The Everyday

Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art

by Stephen Johnstone (Editor)

Writings on the “turn to the ordinary” in contemporary art examine the various ways artists have engaged with the everyday since 1945. Numerous international exhibitions and biennials have borne witness to the range of contemporary art engaged with the everyday and its antecedents in the work of Surrealists, Situationists, the Fluxus group, and conceptual and feminist artists of the 1960s and 1970s. This art shows a recognition of ordinary dignity or the accidentally miraculous, an engagement with a new kind of anthropology, an immersion in the pleasures of popular culture, or a meditation on what happens when nothing happens. The celebration of the everyday has oppositional and dissident overtones, offering a voice to the silenced and proposing possibilities for change. This collection of writings by artists, theorists, and critics assembles for the first time a comprehensive anthology on the everyday in the world of contemporary art. Artists surveyed include
Chantal Akerman, Francis Alÿs, Vladimir Arkhipov, Ian Breakwell, Stanley Brouwn, Sophie Calle, Marcel Duchamp, Fischli & Weiss, Nan Goldin, Dan Graham, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Mary Kelly, Lettrist International, Jonas Mekas, Annette Messager, Aleksandra Mir, Roman Ondák, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Martha Rosler, Allen Ruppersberg, Daniel Spoerri, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andy Warhol, Richard Wentworth, Stephen Willats. Writers include
Paul Auster, Maurice Blanchot, Geoff Dyer, Hal Foster, Suzy Gablik, Ben Highmore, Henri Lefebvre, Lucy R. Lippard, Michel Maffesoli, Ivone Margulies, Helen Molesworth, Nikos Papastergiadis, Georges Perec, John Roberts, David Ross, Nicholas Serota, Michael Sheringham, Alison and Peter Smithson, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Jeff Wall, Jonathan Watkins.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Philosophy

239 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2008

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book half way through my MFA studies and this collection of essays have had a profound affect over my creative practice - how and why I think I continue to make art. Until I delved into this book, I didn't realise that there was contemporary theory surrounding art and everyday practices. This book helped me to open doors in my creative life I didn't think existed.

[Sigrun Hodne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of several really interesting essays on art and the everyday.

[Treynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource for where the critique of everyday may be headed.