The Museum of Modern Art Library

It’s a DIY sculpture! Courtesy of artist Peter Forakis and...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:57:00 -0400

It’s a DIY sculpture! Courtesy of artist Peter Forakis and the magazine Art Voices (v. 5, n. 3, Summer, 1966).

“To change the dimension of this print painting from 2D to 3D cut out the whole shape…from the page.” After some folding and tab-gluing, one is supposed to get…abstract geometric sculpture.

The clip-n-save “Primary Structure Fold Up” was a tongue-in-groove take on the practice of many artists at the time concerning relationships between two- and three-dimensional form, as well as interest in monumentality, bold color, and the idea of deskilling, in which an artist’s idea is fabricated by others. The title in fact refers to an exhibition that year on precisely that theme: Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors at New York’s Jewish Museum.

Fueling the discourse, in an article in the same issue sculptor Kenneth Snelson asked “How Primary is Structure?” Warning against making “the words ‘form’ and ‘structure’ mean the same thing,” he argued instead for “structure as sculpture.” In other words, the forces holding materials together should be central: “the dialogue between push and pull, compression and tension” should be “the subject of form.”

One can imagine robust discussion between Forakis and Snelson on the nature of primary structure. Meanwhile, I’ve been fiddling with a copy of the cut-out but can’t quite transcend two dimensions. -jt

Our exhibition website is up for Please Come to the Show! Come...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:22:23 -0400

Our exhibition website is up for Please Come to the Show! Come visit. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2013/please_come_show/

MoMA Bibliographer conferring over an image from the magazine...

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:40:26 -0400

MoMA Bibliographer conferring over an image from the magazine Radical Software. The talk was at the ICA in Philadelphia this past Sunday as part of their Excursus series.

We are now on Twitter Follow us @MoMALibrary -ls

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:06:00 -0400

We are now on Twitter Follow us @MoMALibrary -ls

pleasecometotheshow: Eugenio Dittborn (1983) Early Airmail...

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:27:00 -0400

pleasecometotheshow:

Eugenio Dittborn (1983)
Early Airmail Painting / very large piece of mail art ==> it’s really big. -ds

Come visit our new Library exhibition - Please Come to the...

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:13:23 -0400

Come visit our new Library exhibition - Please Come to the Show. You can access the show when visiting MoMA or free of charge by entering at the 4 W. 54th St. entrance to the Education Building. -ds

Match text to publication. Which was rendered in typewriter type...

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:43:00 -0400

Match text to publication. Which was rendered in typewriter type in the 1979 self-published paperback Publish Your Photo Book by Bill Owens, and which in 2011 in the full-color, hardcover, trade press Publish Your Photography Book (2011) by Darius Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson?

In the last ten years we have seen an tremendous change and growth in the photographic industry. Today photographic education, museum exhibits, and photographic publications are dominating the (photographic) art scene.

The book can be reviewed…and given mass media exposure. [It may] become an exhibit in a museum or gallery. [It] can be talked about in lectures [and] workshops, passed around to friends and have a life of its own….exposure of your work is the main reason for self-publishing.

[With the photographic book,] the young photographer can share with the public his or her artistic vision.

Photography books have never commanded greater interest than they do today. Over the past fifteen years, interest in photography books has grown at an accelerated rate, due in no small part to the welcoming embrace of photography by the contemporary art world…They provide an artist a passport to the international photography scene: exhibitions, talks, gallery walks, book signings, and press interviews are all brought into being through their publication.

Ultimately, this book is about our inherent desire to communicate, about creating and manifesting one’s creative vision in book form.

Flared jeans may be out but photobooks remain vital. -jt

“The nine photographs of the TV project Self Burial by...

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:08:00 -0400

“The nine photographs of the TV project Self Burial by Keith Arnatt were transmitted daily beginning 11th of October ending 18th of October 69. Each photograph was shown 2 seconds at 8.15 and 9.15pm without any introduction or commentary. The stills of Keith Arnatt were cut into the running daily TV program.” —from the colophon of this book. This project was aired on WDR Fernsehen - a regional West German TV channel. -ds

pleasecometotheshow: John Cage and the Percussion Players! at...

Thu, 02 May 2013 10:47:00 -0400

pleasecometotheshow:

John Cage and the Percussion Players! at the Modern in 1943! Imaginary Landscape #3 looks pretty good. -ds

Today’s stacks find: the score for a...

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:49:00 -0400

Today’s stacks find: the score for a “slideopera,” The Philistine Traveler (New Haven: Philistine, 1954), a labor of love by Dave Jones and William Kent.

The opera was created specifically as a synchronization of Kodachrome slides and sound recording. Per the prescient introduction, (complete with idiosyncratic capitalization),

“The Authors maintain that modern Mechanical Means of Reproduction both in Audio and Visual terms can be approached and used for Themselves…and not merely as a ‘substitute’ for a live-performance.” They believed that such works could “result in an Operatic artform more relevant to Our Times.”

Neither slides nor recording are included in the small-run publication, so performance is left to the imagination, stimulated by the basketweave cover, multicolored paper stock, planograph prints, hand-lettering, perforations, and inserts.

One of the opera’s thirteen sections is titled “Create Traffic,” narrated by the biblical Samuel. Here we see the cover and score. Much like Tumblr traffic, it’s “Going Going, Out and In, Out and In…” -jt

Photo

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:36:30 -0400

Photo

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:22:56 -0400

Claes Oldenburg’s invitation/business card for The Store...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:05:51 -0400

Claes Oldenburg’s invitation/business card for The Store (1961).

Photo

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:16:53 -0400

Pamphlet for the inaugural show at Paula Cooper Gallery (1968).

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:36:48 -0400

Pamphlet for the inaugural show at Paula Cooper Gallery (1968).

Laurie Anderson “For Instants: Part 5” at De Appel...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:33:00 -0400

Laurie Anderson “For Instants: Part 5” at De Appel in Amsterdam (1977)

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Sun, 21 Apr 2013 08:46:44 -0400

Photo

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 08:43:17 -0400

Photo

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 08:27:20 -0400

-ds

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:32:00 -0400

-ds