print September 1993

Let Slip the Dogs of War: Editing Artforum

RETURNING FROM THE Venice Biennale this June with the obligatory haul of books and catalogues, I was reminded of my 1972 trip back from Kassel, carrying a cherished cargo of Documenta V catalogues to New York for Artforum’s review. It was that summer that I began working at the magazine on its tenth-anniversary issue. Artforum’s staff at that time was small—six all told—and its quarters abysmal, but the intellectual climate was highly charged, if not adversarial. This—the artists’ activism, the editorial controversies, the confrontations with institutional strictures—was the best part of the

print December 1973

Re-creation of a Chilean Mural

On Saturday, October 20, North and South American artists and sympathetic passersby on West Broadway re-created a large, popular mural that, until its defacement by the military junta, ran along the Rio Mapocho in Santiago, Chile. The artists’ intention was to protest the massacres, repression, and censorship of the new military regime, and to assert their solidarity with the people of Chile. The mural was chosen as the most appropriate artform because it seemed to typify the freedom of expression that existed under Salvador Allende’s government, when murals appeared spontaneously and anonymously

print May 1973

Meredith Monk: An Introduction

TO SAY THAT MEREDITH MONK is a dancer, musician, singer, composer, director, and film maker is to say both a great deal and a little: Her particular art form defies these professional ascriptions and eludes classification. Her performances—what she refers to as “composite theater” and “nonverbal opera”—integrate elements of theater, dance, film, music, singing, and mime according to carefully conceived compositions. They juxtapose reality with a personal, surreal imagery—real space and time in terms of specific sites, props, dimensions with a psychic space or fantasyland undemarcated except by

print October 1972

Claes Oldenburg, An Interview

What did you think of Documenta? How would you describe it?

It had an historical quality, with people that I regard as legendary figures, like Ben Vautier, for example. There were artists of the Viennese school who deal with abstract expressionism of blood and guts. Then there were eccentrics, such as the man who built the dirigible, Panamarenko, and Anatol, the policeman who built a house everyday, knocked it down, and built it again. There was a section on schizophrenic art, which I enjoyed very much. The exhibition did not seem to be directed toward the United States very much, nor was it one

Angela Westwater