Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013)

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, we came to know Seth Siegelaub through his curatorial work in the 1960s with artists Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Lawrence Weiner, Sol LeWitt, and Joseph Kosuth, among others. However, his contributions to the art world have a wider impact than a single generation of artists.

While the era of the late ’60s represents only a small fraction of Siegelaub’s polymathic life, we were drawn to his work in this period because of his innovative use of the catalogue as the sole framework for an exhibition. That is to say not a catalogue for an exhibition, an ancillary publication tied to

Police officers patrolling the streets of Tarnac, France, November 11, 2008. Photo: Thierry Zoccolan/Getty Images.

books December 2009

THE BEST BOOKS OF 2009

Every year Artforum invites a spectrum of scholars, critics, and writers to reflect on the year’s outstanding titles.

RACHEL KUSHNER

Once upon a time in Paris, there was a short-lived meeting place in the form of a journal called Tiqqun, which, in two volumes, published anonymous philosophical writings that combined resonances of Agamben, Benjamin, Foucault, Heidegger, and Schmitt. Then there was no more Tiqqun, or Tiqqun went on hiatus. Its dissolution, according to rumors, had something to do with 9/11 and disagreements over the way to proceed in its wake. Sometime after this, an anonymous video,