by Jon Lackman | 4 November 2010 | Books
To keep up on French scholarship, I like to check in on Fabula, which is primarily devoted to literary studies but catholic in its interests. One recent post concerned art criticism:
Directed by Françoise Lucbert, the Critique d’art series (published by the Presses universitaires de Rennes) continues collecting and analyzing nineteenth- and twentieth-century art criticism. It recently published Le Critique, l’art et l’histoire by Richard Leeman, who resorts to discourse analysis to study the archaeology of art history in critical writing. The work attests to the discipline’s growing interest in critical texts, visible most notably in the two important recent colloquia devoted to Pierre Restany (at INHA in 2006, its proceedings published in 2009 by éditions des Cendres) and to Michel Ragon (last June). This attention to writing also extends to artists’ writings, demonstrated by the recent “Artists’ Libraries” and the round-table “The Usefulness of Libraries for the Arts,” organized last July 5 by the Centre André Chastel (Paris-Sorbonne/CNRS).
On the topic of artists’ writings, this weekend brings the ever more interesting annual NY Art Book Fair, hosted by Printed Matter at MoMA PS1. Many of my favorite book and periodical publishers will be there from Aperture, Artforum, and Art Papers (now celebrating its 25th anniversary, with an interesting online timeline of its history) to Bidoun, Bomb, Cabinet, Frieze, Harper’s Books, and MIT Press. This year the fair hosts “200 international presses, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, artists and publishers from twenty countries [and] includes special project rooms, screenings, book signings, and performances, throughout the weekend. Other events include the third annual Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference, and The Classroom, a curated series of informal conversations between artists, together with readings, workshops and other artist-led events.” Alas I won’t be able to go this year, but I look forward to exploring some unfamiliar publishers on the fair’s well-linked Exhibitors page.
