James Coleman

by Baker, George

• ISBN13: 9780262523417
• ISBN10: 0262523418
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-10
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

James Coleman has emerged in recent years as one of the most important artists of visual postmodernism. His work has transformed critical debates about the status of the image in contemporary culture and influenced an entire generation of younger artists in ways that have not yet been fully acknowledged. Until recently, Coleman has enjoyed relatively little critical attention-in part because of his refusal to comment on his projects or to allow his work to be reconstructed outside of the context of its exhibition. The illustrated essays in this book span the entirety of Coleman's career to date, from his early postminimal and conceptual experiments with memory and perception, through his work in film, video, and narrative in the 1980s, to his current ongoing series of slide projections with voice-over that he calls simply "projected images." Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the debates induced by Coleman's work, the essays discuss issues of subjectivity and identity, nationalism, postcolonialism, memory, spectacle culture, digitalization, and new media. The contributors are Raymond Bellour, Benjamin Buchloh, Lynne Cooke, Jean Fisher, Luke Gibbons, Rosalind Krauss, Anne Rorimer, and Kaja Silverman. Written by curators, critics, and scholars and spanning the fields of art history, literary criticism, philosophy, and film theory, the essays attest to the interdisciplinary challenge of Coleman's work.

Author Biography

George Baker is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an editor at October magazine and October Books. He is the editor of James Coleman (MIT Press) and a frequent contributor to Artforum.

Table of Contents

Series Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
James Coleman (1970-1985) (1985)	p. 1
The Place of the Spectator in the Work of James Coleman (1983)	p. 19
The Enigma of the Hero in the Work of James Coleman (1983)	p. 37
The Living Dead (Living and Presumed Dead) (1996)	p. 57
Narratives of No Return: James Coleman's guaiRE (1993)	p. 73
Memory Lessons and History Tableaux: James Coleman's Archaeology of Spectacle (1995)	p. 83
A Tempered Agnosia (1992)	p. 113
Live Vocals (2002)	p. 139
"... And Then Turn Away?" (1997)	p. 157
Reinventing the Medium: Introduction to Photograph (1999)	p. 185
Index of Names	p. 211
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