Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art

by Andrea Andersson

One of the most important movements in twenty-first century literature is the emergence of conceptual writing. By knowingly drawing on the histories of art and literature, conceptual writing upended traditional categorical conventions. Postscript is the first collection of writings on the subject of conceptual writing by a diverse field of scholars in the realms of art, literature, media, as well as the artists themselves. Using new and old technology, and textual and visual modes including appropriation, transcription, translation, redaction, and repetition, the contributors actively challenge the existing scholarship on conceptual art. Rather than segregating the work of visual artists from that of writers we are shown the ways in which conceptual art is, and remains, a mutually supportive interaction between the arts.

Genres: Nonfiction

432 pages, Hardcover

Published May 2, 2018

Reviews

[Natalie Hall · Rating 1 out of 5]

I actually only read the introduction of this book, so take this single star with a grain of salt, but the introduction did not make me feel hopeful. Maybe I'll return to it--many of the essay titles sounded promising--but probably only if I break both my legs and suddenly have a lot of free time. The intro was full of long sentences that used technically legitimate but lazy words like "indissociable" and "interpose." If you can't write about an idea without using dense academic jargon in sentences with three or more clauses, you don't understand it well enough to be writing about it at all.