Collected in a 600-plus-page volume, this co-publication of Primary Information and PrintedMatter contains all twenty issues of the newsprint magazine edited by Robinson, Edit DeAk, and JoshuaCohn—who would leave after issue 7—between 1973 and 1978.
(DeAk, Robinson, Sol LeWitt, and Lucy Lippard were among Printed Matter’s 1976 co-founders.)
Contributors to ART-RITE included Vito Acconci, Kathy Acker, Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, David Antin, John Baldessari, Jennifer Bartlett, Gregory Battcock, Lynda Benglis, MelBochner, Christian Boltanski, AA Bronson, Marcel Broodthaers, Trisha Brown, Chris Burden, DanielBuren, Scott Burton, Ulises Carrión, Judy Chicago, Lucinda Childs, Christo, Diego Cortez, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Ralston Farina, Richard Foreman, Peggy Gale, Gilbert and George, John Giorno, Philip Glass, Leon Golub, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Julia Heyward, NancyHolt, Ray Johnson, Joan Jonas, Richard Kern, Lee Krasner, Shigeko Kubota, Les Levine, SolLeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Babette Mangolte, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Rosemary Mayer, Annette Messager, Elizabeth Murray, Alice Neel, Brian O’Doherty, Genesis P-Orridge, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Judy Pfaff, Lil Picard, YvonneRainer, Dorothea Rockburne, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, David Salle, JulianSchnabel, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Serra, Sylvia Sleigh, Jack Smith, Patti Smith, Robert Smithson, Holly Solomon, Naomi Spector, Nancy Spero, Pat Steir, Frank Stella, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Alan Vega, AndyWarhol, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Hannah Wilke, Robert Wilson, and Irene vonZahn.
I have always been sympathetic to so-called minimal art. That does not keep me from criticizing its determined aloofness, which, of course, was also one of its greatest strengths. As to the implied incompatibility between a political statement/information and a work of art, I don’t think there are generally accepted criteria for what constitutes a work of art. At least since Duchamp and the constructivists, this has been a moving target…
Contrary to popular belief, eagles are really not courageous birds; they are even afraid of bicycles, as [Marcel] Broodthaers wrote. Their power is due to projection. The same is true for art—and political power. They need the red carpet, the gold frame, the aura of the office/museum—the paraphernalia of a seeming immortality and divine origin… It is important that the Thatcher painting is an oil painting. Acrylic paint doesn’t have an aura… Another reason for making a painting was that I had been stamped a conceptualist, a photomontagist, that sort of thing. This was a way to mess up the labels…
It is true that I often play on the modes of the contemporary art world, and I try to make something that is accessible to a larger public, which does not care for the histrionics of the art world. As Douglas [Crimp] pointed out, it helps that these pieces do not have the look of hermetic “avant-garde” art…
Where the Left is sometimes unnecessarily vulnerable is in its tendency to make mechanical attributions of ideology. In that respect, it mirrors the Right. We should recognize that things need to be evaluated within their respective historical contexts. Taken out of context, they are likely to be misread and can play the opposite role from that of their original settings… If I had been too concerned about co-optation, I would probably not have been able to do the things I’ve done. It can have a paralyzing effect. I saw this with some colleagues and students in the ’60s and ’70s. They either stopped working altogether or went through tremendous personal crisis, from which some eventually emerged as cynical entrepreneurs. In either case, it amounted to a capitulation to the powers that be. It takes stamina and shrewdness to survive in this mess… We just have to reconcile ourselves to the historical contingency of things. Otherwise, we fall into the idealist trap of believing in universal meanings and values. — Hans Haacke*
On the occasion of the New Museum exhibition HANS HAACKE—ALL CONNECTED—the artist’s first major institutional show in the United States since Hans Haacke—Unfinished Business (1986–1987), also at the New Museum—join Haacke and co-curators Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari for a public conversation.
*Yve-Alain Bois, Douglas Crimp, and Rosalind Krauss, “A Conversation with Hans Haacke,” October 30 (Autumn 1984): 22–48; reprinted in October: The First Decade, 1976–1986, edited by Annette Michelson, Krauss, Crimp, and Joan Copjec (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 175–200.
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