Jo Baer: The Minimal Years, 1960-1975
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Jo Baer's is a singular career. Her commitment to painting, which would be longstanding, matured in the early 1960s via a rigorous examination of its ontology. A young artist arriving in New York on the cusp of the decade, she launched into a stringent inquiry concerning the nat...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/baer/essay.html
Joseph Beuys
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. In 1982, Dia facilitated the realization of Joseph Beuys's proposal for Documenta 7,7000 Eichen (7,000 Oaks). a project that called for the planting of seven thousand trees, each paired with a columnar basalt marker, throughout the city of Kassel, Germany. Dia's association with Beuys...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/beuys/essay.html
Joseph Beuys: 7000 Oaks
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. with statements by Joseph Beuys. I believe that planting these oaks is necessary not only in biospheric terms, that is to say, in the context of matter and ecology, but in that it will raise ecological consciousness-raise it increasingly, in the course of the years to come, because ...
http://www.diacenter.org/ltproj/7000/essay.html
Joseph Beuys: Arena
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. This large-scale installation by Joseph Beuys comprises one hundred panels with several hundred photographs covering the span of the artist's career up to 1972. Ranging from the late forties to the early seventies, Arena constitutes however less an autobiographical statement than an allegorical ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/beuys/arena/essay.html
Joseph Beuys: Drawings after the Codices Madrid
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. In 1987-88, Dia Center for the Arts organized, as one of three inaugural exhibitions marking the opening of its facility in Chelsea, an installation of works by Joseph Beuys drawn from its own extensive holdings. One of the largest outside Germany, Dia's collection of works by ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/beuys/codices/essay.html
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Vernacular industrialized architecture has been the sole subject of Bernd and Hilla Becher's work for some forty years. Their vast photographic inventory now ranges geographically from western Europe through North America and taxonomically across an enormous array of heterogeneo...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/becher/essay.html
Boetti and Bouabré: Worlds Envisioned
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Worlds Envisioned brings into dialogue the works of Italian artist Alighiero e Boetti and Ivorian Frédéric Bruly Bouabré. Selected in consultation with the artists, the works in this exhibition highlight certain affinities and congruences that inform their art notwithstanding their very diffe...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/boettibouabre/worlds/essay.html
Louise Bourgeois
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. In his seminal study. The Poetics of Space. Gaston Bachelard contended that "our house . . . is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word.1. A fundamental thematic in Louise Bourgeois's practice, which now spans more than six decades, this notion has been continually ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/bourgeois/essay.html
John Chamberlain
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. There has never been a consensus on how to classify and evaluate the art of John Chamberlain. In the early 1960s, when his art matured, it seemed to many to be the quintessential, if belated, Abstract Expressionist sculptural statement; its vigorously gestural, visceral abstract...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/chamberlain/essay.html
James Coleman: Projected Images: 1972-1994
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. The act of seeing is an act of interpretation: it is at once reflexive and conditioned by the social contract. Both that which is seen (hence, representation) and the act of seeing have long been central preoccupations for Irish artist James Coleman. In the early 1970s he abando...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/coleman/projected/essay.html
Hanne Darboven
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Time today is no longer a principle of intelligibility . . . let alone a principle of identity. . . . So it is with an image of excessexcess of timethat we can start defining the situation of supermodernity.Marc Augé From the moment in the mid-1960s when Hanne Darboven moved to New...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/darboven/essay.html
Stan Douglas and Douglas Gordon: Double Vision
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Very different in crucial respects, the oeuvres of the Canadian Stan Douglas and the Scot Douglas Gordon nonetheless betray telling parallels and shared interests. Both artists work primarily with film and video, generally presenting these media in the form of installations. Both ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/douglasgordon/double/essay.html
Katharina Fritsch: Rat-King
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "nothing has substance for him but what has already been mediated by memory, Adorno writes of Proust. "His love dwells on the second life [the afterlife, of posterity] the one which is already over, rather than on the first. And he continues: "For Proust's aestheticism, the ques...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/fritsch/ratking/essay.html
Robert Gober
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "Most of my sculptures have been memories remade, recombined and filtered through my current experiences" Robert Gober once stated.1 Asked on another occasion whether his works orginated with "a formal sculptural concept" he elaborated: "It's more a nursing of an image that haunts ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/gober/site/essay.html
Dan Graham: Rooftop Urban Park Project
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Perched on a platform, Dan Graham's latest pavilion is at once elevated above the ground line and cantilevered against the vista of sky and urban horizon. Composed of two-way mirror glass, and hence both translucent and transparent, reflective and opaque, it mediates between the ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/graham/rooftop/essay.html
Rodney Graham and Vera Lutter: Time Traced
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. The camera obscura, like the pinhole camera with which it is virtually synonymous, is based on a phenomenon long understood. When light passes through a small hole into a darkened chamber, it produces an inverted image on the opposite surface plane. In the seventeenth century, ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/grahamlutter/timetraced/essay.html
Rodney Graham and Bruce Nauman: ...the nearest faraway place...
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Fishing for Asian Carp (1966) one of Bruce Nauman's first ventures with film, lasts just under three minutes, the length of time it took for the protagonist (William Allen) to capture his quarry.1 Like several others Nauman shot at this time, it reflects the strong impression made on him as a stu...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/grahamnauman/nearest/essay.html
Ann Hamilton: Tropos
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "You have to trust the things you can't name, Ann Hamilton contends, adding, in a related thought, "you feel through your body, you take in the world through your skin.1 Experience, for Hamilton, leads to knowledge, or, more precisely, to a form of knowledge which is of far greater value and si...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/hamilton/tropos/essay.html
Roni Horn: Part I and Part II
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "Blah, Blah, Blah, the Gershwins's satirical skewing of sentiments now so routine as to be stultified, teases the entrant to Roni Horn's exhibition. Is her title a forewarning? Or an apologia? Or a diversion? Interpreting its role poses the dilemma of how certain recurrent famil...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/horn/part/essay.html" style="text-decoration:none"
Robert Irwin: Prologue: x18' and Excursus: Homage to the Square3
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Robert Irwin responded to Dia's invitation to make an exhibition in its facility at 548 West 22nd Street with a proposal for a two-part, site-determined installation. Prologue: x18' opened April 12, 1998, and closed June 14, 1998.Excursus: Homage to the Square3 will be presented from Se...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/irwin/excursus/essay.html
Alfred Jensen: Concordance
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Jean Dubuffet praised the work of Alfred Jensen for its absence of taste, deeming this singular figure a kind of "primitive."1 Donald Judd focused on what he perceived as a radical flatness in Jensen's work: "There are no other paintings completely without space, he wrote in ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/jensen/concordance/essay.html
Donald Judd
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. In a remarkably fertile though brief period in the early 1960s, Donald Judd not only forged his aesthetic but also determined the iconography, materials, and forms that were to ground his practice for the remainder of his career. Celebrated as a preeminent Minimalist, despite hi
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/judd/essay.html
On Kawara
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Time, as registered in its familiar increments of days, years, centuries, and eons, has preoccupied On Kawara since the mid-1960s, when he began his magnum opus, the Today Series. Each of the Date Paintings that constitute this ongoing work is a monochrome field on which is inscr...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/kawara/essay.html
On Kawara: One Thousand Days One Million Years
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. One Thousand Days One Million Years is a year long installation by On Kawara devised specifically for Dia Center for the Arts. It responds temporally and spatially to the site, in that exhibitions at Dia typically last for the period of one year, and that Dia is located in Manhattan. ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/kawara/onethousand/essay.html
Imi Knoebel
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Raum 19 (Room 19). 1968 is a key work in Imi Knoebel's oeuvre, prescient of his mature aesthetic and practice. Created while he was still a Meister-student under Joseph Beuys, it took its title from the place of its execution, the number of his studio in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/knoebel/essay.html
Sol LeWitt
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "Serial components are multipartite pieces with regulated changes," Sol LeWitt argued in 1966. "The differences between the parts are the subject of the composition."1 Such works, which have constituted the mainstay of his practice since the mid-1960s, "are to be read by the viewer in a linear ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/lewitt/essay.html
Agnes Martin
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. I would like my work to be recognized as being in the classical tradition (Coptic, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese) as representing the Ideal in the mind. Classical art cannot possibly be eclectic. One must see the ideal in one's own mind. It is like a memory-an awareness-of perfection. ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/martin-going/essay.html
Tracey Moffatt: Free-falling
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. I am not concerned with verisimiltude.I am not concerned with capturing reality, I'm concerned with creating it myself - Tracey Moffatt ... I am not recognized as an inventor of stylistic formulae, but for the degree of intensity to which I bring the contamination Pier Paolo Pasolini Styli...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/moffatt/freefalling/essay.html
Juan Muñoz: A Place Called Abroad
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Stenciled on the wall outside the gallery this title sows seeds of doubt even before the visitor enters Juan Muñoz's installation. Does "Called Abroad" mean that this place is known colloquially or familiarly as "Abroad" when, in fact, there is another, more precise or more pros...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/munoz/abroad/essay.html
Bruce Nauman
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Art is a means of acquiring an investigative attitude... Bruce Nauman ... Mice invaded Bruce Nauman's studio in the summer of 1999. In response, he bought an inexpensive video camera and an infrared lamp to track their nocturnal activity. In late August he began recording, having estab...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/nauman/essay.html
Panamarenko: Orbit
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. My projects are not exactly ideas, nor dreams. It isn't a question of making a plane but of exactly producing something that is an ideal. It's enjoyable, even if I never actually fly it. For me, its success lies in the realization of the dream, and it's strangely tied to failure...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/huyghe/streamside/essay.html
Jorge Pardo: Project
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "I am more interested in inscribing reflexiveness . . . by pointing to explanational limits than in making Cliff Notes for an exhibition," Jorge Pardo stated in a recent interview accompanying the first extensive publication devoted to his art.1. In an attempt to respect his position, this text ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/pardo/project/essay.html
Jorge Pardo and Gilberto Zorio: Reverb
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. The work need[s] the direct intervention of the spectator . . . the work [is] constituted of consecutive waves, the first visual and plastic, in silence, the second with the introduction of sounds, words, or noises, the third with their bouncing back and forth and fusion. It was
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/pardozorio/reverb/essay.html
Gerhard Richter
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Gerhard Richter exhibited his first signature works in a furniture store in Düsseldorf in 1963. A relatively recent immigrant to the West from the East German city of Dresden, where he had been born, raised, then trained as a painter, Richter demonstrated in this group of works...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/richter/essay.html
Gerhard Richter: Atlas
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. In my picture atlas ... I can only get a handle on the flood of pictures by creating order since there are no individual pictures at all anymore. -Gerhard Richter... In 1964 Gerhard Richter began amassing onto panels photographs he had collected over the previous few years-sometimes as ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/richter/atlas/essay.html
Gerhard Richter and Jorge Pardo: Refraction
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. In 1963 Gerhard Richter exhibited his first signature works in a furniture store in Düsseldorf. A relatively recent emigrant to the West from Dresden where he had been born, raised, then trained as a painter, Richter demonstrated in this group of Capitalist Realist works a preoc...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/richterpardo/essay.html
Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active. It was in that space, paradoxically, the painting 'took place,'" Bridget Riley summarized with characteristic incisive clarity. "Then, little by little, and, to some extent delibe...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/riley/reconnaissance/essay.html
Fred Sandback
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "The first sculpture I made with a piece of string and a little wire was the outline of a rectangular solid . . . lying on the floor. It was a casual act, but it seemed to open up a lot of possibilities for me," Fred Sandback wrote in 1986, looking back over twenty years of activ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/sandback/essay.html
Thomas Schütte: Gloria In Memoria
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "Fundamentally, my works are almost always in the nature of a proposal, Thomas Schütte contends, while conceding that, nonetheless, mostly "they exist in the form of models.1 Schütte's notion of models is, consequently, encompassing and complex: at its core lies the proposit...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/schutte/gloriainmemoria/essay.html
Thomas Schütte: In Medias Res
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "Fundamentally, my works are almost always in the nature of a proposal, Thomas Schütte contends, while conceding that, nonetheless, mostly "they exist in the form of models. Schütte's notion of models is, consequently, encompassing and complex: at its core lies the proposit...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/schutte/inmediasres/essay.html
Thomas Schütte: Scenewight
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "Fundamentally, my works are almost always in the nature of a proposal, Thomas Schütte contends, while conceding that, nonetheless, mostly "they exist in the form of models.1. Schütte's notion of models is, consequently, encompassing and complex: at its core lies the proposit...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/schutte/scenewright/essay.html
Richard Serra
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. What interests me is the opportunity for all of us to become something different from what we are, by constructing spaces that contribute something to the experience of who we are - Richard Serra ... Concerns quintessentially sculptural have engaged Richard Serra for more than thirty ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/serra/essay.html
Richard Serra: Torqued Ellipses
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. What interests me is the opportunity for all of us to become something different from what we are, by constructing spaces that contribute something to the experience of who we are. - Richard Serra ... While remaining determinedly focused on issues he defines as integral to sculpture, Ri...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/serra/ellipses/essay.html
Jessica Stockholder: Your Skin in this Weather ...
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Even before entering the lobby, one's attention is snared by the shrill green swathe surging across the floor. Brooking neither delay nor deviation, it solicits, entices, and propels the viewer into the installation. By following the lime linoleum, the threshold is breached and ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/stockholder/skin/essay.html
Rosemarie Trockel: Spleen
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. When you are young you think of being an activist, a political activist. This raises the question of whether you really want to do something for other people or to demonstrate a kind of self-admiration. When I started to work on Brigitte Bardot that whole discussion came back be ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/trockel/essay.html
Andy Warhol
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. In the mid-1970s, shadows increasingly began to haunt Andy Warhol. In the Still Life drawing series of 1975 and the Hammer and Sickle series of 1977 (also titled Still Life) they assume an idiosyncratic, almost independent existence as compositional elements; in the Skulls of ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/warhol/essay.html
Andy Warhol: Shadows
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Shadows had long fascinated Andy Warhol before he devoted himself to them as a subject in their own right during a brief, if concentrated, foray in 1978.1 The result was an exceptional series of paintings, which included one vast environmental work in 102 parts plus sundry others ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/warhol/shadows/essay.html
Andy Warhol: The Last Supper Paintings
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. The Last Suppe of Leonardo da Vinci formed the subject of Andy Warhol's final and, arguably, one of his greatest series of paintings.The impetus was the proposal for an exhibition to be held in a gallery in Milan located directly across the street from the church housing the celebrated Ren...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/warhol/lastsupper/essay.html
Franz West: Rest
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "I want the artwork to be real, not like a dream or a movie, Franz West recently stated: "I want] to be able to step into it, to sit on it, lie on it... The artist lives in a social environment, he doesn't just produce work from the other side, West avers, continuing, " ... this is the ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/west/rest/essay.html
Lawrence Weiner
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Since 1967 Lawrence Weiner's work has been formulated by recourse to language rather than the more conventional idioms of painting or sculpture. In language, Weiner found a medium and tool for representing material relationships in the external world in as objective a manner as...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/weiner/essay.html
Lawrence Weiner: Displacement
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Lawrence Weiner chose to present his work at Dia in two formats, the room and the book. At the entrance to the exhibition space, Gary Garrels writes, "Weiner has laid out a gameboardlike runway, distinct from the work itself which cannot be seen at the entrance. The choice to en...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/weiner/displacement/essay.html
Franz West: Rest
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. "I want the artwork to be real, not like a dream or a movie," Franz West recently stated: "...[I want] to be able to step into it, to sit on it, lie on it...The artist lives in a social environment, he doesn't just produce work from the other side," West avers, continuing, "... this is the art of today...
http://www.diachelsea.org/exhibs/west/rest/essay.html
Robert Whitman
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Robert Whitman's pioneering performances of the early 1960s "alchemically transmuted the most quotidian objects and images into improbably fantastic events [imbued with] a magical, mythic aura."1 Among the earliest in a coterie of heterogeneous artists who adopted the nascent idiom of performance ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/whitman/essay.html
Robert Whitman: Playback
Abstract: Essay by Lynne Cooke. Robert Whitman's pioneering performances of the early 1960s "alchemically transmuted the most quotidian objects and images into improbably fantastic events [imbued with] a magical, mythic aura."1 One of the first in a coterie of heterogeneous artists to adopt this nascent perform ...
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/whitman/playback/essay.html
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