Journal

Reading Room: A Journal of Art and Culture
 

Issue 1 (2007)

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN THE WAKE OF CONCEPTUALISM
Edited by Tina Barton, Wystan Curnow and Robert Leonard

In the 1960s and 1970s the idea of art as a mode of self-expression was categorically disavowed. Before conceptual art, autobiography in art was largely to do with expressing the artist's inner life, but conceptual artists were more concerned with measuring life's outward manifestations. On Kawara is an obvious example. Every day he recorded the time he got up, where he went, who he met, and noted that he was still alive, but left psychology out of the picture. Where the old romantic idea of an expressive-confessional art persisted, its production and reception were often inflected by psychoanalytic theory, as in the work of Louise Bourgeois. Lacan's idea that the unconscious was structured like a language became hugely influential. These developments brought new opportunities and problems for autobiography.
 

Contents:
 

.04 Foreword
Chris Saines
.05 Marylyn Mayo and Mavis Mason
Catherine Hammond
.06 Introduction
Robert Leonard
.08 Autobiography: Does it have a Future? Ron Silliman's "The Alphabet" and On Kawara's "Today Series"
Wystan Curnow
.26 Is an Artist? Art, Autobiographies and Humanity's Disappearance
Charles Reeve
.40 Autotopography: Louise Bourgeois as Builder
Postscript. Mieke Bal in Conversation
Mieke Bal
.60 Art in the Face of Fame: Ricky Swallow's Reflection of Reputation
Anthony Gardner
.80 Who is Billy Apple? The Artist after the Death of the Subject
Christina Barton
.97  the undeceived are mistaken...
Mike Parr
.113 "Admit One": Presenting Adrian Reginald Hall, Auckland, 1971
Marcus Moore
.126 Personal Experience and Impersonal Aesthetics: The Video Work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982)
Susan Best
.140 Marcel Duchamp: Creativity is a Form of Onanism
Andrew McNamara
ARCHIVE
 
.161 The Artists' Files
Jennifer French
.171 Jim Allen's "O-AR Part I"
Serena Bentley
.175 I'll Still Be Here When You're Gone: The Archival Strategy of Malcolm Ross
Matt Plummer
.181 Staff Research, Presentations and Publications: 2006
.183 Contributors
   

Reading Room - Issue 1

Reading Room - Issue 1.
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