Michael Brenson

ACTIVE BACKLIST

CORIN HEWITT: WEAVINGS
Text by Michael Brenson, Marisa Sanzhez.
J&L BOOKS
ISBN: 9780979918841 | US $33.00
Pub Date: 5/1/2009
Active | In stock

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ: A LIFE OF DISOBEDIENCE
Text by Hakim Bey, Michael Brenson, David Levi Strauss, Gilbert Vicario.
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775723053 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 11/30/2009
Active | In stock

DAVID SMITH: MEDALS FOR DISHONOR
Artwork by David Smith. Contributions by Dore Ashton. Text by Michael Brenson, Matthew Marks.
INDEPENDENT CURATORS INTERNATIONAL, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780916365479 | US $19.95
Pub Date: 1/2/1997
Active | In stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

WITNESS TO HER ART
BARD COLLEGE
ISBN: 9781931493550 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2007
Out of print | Not available

DAVID SMITH: A CENTENNIAL
Essays by Carmen Giménez, Rosalind E. Krauss, David Anfam, Michael Brenson and Paul Hayes Tucker.
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
ISBN: 9780892073436 | US $85.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2006
Out of print | Not available

THE NEW GATEKEEPERS
NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM
ISBN: 9780974638300 | US $24.99
Pub Date: 5/2/2004
Out of print | Not available

Michael Brenson

Corin Hewitt: Weavings

Performance No. 2 (Portland, OR)

Text by Michael Brenson, Marisa Sanzhez.
Published by J&L Books

During a three-week residency at Portland, Oregon's Small A Projects in 2007, New York-based artist Corin Hewitt, born in 1971, constructed an elaborate workspace within the gallery, complete with a kitchen, photo studio and theater in which the apron-wearing artist performed a series of tasks--cooking, sculpting, eating and weaving--as gallery visitors viewed him through a peephole. Merging elements representing both the contemporary and the historic Northwest, Hewitt transformed such materials as baskets, fabric, canned food, fresh vegetables and grass--as well as elements from the first performance in this ongoing series--into hybridized objects. The 75 color photographs in this book, all taken on-site by Hewitt, document the performance. Combining the sculptural with the theatrical, the photographic with the performative, Hewitt's innovative work has also been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Seattle Art Museum and Taxter & Spengemann gallery in New York.

Daniel Joseph Martinez: A Life of Disobedience

Text by Hakim Bey, Michael Brenson, David Levi Strauss, Gilbert Vicario.
Published by Hatje Cantz

For more than 30 years, Los Angeles-born artist Daniel Joseph Martinez has been honing his politically-inflected practice, which critic Jeffrey Kastner has characterized as "unapologetically prob[ing] uncomfortable issues of personal and collective identity, seeking out threadbare spots in the fabric of conventional wisdom." A wry provocateur, Martinez incorporates an impressive array of media including text, painting, photography, sculpture, video, performance--even animatronics. Known for the controversial pin he created as an interactive piece for the 1993 Whitney Biennial that read, "I can't imagine ever wanting to be white," this volume, with essays by Michael Brenson, David Levi Strauss, Hakim Bey and Gilbert Vicario, provides an in-depth look at selected works from 1978 through Martinez's 2008 Whitney Biennial entry, "Divine Violence," including his contributions to the San Juan Triennial in 2004, the Cairo Biennial in 2006 and the Moscow Biennial in 2007.

Witness to Her Art

Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and Eau de Cologne

Edited by Rhea Anastas, Michael Brenson. Foreword by Tom Eccles. Text by Adrian Piper, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Monika Sprüth, Rhea Anastas, Michael Brenson, Norton Batkin, Johanna Burton, Aruna D'Souza, Pamela Franks, Janet Kraynak, David Levi Strauss, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ann Reynolds, Hamza Walker.
Published by Bard College

This radical new study aims to change the way that some of the most influential artists of the past 40 years are seen--all of them women. Emphasizing questions of autonomy, critical intelligence and artistic intention, Witness to Her Art presents works by Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and Eau de Cologne, a magazine published by gallerist Monika Sprüth. The artworks are accompanied by original writings by the artists, contemporaneous criticism and newly commissioned essays by Pamela Franks, Aruna D'Souza, Johanna Burton, David Levi Strauss, Hamza Walker and Cuauhtémoc Medina. The ambitious works presented and interpreted herein invite us to consider the impact of the feminist revolution across generations while rendering obsolete any stigma associated with shows or catalogues limited to women artists. Taking its lead from Conceptualism, feminism, and from its included artists, Witness to Her Art reaches for art history's capacity as a medium of world-making.

David Smith: A Centennial

Essays by Carmen Giménez, Rosalind E. Krauss, David Anfam, Michael Brenson and Paul Hayes Tucker.
Published by Guggenheim Museum

Deemed the "foremost sculptor of his generation" by art critic Clement Greenberg, David Smith, who lived from 1906 to 1965, is about to be celebrated in his first retrospective since 1969--to be held at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, from February through May of 2006. David Smith: A Centennial features new photographs of nearly every selected sculpture--110 pieces dating from 1932 to 1965, including important examples from each period, many rarely seen in public. Essays from writers including David Anfam, Michael Brenson, Rosalind Krauss and Paul Hayes Tucker tackle key areas, such as Smith's relationship to the painters of the New York School, the dual development of his family life and series sculpture through the 1950s and 60s, and his use of the landscape outside his studio in formulating his late works. Perhaps most importantly, David Smith: A Centennial also features the most comprehensive research on Smith yet published, including a newly compiled and extended bibliography; a comprehensive exhibition history; a chronology; and an illustrated checklist tracking provenance, exhibition history, and bibliographic references for each featured sculpture, finally bringing scholarship on Smith to the level of that on other important American artists of his generation, such as Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. David Smith: A Centennial considers Smith's oeuvre as a totality, and offers readers the chance to understand the complexity of his aesthetic concerns as well as his impact on the course of American sculpture, and American art at large.

The New Gatekeepers

Emerging Challenges to Free Expression in the Arts

Edited by Christopher W. Hawthorne, Mark Schapiro and András Szántó. Essays by Amy Adler, Carol Becker, Louis Menand, Roger Newman, Rochelle Gurstein, Charles Mann, Cass R. Sunstein, et al.
Published by National Arts Journalism Program

Disputes over free expression in the arts have always loomed as struggles between creativity and repression, transgression and outrage, candor and hypocrisy. But while high-profile shootouts at art museums and less visible skirmishes at schools, libraries, and theaters persist, overt censorship is no longer the only, or the most dire, threat to free expression. On the one hand, society has become more accepting of provocative imagery, with media conglomerates often leading the way in the depreciation of taboos. On the other hand, artists, while enjoying some unprecedented liberties, are hemmed in by new constraints that often fall beyond the range of First Amendment protection. The current terrain bears little resemblance to the culture wars of a decade ago, much less to what the First Amendment's Framers could have imagined. And since September 11, 2001, the frontlines of the free-expression debate have been shifting once again. Based on a Columbia University conference organized by the National Arts Journalism Program, The New Gatekeepers explores the reconfigured ranks of those who decide what the public gets to see, hear and read, from struggles over intellectual property and copyright, to continuing debates about acceptable and offensive content in the cultural marketplace, to the less visible biases of the arts funding system. This heavily illustrated book also includes a historical overview of censorship and contributions by 40 scholars, artists, experts and journalists from around the United States. Discussed and participating artists include Edouard Manet, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Serra, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andres Serrano, Carolee Schneemann, Dread Scott, Gran Fury, Joel-Peter Witkin, Kara Walker, Jock Sturges, Chris Ofili and Tom Sachs.

David Smith: Medals For Dishonor

Artwork by David Smith. Contributions by Dore Ashton. Text by Michael Brenson, Matthew Marks.
Published by Independent Curators International, New York

This catalogue examines a major though little-known body of David Smith's work. Enraged by the rise of fascism that he witnessed while visiting Europe in the 1930s, Smith began to work on the “Medals for Dishonor.” Approaching the tradition of commemorative medallions ironically, Smith denounces historical players who willingly contributed to the horrors of war.