Art + Archive provides an in-depth analysis of the connection between art and the archive at the turn of the twenty-first century. The book examines how the archive emerged in art writing in the mid-1990s and how its subsequent ubiquity can be understood in light of wider social, technological, philosophical and art-historical conditions and concerns. Deftly combining writing on archives from different disciplines with artistic practices, the book clarifies the function and meaning of one of the most persistent artworld buzzwords of recent years, shedding light on the conceptual and historical implications of the so-called archival turn in contemporary art.

Artists in the Archive explores the agency and materiality of the archival document through a stunning collection of critical writings and original artworks. It examines the politics and philosophy behind re-using remains, historicising this artistic practice and considering the breadth of ways in which archival materials inform, inflect and influence new works. Taking a fresh look at the relationships between insider know-how and outsider knowledge, Artists in the Archive opens a vital dialogue between a global range of artists and scholars. It seeks to trouble the distinction between artistic practice and scholarly research, offering disciplinary perspectives from experimental theatre, performance art, choreography and dance, to visual art making, archiving and curating.

Dedicated to art practices that mobilize the model of the archive, Staging the Archive demonstrates the ways in which such “archival artworks” probe the possibilities of what art is and what it can do. Through a variety of media, methodologies and perspectives, the artists surveyed here also challenge the principles on which the notions of organization, evidence, and documentation are built. The earliest examples of the modern archival artwork were made in the 1930s, but only since the 1960s have artists really embraced archival principles to inform, structure, and shape their works. This includes practices that consist of archive construction, archaeological investigation, record keeping, and the use of archived materials, but also interrogations of the principles, claims, and effects of the archive. Staging the Archive shows how artists read the concept of the archive against the grain, questioning not only what the archive is and can be but what materials, images, or ideas can be archived. Ernst van Alphen examines these archival artists and artworks in detail, setting them within their social, political, and aesthetic contexts. Exploring the works of Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Broodthaers, Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Fiona Tan, and Sophie Calle, among others, he reveals how modern and contemporary artists have used and contested the notion of the archive to establish new relationships to history, information, and data.

The archive as a crucible of twentieth-century modernism and key for understanding contemporary art. The typewriter, the card index, and the filing cabinet: these are technologies and modalities of the archive. To the bureaucrat, archives contain little more than garbage, paperwork no longer needed; to the historian, on the other hand, the archive's content stands as a quasi-objective correlative of the “living” past. Twentieth-century art made use of the archive in a variety of ways—from what Spieker calls Marcel Duchamp's “anemic archive” of readymades and El Lissitzky's Demonstration Rooms to the compilations of photographs made by such postwar artists as Susan Hiller and Gerhard Richter. In The Big Archive, Sven Spieker investigates the archive—as both bureaucratic institution and index of evolving attitudes toward contingent time in science and art—and finds it to be a crucible of twentieth-century modernism. Dadaists, constructivists, and Surrealists favored discontinuous, nonlinear archives that resisted hermeneutic reading and ordered presentation. Spieker argues that the use of archives by such contemporary artists as Hiller, Richter, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Walid Raad, and Boris Mikhailov responds to and continues this attack on the nineteenth-century archive and its objectification of the historical process. Spieker considers archivally driven art in relation to changing media technologies—the typewriter, the telephone, the telegraph, film. And he connects the archive to a particularly modern visuality, showing that the avant-garde used the archive as something of a laboratory for experimental inquiries into the nature of vision and its relation to time. The Big Archive offers us the first critical monograph on an overarching motif in twentieth-century art.

These fabulous, whimsical paintings, created for his own pleasure and never shown to the public, show Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) in a whole new light. Depicting outlandish creatures in otherworldly settings, the paintings use a dazzling rainbow of hues not seen in the primary-color palette of his books for children, and exhibit a sophisticated and often quite unrestrained side of the artist. 65 color illustrations.

This volume is a collection of texts and documents selected from and illustrating the history of Artpool, a non-profit artist run institution in Budapest, established in 1979 by György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay and operating since 1992 under the name of Artpool Art Research Center. The book focuses on Artpool’s direct antecedents (among them the events at György Galántai's Chapel Studio in Balatonboglár, 1970–1973), on the foundation, development, art projects and events, as well as the preferences and issues pertaining to art research (not independent of the historical and social environment they were conceived in) that had formed throughout the course of many years and decades. "The occasion of the publication of ARTPOOL The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe is a milestone in the history of art for its documentation of a remarkable period in the chronicles of conceptual, performance, installation, and video art, as well ephemeral mediums such as mail art and artists’ stamp sheets, postcards, rubber stamp imprints, artists’ writings and samizdat publications. The work represented in the Artpool archive is astonishing in its scope and quantity, quality of imagination, intellectual force, and the courage of the artists who created it. This volume presents an opportunity to reflect on the events that brought Artpool into being, to acknowledge that while originating in the context of East-Central Europe, Artpool’s community has always been international, and to evaluate its broad contributions to world culture and society." (Kristine Stiles)

The two-volume publication reflects on the Rubin Foundation's art and social justice initiatives over the last six years, including thematic essays, roundtable discussions, and newly commissioned artworks. An Incomplete Archive of Artistic Activism is a publication in two volumes, documenting the Rubin Foundation's art and social justice mission, serving as a critical and educational resource for those interested in activist art practices and philanthropy. One volume highlights the emergence of a cultural shift, addressing art's role in the formation of both community and justice, featuring essays by Andre Lepecki and Lucy Lippard, thematic roundtables with cultural producers, and newly commissioned text-based artwork by Edgar Heap of Birds, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Dread Scott, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles. The second volume documents exhibitions at The 8th Floor, the Foundation's exhibition and event space, such as In the Power of Your Care, Enacting Stillness, The Intersectional Self, and the exhibition series Revolutionary Cycles, with newly commissioned propositional texts by Mel Chin and Claudia Rankine. This compendium is conceived to be a critical resource for those interested in socially engaged art and includes contributions from leading artists, scholars, critics, and activists.