David J. Getsy

The image of a tortured genius working in near isolation has long dominated our conceptions of the artist's studio. Examples are abound: think Jackson Pollock dripping resin on a cicada carcass in his shed in the Hamptons. But times have changed; ever since Andy Warhol declared his art space a 'factory', artists have begun to envision themselves as the leaders of production teams, and their sense of what it means to be in the studio has altered just as dramatically as their practices. "The Studio Reader" pulls back the curtain from the art world to reveal the real activities behind artistic production. What does it mean to be in the studio? What is the space of the studio in the artist's practice? How do studios help artists envision their agency and, beyond that, their own lives? This forward-thinking anthology features an all-star array of contributors, ranging from Svetlana Alpers, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Storr to Daniel Buren, Carolee Schneemann, and Buzz Spector, each of whom locates the studio both spatially and conceptually - at the center of an art world that careens across institutions, markets, and disciplines. A companion for anyone engaged with the spectacular sites of art at its making, "The Studio Reader" reconsiders this crucial space as an actual way of being that illuminates our understanding of both artists and the world they inhabit.

A fascinating look at the genesis and meaning of Van Gogh’s famed paintings of his bedroom Vincent van Gogh’s The Bedroom, a painting of his room in Arles, is arguably the most famous depiction of a bedroom in the history of art. The artist made three versions of the work, now in the collections of the Van Gogh Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée d’Orsay. This book is the first in-depth study of their making and their meaning to the artist. In Van Gogh’s Bedrooms, an international team of art historians, scientists, and conservators investigates the psychological and emotional significance of the bedroom in Van Gogh’s oeuvre, surveying dwellings as a motif that appears throughout his work. Essays address the context in which the bedroom was first conceived, the uniqueness of the subject, and the similarities and differences among the three works both on and below the painted surface. The publication reproduces more than 50 paintings, drawings, and illustrated letters by the artist, along with other objects that evoke his peripatetic life and relentless quest for “home.”Distributed for the Art Institute of ChicagoExhibition Schedule:Art Institute of Chicago (02/14/16–05/10/16)

An innovative analysis of 1960s abstract sculpture that draws on transgender studies and queer theory Now back in print, Abstract Bodies was the first book to bridge the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies with the discipline of art history. Original and theoretically astute, it recasts debates around abstraction and figuration in 1960s art through a discussion of gender’s mutability and multiplicity. In that decade, sculpture purged representation and figuration but continued to explore the human as an implicit reference. Even as the statue and the figure were left behind, artists and critics asked how the human, and particularly gender and sexuality, related to abstract sculptural objects that refused the human form. This book examines abstract sculpture in the 1960s that came to propose unconventional and open accounts of bodies, persons, and genders. Drawing on transgender studies and queer theory, David J. Getsy offers innovative and archivally rich new interpretations of artworks by and critical writing about four major artists—Dan Flavin (1933–1996), Nancy Grossman (b. 1940), John Chamberlain (1927–2011), and David Smith (1906–1965). Abstract Bodies makes a case for abstraction as a resource in reconsidering gender’s multiple capacities and offers an ambitious contribution to this burgeoning interdisciplinary field.

The first book to chart Scott Burton’s performance art and sculpture of the 1970s. Scott Burton (1939–89) created performance art and sculpture that drew on queer experience and the sexual cultures that flourished in New York City in the 1970s. David J. Getsy argues that Burton looked to body language and queer behavior in public space—most importantly, street cruising—as foundations for rethinking the audiences and possibilities of art. This first book on the artist examines Burton’s underacknowledged contributions to performance art and how he made queer life central in them. Extending his performances about cruising, sexual signaling, and power dynamics throughout the decade, Burton also came to create functional sculptures that covertly signaled queerness by hiding in plain sight as furniture waiting to be used. With research drawing from multiple archives and numerous interviews, Getsy charts Burton’s deep engagements with postminimalism, performance, feminism, behavioral psychology, design history, and queer culture. A restless and expansive artist, Burton transformed his commitment to gay liberation into a unique practice of performance, sculpture, and public art that aspired to be antielitist, embracing of differences, and open to all. Filled with stories of Burton’s life in New York’s art communities, Queer Behavior makes a case for Burton as one of the most significant out queer artists to emerge in the wake of the Stonewall uprising and offers rich accounts of queer art and performance art in the 1970s.

Part of the acclaimed 'Documents of Contemporary Art' series of anthologies. There has never been an anthology of artists' writings like Queer. It is an antidote to assimilation, a call for radical creativity, and a recipe for artistic revolution. - Richard Meyer, Professor, Department of Art & Art History, Stanford University Rather than a book of queer theory for artists, this is a book of artists’ queer tactics and infectious concepts. In the first such anthology to be centred on artists’ writings, numerous conversations about queer practice are brought together from diverse individual, social and cultural contexts. Together these texts describe and examine the ways in which artists have used the concept of queer as a site of political and institutional critique, as a framework to develop new families and histories, as a spur to action, and as a basis from which to declare inassimilable difference. Artists surveyed include: Nayland Blake, Gregg Bordowitz, Leigh Bowery, AA Bronson, AK Burns, Giuseppe Campuzano, Tee Corinne, Barbara DeGenevieve, Dyke Action Machine!, Elmgreen & Dragset, Nicole Eisenman, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Simon Fujiwara, Malik Gaines, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Gran Fury, Sunil Gupta, Hahn Thi Pham, Harmony Hammond, Sharon Hayes, Hudson, Roberto Jacoby, Derek Jarman, Isaac Julien, Mahmoud Khaled, Zoe Leonard, Lesbian Avengers, Catherine Lord, Ma Liuming, LTTR, Allyson Mitchell, Zanele Muholi, Carlos Motta, Ocaña, Hélio Oiticica, Catherine Opie, Marlon Riggs, Emily Roysdon, Prem Sahib, Assoto Saint, Tejal Shah, Amy Sillman, Jack Smith, AL Steiner, Wolfgang Tillmans, Toxic Titties, Danh Vo, David Wojnarowicz, Wu Tsang, Yan Xing, Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis, Akram Zaatari and Sergio Zevallos

Late nineteenth-century Britain experienced an explosion of interest in sculpture. Sculptors of the “New Sculpture” movement sought a new direction and a modern idiom for their art. This book analyzes for the first time the art-theoretical concerns of the late-Victorian sculptors, focusing on their attitudes toward representation of the human body. David J. Getsy uncovers a previously unrecognized sophistication in the New Sculpture through close study of works by key figures in the movement: Frederic Leighton, Alfred Gilbert, Hamo Thornycroft, Edward Onslow Ford, and James Havard Thomas.These artists sought to activate and animate the conventional format of the ideal statue so that it would convincingly stand in for both a living body and an ideal image. Getsy demonstrates the conceptual complexity of the New Sculptors and places their concerns within the larger framework of modern sculpture. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art