Julia Bryan-Wilson
Book Launch
Saturday, November 7, 2009, 5-7 PM
Printed Matter, Inc. is pleased to host a book launch for Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era by Julia Bryant-Wilson, a new book investigating a historical moment defining the role of labor in art systems. Please join us along with the author on Saturday, November 7 from 5-7 PM. Printed Matter is located at 195 Tenth Avenue, between 21st and 22nd Street, in New York City.
Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era examines the efforts by a group of American artists and critics during the late 1960s and early 1970s to employ the term “art worker” as a tactic for shifting the boundaries of creative labor. The book features extensive case studies of four core participants of the Art Workers' Coalition and the New York Strike Against Racism, War, and Repression: Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Hans Haacke and Lucy Lippard (one of the founders of Printed Matter).
In her introduction, Bryan-Wilson writes:
“The moniker art worker gave left-leaning artists a collective identity to rally behind.That identity also brought a sharp focus to their frustration with the war in Vietnam and the increasingly repressive tactics of the U.S. government. The term elaborates the dense meanings embedded in the phrase art work—that is, it spells out the relationship between art as an object and as an activity. It also asks, implicitly: What work does art do? How does it put pressure on systems of representation and forms of signification? How does it intervene in the public sphere? How does it function economically; how does it structure relations; how does it put ideas into circulation?”
Published by the University of California Press, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era is 296-pages in black-and-white with 12 full-color plates. Issued as a hardcover, the book retails for $39.95 in store and online. Please contact us to arrange for signed copies for those unable to attend the launch.
Julia Bryan-Wilson is an Associate Professor of Art History and the Director of the Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at University of California, Irvine. As a frequent contributor to Artforum, she is especially committed to feminist, queer, and collaborative art. Her writing has also appeared in Bookforum, Cabinet, Camera Obscura, Frieze, and Modern Painters, among many others.
Printed Matter Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the mission to foster the appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of artists'' books and other artists'' publications.
Printed Matter, Inc. has received support, in part, through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Erste Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Gesso Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Tekserve, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and individuals worldwide.
Printed Matter, Inc.
195 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
www.printedmatter.org
T: 212 925 0325
F: 212 925 0464
