JRP | Ringier – förlag

Art has never been as culturally and economically prominent as it is today. How can artists themselves shape the social relevance and impact of their work? In How to Do Things with Art, German art historian Dorothea von Hantelmann uses four case study artists--Daniel Buren, James Coleman, Jeff Koons and Tino Sehgal--to examine how an artwork acts upon and within social conventions, particularly through the "performing" of exhibitions. The book''s title is a play on J.L. Austin''s seminal text, How to Do Things with Words, which describes language''s reality-producing properties and demonstrates that in "saying" there is always a "doing"--a linguistic counterpart to the dynamics envisioned by Von Hantelmann for art, in which "showing" is a kind of "doing." Von Hantelmann''s close analysis of works by Buren, Coleman, Koons and Sehgal explores how each of these artists has taken control of how their work conducts itself in the world.

Part of JRP|Ringier''s innovative Documents series, published with Les Presses du Réel and dedicated to critical writings, this publication comprises a unique collection of interviews by Hans Ulrich Obrist mapping the development of the curatorial field--from early independent curators in the 1960s and 70s and the experimental institutional programs developed in Europe and the U.S. through the inception of Documenta and the various biennales and fairs--with pioneering curators Anne D''Harnoncourt, Werner Hoffman, Jean Leering, Franz Meyer, Seth Siegelaub, Walter Zanini, Johannes Cladders, Lucy Lippard, Walter Hopps, Pontus Hulten and Harald Szeemann. Speaking of Szeemann on the occasion of this legendary curator''s death in 2005, critic Aaron Schuster summed up, "the image we have of the curator today: the curator-as-artist, a roaming, freelance designer of exhibitions, or in his own witty formulation, a ''spiritual guest worker''... If artists since Marcel Duchamp have affirmed selection and arrangement as legitimate artistic strategies, was it not simply a matter of time before curatorial practice--itself defined by selection and arrangement--would come to be seen as an art that operates on the field of art itself?" This is the ebook edition of A Brief History of Curating, originally published in print form in October, 2008.

"e;(Curating) From A to Z"e; offers a summary of the development of curatorial practice over the last two decades seen through the eyes of curator Jens Hoffmann. In this publication each letter of the alphabet evokes a particular word related to the world of exhibition making: From A (as in Artist) and B (as in Biennial) to R (as in Retrospective) and W (as in White Cube). Employing a diarist style, the curator presents his personal curatorial alphabet with a similar transparency and the same idiosyncratic character revealed in many of his exhibitions. The entries are not only stimulating and intellectually rigorous, but also emotionally engaging.