The unofficial mascot for the fifth decennial Skulptur Projekte Münster—through October 1, 2017—is a cartoon of a man holding a drink and a cigarette exclaiming, “This shit rocks!” In the year of the previous exhibition, the Henry Moore Institute and its curator Penelope Curtis initiated and published the MODERN SCULPTURE READER (2007)—which quickly sold out and fell out of print.
Five years later, the J. Paul Getty Museum sponsored a second edition of this essential volume on twentieth-century sculpture, which includes:
Essays by Eva Hesse (“Contingency”), Apollinaire (“Duchamp–Villon”), Vito Acconci (“Notes on Vienna”), and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (“Michael Asher and the Conclusion of Modern Sculpture”). Interviews with Louise Bourgeois, Robert Smithson, Rachel Whiteread, Bruce Nauman, and Richard Serra. Excerpts from longer pieces—Robert Irwin’s “Notes Toward Conditional Art,” Rilke on Rodin, Wilhelm Worringer on abstraction, Carl Einstein on African sculpture, and Allan Kaprow on assemblages and happenings.
The 70 texts—artists’ statements, newspaper and magazine articles, poems, transcribed lectures and interviews—are arranged chronologically, and edited by Jon Wood, David Hulks, and Alex Potts.
MODERN SCULPTURE READER (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute/Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2007 and 2012).
Claes Oldenburg, Giant Pool Balls—which was made for the first Skulptur Projekte Münster in 1977—covered with graffiti. Image credit: Rudolf Wakonigg/LWL, 1977/©1987 Skulptur Projekte Münster.
