Christophe Cherix

Made at a critical juncture in Betye Saar’s (born 1926) career, the enigmatic assemblage Black Girl’s Window (1969) was recognized by the artist as a crucial link between her past and future even at the time she made it. Saar has drawn upon family history, spirituality, astrology and politics consistently throughout her 60-year career, and all are present in the prints, drawings and found material neatly ensconced within the gridded panes of the antique window frame that is the work’s defining element.

This in-depth study by curators Christophe Cherix and Esther Adler expands our understanding of Saar’s early career and casts light on all that followed. Drawing on new research into the work’s construction and materials, and on firsthand discussions with the artist regarding the making of Black Girl’s Window and the themes behind her evocative imagery, this concise, generously illustrated volume explores one of Saar’s best-known and most iconic works.

Adrian Piper has consistently produced groundbreaking work that has profoundly shaped the form and content of conceptual art since the 1960s. Strongly inflected by her longstanding involvement with philosophy and yoga, her pioneering investigations into the political, social, psychological and spiritual potential of conceptual art have had an incalculable influence on artists working today.

Published in conjunction with the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date, this catalog presents more than 280 artworks that encompass the full range of Piper’s mediums: works on paper, video, multimedia installation, performance, painting, sound and photo-texts. Essays by curators and scholars examine her extensive research into altered states of consciousness; the introduction of the Mythic Being—her subversive masculine alter-ego; her media and installation works from after 1980, which reveal and challenge stereotypes of race and gender; and the global conditions that illuminate the significance of her art. Previously unpublished texts by the artist lay out significant events in her personal history and her deeply felt ideas about the relationship between viewer and art object. This publication expands our understanding of the conceptual and post-conceptual art movements and Piper’s pivotal position among her peers and for later generations.

Adrian Piper (born 1948) is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher. She received an AA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 1969, a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Musicology from the City College of New York in 1974 and a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1981. Piper’s artwork is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Generali Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, among others.

Cornelia Butler is Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

David Platzker is Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Christophe Cherix is Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at MoMA.

Tessa Ferreyros is Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Since the early 2000s, New York–based Kelley Walker (born 1969) has developed a body of work that uses the potency of advertising strategies to interrogate the ways a single image can migrate into several cultural contexts and how everything and everyone is subject to reinvention. Often using such technologies as 3-D modeling and laser cutting, Walker works in photography, painting, printmaking, collage and sculpture, to draw attention to popular culture’s perpetual consumption. This comprehensive monograph features Walker’s various bodies of works to date (the Black Star Press, Brick Paintings, Recycling Signs and Schema series, among others) alongside his most recent pieces. Edited and introduced by Jeffrey Uslip, it brings together new essays by MoMA curator Christophe Cherix, Le Consortium’s Co-Director Anne Pontégnie and University of Southern California’s Professor Suzanne Hudson.

Marcel Broodthaers’ extraordinary artistic output placed him at the center of international activity during the transformative decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout his career, from early objects variously made of mussel shells, eggshells and books of his own poetry, to his most ambitious project, the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles), and the Décors made at the end of his life, Broodthaers occupied a unique position, often operating as both innovator and commentator. Setting a precedent for what we call installation art today, his work has had a profound influence on a broad range of contemporary artists, and he remains vitally relevant to cultural discourse at large. Published to accompany Broodthaers’ first retrospective in New York, this volume examines the artist’s work across all mediums. Essays by the exhibition organizers Christophe Cherix and Manuel Borja-Villel, along with a host of major scholars, including Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Jean François Chevrier, Thierry de Duve and Doris Krystof, provide historical and theoretical context for the artist’s work. The book also features new translations of many of Broodthaers’ texts.

Marcel Broodthaers (1924–76) worked as a poet and critic until the age of 40, when he declared himself a visual artist. Over the next 12 years, he moved between Brussels, his birth city, and Düsseldorf and London. From 1968 to 1972 Broodthaers operated the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, an itinerant museum devoted to the exploration of the role of the institution itself and the function of art in society.

Christophe Cherix is Robert Lehman Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.Manuel Borja-Villel is Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

Benjamin H.D. Buchloh is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University.

Jean-François Chevrier is Professor in the History of Contemporary Art, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

Thierry de Duve is Theorist in Residence, MA Aesthetics and Politics Program at CalArts, Valencia, CA.

Doris Krystof is Curator at Stiftung Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

Cathleen Chaffee is Senior Curator at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.

Kim Conaty is Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Assistant Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Rafael García Horrillo is Coordinator of Temporary Exhibitions at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

Christian Rattemeyer is Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Sam Sackeroff is Mellon MRC Fellow of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Francesca Wilmott is Curatorial Assistant of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Teresa Velázquez is Head of Exhibitions at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

Klaus Biesenbach is the Director at MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large at MoMA.

Christophe Cherix is the Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at MoMA.

Jon Hendricks is a collector, artist, and the Fluxus Consulting Curator at MoMA.

Clive Phillpot is the former Director of the MoMA Library.

David Platzker is a Curator in the Drawings and Prints department at MoMA.

Ann Temkin is an American art curator, and currently the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Christophe Cherix was appointed The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art in 2013. His appointment followed a reorganization that merged the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, of which Mr. Cherix had been Chief Curator since 2010, with the Department of Drawings. He joined the Museum’s curatorial staff in July 2007, after serving as curator of the Cabinet des Estampes at the Musée d'art et d'histoire in Geneva. His specialty is modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on the art of the 1960s and 1970s.