WHILE IT CONVEYS INTIMATE DETAILS of a revolution, and therefore of a historical event, Susan Meiselas’ Nicaragua should not be treated as any kind of historical analysis. The book has been criticized for deciphering less about an event or a situation than a 60-second television news report, but this is fatuous. Whatever a book of still photos can tell its readers and viewers is clearly not of the same order of experience as a television broadcast. While such a book does not attempt to fill in the gaps between occurrences, it does impart their flavor and mood. If it doesn’t furnish corporate

Heinecken, edited by James Enyeart, Friends of Photography in association with Light Gallery, 1980, 158 pages.

IN HIS INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT to this volume, Robert Heinecken acknowledges that reproductions of his work can only function as “bare diagrams of already esoteric ideas or, at best, oblique reflections of the actual items.” Recognizing this limitation, Heinecken and his publishers have attempted to fashion something more visceral: sequences of “rich, non-linear sensations.”

Heinecken surveys a little over a decade of work—the years between 1963 and 1976—in which the artist established

“WHY LOOK AT ANIMALS?” John Berger asks in the first of 23 brief essays. They disappoint so, our pretty pets and zoo inmates, they look so dead, so indifferent. What do we see there? Berger answers simply: we see “marginality,” and theirs reflects our own. Mere tokens, neither natural nor social, animals exist, properly, nowhere—a fate, Berger implies, that may be ours, too. As we isolate, so are we isolated, and that is what the dumb stares of both zoo visitors and zoo animals bespeak, isolation—an “historic loss” due to the “culture of capitalism.” In 19th- and 20th-century Western Europe and

“WHEN WATCHING A MOVIE,” writes Robert Hughes, “one only has two choices—go or stay. With television, there is a third: change the channel.” Channel-switching, he claims, has accustomed us to receiving information as a montage of images. While the subject of The Shock of the New is modern art, its armature is undeniably television; it is a fast-paced collage of themes, ideas and names, pasted together with Hughesian wit.

After seeing most of the TV series from which the book evolved, it is impossible really to “read” it; one “hears” the sentences rumble forth in Hughes’ resonant Australian voice

THIS ANTHOLOGY IS AN immensely valuable sourcebook for anyone interested in the history of photography. It includes 50 texts of various kinds from all periods of the medium’s past—essays by critics, historians, photographers; interviews with significant figures in the field; news reports of major events; and reports on technical advances—all illustrated profusely, and each introduced by a short background note by Beaumont Newhall. In form it is strongly reminiscent of Nathan Lyons’ 1966 Photographers on Photography. In fact, the two volumes complement each other well—while Newhall’s is weakest

ALMOST ANY IMAGE OF IRELAND is an eye-catcher. Surely no country is more beautiful, but rarely has a country been more cursed. Yet, this book, including a brief introduction by Duncan McLaren, (a director of Sotheby Parke Bernet) draws no conclusions. It merely presents on every second page a Simon Marsden photograph of yet another spectacular ruin. For instance, a once great house in Ireland faces a short surreal statement by McLaren which is—like other entries—of little historical relevance. Included with each statement is the name of the ruin, its location and dates of construction and demise.

BOB & BOB IS written like a long, meaty press release, which is in keeping with these two artists’ general tactics. I have never seen one of their live performances, but I like the way they tread the thin line between silly-smart and silly-stupid in this book. It tells the who (Francis Shishim and Paul Velick), what (music, performance, public action, drawing, self-advertising, film, photography and whatever else was at hand), and where (California) of the first five years of this team’s collaboration. Texts of songs, interviews and routines are included. Two of the worst art jokes ever put into

MOST EVERYONE HAS A FAMILY album tucked away somewhere. Myths are born and die in these pages. Michael Lesy, with cold detachment (and perhaps a touch of cynicism), has assembled edited transcripts from conversations among families and friends as they look through their albums. The personalities and depicted events sometimes overlap, but rarely do family members agree on their interpretations of shared memories. Each person speaking takes the center of his or her own story. They all take you into their confidence, or rather they took in Michael Lesy, revealing intimate details, secrets, joys

THERE IS A GREGORY BATTCOCK story in each of us. Mine has to do with a dinner at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1974, the night before the first conference on video art. The host asked us all to rise and identify ourselves. One after another, we staggered to our feet, mumbled our names, added a self-descriptive phrase or institutional tag, then collapsed. Suddenly, 25 or 30 names later, an astonishing young woman split the air with a thrilling shout, never moving from her seat: “I AM GREGORY BATTCOCK!” At first the laughter came like a cold shock. Then it relaxed, breaking into a wave of

POPism: The Warhol ’60s, by Andy Warhol & Pat Hackett, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980, 192 pages, 8 illustrations.

Andy has done it again. After hitting the top with Pop and movies and socialites and superstars, reinventing art pompier for our time, and defining celebrity once and for all, Warhol, with collaborator Pat Hackett, has told a story called POPism: The Warhol ’60s. It is the best book I’ve read about what it was like then to be involved with contemporary art and to be in New York.

With a cast that includes most of the painters, writers, dealers and collectors that seemed to

Italian Drawings 1780-1890, by Roberta J.M. Olson, New York: The American Federation of Arts, and Bloomington, Ind., and London: Indiana University Press, 1980, 247 pages, 107 illustrations, including 4 in color.

In format this is an old-masterish catalogue comprising a lot of good full-page, black-and-white illustrations with an introductory essay. Frankly, I was hoping for the kind of drawing problem that I really like, where the conservative and the radical in the 19th century may not be as distinct as is assumed (and which I took up in The Burlington Magazine (April 1977) with a letter from

Photo-Realism, by Louis K. Meisel, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1980, 528 pages, 1,203 illustrations, including 710 in color.

As a key dealer in Photo-Realist painting, Louis Meisel is the ideal guide through this collection of illustrations, bibliographies and exhibition lists. While exception can be taken to Gregory Battcock’s suggestion in the foreword that Photo-Realism “has raised the possibility of art appreciation on the basis of subject matter,” Meisel’s first three criteria for Photo-Realist work seem to the point: “The Photo-Realist uses the camera and photograph to gather information.