Ways of Re-Thinking Literature

Ways of Re-Thinking Literature creates a unique platform where leading literary thinkers and practitioners provide a multiplicity of views into what literature is today. The texts gathered in this extraordinary collection range from philosophy to poetry, to theater, to cognitive sciences, to art criticism, to fiction, and their authors rank amongst the most significant figures in their fields, in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Topics covered include an assessment of the role of literary narratives in contemporary writing, new considerations on the novel, a redefinition of the "poetic" factor in poetry and life, and a discussion of how literature engages with contemporary forms of individuality. Under the auspices of literary luminaries Hélène Cixous and the late John Ashbery, these new pieces of writing bring to light contributions by innovative and well-established authors from the English-speaking sphere, as well as never-before translated prominent new voices in French theory. Featuring original work from some of today’s most influential authors, Ways of Re-Thinking Literature is an indispensable tool for anybody interested in the future and possibilities of literature as an endeavor for life, thought, and creativity.  With special cover artwork by Rita Ackermann, the volume includes contributions from Emily Apter, Philippe Artières, John Ashbery, Paul Audi, Dodie Bellamy, Tom Bishop, Hélène Cixous, Laurent Dubreuil, Tristan Garcia, Stathis Gourgouris, Donatien Grau, Boris Groys, Shelley Jackson, Wayne Koestenbaum, Camille Laurens, Vanessa Place, Maël Renouard, Peter Schjeldahl, Adam Thirlwell, and Camille de Toledo.

Literature & Fiction

Grau, Donatien

History & Criticism

Routledge

The Transitory Museum

Throughout modernity there has been a clear divide between art and commerce. Objects could either be consumed as commerce or contemplated as art. Today, as museums are facing increasing financial pressure and as stores have become inventive locations for new modes of display, this clear divide has begun to dissolve. There is one place that represents a key stage in this evolution: 10 Corso Como. It was founded in Milan, at that very address, by fashion editor Carla Sozzani and has since expanded to Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and New York. The name “concept store”, which has now spread across our globalized world, was originally coined to describe this new form. This book is the first philosophical inquiry into this new form of store and it sheds new light on how categories that have governed our modern lives, such as commerce, art, fashion, and museum, are being redefined today.

Business & Money

Coccia, Emanuèle

Industries

Polity

Throughout modernity there has been a clear divide between art and commerce. Objects could either be consumed as commerce or contemplated as art. Today, as museums are facing increasing financial pressure and as stores have become inventive locations for new modes of display, this clear divide has begun to dissolve. There is one place that represents a key stage in this evolution: 10 Corso Como. It was founded in Milan, at that very address, by fashion editor Carla Sozzani and has since expanded to Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and New York. The name "concept store", which has now spread across our globalized world, was originally coined to describe this new form. This book is the first philosophical inquiry into this new form of store and it sheds new light on how categories that have governed our modern lives, such as commerce, art, fashion, and museum, are being redefined today.

No thinker in the West has had a wider and more sustained influence than the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. From philosophy to drama, religion to politics, it is difficult to find a current cultural or social phenomenon that is not in some aspect indebted to the famous philosopher and the Platonic tradition. It should come as no surprise that contemporary artists continue to engage with and respond to the ideas of Plato.   Accompanying an exhibition at the Getty Villa, this book brings together eleven renowned artists working in a variety of media—Paul Chan, Rachel Harrison, Huang Yong Ping, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Joseph Kosuth, Paul McCarthy, Whitney McVeigh, Raymond Pettibon, Adrian Piper, and Michelangelo Pistoletto—all of whom have acknowledged the role of Plato in their artistic process.   Featuring candid interviews with the artists, this volume begins with an essay by the critic and curator Donatien Grau that contextualizes Plato in antiquity and in the present day. Contemporary art, Grau demonstrates, is Platonism stripped bare, and it allows us to reconsider Plato’s philosophy as a deeply human construct, one that remains highly relevant today.  

Plato in L.A.: Contemporary Artists’ Visions

Arts & Photography

J.paul Getty Museum

La Vie Alaïa

Actes-sud

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Musée national Picasso-Paris produced in partnership with the Calder Foundation and Fundacíon Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, Calder, Picasso explores the uses of negative or empty space in the work of Alexander Calder (1898–1976) and Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), both in their resonances and their differences. With a focus on figurative as well as abstract themes, the exhibition links some 150 artworks by both artists via a thematic lens of void-as-matrix and the corollary proposition that confrontation with the void is a fundamental aspect of 20th-century modernism. These works are interpreted objectively as well as metaphorically, using the void as a prism through which to analyze the conceptual and formal tensions both artists deploy as a means to place the direct and personal experience of the spectator at the very heart of their work. The catalog maps the tangible traces of a relationship between these two men: their points in common, their encounters, their collaborations and the sometimes extreme confrontation posed in their works through the use of obscure or even illusory perspectives; it includes numerous major texts on these topics by respected specialists.

Calder-Picasso

De Diego, Estrella

Coulibaly, Mariah

Dvorakova, Simona

Garnier, Claire

Skira

Tom Bishop a, pendant plus de soixante ans, contribué à définir les échanges littéraires, philosophiques, culturels, artistiques, mais aussi politiques entre Paris et New York. Comme professeur et directeur du Centre de Civilisation et de Culture Françaises à New York University, il a fait de l'institution de Washington Square l'un des grands ponts entre les nouveautés venues de Paris et une scène new-yorkaise alors en transformation complète. Tom Bishop était proche de Beckett, a défendu Robbe-Grillet aux États-Unis, s'est lié d'amitié avec Marguerite Duras et Hélène Cixous, a organisé des rencontres publiques historiques - comme celle entre James Baldwin et Toni Morrison. Il est également chercheur, spécialiste reconnu de l'avant-garde, notamment du Nouveau Roman et du Nouveau Théâtre. En 2012, il a invité Donatien Grau à donner une conférence à NYU. A partir de cette invitation, des conversations, une amitié se sont développées - dont certaines sont rassemblées dans ce livre. Tom Bishop retrace son parcours, sa propre histoire: son départ de Vienne, ses études, ses rencontres, ses choix, sa conception de la littérature et de la vie, son rapport au monde politique et économique; la manière dont il a contribué à définir la profession de « curator » telle qu'elle se pratique aujourd'hui. Dans ces entretiens, il se présente à la fois comme un savant, un organisateur, un acteur majeur de la vie intellectuelle: un individu, avec ses déclarations, sa colère, ses refus, sa loyauté, son appétit insatiable de découverte et de nouveauté, son profond attachement à l'université, lieu de liberté et de création.

La littérature est un voyage de découverte: Tom Bishop en conversation avec Donatien Grau (French Edition)

Biographies & Memoirs

Bishop, Tom

Arts & Literature

Diaphanes

A personal take on French Theory by one of the people who invented it. In the mid-1970s, Sylvère Lotringer created Semiotext(e), a philosophical group that became a magazine and then a publishing house. Since its creation, Semio-text(e) has been a place of stimulating dialogue between artists and philosophers, and for the past fifty years, much of American artistic and intellectual life has depended on it. The model of the journal and the publishing house revolves around the notion of the collective, and Lotringer has rarely shared his personal journey: his existence as a hidden child during World War II; the liberating and then traumatic experience of the collective in the kibbutz; his Parisian activism in the 1960s; his time of wandering, that took him, by way of Istanbul, to the United States; and then, of course, his American years, the way he mingled his nightlife with the formal experimentation he invented with Semiotext(e) and with his classes. Since the early 2010s, Donatien Grau has developed the habit of visiting Lotringer during his trips to Los Angeles; some of their dialogs were published or held in public. This book is an entry into Lotringer's life, his friendships, his choices, and his admiration for some of the leading thinkers of our times. The conversations between Lotringer and Grau show bursts of life, traces of a journey, through texts and existence itself, with an unusual intensity. &nbsp;

I Was More American than the Americans: Sylvère Lotringer in Conversation with Donatien Grau

Lotringer, Sylvère

Professionals & Academics

Mungo Thomson's wide-ranging, multi-media work approaches mass culture and everyday perceptual experience through a lens of deep time and cosmic scale, implicating the spaces of production and exhibition in ever-widening extrapolations.He has convened an orchestral ensemble to perform a score transcribed from the chirping of crickets, persuaded museums to let their incoming mail pile up unopened in the galleries for the run of an exhibition, and replaced the coat-hangers in the Whitney Museum's coat check with custom-made hangers modeled on orchestral triangles, transforming it into an enormous musical instrument.Spanning his entire oeuvre, this first comprehensive monograph focuses in particular on the artist's three main series that embody his exploration of popular culture and everyday objects to question what we most take for granted, or fail to notice.In the 'TIME' series, person-sized silkscreened mirrors bearing the red border and logo of the 100-year-old international weekly newsmagazine, pair a precise historical moment with the viewer's own reflection in the present. As a series, these works form their own archive, reflecting each other, and picturing the viewer within an infinity room of culture and politics and media and design.The 'Wall Calendar' series displays commercial calendar images as if held up to the sun, allowing the reverse side of the page to show through. Printed on both sides of fabric and stretched over a lightbox, recto and verso are collaged together with light--the calendar grid of a single month is superimposed onto a photograph of a 40-million-year-old mountain, and the everyday minutiae of living is put into scale with geological time.These works consider geochronology from a precarious contemporary vantage, contrasting evocations of elevated consciousness with contemplations of extinction. Thomson's 'Snowman' is a series of trompe-l'oeil stacks of Amazon boxes and other online retail shipping cartons cast in sturdy patinated bronze. Both a droll contribution to the field of outdoor sculpture and a mineralogical transformation of the temporary and ephemeral into the permanent and geological, in 2020 the Snowman also became public art for a depopulated world.Includes a conversation with Laura Owens.

Mungo Thomson

Lehrer-Graiwer, Sarah

Griffin, Tim

Individual Artists

Jrp Ringier Kunstverlag Ag

Between a Temple of Art and a Big Event As places to enjoy art, as well as institutions that have become historic, museums can also be examined through the question of who exactly heads up these temples of art. What kinds of personalities have guided the fates of these large, traditional institutions? How have they done so, and what has motivated them? What galvanizes international curators or museum employees, and how have they risen to the challenge of opening their organizations to increasingly large numbers of visitors? Donatien Grau has conducted impressive conversations with influential museum operators. We have him to thank for these personal, art historical, cultural-political, and timely insights into museum operations, the histories of various institutions, and their leaders' very personal attitudes toward art. This volume reads like a detective story about the mediation efforts of museums and the personal motives behind them. Interviews with MICHEL LACLOTTE, Director of the Louvre, Paris, 1987-1995; SIR ALAN BOWNESS, Director of the Tate, London, 1980-1988; SIR TIMOTHY CLIFFORD, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1984-2006; PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977-2009; IRINA ANTONOVA, Director of the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, 1961-2013; PETER-KLAUS SCHUSTER, General Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1998-2008; SIR MARK JONES, Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2001-2011; TOM KRENS, Director of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Venice, and Bilbao, 1988-2008; WILFRIED SEIPEL, General Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1998-2008; HENRI LOYRETTE, Director of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (1994-2001), and the Louvre, Paris (2001-2013). DONATIEN GRAU is a newspaper art critic, a museum curator, and a university teacher. His lively and clever voice has a firm place in the field of art.

Living Museums

Hatje Cantz

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