I have this book and I love it. You are given a glimpse of the New York art scene in the 1960's and get a feeling of what it must have been like during that exciting period. In fact, it's a little scary to imagine being around during that time, kind of overwhelming. Conceptual art, pop art, Andy Warhol, the whole psychedelic hippie scene. But oddly still a man's world, for all the miniskirts and 'free love' hype. Her contemporaries were pretty much all men, and the women tended to be more like sidekicks and dilettantes. (Not to take anything away from male artists, that's just the way it was at the time.) The end of Eva's marriage, to another artist, seems almost a given once she really started to come into her own right. It must have been kind of lonely, men were probably threatened by the idea of a female artist, or maybe it was just that she didn't have time to find the right person in her short life. Also, at the time there was much less awareness of toxicity in art materials both traditional and non-traditional. I have to admit I'm fascinated by the romance of this heroic figure producing art despite the cost to her personal life and health. I don't see her as a martyr but as a brave pioneer who left us with beautiful art. Many of Eva Hess's sculptures were made using ephemeral materials but this book has pictures of them when they were new. Even if the actual sculptures don't survive, the image of them will somehow continue to survive, maybe with the help of virutal reality technology? Anyway, thank you Lucy Lippard for this informative book packed with pictures and info about Eva!

Featured are reproductions even of artworks which no longer exist, and Lippard's commentary is always to the point. I don't dwell on the fact that Eva Hesse died young -- in fact, I'm not interested in the cult of personality which in my view only obscures the works themselves. But in at least three directions Hesse has given me plenty to think about and purely enjoy, and this book documents everything... maybe it slights the drawings a bit, but there's another book out there with nothing but drawings, drawings galore. The implications of what Hesse accomplished remain "mindblowing." Anyone who has only heard about her or seen one or two works needs to see what they've missed.

This book is must for women artists, either young or firmly established. Originally published as From The Center, it helped me to understand my relationship to my artwork and my work's relationship to the various aspects of the larger art world. When I was attending art school, all my fellow women grad students read this book and, interestingly, responded enthusiastically to different sections. Lippard is a grounded, intelligent writer with a wry sense of humor and has a keen sense of observation. Her other books are also excellent, especially Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory and Sense of Place.

As a young college student and newly marked feminist this book filled in important gaps surrounding women's art and feminism that was lacking in my male-dominated art history classes. It gave me a sense of history and brought up many issues in feminist art I had not yet discovered. It also sent me to library to look up many female artists in hope to find more information. The book was very easy to read and wasn't weighted down with to much academia.

What I liked about MacCannell's book was how easy it was to read- now, granted, I was forced to plow through this in a week, so I didn't get to savor it- but I really felt like I understood far more than I usually do- like the book had enough of substance to say that it wasn't necessary to obscure the ideas with jargon.

It seemed like in many ways this was a rebuttal to Daniel Boorstin's "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo Events in America" , which presents a fairly elitist distinction between traveller and tourist. MacCannell expressely mentions Boorstin's ideas and decries them as being counterproductive- that we'd all like to elevate ourselves above the majority, but are mostly deceiving ourselves that this distinction is true.

Also, some very interesting stuff in here about how a sight is established- how it is marked- the interplay of markers and signs. His work on Staged Authenticity is also quite compelling- the idea of Front, Back, and Reality- spaces where everyone can go, restricted spaces that are still modified knowing outsiders will pass through, and spaces that are authentic.

His examples involving Paris are especially interesting. I'd recommend checking out this AND the Boorstin.

All around the world, especially in those domains inhabited by readers of Lonely Planet publications, a fine (or sometimes not so fine) distinction is drawn between "tourists" and "travellers". Almost always, "tourists" are "them", while "travellers" are "us". Tourists are somebody you can look down on, from the height of your greater awareness, cultural sensitivity, or superior poverty. In the old days, the term "pilgrim" described not only people who went to places like Mecca, Jerusalem or Rome, but also those on the "road of life". It seems to me that all travellers are tourists and vice-versa. Anthropologists too are just tourists with a more professional attitude, intent on telling others what they have found in their in-depth investigations and placing it in an academic framework. If you want to get to the bottom of this whole topic---with all the various ramifications---then you must read MacCannell's book, an essay in the (OK, somewhat arcane) field of the Anthropology of Tourism. It is not a bedtime reading book, but will stimulate plenty of thought.

The author takes the tourist as a model of modern man. He engages in a very effective piece of structural analysis; more effective in my opinion than any ever created by the Old Master, Claude Levi-Strauss. A reader of THE TOURIST will come away having understood everything, not totally baffled by mountains of jargon. The pre-modern world has not disappeared, it has been turned into zillions of tourist attractions. We, the seekers, pilgrims, or, if you like, the tourists, try to get close to the roots of our civilization, to our own origins, by visiting and looking at packaged versions of the past. Where pre-modern societies still exist to some extent, for example, among the hill tribes of Thailand, tourists make great efforts to visit them and, significantly, try their utmost to ensure that their visits are not "packaged" but "real". The tourist wants to penetrate and share the lives of "others", others who are so distinct from ourselves. Tourist satisfaction may be directly correlated to how "authentic" the experience seems to the visitors. That's why having the authentic Hungarian peasant's dinner is important. Unfortunately, you can't really share that dinner if you are travelling with forty other pilgrims in search of authenticity on a large bus. But advertising, as always, can work wonders! Fake authenticity has become the norm.

MacCannell discusses such serious topics as "commodity and symbol", "cultural productions and work groups" and how these relate to work. In subsequent chapters, entitled "Sightseeing and Social Structure", "The Paris Case: Origins of Alienated Leisure", "Staged Authenticity", "A Semiotic of Attraction", "The Ethnomethodology of Sightseers", and "Structure, Genuine and Spurious", the author covers a wide variety of fascinating subjects in a brilliant book which will definitely succeed in making you view tourism in a different way forever afterwards. The pages are crammed with insights, analysis, good examples and interesting observations. This book is the classic work of the Anthropology of Tourism. If you are starting out in the field or are just interested in thinking about tourism in modern life, this is your book. If you are a tourist along the byways of Amazon.com, you might consider making a stop here. You will not find less than an authentic gem.

Aside from being rather expensive, this is an excellent introducion to Ad Reinhardt, perhaps the most irascible and independent of the (by their own description) irascible abstract expressionist artists of the 1940's and 50's. There are enough reproductions that you can see Ad's development, and they were done very well technically. This is an achievement because Reinhardt's late paintings, which relied on very subtle gradations of black, have to be among the hardest to reproduce in the history of art. (By the way, they are also good paintings to show to people who think abstract art does not take any skill.) The introductory essays are more readable than much of what has been written about modern art. However, the best writing about Ad Reinhardt's work was that of Reinhardt himself He was a very witty and idiosyncratic writer who fiercely defended his attitude about art and life in prose that is sometimes difficult, but always funny and ultimately enlightening. This book is comprehensive enough to be a mini-anthology of Reinhardt's writings. If you can possibly look at this book before you buy it, I would do so, since it is so expensive; if you like abstract art, however, I think you will find it beguiling.

Whitfield Lovell is famed for his art combining on-site drawings with found objects and other components of personal metaphor, African-American ancestry, and cultural memory. Using images from photographs of people from the 1920s and 1930s, Lovell evokes and honors an era with heavily layered narrative drawings manifesting timelessness and universality. The Art Of Whitfield Lovell is enhanced with an informative essay by Lucy Lippard and a "must" for all Lovell fans.

Try to imagine that someone captured all the stars in the sky, molded them into straining human and animal shapes and then sealed them beneath a glistening coat of spring rain. If you can fix that image in your mind you have some slight idea of the power of the sculpture of Luis Jimenez. This artist uses materials that you'd expect to see gracing the clear-coated skins of street rods to make amazing sculptures of men and women who work hard for a living, play hard for life and face Death like a long-lost lover. In his book "Man on Fire" you see a collection of the various stages of the ideas that have sprung from this creative man's mind. It is fascinating to see the pencil drawing receive color, then go on to a maquette and finally a finished sculpture that more often than not looks like liquid fire trapped momentarily in solid form. It is equally fascinating to see and read about what inspired Mr. Jimenez to combine such diverse influences to create uniquely new works. Having seen several of Mr. Jimenez's pieces in person, I can say that the pictures in this book pale in comparison to the real pieces but then a pale reflection of near-perfection is still near perfection. I'd recommend this book and this artist to anyone interested in something beyond the usual and I look forward to seeing more of his work in the future.

New•Land•Marks: Public Art, Community, and the Meaning of Place, edited by Penny Balkin Bach, is the book version of an exhibition of models and proposals for an ambitions public art project in Philadelphia, undertaken by the Fairmount Park Art Association. In a way, the show and book are virtual public art: the photographs, texts, and models are a vision of what could happen, not only in this project but in the larger area of community-based public art. Sixteen artists provide visions of the city, communities within it, and the interaction of art, the public, and public space. The book itself is beautifully designed: with innovative site photographs and innovative presentation of the texts and models proposed for each site. This book breaks new ground in the field of public art.

My 28-year residency in New Mexico ended with my recent move to California. Viewing Miguel Gandert's photographs opened the floodgates of memory in ways I had not anticipated.

Gandert's images carry the viewer into the most important dimension of ritual: the experiential element. Witnessing these ritual dances, even as a mere spectator, can be a moving experience. A vivid recollection of one New Year's Day at Jemez Pueblo Plaza comes to mind. I sat crosslegged on the ground at the inward-facing edge of the assembly, following the action of the Matachine dancers. A little boy portraying El Torito, the bull, was being chased by a whip-wielding Abuelo, who represents both wise elder and taunting clown. I held my hands over my head, feigning a protective gesture in mock fear, as they ran around me in ever tightening circles. The double-line pattern of the danzantes suddenly shifted and swept over me on both sides with ribbons flying in a swirl of color. In that moment I found all concept of time and structure collapsing into liminality. Afterwards, I became concerned that I might have inadvertently violated ritual space. Upon expressing my feelings to a tribal member, however, I was assured that no such transgression had taken place and that I might have even received a blessing.

The event described above could, no doubt, be interpreted quite differently from another standpoint and through another's eyes. Similarly, this book can be appreciated on many different levels. It's relevancy to universal elements and ritual may resonate with a widely diverse audience. Gandert and four knowledgeable essayists create a compelling cultural admixture of polarity and paradox. The resultant images emerge through layers of time, space, and history like so many bubbles from some deep, ancient well. This book is truly a verbal and visual treasure.

Readers interested in expanding their knowledge of the Matachines tradition will also find a valuable resource in The Matachines Dance: Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Upper Rio Grande Valley by Sylvia Rodriguez.

Working with many artists, this is one of the most thumbed books in the sculpture workshop library and I am finally buying a copy as that one keeps going missing. The pictures and diagrams are visually exciting and informative - they must be or the artists wouldnt be interested enough to want to covert the book! The text is informative and helpful when looking for inspiration and you continuously get the feeling "why hadn't I noticed that before" when flipping through the book. Its very readable and not too convoluted, it gives you a taster to want to go on to find out more about ancient art forms. It gives you the freedom to create art, as you no longer feel the need for any art to be original, once you've read this book you'll realise that no art is ever truely original, be it ancient or contemporary, and yet it can all be exciting.

Enhanced with an informative essay by Lucy R. Lippard, Peter Gourfain: Clay, Wood, Bronze, And Works On Paper by features Russell Panczenko's interview with Peter Gourfain and is a remarkable photographic showcase of the unique and extrinsic drawings and sculptures of that minimalist expert. Some of the images are in color, but most photographs are black-and-white in this extensive and recommended collection in celebration of Peter Gourfain's artistic achievements and contributions as exhibited at the Elvehjem Museum of Madison, Wisconsin.