Tom Friedman (Contemporary Artists (Phaidon)) [Paperback]

Bruce Hainley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Contemporary Artists (Phaidon) | Publication Date: March 26, 2001

The work of Tom Friedman captures for many the essence of art at the beginning of a new century: modest in scale; imaginative and ecological; painstakingly crafted and "unheroic". Friedman suggests a new direction in art - post-video; post-political/identity issues; post-digital media; post-ready-mades. He works in a windowless studio (more like a playground-kitchen-laboratory) in rural Masachusetts, relentlessly inventing these startling ephemeral objects "out of the stuff in my house" -bits of Styrofoam, packing material, bottle tops, pencil shavings, plastic straws, dental floss, spaghetti, toothpicks, bubble gum. Some of his works are too delicate to move, and exist above all in photographs - and in the imagination. This is art which, to quote "New York Times" critic Roberta Smith again, "raises wonderful questions about the making and seeing of art", about paying attention, about how we spend our time, and about the pleasures of small transformations producing sudden beauty. Solo exhibitions of Tom Friedman's works have been held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. A major touring exhibition of his work, "Tom Friedman: The Epic in the Everyday", in 2000-2002 is at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, San Francisco, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and Southeastern Centre for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bruce Hainley (Survey) is a Los Angeles-based art critic and Contributing Editor to Artforum, Spin and frieze. Since 1997 he teaches at the graduate Fine Arts programme at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Dennis Cooper (Interview) is a novelist and critic, contributing editor of Spin magazine, and a frequent contributor to Artforum. He has published a number of novels, among them Frisk (1991), as well as a collection of poems, The Dream Police: Selected Poems 1969-93. Adrian Searle (Focus) is a London-based curator and the art critic for the Guardian. He also contributes to frieze and Artforum, and was curator of Unbound: Possibilities in Painting, Hayward Gallery, London, 1994. Tom Friedman (Artist's Writings) The artist's unusual imagination, witnessed in his sculptures, is here reflected in his interest in word play an in excerpts of interviews including one with Robert Storr.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press; 1st Ed. edition (March 26, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714839868
• ISBN-13: 978-0714839868
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #977,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating to Look at, November 11, 2003

By 

shane m. watkins (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tom Friedman (Contemporary Artists (Phaidon)) (Paperback)

Tom Friedman is a conceptual artist whose work has the remarkable ability to intrigue almost anyone. This book is impossible to not examine: the works are wonders, the layout and photography are beautiful, and the text is as enlightening as it is thought provoking.
I'm a High School English teacher and I sometimes leave this book out so that unsuspecting students can open it and marvel at Friedman's work: The bubblegum piece and the toothpicks never escape their attention. I've yet to meet anyone who can simply dismiss Friedman's work they way most installation art is written-off as unappealing to anyone without an art degree.
While the interview with Friedman occasionally lapses into vacuous philosophizing, it is surprisingly lucid and often adds another dimension to the viewer/reader's engagement of a particular piece. Friedman is especially good at addressing (and dismissing) the common (and lazy) description of his work as "obsessive."
This book's representation of Friedman's work has a popular appeal that is inextricably intertwined with its philosophical and artistic inquiry:
"bubble gum": What is craft?
"1,000 hours of staring "What is history?
"Ball of feaces": What is the line between existing and not existing?
In short: burn your art history books and replace them with this one.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great artist, Great collection, April 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Tom Friedman (Contemporary Artists (Phaidon)) (Paperback)

Tom Friedman takes household objects and...well read the book jacket if you want a description of what Friedman does, the fact is this is a great book. The obsessive nature of Friedman's work really comes through in this collection, with descriptions of the painstaking process Friedman went through to create his works. One such work is a blank piece of paper that Tom Friedman literally stared at for a thousand hours, not consecutively of course. Friedman explains his thought process, how he conceptualizes his art. The "1000 hours of Staring" for example, are Friedman's attempts to "create" a history to an object (without knowing the "history" of the piece, you would simply be looking at a blank piece of paper)

It would probably be more impressive to see these pieces in person, (especially in his pieces that are very very small or emphasize 'imagined' space such as the area that Friedman had a witch put a hex on). To anyone who hate art installations and the like this book may change your mind. But don't think that Friedman only does installations, his work covers many different areas, from photograhpy to sculpture and illustration. The one quality that links all these mediums is Friedman's intricate, detailed thought process. Even people who aren't into modern art will be forced to meditate on the nature of the objects Friendman employs. Can't say enough about this book. Pick it up even if you think you don't like post modernism, pick it up even if you hate art.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Conceptual Artist still fresh, February 23, 2008

By 

Consumer "J Lew" (Brooklyn, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tom Friedman (Contemporary Artists (Phaidon)) (Paperback)

I love Tom Friedman's work, its really conceptual even still. This book is really insightful and has a lot of his best known work. With these artist's books though, comes with poor binding. It will fall apart if you don't take care of it.