Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews

by Jeff Wall, Peter Galassi (Foreword)

Throughout his career, the influential art photographer Jeff Wall has written periodically on a variety of subjects--from the work of his Vancouver colleagues, to the art of such diverse figures as Edouard Manet, On Kawara, and Dan Graham, to the important role of photography in Conceptual art. Wall's own work takes center stage in the many interviews he has granted over the past two decades. Both the essays and the interviews are indispensable to the study of Wall's work, which will be the subject of a major American traveling retrospective, with stops in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, throughout 2007. Thanks to Wall's wide-ranging curiosity, nimble mind, and articulate voice, the texts are also of considerable interest outside of the context of his own oeuvre. This generous selection of 14 essays and 23 interviews from the past 25 years is the first collection of Wall's texts to be published in English, and as such, is an instant collector's item. This affordable volume also includes 120 black-and-white illustrations for reference purposes.

Genres: Art, Photography

348 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2007

About the author

Jeff Wall is a leading contemporary Canadian photographer whose work is concerned with ideas about the nature of images, representation, and memory. His large-scale photographs appropriate the visual language of advertising in their use of backlit transparencies and large scale. The subjects are “cinematographic” reconstructions of everyday moments, fiction, and art history, which he refers to as “near documentary”. “[Near documentary] means that they are pictures whose subjects were suggested by my direct experience, and ones in which I tried to recollect that experience as precisely as I could, and to reconstruct and represent it precisely and accurately,” he said of his process.

Born on September 29, 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, he received his MA from the University of British Columbia in 1970. Mainly focusing on academia during the following decade, he studied with the famed British historian T.J. Clark at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. A Conceptual artist and art historian until the 1980s, Wall began creating photographs styled after artists including Hokusai and Édouard Manet as well as novels like the Invisible Man. In 2012, a print of his image Dead Troops Talk (1993) broke auction records at Christie’s and became the third most expensive photograph ever sold at the time.

Today, his works are held in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Kunstmuseum Basel, among others. Wall currently lives and works in his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

Reviews

[chase Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

About 100 pgs into the Essays section, and I'm thoroughly impressed with Jeff Wall's knowledge and application of art history. I've already been turned on to 3 artists that I knew very little about. The most mindblowing bit so far though is Wall's analogy of vampiricism used to examine the phenomenon of the occupant of the glass house. I'll be adding to this as I go along, I'm sure.

[Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to pair Jeff Wall up with Arthur Danto in terms of defining where art is after the modernist period. If I could create a mashup art theory book, Wall's essays and interviews would be a key ingredient. I want to be like Jeff when I grow up.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

note to self: only read interviews, return after review of art history/theory

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this guys work. Great to see how he thinks and works.