{"title":"Michael Asher","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"1033021","title":"Public Knowledge: Selected Writings by Michael Asher","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdited by Kirsi Peltomaki\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritings by the conceptual artist Michael Asher—including notes, proposals, exhibition statements, and letters to curators and critics—most published here for the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe California conceptual artist Michael Asher (1943–2012) was known for rigorous site specificity and pioneering institutional critique. His decades of teaching at CalArts influenced generations of artists. Much of Asher's artistic practice was devoted to creating works that had no lasting material presence and often responded to the material, social, or ideological context of a situation. Because most of Asher's artworks have ceased to exist, his writings about them have special significance.\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePublic Knowledge\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ecollects writings by Asher about his work—including preliminary notes and ideas, project proposals, exhibition statements, and letters to curators and critics—most of which have never been previously published.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAsher gave few interviews, didn't write art criticism, and rarely published extensive accounts of his own work. Yet writing was central to his artistic practice, serving as a tool for working out ideas, negotiating institutional parameters, and describing thought processes. In these texts, he considers writing and documentation, discusses artistic practice, offers notes for gallery and museum talks, presents artist statements for exhibition-goers, describes individual works and their situational context, and reflects on teaching and art education. Among other things, Asher provides his definition of site specificity, addresses the function of art in public space, and analyzes the intersection of teaching art and institutional models of education. Readers will see an artist at work, formulating ethical and political strategies for making art in a situational world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe MIT Press, 2019\u003cbr\u003eHardcover, 264 pages\u003cbr\u003e9.25 x 7.25 inches\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":33212601204816,"sku":"9780262042673","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0035\/4502\/files\/asher.jpg?v=1784143338"},{"product_id":"1036537","title":"Michael Asher: Writings 1973–1983 on Works 1969–1979","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBy Benjamin Buchloh\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOriginally published in 1983, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eWritings 1973-1983 on Works 1969-197\u003c\/em\u003e9\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e, by Los Angeles artist Michael Asher (1943-2012) presents select documentation of 33 works through writings, photographs, architectural floor plans, exhibition announcements and other ephemera.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFor most of his career, Asher did not create traditional art objects; instead, he altered the existing institutional apparatus through which art is presented, creating work that intervened in the architectural, social or economic systems that undergird how art is produced and experienced. For example, in 1974, he removed the partition wall dividing the office and gallery space of the Claire S. Copley Gallery in Los Angeles, revealing the day-to-day activities of the gallery to the public. In another work from 1979, Asher had a bronze replica of a late 18th-century sculpture of George Washington moved from the exterior of the Art Institute of Chicago to a museum gallery that housed 18th-century art, reintroducing the statue to its original period context and shifting its function from public monument to indoor sculpture.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDue to its site- and time-specific nature, Asher’s work generally ceased to exist after an exhibition, which makes this highly sought-after book an invaluable resource. As the artist states in the introduction: “This book as a finished product will have a material permanence that contradicts the actual impermanence of the art-work, yet paradoxically functions as a testimony to that impermanence of my production.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul class=\"a-unordered-list a-nostyle a-vertical a-spacing-none detail-bullet-list\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-list-item\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePrimary Information, 2021\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-list-item\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSoftcover, 229 pages\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-list-item\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e9 x 12 inches\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Primary Information","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40510312415312,"sku":"9781732098640","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0035\/4502\/files\/BOW_Template1500px_5_f2a1ff42-0f92-4575-a998-da6598ded759.jpg?v=1709167470"},{"product_id":"1036543","title":"It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969-1973","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdited by Rebecca G. McGrew, Glenn R. Phillips, and Marie Shurkus\u003cbr\u003eText by Thomas Crow and David Pagel\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom 1969 to 1973, a series of radical art projects took place at the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County at the Pomona College Museum of Art, in Claremont, California. Here, Hal Glicksman, a pioneering curator in Light and Space art and former assistant to Walter Hopps, and Helene Winer, later the director of Artists Space and founder of Metro Pictures gallery in New York, curated landmark exhibitions by young local artists who bridged the gap between postminimalism and Conceptual art and presaged the development of postminimalism in the late 1970s. Among these artists were Bas Jan Ader, Michael Asher, Mowry Baden, Lewis Baltz, Chris Burden, Judy Chicago, Ger van Elk, Jack Goldstein, Robert Irwin, William Leavitt, John McCracken, Allen Ruppersberg, James Turrell and William Wegman. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eProviding unprecedented and revelatory insight into the art history of postwar Los Angeles,\u003cem\u003e It Happened at Pomona\u003c\/em\u003e chronicles the activities of artists, scholars, students and faculty associated with the College during this period. The book provides new insight into the relationship between postminimalism, Light and Space art and various strands of Conceptual art, performance art and photography in California, while contributing substantial new information about interconnections between artistic developments in Los Angeles and New York.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePomona College Museum of Art, 2011\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSoftcover, 386 pages\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e9 x 13 inches\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Pomona College Museum of Art","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40651173888080,"sku":"1036543","price":49.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0035\/4502\/files\/Pomona_cover.jpg?v=1699031046"},{"product_id":"michael-asher-october-files","title":"Michael Asher: October Files","description":"\u003cp\u003eDuring a career that spanned more than forty years, from the late 1960s until his death in 2012, Michael Asher created site-specific installations and institutional interventions that examined the conditions of art's production, display, and reception. At the Art Institute of Chicago, for example, he famously relocated a bronze replica of an eighteenth-century sculpture of George Washington from the museum's entrance to an interior gallery, thereby highlighting the disjunction between the statue's symbolic function as a public monument and its aesthetic origins as an artwork.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, Asher is celebrated as one of the forerunners of institutional critique. Yet because of Asher's situation-based method of working, and his resistance to making objects that could circulate in the art market, few of his works survive in physical form. What does survive is writing by scholars and critics about his diverse practice. The essays in this volume document projects that range from Asher's environmental works and museum displacements to his research-based presentations and reflections on urban space.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe MIT Press, 2016\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSoftcover, 200 pages\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e6 x 9 inches\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40886532046928,"sku":"9780262528795","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0035\/4502\/files\/Michael-Asher.jpg?v=1724278633"}],"url":"https:\/\/mocastore.org\/collections\/michael-asher.oembed","provider":"MOCA Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}