Description
Book SynopsisCurator and historian, gallerist and writer: Klaus Kertess has long been a decisive and forward-thinking presence in the art world. He founded the Bykert Gallery in 1966, where he represented artists including Chuck Close, Ralph Humphrey, Brice Marden and Dorothea Rockburne; three decades later, he curated the 1995 Whitney Biennial, the follow-up to the famously political 1993 iteration. What is being proposed here, he wrote in a catalogue essay for the 1995 exhibition, is not a return to formalism but an art in which meaning is embedded in formal value. An acknowledgment of sensuousness is indispensable--whether as play or sheer joy or the kind of subversity that has us reaching for a rose and grabbing a thorn. The art world has changed considerably from the relatively convivial world of the 60s to today''s globalized milieu, but Kertess has been a constant throughout the years, curating shows of provocative new work and writing critical essays on artists whose work challenges and eng
