Robert Rauschenberg is one of the most important visual artists of the second half of the twentieth century. In Random Order, Branden Joseph examines Rauschenberg's work in the context of the American neo-avant-garde. One of the foundations of his study is Rauschenberg's professional relationship with experimental composer John Cage. From the moment of their encounter at Black Mountain College in 1952, Joseph argues, Rauschenberg and Cage initiated a new avant-garde project, one that approached the idea of difference not in terms of negation but as a positive force. Claiming that Rauschenberg's work cannot be understood solely from the standpoint of the Frankfurt School--whose theories have dominated discussions of avant-garde and neo-avant-garde aesthetics--Joseph turns to the theoretical positions of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. Rauschenberg's neo-avant-garde was not a simple repetition of earlier avant-garde movements, Joseph shows, but a series of practices that opposed the rise of postwar spectacle, commodification, and mass conformity.Beginning with the White Paintings, Joseph examines Rauschenberg?s artistic development from 1951 to 1971. He looks at the black paintings, Red Paintings, Elemental Paintings and Elemental Sculptures, Combines and Combine paintings, transfer drawings and silkscreens, performances, and explorations in art and technology. Joseph?s study not only offers new interpretations of Rauschenberg?s work, but also deepens our understanding of the entire neo-avant-garde project.

Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde (October Books)

Arts & Photography

Rauschenberg, Robert

Joseph, Branden W.

Individual Artists

Mit Pr

An examination of the artistic development of Robert Rauschenberg, focusing on his relationship with John Cage and his role in the making of the American neo-avant-garde.
Robert Rauschenberg is one of the most important visual artists of the second half of the twentieth century. In Random Order, Branden Joseph examines Rauschenberg's work in the context of the American neo-avant-garde. One of the foundations of his study is Rauschenberg's professional relationship with experimental composer John Cage. From the moment of their encounter at Black Mountain College in 1952, Joseph argues, Rauschenberg and Cage initiated a new avant-garde project, one that approached the idea of difference not in terms of negation but as a positive force. Claiming that Rauschenberg's work cannot be understood solely from the standpoint of the Frankfurt School―whose theories have dominated discussions of avant-garde and neo-avant-garde aesthetics―Joseph turns to the theoretical positions of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. Rauschenberg's neo-avant-garde was not a simple repetition of earlier avant-garde movements, Joseph shows, but a series of practices that opposed the rise of postwar spectacle, commodification, and mass conformity.
Beginning with the White Paintings, Joseph examines Rauschenberg's artistic development from 1951 to 1971. He looks at the black paintings, Red Paintings, Elemental Paintings and Elemental Sculptures, Combines and Combine paintings, transfer drawings and silkscreens, performances, and explorations in art and technology. Joseph's study not only offers new interpretations of Rauschenberg's work, but also deepens our understanding of the entire neo-avant-garde project.

The MIT Press

In 1977, Max Neuhaus turned a triangle of pedestrian space between 45th and 46th Streets in Times Square into an island of harmonic sound. The rich textures of that sound continue today, emanating from beneath the sidewalk grating, to anonymously reach an individual’s ears as if one has stumbled upon a secret. Known as Times Square, the celebrated installation was restored in 2002 with support from Dia Art Foundation, which further commissioned a site-specific piece, Time Piece Beacon, from Neuhaus in 2006 for its museum in Beacon, New York.
This stunning book―the only volume in print dedicated solely to the work of Neuhaus―takes these two projects as a point of departure from which to consider the singular impact this artist has had in establishing sound as a medium in contemporary art. An interview with Neuhaus is complemented with essays by multidisciplinary scholars who investigate and situate his work within a historical context.

Max Neuhaus

Potts, Alex

Loock, Ulrich

Cox, Christoph

Kotz, Liz

Neuhaus, Max

Pakesch, Peter

History & Criticism

Dia Art Foundation

Anthony McCall's Line Describing a Cone has long been a classic of American avant-garde cinema, but because it was most often screened in dusty Soho lofts in the past, the piece was little known to a wider audience. The inclusion of Line Describing a Cone,1973 in the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition "Into the Light: the Projected Image in American Art, 1964-1977" has opened McCall's work to a great deal of interest both in America and abroad. While curators are only now beginning to mine the history of the projected image in art, McCall continues to be one of the most important of the Post-Minimalist artists to use projected film. This book includes a major essay by Branden Joseph, an interview with the artist by Jonathan Walley, and the first photo-documentation ever made of his pieces as well as diagrams of related works. Additional biographical and bibliographic materials are included in the book to provide a baseline for further scholarly research in the area, as well as 100 never-before-seen reproductions of historical photographs, sketches, and diagrams from the artist's archive. New photography of the never-before-photographed Long Film For Four Projectors, 1974 was commissioned for this book. Anthony McCall: The Solid Light Films and Related Works is a co-publication with the New Art Trust in San Francisco, California.

Anthony McCall: The Solid Light Films and Related Works

Walley, Jonathan

Eamon, Christopher

Northwestern University Press

Cameron Jamie (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

Vergne, Philippe

Rugoff, Ralph

Filipovic, Elena

Humor & Entertainment

Phaidon Press

Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines

Drew Sawyer

Examining Tony Conrad's collaborative interactions as a guiding thread by which to investigate the contiguous networks and discursive interconnections in 1960s art.
Tony Conrad has significantly influenced cultural developments from minimalism to underground film, “concept art,” postmodern appropriation, and the most sophisticated rock and roll. Creator of the “structural” film, The Flicker, collaborator on Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures and Normal Love, follower of Henry Flynt's radical anti-art, member of the Theatre of Eternal Music and the first incarnation of The Velvet Underground, and early associate of Mike Kelley, Tony Oursler, and Cindy Sherman, Conrad has eluded canonic histories. Yet Beyond the Dream Syndicate does not claim Conrad as a major but under-recognized figure. Neither monograph nor social history, the book takes Conrad's collaborative interactions as a guiding thread by which to investigate the contiguous networks and discursive interconnections in 1960s art. Such an approach simultaneously illuminates and estranges current understandings of the period, redrawing the map across medium and stylistic boundaries to reveal a constitutive hybridization at the base of the decade's artistic development. This exploration of Conrad and his milieu goes beyond the presentation of a relatively overlooked oeuvre to chart multiple, contestatory regimes of power simultaneously in play during the pivotal moment of the 1960s. From the sovereign authority invoked by Young's music, to the “paranoiac” politics of Flynt, to the immanent control modeled by Conrad's films, each avant-garde project examined reveals an investment within a particular structure of power and resistance, providing a glimpse into the diversity of the artistic and political stakes that continue to define our time.

Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage

Zone Books

Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (Mit Press)

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