Published: June 2011

Publisher: Yale University Press

Debate over what precisely was at issue in French critical thought—and, indeed, in France itself—in the 1960s and ’70s continues to this day

Published: April 2011

Publisher: Prestel Publishing

If there is one central conclusion to be drawn from the recent array of books and catalogues on contemporary women artists, it is that there exists no such thing as women’s art, or even feminist art. Indeed, as many feminist scholars, critics and artists have long argued, possession of a uterus, or identification with feminism, in no way determines, much less defines, the nature of women’s artistic production.

Published: July 2010

Publisher: MIT Press

IN 1975, THE MOSCOW duo Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid collaborated on the performance Where Is the Line Between Us? with theAmerican conceptual artist and critic Douglas Davis. In a documentary montage, the Russian pair and Davis (photographed in their respectivecountries) stand divided by a thick black line, holding two square blackplanks inscribed with the question “where is the line between us?” in English (on Komar and Melamid’s) and Russian (on Davis’s). Created inthe year of the U.S.-Soviet linkup in space, this collaborative project implied that nonconformist artists of the 1970s generation believed in the translatability of their concepts and were seeking an active dialogue with Western colleagues.

Published: September 2009

Publisher: Yale University Press

Romy Golan contends that European murals have not received due critical attention for the important part they played in the international “synthesis of the arts” movement that arose in the years straddling World War II.

A long time ago, I wanted to write a review of an artist nobody had heard of, whose work was on view at a gallery nobody was familiar with. Phil Leider, then the intimidating editor of Artforum, told me, “I’ll run a review of a known artist in an unknown place, or an unknown artist in a known place, but not an unknown artist in an unknown place.”