Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Examining the titles of Matta-Clark’s works, as well as private notebooks, aphoristic notecards, letters and loquacious statements he made to various interviewers, Richard—herself a poet—maps with obsessive precision the ways in which the artist’s language use frames and enlarges his artworks, many of which exist now only in the form of documentation. . . . Richard’s nimble exegesis of her subject
and his language sets the stage for conjuring a vision of Matta-Clark working in the landscape." * Chicago Review of Books *
"Richard conscientiously treats Matta-Clark's written word as another facet of his artistic production, which serves to contextualize and deepen an understanding of his short-lived career. Presenting these musings, complete with words crossed-out, spelling errors, arrows, and marginal notations from books, provides a conduit to Matta-Clark's archive and displays his playful use of language. This book is remarkable in its ability to systematically weave Matta-Clark's thought process with his artwork in a way that remains directly connected to the archives while still reading narratively. It would be an excellent resource for anyone interested in Matta-Clark and his milieu in the 1970s Soho art scene." * ARLIS/NA Reviews *
"Richard's compelling and crystalline prose make it quite the page-turner. Reading it under lockdown during a pandemic has been a particularly thought-provoking experience.
Physical Poetics exemplifies the kind of rigorous work that is difficult to achieve, so thorough is its analysis of the archival and the material evidence. It reads at once like a biography, an essay and an inventory; it is a Matta-Clark concordance, but much more thrilling than that sounds." * Burlington Magazine *
"Richard authors an extensively researched and dense text that examines the archives of the artist, focussing predominantly
on his prosaic texts and irreverent semantic aphorisms recorded on notecards. For any fan or interest in the artist, the book serves as part-analysis of the archive, with a nuanced insight into New York’s emerging contemporary art scene of the late 1960’s and early 70’s. However, the volume also works as semi-biographical, charting Matta-Clark’s tumultuous parentage and maturation, in a parallel to his works, interests, and backdrop of famous connections past, present, and future." * Visual Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. CONFUSION GUIDED BY A CLEAR SENSE OF PURPOSE;
or, a comet, which would have its tail in front PART ONE. TOTAL (SEMIOTIC) SYSTEM: READING GORDON MATTA-CLARK
“Total (Semiotic) System”
Walking and Reading
WORKING AT SEVERAL DIMENTIONS
“A step taken in the fog”
“Kool Killer, or the Insurrection of Signs”
PART TWO. ANARCHITECTURE AS POETIC DEVICE: GORDON MATTA-CLARK AND THE SOHO CONVERSATION
Anarchitecture as Poetic Device
“The Poetics of Psycho-Locus”
AVAILABLE
“Metaphoric Void”
Arche and the Alpha Privative
"Ambiguity Is All”
Art World Prince
BEST LATED WISHES
Of Trees, Burial, Cooking, and Cannibalism
“Another name more or less the same”
Venn Diagram
To THE MEETING and THE MOB (AGAIN)
MAKING NOT SOLVING PROBLEMS
The Irrational Village and the Non-u-ment
Un-monumentalizing Conversation
Monument, Non-u-ment, and Site/Non-site
Smithson Coda: The Islands
Quadrille, Walls paper, et al.
Fake Estates LAYERED REALITY, Thin Edge, and Space Between
“Been Gone”: Notes on the Index
Cut/Draw/Write
Immune versus Cancer Cells PART THREE. A SILENT FORCE: THE LEGACIES OF MATTA AND DUCHAMP
DEMENTIONS
“A Silent Force”
Matta and Pajarito: “Psychological Morphology” and
Réalité parallèle Noguchi
“Jestures”
Étant . . . Anartist and Anarchitecture
Inframince and Thin Edge
Bullet Holes
Phenomena of Infra-
Readymade and Ready-to-be-unmade
The Alchemical Pun
PART FOUR. SPACISM: GORDON MATTA-CLARK AND THE POLITICAL
“We chose to build a world of our own”
“My understanding of art . . .” and THE JOY OF GETTING AWAY WITH IT SPACISM
“I woundered who it is for . . .”
Chile and the Bienal de São Paulo
Window Blow-OutArc de Triomphe for WorkersA Resource Center and Environmental Youth Program for Loisaida THE VOYEURIST'S SPACE
Violent Space, SECURITY MEASURES, and THE SIGN POST ANARCHIE
The Money Photographs
Cornell ’69
“Gordon Matta-Clark and Individualism”
“A fine-tuned language and logic of the body”
Conclusion. “WITHIN ABSURDITY THERE IS A FANTASTIC FREEDOM”
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes
List of Illustrations
Index
