Peter Muir book review

Peter Muir book review from PHILOSOPHY NOVEMBER 2010 VOLUME 25, NUMBER 4 ISSN 0887-3763

Shimon Attie's "Writing on the Wall: History, Memory, Aesthetics

Muir, an art historian and Open University lecturer, analyzes Shimon Attie's "Writing on the Wall" as installation in the Scheunenviertel of Berlin and as a photographic exhibit. These photographs of Jewish life in Berlin from the 1920s and 1930s were shown in 1992 projected upon the buildings by which they were originally taken. The images were then photographed. Muir bases his analysis on recent critical theory and Benjamin's "On the Concept of History." The metaphors of space and memory are employed to show the many layers of this work. Muir does not ignore the sense of tragedy deriving from the knowledge in the viewer that all these people and places were destroyed in the Holocaust. As a comparison to the evocative images from 1992, Muir includes his own pictures of the same sites, taken in 2009. He has created a fine explication of how art, historical context and emotion combine to project a meaning greater than any one component. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Peter Muir: Research Profile

 

http://open.academia.edu/PeterMuir

My academic interests concern the relationship between word and image, the mnemonic significance of materials as well as the implications of spatial theory in relation to contemporary art practice and cultural identity.

 

‘Gordon Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect: Luxury will be King’

I’m very pleased to announce that an article ‘Gordon Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect: Luxury will be King’ will be published by The Journal For Cultural Research in 2011. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14797585.asp

The analysis considers Gordon Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect (also known as Etant d’art pour locataire, 1975), as a physical expression of the psychological tensions between rational and irrational impulses active at the artwork’s moment and location (the Plateau Beaubourg during the Paris biennale of 1975), and seeks to demonstrate how such conflicting and contradictory forces manifest themselves within, and are refracted by, the iconographic language of the art object.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLg2ID2KCTI&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKo_g5EZonI
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Conceptual%20art&page=1&f=Movement&cr=7

A book Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall, History, Memory, Aesthetics is published by Ashgate: July 2010

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754669630
Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall: History, Memory, Aesthetics
Imprint: Ashgate. Illustrations: Includes c.4 colour plates and 26 b&w illustrations. Published: July 2010. Format: 234 x 156 mm. Extent: 200 pages. Binding: Hardback.
ISBN: 978-0-7546-6963-0Price : £55.00 Online: £49.50
BL Reference: 709.2-dc22LoC. Control No: 2009047145


Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall: History, Memory, Aesthetics theorizes images from Attie's "The Writing on the Wall 1991-1993" installation as a memorial activity, and as an index or habitation for history. The images, which appeared in Berlin's Scheunenviertel district, are suspended by the palimpsestic associations established between the fixated dead of the past and their ghostly appearance in the present. Part of that palimpsest is a collective cultural knowledge of the impending obliteration of community (both the Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of Berlin) by mass-produced death.Peter Muir analyzes Attie's work by responding to a series of propositions arising from Walter Benjamin's text Thesis "On the Concept of History."

Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall: History, Memory, Aesthetics's presiding metaphor is that of loss-the central problem that the book addresses is that of forgetting.Contents: Introduction; Memory and the Scheunenviertel site; The space of forgetfulness; The archival apace; Spaces of exception; Allegory as a threshold space; Mediating signs; The tragic drama of Shimon Attie; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author: Peter Muir is a Research Associate with MIRIAD (the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design):http://www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk/visualculture/locationmemory/and an Associate Lecturer with the Open University.

Contemporary image of the Scheunenviertel district of Berlin.

Photograph by Dr. Peter Muir (2009)

Peter Muir

Photographs by Peter Muir

Dear all, I’ve set up this blog in response to a number of requests to speak about art historical research and methodologies, also in relation to a series of inquiries concerning my new book on Shimon Attie’s work in Berlin. Of course, I welcome your feedback, questions and commentary on any of the material that appears here. The photograph below is of one of the few buildings in the Scheunenviertel district that remains in its ‘1990s condition.’ The vast majority have been renovated to contemporary standards although I see that the graffiti elements (so common in Berlin) are increasingly appearing on the new structures.

Photograph by Dr. Peter Muir

Photograph by Dr. Peter Muir