Challenging Art-C: Artforum, 1962-1974 [Hardcover]

Amy Newman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

In 1962 the magazine Artforum was founded on a shoestring in San Francisco to challenge the East Coast art establishment. Soon thereafter, it moved to Los Angeles, and then to New York City. Suddenly it was "the establishment," setting the terms according to which art was to be judged.

Amy Newman has spent nine years interviewing the participants in this amazing critical venture-Philip Leider, John Coplans, Rosalind E. Krauss, Michael Fried, Barbara Rose, Max Kozloff, Annette Michelson, Sidney Tillim, Robert Pincus-Witten, Peter Plagens, and Charles Cowles, as well as Lucy Lippard and John Baldessari, among others-about their backgrounds, their views on art, and their disagreements with one another. In their own words, they tell us what motivated them as arbiters of our culture and how they view their accomplishment in retrospect.

This inside look at an astonishing cultural phenomenon is an intriguing read for a lay audience and an essential source of information for artists, students, and critics. Soho Press

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The lushly laid-out, usually rigorous and ever-trendy magazine Artforum is one of the long-running successes of the critical community. Newman (co-editor, Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr.) is well placed as a former managing editor of ArtNews magazine to tell the tale of the first dozen years of the magazine and its crucial championing of conceptual art, which eventually triumphed. Yet this bloated and repetitive volume suffers from its format: mostly unchallenged statements of "oral history" from various journalists and editors who were there. The extensive recollections include much vicious infighting and backstabbing, especially involving the polemicist and poetaster (and if this book is any evidence, nasty-tempered) Michael Fried, who is told on by a number of interviewees. And few pages in modern art history can be as boring as Newsweek art critic Peter Plagens's detailed account of his schooling, various fellowships and jobs, faithfully printed here word for word. Newman reportedly spent nine years on this project, which may have been far too many. The more terse statements, such as those by veteran art historians Robert Rosenblum and David Rosand, are among the most lucid and scene-setting. The late Meyer Schapiro, one of the ?minences grises of modernist studies, gives a noble and benevolent impression, and one suspects if his involvement with the magazine had been more direct, the combative atmosphere might have ameliorated. This is one case where the human details behind print achievement actually belittle the work, rather than offering insights into what was accomplished. A reader genuinely interested in the real importance of Artforum might do well to simply read back issues. The personalities here interfere too much with the transmission of ideas. B&w photo insert not seen by PW. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Amy Newman, a former managing editor of ArtNews and co-editor of Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 559 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press; First Edition edition (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569472076
• ISBN-13: 978-1569472071
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #433,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Battle for the Soul of Contemporary Art, October 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Challenging Art-C: Artforum, 1962-1974 (Hardcover)

Amy Newman has written a thrilling account of how a small alternative art magazine, first published in the back room of a San Francisco art gallery in the early 1960s, developed into the "Bible" of the contemporary art world. Told compellingly in the words of the participants themselves, this oral history is a must read for people interested in contemporary art and an important introduction for those who want to know more. Ms. Newman adds important chapter and section introductions that move the story along and explain the interplay of personalities, ideas and events that influenced the art world. Important and surprising gems appear in endnotes, which reveal a depth of scholarship and insight that gives both the knowledgeable reader and the novice a further appreciation of the dramatic changes occurring in the art market and art criticism during the crucial decades of the 1960s and early 1970s. You meet not only the significant writers and editors of the time, but also the gallery owners, artists, collectors and others who shaped opinions and battled among themselves to create and mold the world of contemporary art into what is now a worldwide industry worth many hundreds of millions of dollars annually. This is a story told by men and women with deeply held views, strong personal and professional attachments, intense friendships and breakups--all committed to influencing how the world looked at, reacted to and evaluated the exploding contemporary art scene. They tell you about their battles, their triumphs and their defeats. They discuss issues that still resonate strongly throughout the art world. As the story develops, it becomes a drama that can't be put down.