Lucy R. Lippard's famous book, itself resembling an exhibition, is now
brought full circle in an exhibition (and catalog) resembling her
book.
"Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and
the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap,
unpretentious and/or 'dematerialized.'"
--Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years
In 1973 the critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a
book with possibly the longest subtitle in the bibliography of art: The
dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference
book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a
bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works,
documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and
focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions
of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth,
or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England,
Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and
annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as a
conceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new
type of art-making that Lippard was intent on identifying and
cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing and curating
art. Nearly forty years later, the Brooklyn Museum takes Lippard's
celebrated experiment in curated concatenation as a template, turning a
book that resembled an exhibition into an exhibition materializing the
ideas in her book.
The artworks and essays featured in this publication recall the thrill
that was tangible in Lippard's original documentation, reminding us that
during the late sixties and early seventies all possible social and
material parameters of art (making) were played with, worked over,
inverted, reduced, expanded, and rejected. By tracing Lippard's own
activities in those years, the book also documents the early blurring of
boundaries among critical, curatorial, and artistic practices.
With more than 200 images of work by dozens of artists (printed in color
throughout), this book brings Lippard's curatorial experiment full
circle.
