Donatien Grau
This publication accompanies the exhibition The End of Money (22 May – 7 August 2011), curated by Juan A. Gaitán, assisted by Amira Gad, at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). The book includes a number of contributions that extend the exhibition proper beyond its self-contained existence in the gallery space. In this respect, it is also a vehicle through which the exhibition can find different discursive grounds for exploring the theme of the end of money, both as a literary and as an iconographic motif. Beyond the aforementioned essays by Dessislava Dimova, Donatien Grau, and ...
“In this very moment we are experiencing something unprecedented: the transformation of the art book into an art object. On the one hand, the continual pressure from the market to manufacture books less expensively and make them more affordable can’t be denied. On the other, there is increasing demand for durability, solidity, and quality. The art book itself is becoming a valuable collector’s item. Who wants to acquire a catalogue, an artist’s book, or a catalogue raisonné without believing it will still be a jewel in one’s book collection a decade from now? It’s this kind of book that ...
In the mid-1970s Sylvère Lotringer created Semiotext(e), a philosophical group that became a magazine and then a publishing house. Since its creation Semiotext(e) has been the place for stimulating dialogue between artists and philosophers, and American artistic and intellectual life for the past fifty years has largely depended on it. The model of the journal and the publishing house revolves essentially around the notion of the collective, and its creator Sylvère Lotringer has rarely divulged his personal journey: his existence as a hidden child during the Second World War; the liberating and then traumatic experience of the collective in the ...
For over sixty years Tom Bishop has contributed to shaping the literary, philosophical, cultural, artistic, but also political conversation between Paris and New York. In his position as professor and director of the Center for French Civilization and Culture at New York University, he made the Washington Square institution one of the great bridges between French innovation and a New York scene that was then in full transformation. Tom Bishop was close to Beckett, championed Robbe-Grillet in the United States, befriended Marguerite Duras and Hélène Cixous, organized historic public encounters—such as the one between James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. He ...
As places to enjoy art, as well as institutions that have become historic, museums can also be examined through the question of who exactly heads up these temples of art. What kinds of personalities have guided the fates of these large, traditional institutions? How have they done so, and what has motivated them? What galvanizes international curators or museum employees, and how have they risen to the challenge of opening their organizations to increasingly large numbers of visitors? Donatien Grau has conducted impressive conversations with influential museum operators. We have him to thank for these personal, art historical, cultural-political, and ...
