With the confluence of cultural diasporas living and contributing to all countries disseminated and collective identities, it is difficult to imagine celebrating a national holiday such as Memorial Day without offending or upsetting a war veteran in some way. People sub or consciously approach the holiday as simply another long weekend to celebrate the arrival of summer bar-b-ques.  

Riding my bike through downtown L.A. and Skid Row everyday to work, I encounter kaleidoscopic views and sounds that sometimes shock and sometimes numb my consciousness.  One message scrawled on a piece of white paper caught my mind's eye; "Memorial Day is hard for homeless vets."  The simple message reminded me that Memorial Day is not celebratory for many vets--especially homeless ones.  

This weekend here at Art Catalogues we are looking at artists(Horn, Arneson, Gonzalez- Torres, Holzer, Durant)  and architects(Lin, Liebeskind) who have made and are proposing memorials to many groups of peoples in a collective effort to bring solace to the living while honoring the dead.  We invite you to come in and check out what we have found and also to let us know what you think about Memorial Day.

Please join us to celebrate the publication of Marching Bands, Jules Allen's latest book, and to hear Jules and UC Irvine professor Joe Lewis in conversation about the complexity, pageantry and the contribution of Black Marching Bands.

 
Image courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery

Performance by Centennial High School Marching Band at 4 p.m. on BP Plaza

Talk, reception and booksigning to follow.

Marching Bands Introduction by Joe Lewis with photographs by Jules Allen      
QCC Art Gallery, Oakland Gardens, 2016  
Hardcover, 96 pp, 95 full page black & white images, $45.00

To purchase a signed copy of Marching Bands click here.
Art Catalogues is located in the Ahmanson Building at LACMA.  

5905 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA  90036

Please join us on February 12, 2017 from 4-6 p.m. when Wallis Annenberg director of LACMA, Michael Govan talks to Flavin Judd, Curator and Co-President of Judd Foundation about furniture, architecture and art.

Donald Judd and Floor, 101 Spring Street, New York, 1985

Talk, reception and booksigning to follow

Donald Judd Writings (click here to purchase signed copy in advance.)

Edited by Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray

Copublished by Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books, New York, 2016

1,056 pages/ 180 color/ 47 b/w illus./ $39.95

Flavin will sign only books purchased at Art Catalogues. 

 

Please join us to experience Ana Prvacki's Tent, quintet, bows and elbows. At once a sculpture, a sound piece and a performance, Tent physically contains and embodies sound to make physical the ephemeral.

Ahmanson Building, January 15th, 2017 4-6 p.m.

The tent will activate at 4:15 p.m. Performed by the Lyris Quartet

Talk, reception and booksigning to follow.

Finding Comfort in an Uncomfortable Imagination: A Catalogue of Ideas

by Ana Prvacki

Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore, 2015. $40

To pre-order a signed copy, click here.

To watch the video of the performance, click here.

Published books sometimes have a very limited edition size. Whether large or small, thin or voluminous, Art Catalogues holds a vast repository of out of print books from modern to contemporary artists, group show catalogues and art movements.

One of our favorites is the catalogue for the now legendary exhibition at MOMA in New York titled "INFORMATION."(click on title to see product page.) I imagine the art world in 1970 was looking forward to innovative strategies to  after the Summer of Love in '67 and the tumultuous student uprisings of '68.

A watershed moment for conceptual artists and like minded collaboratives, INFORMATION included 100 international artists from Mel Bochner to Lawrence Weiner.  Hans Haacke famously contributed his institutionally critical survey piece questioning viewers; "Question:

Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon's Indochina policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November ?

 Answer:

If 'yes'
please cast your ballot into the left box
if 'no'
into the right box.

New York Governer Nelson Rockefeller was a member of the board of trustees of MOMA and planning a run for the U.S. Presidency at the time.  

INFORMATION was edited by Kynaston L. McShine, Associate curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA at the time of the exhibition.  In 1980 McShine became senior curator in MoMa's Department of Painting and Sculpture, a position he served in until 2001, when he became Acting Chief Curator of the department. In 2003, he was named Chief Curator at Large. 

For the book INFORMATION, 100 artists were "invited to create [their] own contribution to this book, a situation which meant that the material presented would be either directly related to the actual work in the show or independent of it. Therefore, this book is essentially an anthology and considered a necessary adjunct to the exhibition."