Wow! eBook
Seen, Written: Selected Essays
Author(s): Klaus Kertess (Author)
- Publisher: Gregory R. Miller & Co.
- Publication Date: 12 May 2011
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 220 pages
- ISBN-10: 0980024293
- ISBN-13: 9780980024296
Book Description
Curator and historian, gallerist and writer: Klaus Kertess has long been a decisive and forward-thinking presence in the art world. He founded the Bykert Gallery in 1966, where he represented artists including Chuck Close, Ralph Humphrey, Brice Marden and Dorothea Rockburne; three decades later, he curated the 1995 Whitney Biennial, the follow-up to the famously political 1993 iteration. “What is being proposed here,” he wrote in a catalogue essay for the 1995 exhibition, “is not a return to formalism but an art in which meaning is embedded in formal value. An acknowledgment of sensuousness is indispensable–whether as play or sheer joy or the kind of subversity that has us reaching for a rose and grabbing a thorn.” The art world has changed considerably from the relatively convivial world of the 60s to today’s globalized milieu, but Kertess has been a constant throughout the years, curating shows of provocative new work and writing critical essays on artists whose work challenges and engages him, while also maintaining a vital literary sideline (his short stories are collected in 2000’s South Brooklyn Casket Company). This volume collects Kertess’ critical works from the past 30 years, including meditations on Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, John Chamberlain, Vija Celmins, Chris Ofili and Matthew Richie. With each essay accompanied by full-color reproductions of works discussed, Seen, Written provides a priceless opportunity to see art through the eyes of a lifelong viewer.
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About the Author
In 1966, Klaus Kertess cofounded the Bykert Gallery. Under his direction over the next decade, the Bykert Gallery represented Chuck Close, Barry Le Va, Brice Marden, Dorothea Rockburne, Alan Saret, and Paul Sharits, among many other significant artists. Since leaving the gallery in 1975 to pursue writing and curating, Kertess has worked with many of the most significant artists of the last four decades. Kertess has written for Artforum, Parkett, Art in America, and numerous other publications and has published monographs on Peter Hujar, Brice Marden, Joan Mitchell, and Jane Freilicher. He has recently written about John Chamberlain, Albert Oehlen, and Matthew Ritchie. Kertess has curated several major exhibitions, including the 1995 Whitney Biennial, Willem de Kooning: Drawing Seeing/Seeing Drawing for the Drawing Center in New York (1998), and Meditations in an Emergency, the inaugural exhibition for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2007. Kertess received the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian’s Archives for American Art in 2009.
