Even if you know Doug Hall’s work, you don’t know “this” Doug Hall: the little boy afraid of bears in Boston who became the love-smitten art student who grew into a fearless Conceptual artist challenging many of our most beloved assumptions. Although lavishly and beautifully illustrated, this is not a book only to be looked at but one to be thoroughly read and enjoyed. In an account at once intimate and historical, Doug Hall writes eloquently about his development as a person and an artist. He situates his story within the broader conflicts of the latter part of the twentieth century and shows how these often absurd forces influenced a generation of artists to adopt radical art practices — video, performance, and installation — as a counter to the modernist aesthetics that preceded them. From his hilarious and troubling descriptions of the Altamont Free Concert (1969) and his disorienting confrontation in Berkeley with an LSD-tripping Indian Saddhu to his thoughts about teaching, making art, and the thinking behind some of his most important projects, Hall’s writing is generous and instructive for all those interested in our humanity and how it is nurtured through the arts.
