Chance

Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art

by Margaret Iversen (Editor)

The chance situation or random event--whether as a strategy or as a subject of investigation--has been central to many artists' practices across a multiplicity of forms, including expressionism, automatism, the readymade, collage, surrealist and conceptual photography, fluxus event scores, film, audio and video, performance, and participatory artworks. But why--a century after Dada and Surrealism's first systematic enquiries--does chance remain a key strategy in artists' investigations into the contemporary world? The writings in this anthology examine the gap between intention and outcome, showing it to be crucial to the meaning of chance in art. The book provides a new critical context for chance procedures in art since 1900 and aims to answer such questions as why artists deliberately set up such a gap in their practice; what new possibilities this suggests; and why the viewer finds the art so engaging. Artists surveyed include Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Francis Alys, William Anastasi, John Baldessari, Walead Beshty, Mark Boyle, George Brecht, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas, Marcel Duchamp, Brian Eno, Fischli & Weiss, Ceal Floyer, Huang Yong Ping, Douglas Huebler, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Jiri Kovanda, Jorge Macchi, Christian Marclay, Cildo Meireles, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Cornelia Parker, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Daniel Spoerri, Wolfgang Tillmans, Keith Tyson, Jennifer West, Ceryth Wyn Evans, La Monte Young Writers include Paul Auster, Jacquelynn Baas, Georges Bataille, Daniel Birnbaum, Claire Bishop, Guy Brett, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Stanley Cavell, Lynne Cooke, Fei Dawei, Gilles Deleuze, Anna Dezeuze, Russell Ferguson, Branden W. Joseph, Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Lacan, Susan Laxton, Sarat Maharaj, Midori Matsui, John Miller, Alexandra Munroe, Gabriel Perez Barreiro, Jasia Reichardt, Julia Robinson, Eric L. Santner, Sarah Valdez, Katharina Vossenkuhl"

Genres: Art

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 22, 2010

About the author

Margaret Iversen is one of the leading international authorities in the field of art theory and contemporary art. Her first book was on one of the founders of Art History as a discipline: Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (1993). Since then she has continued to write occasionally about the history of art history ('Retrieving Warburg's Tradition'), but has made her main areas of study psychoanalytic art theory, publishing Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes (2007). Her present and future research is devoted to the overlapping fields of photography and contemporary art. She was director of a large AHRC research project called Aesthetics after Photography (2007-2010), an interdisciplinary project in partnership with Diarmuid Costello of the Philosophy Department, University of Warwick. Other publications include a monograph on the contemporary artist Mary Kelly and an essay on the American painter Edward Hopper which appears in the catalogue of the 2004 Tate Modern exhibition of his work. Recently published work includes a book called Writing Art History (with Stephen Melville) and two articles, 'Analogue: Zoe Leonard and Tacita Dean' and 'Index, Diagram, Graphic Trace.'. She is currently working a book to be called Photography, Trace and Trauma.

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always a good art history / philosophy series, this edition is a rewarding collection of artists' writings, interviews and art theorists discussions of this idea within art. It covers lots of artists' working with chance, indeterminacy, the unexpected and the un-forseen.

[Steve Juras]

Step back and enjoy the read.