Pipilotti Rist
The latest addition to the “Contemporary Artist” series, published by the London based Phaidon Press, is this volume dedicated to Pipilotti Rist, born in Rheintal, Switzerland, in 1962. Rist is most well-known within the field of video art for her large and colorful installations, in which the artist unites poetry, music, irony, and the female identity, in such pieces as Ever Is Over All, which she showed at the 1997 Venice Biennale, and last year’s massive Open My Glade, which was projected in Times Square, New York. Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews the artist, while the critical text is penned by the feminist theoretician Peggy Phelan, who closely analyses the thematic and iconographic elements at play in Rist’s work (including Andy Warhol, MTV, and Hollywood movies). Particularly interesting are the connections Phelan makes between Rist’s Ever Is Over All, with Claude Monet’s painting Poppies, near Argenteuil, and Victor Fleming’s film The Wizard of Oz. Furthermore, the theoretician Elisabeth Bronfen makes a contribution with her essay, a psychoanalytical study of Absolutions (Pipilotti’s Mistakes). Finally, specifically chosen passages by from the artist’s favorite writings are reprinted, such as Anne Sexton’s poetry, entitled Barefoot, and a short story by American writer Richard Brautigan. Texts in English.

Pipilotti Rist, Phaidon Press (Regent’s Wharf, All Saints Street, London, www.phaidon.com), 2001, 160 pages, 29 x 25 cm.

Gabriel Orozco. From Green Glass to Airplane recordings.
This volume is graced with a minimalist cover which replicates an inventory form. The book documents the project Recordings and Drawings, created by Gabriel Orozco for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which was made up of five digital videos shot in common urban situations, as explained by Orozco himself, during the autumn of 1997 in New York and Amsterdam. While the titles given to the works appear quite curious, they in fact refer to the opening and closing image of each of the videos. From Green Glass to Federal Express, From Container to Don’t Walk, From Cap in Car to Atlas, From Dog Shit to Irma Vep, and From Flat Tyre To Airplane disclose the poetic narratives and simultaneously classify and document Orozco’s work, as indicated by the title word, recordings, which refers to the act of capturing the images themselves. Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen, the curator of the show, selected the videos, which run for from about forty minutes to one hour and their great expressiveness is witnessed by the video stills reproduced in the catalogue. Texts in English.

Gabriel Orozco, From Green Glass to Airplane Recordings, Artimo (Fokke Simonszstraat 8, Amsterdam, www.lostboys.nl), 2001, 536 pages, 24 x 19 cm.

La Vie Sexuelle de Catherine M.
Catherine Millet is the director of the French contemporary art magazine “Art Press,” where she has worked since 1972. In 1995, she was the commissioner for the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and is also the author of numerous books on contemporary art, the most recent of which is L’Art Contemporain (1997). Without a strict chronological sequence or precise references to dates and places, La vie sexuelle de Catherine M. recounts Millet’s sexual adventures, subdivided in four chapters: “The Number,” “The Space,” “The Shortened Space,” and “The Details.” In her tale, Millet confesses to have had fifty identifiable lovers, as well as a multitude of other anonymous men.

Catherine Millet, La vie sexuelle de Catherine M., Seuil (Editions du Seuil, 27, rue Jacob, Paris, www.seuil.com), 2001, 220 pages, 14 x 21 cm.

Gabriela Gründler, Stars of Suburbia
Stars of Suburbia was born from the musings of artist Gabriela Gründler as to whether a photographic portrait was really ever enough to express an individual’s personality through the face alone. This volume presents a portrait sui generis of two friends, Mrs H. and Mrs G., who first met each other by accident one day in a Zurich suburb, during the 1982 electoral campaign, and they discovered that they were in fact neighbors. The photographs on cover reflect Gründler’s choice on how she will present her portraits: she reveals only the backs of the two women’s heads. The book means to be a fluid portrait, made up of letters and cards that the two women sent each other, doodles, drawings, and short notes, as well as gifts and other objects the two exchanged. Texts in English and German.

Gabriela Gründler, Stars of Suburbia, Edition Patrick Frey (Weinbergstrasse 22a, Zurich), 2001, 144 pages, 19 x 24 cm.

Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art
Edited by Martina Corgnati and Francesco Poli, this is the first Italian-language informative and didactic tool that presents the history of art and other related branches as an actual dictionary, covering subjects from Impressionism to contemporary art movements. The items, amassed in a clear and understandable way for consultation, do not refer to single artists but to groups, movements, trends, critical interpretations, working techniques, and the different materials used in the various modes of artistic expression. The dictionary also presents twenty-nine images of major avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde masterpieces, which are accompanied by their relative critical listings.

Martina Corgnati, Francesco Poli, Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art. Movements, artists, works, techniques and sites, Bruno Mondadori, 2001, 704 pages, 13 x 19 cm.