1969-1979 PDF Author: Michael Asher
Publisher: Halifax, N.S. : Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
ISBN:
Category : Art, American
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Michael Asher

Michael Asher PDF Author: Anne Rorimer
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1846380936
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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An examination of a major 1992 installation by a pioneer of site-specific experimentation. Michael Asher (born in 1943), one of the foremost installation artists of the Conceptual art period, is a founder of site-specific practice. Considered a progenitor of institutional critique, he spearheaded the creation of artworks imbued with a self-conscious awareness of their dependence on the conditions of their exhibition context. In the work Kunsthalle Bern 1992, Asher removed the radiators from all the museum's exhibition spaces and reassembled them in its entryway gallery. Metal pipes connected the relocated radiators to their original sockets; these tubular conduits, coursing in linear fashion along the Kunsthalle's walls, kept the steam heat flowing and endowed the installation with directional lines of force. This “displacement of givens” offers a perfect example of site-specific practice, one that took the gallery space and the institution itself as its subject. In this detailed examination of Kunsthalle Bern 1992, Anne Rorimer considers the work in the context of Asher's ongoing desire to fuse art with the material, economic, and social conditions of institutional presentation. Rorimer analyzes Kunsthalle Bern 1992 in relation to the earlier innovations of such minimalist artists as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, and Dan Flavin as well as to such conceptualist contemporaries as Daniel Buren, Dan Graham, and Maria Nordman. She also considers the installation in the context of other works by Asher that have used non-art, functional elements, including walls, or that have investigated museological issues.

Public Knowledge

Public Knowledge PDF Author: Michael Asher
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262354039
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Writings by the conceptual artist Michael Asher—including notes, proposals, exhibition statements, and letters to curators and critics—most published here for the first time. The California conceptual artist Michael Asher (1943–2012) was known for rigorous site specificity and pioneering institutional critique. His decades of teaching at CalArts influenced generations of artists. Much of Asher's artistic practice was devoted to creating works that had no lasting material presence and often responded to the material, social, or ideological context of a situation. Because most of Asher's artworks have ceased to exist, his writings about them have special significance. Public Knowledge collects writings by Asher about his work—including preliminary notes and ideas, project proposals, exhibition statements, and letters to curators and critics—most of which have never been previously published. Asher gave few interviews, didn't write art criticism, and rarely published extensive accounts of his own work. Yet writing was central to his artistic practice, serving as a tool for working out ideas, negotiating institutional parameters, and describing thought processes. In these texts, he considers writing and documentation, discusses artistic practice, offers notes for gallery and museum talks, presents artist statements for exhibition-goers, describes individual works and their situational context, and reflects on teaching and art education. Among other things, Asher provides his definition of site specificity, addresses the function of art in public space, and analyzes the intersection of teaching art and institutional models of education. Readers will see an artist at work, formulating ethical and political strategies for making art in a situational world.

Situation Aesthetics

Situation Aesthetics PDF Author: Kirsi Peltomaki
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262526085
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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The first book-length study of this influential artist's work, focusing on the participatory role of the human subject rather than the art object. Michael Asher doesn't make typical installations. Instead, he extracts his art from the institutions in which it is shown, culling it from collections, histories, or museums' own walls. Since the late 1960s, Asher has been creating situations that have not only taught us about the conditions and contexts of contemporary art, but have worked to define it. In Situation Aesthetics, Kirsi Peltomäki examines Asher's practice by analyzing the social situations that the artist constructs in his work for viewers, participants, and institutional representatives (including gallery directors, curators, and other museum staff members). Drawing on art criticism, the reports of viewers and participants in Asher's projects, and the artist's own archives, Peltomäki offers a comprehensive account of Asher's work over the past four decades. Because of the intensely site-specific nature of this work, as well as the artist's refusal to reconstruct past works or mount retrospectives, many of the projects Peltomäki discusses are described here for the first time. By emphasizing the social and psychological sites of art rather than the production of autonomous art objects, Peltomäki argues, Asher constructs experientially complex situations that profoundly affect those who encounter them, bringing about both personal and institutional transformation.

A Desert Dies

A Desert Dies PDF Author: Michael Asher
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780140095791
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Thesiger

Thesiger PDF Author: Michael Asher
Publisher: Viking Books
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
In 1979, the author of this work read Arabian Sands by W. Thesiger, which had an impact on his life and made him become a desert explorer. In tribute to Thesiger, he has written this biography of Thesigers motivations and achievements. A man of great paradoxes and contradictions, Thesiger revered traditional peoples, but retained at the same time a profound pride in his own race and background. He felt most intensely alive when living on the same level as his tribal companions, yet rejoiced in his ability to return to the civilized world. also follows in Thesinger's footsteps, interviewing many of his former travelling companions and throwing new light on the celebrated Arabian expeditions.

Michael Asher

Michael Asher PDF Author: Whitney Moeller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
Published to accompany the exhibit, Focus: Michael Ashner, organized by and presented at the Art Institute of Chicago from September 29, 2005 to January 1, 2006.

The Eye of Ra

The Eye of Ra PDF Author: Michael Asher
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0006513174
Category : Archaeologists
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
A brilliant atmospheric thriller, set in Cairo and the surrounding tombs and deserts, involving the threat of the past entwined with present deaths and future machinations. Omar Ross, a maverick archaeologist, is disturbed by the death at the foot of the pyramids of Giza, of his old colleague, a famous Egyptologist, Richard Cranwell. Cranwell had become obsessed by his search for the legendary lost city of Zerzura. Ross's suspicions become further aroused by documents left referring to other deaths, of Carnarvon, of Wingate, of Carter, all linked by the inscription for the god Thoth. It seems as if Cranwell had been on the verge of a great discovery; but every contact, every informant, disappears: Cranwell's body itself is lost and Ross, threatened, beleagured and friendless, turns to his mother's family, of the Bedouin tribe. This is a first novel with a difference. Written with great confidence, it is rich with Egyptian mythology and history, its new discoveries are plausible and convincing, the secret organizations and believers complex and frightening, and the cast of characters lively and varied.

Death in the Sahara

Death in the Sahara PDF Author: Michael Asher
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 9781616085940
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Under-armed in hostile territory, and foolishly employing the enemy as guides, the one hundred explorers were ambushed and stranded without camels or supplies in the deserts of southern Algeria. Many were killed outright, and for four months the survivors were menaced by the Tuareg, the “lords of the desert,” robbed, starved, and tricked into eating poisoned fruit. To escape, the men hid in the wastelands of the Sahara with little hope of finding food or water. Finally forced to eat each other, only a dozen men lived to tell their tale. The story of their one-thousand-mile journey is one of the most astonishing narratives of survival ever recorded.

Impossible Journey

Impossible Journey PDF Author: Michael Asher
Publisher: New York, N.Y. : Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780140146691
Category : Sahara
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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