Bodies of Work, essays by Kathy Acker. Serpent’s Tail, 1997. Reprinted with an Afterword by Cynthia Carr in 2006, 179pp $16.00 ISBN 1852424850

A review by George Leonard.

When Kathy Acker died, the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State did something that I’d never seen before: they covered the wall of one corridor with a collage of pictures, notes, testimonials of homage and grief. Such was the passion that this unlikely poetic diva inspired. I only met her once, at a premiere of an Eleanor Antin film– a small, startling combination of piercings, muscles, and wild hair, unexpectedly gentle and affable for a woman working on Janis Joplin’s reputation.

(more…)

Museum Skepticism: a History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries, by David Carrier. Duke University Press, 2006. xiii+313pp with bibliography and index. $16.00 ISBN 0822336944 Sean Scully by David Carrier. New York and London: Thames and Hudson, (224 pp, 190 color illustrations, 10 black and white.) $65.00 cloth. I-Shu Shi Xie Zuo [Principles of Art History Writing], by David Carrier, translated into Chinese by Wu Xiao Lai (297 pages, 40 color illustrations) Beijing: Renmin Daxue (People’s University Press) 2004, 49.80 yuan.

A review by George J. Leonard, San Francisco State University

In the summer of 2006, as baseball fans were watching Barry Bonds push his lifetime home-run total into the 720s, patiently chasing Hank Aaron’s record, those of us who follow aesthetics were watching David Carrier write his 11th 12th and 13th book, chasing his teacher Arthur Danto’s home run record. I had recently finished Carrier’s Rosalind Krauss and American Philosophical Art Criticism (2002), Writing about Visual Art (2003), and the catalog of a museum show he put together. (My favorite among his books remains The Aesthetics of Comics.) Today I review Carrier’s latest book, Sean Scully, and the Chinese translation of his Principles of Art History Writing, plus Museum Skepticism: a History of the Display in Public Galleries, Carrier’s book on the museum experience from Duke University Press, begun during a year at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

(more…)