James Lee Byars: 1/2 An Autobiography, Exhibition Catalog Published by Walther König, Köln/MoMA PS1/Museo Jumex.
Edited with text by Magali Arriola, Peter Eleey. Text by Ana Janevski, Shinobu Sakagami, Pan Wendt. Conversation with Jocelyn Miller, Robert Landsman, Sandra Lang-Landsman. The long-anticipated second volume of James Lee Byars’ wide-ranging oeuvre The spiritually inclined work of American artist James Lee Byars (1932–97) ranged from highly refined objects to extremely minimal performance and events, and books, ephemera and correspondence that he distributed widely among friends and colleagues. Fascinated by death and the afterlife, Byars wrote his 1/2 Autobiography in 1969 at the age of 37, about half the average male lifespan at the time. For his first major posthumous survey in the US, the 2014 exhibition at MoMA PS1, curators Magalí Arriola and Peter Eleey decided to produce a catalog in two “halves,” playing on his “1/2 Autobiography”: a catalog of the exhibition itself, including new scholarship, and a sourcebook of primary documents. 1/2 An Autobiography, Exhibition Catalog is the second part of this reverential survey. This volume reveals the full scope of the artist’s work through 125 sculptures, costumes, performable paper works, films, ink paintings, correspondences, ephemera, live performances, documents and previously unpublished material.
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