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Klaus Kertess: Seen, Written eBook

Selected Essays

By Klaus Kertess.

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Now available as an illustrated eBook.
Curator and historian, gallerist and writer: Klaus Kertess has long been a decisive and forward-thinking presence in the art world. He founded the Bykert Gallery in 1966, where he represented artists including Chuck Close, Ralph Humphrey, Brice Marden and Dorothea Rockburne; three decades later, he curated the 1995 Whitney Biennial, the follow-up to the famously political 1993 iteration. "What is being proposed here," he wrote in a catalogue essay for the 1995 exhibition, "is not a return to formalism but an art in which meaning is embedded in formal value. An acknowledgment of sensuousness is indispensable--whether as play or sheer joy or the kind of subversity that has us reaching for a rose and grabbing a thorn." The art world has changed considerably from the relatively convivial world of the 60s to today's globalized milieu, but Kertess has been a constant throughout the years, curating shows of provocative new work and writing critical essays on artists whose work challenges and engages him, while also maintaining a vital literary sideline (his short stories are collected in 2000's South Brooklyn Casket Company). This volume collects Kertess' critical works from the past 30 years, including meditations on Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, John Chamberlain, Vija Celmins, Chris Ofili and Matthew Richie. With each essay accompanied by full-color reproductions of works discussed, Seen, Written provides a priceless opportunity to see art through the eyes of a lifelong viewer. This is the eBook edition of Seen, Written, originally published in print form in April 2011.

"In these collected essays, most on individual artists, Mr. Kertess combines an eye for formal, technical details with a rare knowledge of personal history. We learn that John Chamberlain began making sponge sculptures, precursors to his foam works, as a guest at dealer Virginia Dwan’s Malibu beach house, and that Peter Hujar sometimes spent hours talking to animals he was planning to photograph..." —Excerpted from Andrew Russeth's review in The New York Observer.