Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.. Text by Ellen Harvey.
Between 1999 and 2001, small old-fashioned landscapes painstakingly executed in oil started to appear on graffiti sites across New York City. The paintings were the work of the well-known Brooklyn-based artist Ellen Harvey (born 1967).
Documented in this reprint of the sold-out first edition are both the works themselves and Harvey's diaristic accounts of painting illegally throughout the city. The narrative of her “beautification project” is both provocative and hilarious. It touches on such issues as who is allowed to make art in our society, and what distinguishes art from graffiti, while never losing touch with the frequently comical reality of creating a contemporary art project on the streets of New York.
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.. Text by Henriette Huldisch. Interview with Adam Budak.
From her earliest experiments with painting old-master landscapes as graffiti on the streets of New York, to her recent project The Alien's Guide to the Ruins of Washington, DC (2013) at the Corcoran in Washington, DC, Ellen Harvey (born 1967) has applied her unique and humorous perspective to unpacking the history of art and aesthetics. Taking its title from the ongoing project featured in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, a rear-illuminated wall of plexiglass mirrors in ornate frames, The Museum of Failure is the first major retrospective publication on the artist's work, looking at each of her major projects and bodies of work of the past 20 years. Harvey's practice incorporates painting, photography, video, installation and public participation to examine our expectations about art and cultural production, their proper contexts and what constitutes appropriate engagement, all with a disarming charm. The book includes a new text on the artist by curator Henriette Huldisch and an in-depth interview with the artist by curator Adam Budak.
Published by Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Essays by Alex Baker and Shamim Momin.
The artist best known for her New York Beautification Project--40 lozenge-shaped miniature landscapes illicitly painted on urban surfaces in public spaces around New York City from 1999 to 2001--has gone legit and gone indoors with Mirror, a site-specific installation at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Playing off the Academy's Victorian architecture and academic traditions, in which students copy works of art, Harvey literally holds a mirror up to Frank Furness' Victorian Gothic architecture, copying the image of his interior stair hall as a nearly life-size reverse engraving on mirror. The glass is illuminated from behind so the engraved lines glow, and the resulting nearly 360-degree drawn environment is anchored by a video projection of Harvey creating the work. Mirror documents and puts in context Harvey's most ambitious site-specific work to date, and also serves as a mini-monograph, a short survey of her career, highlighting projects from 1998 to the present with brief descriptions written by the artist.
PUBLISHER Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 9 x 12 in. / 96 pgs / 60 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/1/2006 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2006 p. 121
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780943836287TRADE List Price: $25.00 CAD $34.50 GBP £22.00
AVAILABILITY Out of stock
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.. Artwork by Ellen Harvey.
Between 1999 and 2001, small old-fashioned landscapes painstakingly executed in oil started to appear on graffiti sites across New York City. The paintings were the work of the well-known artist Ellen Harvey. Documented here are both the works and Harvey's diaristic accounts of painting illegally throughout the city. The narrative of her “beautification project” is both provocative and hilarious. It touches on such issues as who is allowed to make art in our society, and what distinguishes art from graffiti, while never losing touch with the frequently comical reality of creating a contemporary art project on the streets of New York.
Ellen Harvey: Museum of Failure
Ellen Harvey: Mirror
Ellen Harvey: New York Beautification Project