Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism

Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism

by JaneRendell (Author)

Synopsis

The prominent cultural critic Mieke Bal defines the new discipline of 'art writing' as a fresh mode of criticism, which aims to 'put the art first'. Following this definition, Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism puts the sites of the critic's engagement with art first. The book puts into shape what happens when discussions concerning situatedness and site-specificity enter the writing of art criticism. The sites explored are the material, emotional, political and conceptual settings of the artwork's construction, exhibition and documentation, as well as those remembered, dreamed and imagined. Through five different spatial configurations - both psychic and architectural - Site-Writing explores artworks by artists as diverse as Jananne Al-Ani, Elina Brotherus, Nathan Coley, Tracey Emin, Christina Iglesias and Do-Ho Suh, aiming to adapt such psychoanalytic ways of working as free association and conjectural interpretation to art criticism.

$31.74

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Publisher: I B Tauris & Co Ltd
Published: 30 Nov 2010

ISBN 10: 1845119991
ISBN 13: 9781845119997

Media Reviews
'A timely and highly significant contribution to academic and professional fields of contemporary art, Rendell's Site-Writing offers the first substantial exploration of the situatedness of engagement with art. Here Rendell combines exemplary academic argument with immersive critical analysis of contemporary works. It is this distinctive voice which sets Rendell apart from her contemporaries and makes Site-Writing an essential volume for anyone interested in the specificity of viewing and engaging with, producing and writing about art.' - Claire Doherty, Director, Situations, University of the West of England, Bristol; 'Jane Rendell is a nomadic theorist and a theoretical nomad, whose formidable intellect has produced books on the interstitial relationship between space and feminism, place and psyche, city and citizen, architecture and art. Asking, where does biography end and theory begin?A Rendell's architectonics of criticism performs a praxis that negotiates the personal and the universal. This discloses the critic in all of us, who, in facing the creative work, is confronted with the other (both distant and near), compelling us to reconstruct our own world and therefore the very space we occupy.' - Professor Dorita Hannah, Spatial Design, Massey University College of Creative Arts
Author Bio
Professor Jane Rendell is Director of Architectural Research at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She is author of Art and Architecture (I.B.Tauris, 2006), The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002), and co-editor of Critical Architecture (2007); Spatial Imagination (2005); The Unknown City (2001); Intersections (2000); Gender, Space, Architecture (1999) and Strangely Familiar (1995).