Text by Reinhard Spieler, Kerstin Skrobanek, Alexander Eiling, Wulf Herzogenrath.
Starting out as a Fluxus-oriented maker of objects and participatory conceptual compositions, Mary Bauermeister (born 1934) had her first solo show at the Stedelijk Museum in 1962. Exhibited alongside her exhibit was a small group survey of American art, which included Robert Rauschenberg's "Goat" paint-sculpture. "I was so flabbergasted by this piece, and I knew: where this is called Art, I will and want to be!" she later recalled. Bauermeister promptly relocated to New York, and quickly fell in with artists such as Duchamp, Warhol and Johns, and also began to make works protesting the Vietnam war and critiquing consumer culture. Her "lens boxes"--wooden or aluminum boxes containing layers of often bubble-like glass with collaged elements--were soon bought up by major American museums, and have become the works for which she is best known today. Here, for the first time, Bauermeister's enigmatic objects are surveyed and contextualized.
"The first box was frugal in design. Bauermeister loosely lined the floor of the box with her pen-and-ink drawings, and distributed magnifying glasses and lenses and prisms on the sheets of glass. Under a number of the magnifying glasses, leaves and stones were discernible. The box’s coloration was very subdued, the delicate pen-and-ink drawing hardly disturbing the basic shade of white which— along with the sparkling magnifying glasses and lenses and the repetitive circular forms—created a seemingly cosmic impression. Here, with the aid of the magnifiers and lenses, Bauermeister achieved a meaningful symbiosis: she combined this cosmic impression with the lyrical gesture of the scientist leaning over his finds and studying them. The motif of the magnifying glass served to connect microcosm and macrocosm: the viewer could look at the tiny details of the natural objects as the smallest components of the cosmos so to speak, or think of the entire box as a glimpse into a faraway galaxy."
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 9.75 in. / 176 pgs / 72 color / 30 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $65 ISBN: 9783866784499 PUBLISHER: Kerber AVAILABLE: 2/28/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA ME
Published by Kerber. Text by Reinhard Spieler, Kerstin Skrobanek, Alexander Eiling, Wulf Herzogenrath.
Starting out as a Fluxus-oriented maker of objects and participatory conceptual compositions, Mary Bauermeister (born 1934) had her first solo show at the Stedelijk Museum in 1962. Exhibited alongside her exhibit was a small group survey of American art, which included Robert Rauschenberg's "Goat" paint-sculpture. "I was so flabbergasted by this piece, and I knew: where this is called Art, I will and want to be!" she later recalled. Bauermeister promptly relocated to New York, and quickly fell in with artists such as Duchamp, Warhol and Johns, and also began to make works protesting the Vietnam war and critiquing consumer culture. Her "lens boxes"--wooden or aluminum boxes containing layers of often bubble-like glass with collaged elements--were soon bought up by major American museums, and have become the works for which she is best known today. Here, for the first time, Bauermeister's enigmatic objects are surveyed and contextualized.
