pressPLAY: Contemporary Artists in Conversation

by Phaidon Press

A personal encounter with 50 of the world's most significant contemporary artists, pressPLAY draws together the full texts of the complete Phaidon interviews with artists since 1995. From highly established artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Alex Katz to midcareer masters such as Fischli and Weiss and Jenny Holzer to the most exciting artists of the current generation such as Maurizio Cattelan and Pipilotti Rist, the artists in pressPLAY work in every variety of media - from painting to video, sculpture to installation. In discussion with key art critics as well as fellow artists, novelists, musicians and theorists, together the players in pressPLAY explain in full what it means to be an artist today. Highlights include veteran painter Vija Celmins and noted sculptor Robert Gober in an intimate discussion on their differing art practices; longtime friends and fellow travellers for decades, Benjamin Buchloh and Lawrence Weiner recall 35 years of work in the definitive, career-long interview for this key conceptual artist; the late Sir Ernst Gombrich in a discussion with the UK's pre-eminent sculptor Antony Gormley, who confesses that it was Gombrich's Story of Art that first inspired him to become an artist; the taciturn, legendary Raymond Pettibon muses on the evolution of his work with noted novelist Dennis Cooper; musician-artist Christian Marclay discusses performance, music and art with Kim Gordon from the legendary rock band Sonic Youth .

Genres: Art

808 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Phaidon Press is a global publisher of books on art, architecture, design, fashion, photography, and popular culture, as well as cookbooks, children's books, and travel books. The company is based in London and New York City, with additional offices in Paris and Berlin. -wikipedia

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I carried this around for a while and opened up to random pages to find what I could. This worked well since the book is a collection of conversations, with photographs of the artists' work throughout. I enjoyed reading through interviews of an artist I was unfamiliar with and only seeing the artwork after I began to understand his or her point of view. It's one of those flip-around carry-around books.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible documentation of process in post-Modern art. Every undergraduate art seminar should focus on this book at some point due to it's unique ability to really provide the reader with a plethora of artists to understand. This will not only teach a history of processes in post-Modern art, but it will help guide student artists to understand their own work as an extension of these ideas.

[Stephan Ferreira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best collection of conversations with artists I've ever read. Most of the artists are making work completely disconnected from mine...but everything discussed within is worthy of being called an "art-thought-bible".