Hammer Museum of Art.
Good catalogues refresh and sustain the life of memorable shows.
This year, some of the best publications did not originate as exhibition catalogues, however. Underlaid by the fertile imagination, insatiable curiosity, and chuzpah that might mask a modicum of absurdity, the earnest disposition that once underlay a tie-exchange with U.S. senators is solemnly dispatched. Prefaced by Dave Hickey's witty view of Vallance's world, i.e., the San Fernando Valley, Vallance's perceptions and their consequences make his narrations, even the meticulously entered definitions, tantalizing. Another artist who scores high in print is Buzz Spector. This may take the form of altered books like those of Ann Hamilton and Margaret Wharton, or of original publications such as Anselm Kiefer's weighty tomes and John Baldessari's illustrations for Sterne's Tristam Shandy , the latter lauded as a counterpart to the bawdy text.