Lionel Bovier – författare

Exploring a pioneering curator’s collection of cutting-edge ’60s and ’70s California art

The curator Hal Glicksman (born 1937) was a central figure in the development of the Californian art scene in the 1960s and 1970s. The Glicksman collection, gifted to MAMCO and Kunsthaus Biel Centre d’art Bienne (KBCB) in 2023 and documented in this volume, provides insight into the prevailing culture of Los Angeles and its famous and lesser-known figures. As a student, Glicksman witnessed firsthand the Beat Generation (George Herms, Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner) and came into contact with artists such as Ben Talbert and Fred Mason. He curated bold exhibitions of site-specific art projects (Michael Asher, Judy Chicago, Tom Eatherton, Bruce Nauman, Larry Bell, Peter Alexander, Jane Reynolds, Daniel Buren), while organizing shows of assemblage and Chicano art. Glicksman and his wife were also close companions of Guy de Cointet, whose work sits at the crossroads of performance and Conceptual art.

Conceived by New York–based artist Greg Parma Smith (born 1983) as an archive, this artist’s book combines a selection of recent paintings with drawings (preparatory sketches, studies, patterns and designs, cartoons and doodles) realized by the artist from his youth on.

A central figure of the New York art scene of the 1960s and ’70s, Castoro experimented in painting, sculpture and performance: subversive even for her time

As a self-titled "paintersculptor," Rosemarie Castoro (1939–2015) had a singular take on Minimal and Conceptual art. She initially explored the potential of abstract and monochrome painting, going on to expand their sphere and modes of operation to incorporate the body, and even the exhibition space, thanks to decisive sculptural experimentation, organic metal and Masonite shapes, street works and architectural interventions. In so doing, she distorted elementary forms through her haptic, integrated and sexualized treatment. Together with Christine Kozlov and Adrian Piper, she was one of the women artists featured in Ursula Meyer’s anthology of Conceptual art in 1972. Lucy R. Lippard included her in her famous Numbers exhibitions in 1969—championing Castoro as having "subverted or overridden Minimalism on its own turf." Archival documentation as well as new exhibition views and images of works complete this volume, published with MAMCO Geneva, to make it the most comprehensive monograph available on the artist.