Words to Be Looked At: Language in 1960s Art
"In 1959, Brion Gysin famously claimed that poetry was fifty years behind painting. Gysin's prophecy still holds true: half a century later, contemporary poetry is just beginning to explore ideas forged by language-based artists in the 1960s. As such, this book is a roadmap, bursting at the seams with inspiration and ideas for current literary practices. By embracing an intermedia approach -- one where music, photography, visual art, poetry and performance all live in the same room -- Liz Kotz elegantly creates a compelling portrait of our digitized networked present. The implications are radical: by gazing backwards, this book predicts the future."-- Kenneth Goldsmith, University of Pennsylvania"Book-ended by Cage's 4'33'' and Warhol's a: a novel, by 'silence' and 'glossolalia', Liz Kotz's text tracks a hitherto uncharted trajectory in what she terms "the turn to language" in vanguard art practices of the 1960s and 70s. Kotz's nuanced probing of linguistic operations serving instrumental or instructional ends and/or deployed as material entities illuminates an impressively wide range of works in various fields from experimental music and poetry, to the visual arts. Acutely attentive to that era's displacement of conventional categories, she constructs a network of cross disciplinary readings that freshly parses the interrelationships of Fluxus, Conceptual, performance and post-minimal art works with concurrent disciplines."--Lynne Cooke, Curator, Dia Art Foundation(Lynne Cooke, Dia Art Foundation)"An excellently researched archaeology of the emergence of Conceptualism in New York in the '60s and a reminder of the extraordinary fecundity of the dialogues that were occurring in avant-garde circles at that time." Michael Gibbs The Art Book"Book-ended by Cage's 4'33" and Warhol's a: a novel, by 'silence' and 'glossolalia', Liz Kotz's text tracks a hitherto uncharted trajectory in what she terms "the turn to language" in vanguard art practices of the 1960s and 70s. Kotz's nuanced probing of linguistic operations serving instrumental or instructional ends and/or deployed as material entities illuminates an impressively wide range of works in various fields from experimental music and poetry, to the visual arts. Acutely attentive to that era's displacement of conventional categories, she constructs a network of cross disciplinary readings that freshly parses the interrelationships of Fluxus, Conceptual, performance and post-minimal art works with concurrent disciplines." Lynne Cooke, Curator, Dia Art Foundation"Book-ended by Cage"s4"33"and Warhol"sa: a novel,by "silence" and "glossolalia", Liz Kotz"s text tracks a hitherto uncharted trajectory in what she terms "the turn to language" in vanguard art practices of the 1960s and 70s. Kotz"s nuanced probing of linguistic operations serving instrumental or instructional ends and/or deployed as material entities illuminates an impressively wide range of works in various fields from experimental music and poetry, to the visual arts. Acutely attentive to that era"s displacement of conventional categories, she constructs a network of cross disciplinary readings that freshly parses the interrelationships of Fluxus, Conceptual, performance and post-minimal art works with concurrent disciplines."Lynne Cooke, Curator, Dia Art Foundation"In 1959, Brion Gysin famously claimed that poetry was fifty years behind painting. Gysin"s prophecy still holds true: half a century later, contemporary poetry is just beginning to explore ideas forged by language-based artists in the 1960s. As such, this book is a roadmap, bursting at the seams with inspiration and ideas for current literary practices. By embracing an intermedia approachone where music, photography, visual art, poetry and performance all live in the same roomLiz Kotz elegantly creates a compelling portrait of our digitized networked present. The implications are radical: by gazing backwards, this book predicts the future."Kenneth Goldsmith, University of Pennsylvania"Kotz, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature, has a keen eye and ear for language in art. And she has also gamely tackled close readings of some of the twentieth century's most impenetrable, enigmatic artworks and poems, drawing out a succession of fascinating details and compelling contextualizations." Art on Paper"Of the many strengths ofWords to be Looked AtKotz"s synthetic vision stands out. She has a gift for bringing together previously isolated works in ways that illuminate both elements of her comparison. The discussion of John Ashbery and Jackson MacLow offers us a superb example of this within the domain of poetry, while the chapter on George Brecht"s performance piece and Joseph Kosuth"s photographic installation provides a model for the synthesis of different arts."P. Adams Sitney, Director, Program in Visual Arts, Princeton University