Reconsidering the Object of Art examines a generally underexposed (and therefore often misunderstood) period in contemporary art and highlights artists whose practices have inspired much of the most significant art being produced today. It illustrates and discusses many crucial, ground-breaking works that have not been seen within their proper historical context, if they have been individually seen at all. By 1969 such artists as Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and others had begun to create works using a variety of media that sought to reevaluate certain fundamental premises about the formal, material, and contextual definitions of art. This first comprehensive overview of Conceptual art in English documents the work of fifty-five artists, work that marked a significant rupture with traditional forms and concepts of painting, sculpture, photography, and film. Also included are essays that elucidate the significant aesthetic issues that gave rise, in both America and Europe, to the highly individual, but related, modes of Conceptual art. Lucy Lippard (art historian) writes on the broader sociopolitical milieu in which this work was made; Stephen Melville (Professor of Art History, Ohio State University) probes the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of Conceptual art; and Jeff Wall (artist) discusses the relationship between Conceptual art and photography. Anne Rorimer and Ann Goldstein (curators of the exhibition the book accompanies) respectively take up the role of language in this work, and discuss each of the artists. Copublished with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975

Arts & Photography

Goldstein, Ann

Rorimer, Anne

History & Criticism

Mit Pr

In a 1979 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, American conceptual artist Michael Asherknown for his site-specific” work that investigates the relationship between a piece of art and its place of displayrelocated a 20th-century bronze cast of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s famous marble George Washington (178591) from the museum’s front steps to an interior gallery. In placing the work in a new context, Asher sought to make the viewer aware of usually invisible institutional practicesthe categorization of works of art, methods of installation, and the criteria for assigning aesthetic value.This book focuses on Asher’s 2005 installation at the Art Institute, for which he again relocated the statuebut to an entirely different effect. With reproductions of archival documents that chart the itinerant life of the bronze, installation photographs, a selected bibliography, and exhibition history, this book also features absorbing essays that examine the two installations and that offer a unique glimpse into the evolution of Asher’s provocative and challenging process.

Michael Asher: "George Washington" at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1979 and 2005

Moeller, Whitney

Art Institute of Chicago

Provides a richly illustrated study of developments in conceptual art during the late 1960s and 1970s, describing the use of alternative media and procedures, examining the cultural, political, and social context of the art, and analyzing the work of Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, Eleonor Antin, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and other notable artists.

New Art in the 60s and 70s: Redefining Reality

Thames&Hudson

A classic now back in print and enriched with new imagery, James J. Rorimer’s riveting first-hand account takes readers on a treasure hunt as he follows the Allied troops across France and Germany to save Nazi-stolen masterpieces of art.\nJames J. Rorimer, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, became a leading figure in the art recovery unit known as the Monuments Men, an elite group imbedded in the US Army, who risked their lives during World War II to save Europe’s greatest artworks from Hitler’s grasp. In the film Monuments Men, Matt Damon’s character is based on Rorimer as he embarks on the world’s most dangerous real-life hunt for stolen artworks with the goal of locating, seizing, and returning the works to their original holders, including museums and private collectors.\nThis new edition of a book first published in 1950 includes the original illustrations from the first edition plus a wealth of new imagery and ephemera uncovered during extensive research, including WWII photo-graphs, many taken by Rorimer himself, that are accompanied by gorgeous reproductions of many of the Old Masters Rorimer helped save by artists such as Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruegel, Vermeer, Goya, Velazquez, and van Eyck. Maps created specially for this volume, and other facts about WWII history and geography, add new dimension to a remarkable story of courage, perseverance, and ultimately, triumph.

Monuments Man: The Mission to Save Vermeers, Rembrandts, and Da Vincis from the Nazis' Grasp

Rorimer, James J.

Rorimer, Louis

Rizzoli Electa

Art at the Armory: Occupied Territory

Bruegmann, Robert

Wright, Beryl J.

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Museum Of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Artwork by John Baldessari. Contributions by Andrea Hales. Text by Hugh Davies, Anne Rorimer.

John Baldessari: National City

Davies, Hugh

Individual Artists

Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

The dwelling, the walls, the windows, the roof, the furniture, the pictures, the ornaments, the dress, the fence or hedge-all act constantly upon the imagination and determine its contents. -- Charles Henderson In 1990, Asher, armed with his characteristic incisive wit and critical intellect, set out to dig through the historical foundations of the Renaissance Society's Bergman Gallery at the University of Chicago. This exhibition marks Asher's shift from physically altering gallery spaces to using text and documentation as a manifestation of the ideological backgrounds for exhibitions. Revealing the underlying intellectual and social coordinates of The Society by juxtaposing writings from early University of Chicago scholars of the American Arts and Crafts Movement with the U.S. patent numbers for various gallery fixtures, Asher's exhibition was a brilliant contribution to the movement of institutional critique. With detailed and thorough reproductions of the installation alongside

Michael Asher: The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, January 21-March 4, 1990

Pelzer, Birgit

Renaissance Society

History of the Renaissance Society: The First Seventy-five Years

Vinci, John

Kostelanetz, Richard

Fulton, Jean

Scanlan, Joseph

These are the first six provocative lectures on contemporary art initiated by the Dia Center. Artists discussed include Lawrence Weiner, Ketherina Fritsch, Robert Gober and Joseph Beuys.

Robert Lehman Lectures On Contemporary Art

Dia Art Foundation

Michael Asher (born in 1943), one of the foremost installation artists of the Conceptual art period, is a founder of site-specific practice. Considered a progenitor of institutional critique, he spearheaded the creation of artworks imbued with a self-conscious awareness of their dependence on the conditions of their exhibition context.In the work Kunsthalle Bern 1992, Asher removed the radiators from all the museum's exhibition spaces and reassembled them in its entryway gallery. Metal pipes connected the relocated radiators to their original sockets; these tubular conduits, coursing in linear fashion along the Kunsthalle's walls, kept the steam heat flowing and endowed the installation with directional lines of force. This "displacement of givens" offers a perfect example of site-specific practice, one that took the gallery space and the institution itself as its subject. In this detailed examination of Kunsthalle Bern 1992, Anne Rorimer considers the work in the context of Asher's ongoing desire to fuse art with the material, economic, and social conditions of institutional presentation. Rorimer analyzes Kunsthalle Bern 1992 in relation to the earlier innovations of such minimalist artists as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, and Dan Flavin as well as to such conceptualist contemporaries as Daniel Buren, Dan Graham, and Maria Nordman. She also considers the installation in the context of other works by Asher that have used non-art, functional elements, including walls, or that have investigated museological issues.

Michael Asher: Kunsthalle Bern, 1992

Afterall Books

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Books by Rorimer, Anne