Böcker av Alexander Alberro

IAIN BAXTER& has been challenging and expanding notions of art for more than fifty years. Inspired by his creative credo Art Is All Over, he experimented with non-traditional materials and modes of production. In doing so, he pioneered new models of art making that collapsed boundaries between art, commerce, and everyday life, often opening pathways for other artists to follow. BAXTER& began producing art in the late 1950s under his given name, Iain Baxter, N.E. Thing Co. was founded in 1967, with Baxter and then-wife Ingrid serving as co-presidents. Under the guise of a corporation, N.E. Thing Co. produced a diverse array of projects that questioned the role of art both as consumer commodity and as a medium for cultural commentary. When the company dissolved in 1978, Baxter further expanded his practice to encompass Polariod film and multimedia installations that blended painting and sculpture. He also pursued pedagogy as an extension of his creative ideals. In 2005, he legally changed his name to IAIN BAXTER&, appending an ampersand to underscore his belief that art is contingent upon a collaborative connection with the viewer. This comprehensive book surveys BAXTER&'s remarkable career and recognizes his defining contribution to mainstream histories of conceptual art, photography, and installation art. Featuring more than 200 reproductions, it also offers a multi-faceted appraisal of his achievement with feature essays by David Moos, Michael Darling, Dennis W. Durham, Christophe Domino, and Lucy R. Lippard, as well as interviews with IAIN BAXTER& and Ingrid Baxter by Alexander Alberro.

Most of the books about modern art in South America have focused on particular artists or nations. There has been no book-length history of the movement as it evolved across the continent until now. Alexander Alberro has written that book. Profusely illustrated and beautifully written, it explores how artists working in several cities (Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Caracas, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro) in the mid-twentieth century altered the nature of modernist art. Its thesis is as radical as the art of the time: in breaking with the core dictums of European and US abstract art, these artists re-imagined the relationship of art to its public, granting the spectator a greater role in the realization of the artwork. In this new conceptualization the artwork was no longer considered a thing made in advance of the context in which it is shown, but rather a dynamic force or event that can only be produced at the site where the art object and the spectator meet. Ahead of its time, this art anticipated Happenings in NYC and Europe in the late 1950s and early 1960s."

The first exhaustive monograph on the work of the multi-media, award winning artist.