Books by Carlos Basualdo
Merce Cunningham: Common Time
by Victoria Brooks, Douglas Crimp, Kelly Kivland, Danielle Goldman, Benjamin Piekut, Hiroko Ikegami, Carlos Basualdo, Juliet Bellow, Philip Bither, Roger Copeland, Mary Coyne, Claudia La Rocco, Aram Moshayedi
How Cunningham transformed postwar culture through collaboration
Renowned as both choreographer and dancer, Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) also revolutionized dance through his partnerships with the many artists who created costumes, lighting, films and videos, and décor and sound for his choreographic works. Cunningham, together with partner John Cage, invited those artists to help him rethink what dance could mean, both on the stage and in site-responsive contexts. His notion that movement, sound and visual art could share a “common time” remains one of the most radical aesthetic models of the 20th century and yielded extraordinary works by dozens of artists and composers, including Charles Atlas, John Cage, Morris Graves, Jasper Johns, Rei Kawakubo, Robert Morris, Gordon Mumma, Bruce Nauman, Ernesto Neto, Pauline Oliveros, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, David Tudor, Stan VanDerBeek, Andy Warhol and La Monte Young, among many others. These collaborations bring to the fore Cunningham’s direct impact upon postwar artistic practice.
This 456-page volume, published in conjunction with the Walker Art Center and MCA Chicago’s exhibition, reconsiders the choreographer and his collaborators as an extraordinarily generative interdisciplinary network that preceded and predicted dramatic shifts in performance, including the development of site-specific dance, the use of technology as a choreographic tool and the radical separation of sound and movement in dance. It features ten new essays by curators and historians, as well as interviews with contemporary choreographers―Beth Gill, Maria Hassabi, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener―who address Cunningham’s continued influence. These are supplemented by rarely published archival photographs, reprints of texts by Cunningham, Cage and other key dancers, artists and scholars, several appendices and an extensive illustrated chronology placing Cunningham’s activities and those of his collaborators in the context of the 20th century, particularly the expanded arts scene of the 1960s and 1970s. This book is an essential volume for anyone interested in contemporary art, music and dance.
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Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies
An insightful examination of Bruce Nauman’s Contrapposto Studies, I through VII, Contrapposto Studies, i through vii, and related works, through both rigorous analysis and the artist’s own words
This important publication offers the first in-depth exploration of contemporary artist Bruce Nauman’s (b. 1941) monumental works Contrapposto Studies, I through VII and Contrapposto Studies, i through vii of 2015–16. The book surveys Nauman’s trajectory from his early works, which set clear precedents for experimentation with video and performance, to his latest installations that combine video, sound, and performative elements to create immersive environmental experiences. The essays also address Nauman’s return to the motif of contrapposto, and the use of his own body as a tool and subject for performance. Related works, including Walks In Walks Out and Model for Philadelphia Museum of Art (1'=1"), are considered as well. In the recent interview published here for the first time, Nauman discusses the conception, development, and installation of the Contrapposto Studies, which stand as a testament to his ability to transform simple gestures into grand ruminations on the possibilities of representation.
Published in association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art
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