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

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

Gordon Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect: “Luxury will be King” JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH VOLUME 15 NUMBER 3 (JULY 2011), pp. 173-192.

N 1479–7585 © 2011 Taylor & Francis

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a938621491~db=all~jumptype=rss

This essay argues that Gordon Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect (1975) exemplifies Lefebvre’s understanding of art’s function in relation to urban space. Yet the aim is not to fix a retrospective meaning onto Conical Intersect. Instead, by mapping conceptual processes and reception history, the essay uses Lefebvre’s theory to interrogate the range of interpretive opportunities provided by this arresting yet temporally specific artwork. Such an approach allows the writing to be alive to the convergence of historical and cultural meanings and tensions that are at the heart of both the essay and Conical Intersect.
 

Footage of the artwork can be found at the following sites:

http://vimeo.com/10617205,

Peter Muir: Shimon Attie’s Writing on the Wall Book Review

Peter Muir: Shimon Attie’s Writing on the Wall Book Review

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754669630

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

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)