Mary Lucier (PAJ Books: Art + Performance) [Paperback]

Professor Melinda Barlow (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 11, 2000 | Series: PAJ Books: Art + Performance

"I arrived at video through performance, sculpture, photography, theater, music--mediums that evolve in time, involve a frame, and are three-dimensional. A video installation deals with time and space and placement and framing, sound, picture, movement, stillness--but in a single medium." --Mary Lucier

Internationally recognized for her visually elegant, thought-provoking video art, Mary Lucier was a sculptor, photographer, and performance artist before she turned to video in 1973. In Mary Lucier, the first book published on Lucier's work, Melinda Barlow brings together a selection of Lucier's previously unpublished writings and drawings along with essays, reviews, interviews, and photographs of her ephemeral installations and performances to create an absorbing portrait of one of America's most accomplished video pioneers.

Since 1970, when Lucier exhibited her first series of photographs in New York, she has been intriguing viewers with an aesthetic that perceives humanity and technology as equally organic, one whose unique blend of conceptual rigor and sensual lyricism is as compelling as it is deeply moving. Whether exploring the limitations of video technology, investigating America's complex relation to landscape, or examining how people in different places survive catastrophe, Lucier's work has been concerned with the most basic human issues: the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration; the necessity of memory; and the inevitability of decay.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Melinda Barlow is an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is currently at work on a full-length study of the video installations of Mary Lucier.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (July 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801863805
• ISBN-13: 978-0801863806
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,235,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Insightful and Comprehensive Look at a Video Pioneer, November 11, 2001

By 

Cindy O'Dell, DePauw University (Greencastle, IN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mary Lucier (PAJ Books: Art + Performance) (Paperback)

Mary Lucier: Art + Performance is accessible and complex all in the same instant. Barlow begins the book with her own journey to find "House by the Water," a video installation by Lucier installed in Charleston, South Carolina. Barlow then takes the reader on a journey as she frames and contextualizes the writings of both Lucier and other contributors to penetrate the multi-faceted voice of Lucier. This is very appropriate, as we later learn that so much of Lucier's work is about a journey, whether actual or metaphorical into the landscape. Through this journey the reader can grasp the foundation, disparity, continuity and transformation of Lucier's work from her early performance projects to her more recent video projections and installations.

This text is great for students because of its accessibility and depth - it presents many useful perspectives. Due to the fact that Lucier's sketches, journal entries and writings are included and so clearly articulated, students can delve into the developmental process of the video artist, a substantial complement to the theoretical analysis. We become the voyeur into the working process of Lucier as Barlow literally takes pages out of Lucier's sketch books to brings all these elements together for us. There is an inherent irony in this, due to the fact that so much of Lucier's work is also about voyeurism.

Barlow does an excellent job of making sure that the artist and critics do not have competing voices, but simply present a full and thorough examination of the layers of Lucier's prolific career. This text is crucial not only to the medium of video but also to the art world. When so little has been written on video, and on women video artists in particular, I am thankful for this text. It is an inspiration to my own art making and will help me present to my students an in-depth and accessible look at one of the most important women in video art.