Conceptualisms and Other Fictions: The Collected Writings of Eduardo Costa 1965-2015

by Eduardo Costa

Overview

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. LGBT Studies. Art. Edited by Patrick Greaney. Translated by Jen Hofer and John Pluecker. CONCEPTUALISMS AND OTHER FICTIONS reveals the aesthetic range, critical wit, and literary sensibility of Argentine artist Eduardo Costa. This collection brings together essays, letters, interviews, reviews, scripts, and other texts published in Spanish and English over the past fifty-five years.

Costa is a painter, also known for his sound, video, and textual works. But more than anything else, he is a "creator of genres," as art historian María José Herrera has called him. Fashion fictions, street works, tape poems, talking paintings, volumetric paintings: these are just a few of the art forms that he has invented or helped invent over the past half century. Costa's innovative works have emerged from an intense reflection on the forms and materials of modern and contemporary art, as shown in his essays on Duchamp and on his friends Scott Burton, Ana Mendieta, and Hélio Oiticica.

The writings collected here reconstruct Costa's creative development from the early 1960s until the present, and they show the importance of dialogue, collaboration, and history for this key figure in global conceptualism.

"Eduardo Costa is a leading conceptual artist, the co-author of the very first manifesto of conceptualism. He is someone who thinks through art. The ultimate goal of his actions and words is to think, analytically and ironically. Costa is both serious and witty, and his work possesses gravitas and lightness. CONCEPTUALISMS AND OTHER FICTIONS is more than a brilliant title: it's a true and daring proposition and an urgent read. Like Duchamp, who might be Eduardo Costa's alter ego, and whose work can't be understood without Duchamp du signe, Costa's work is oeuvre and writing, action and language. This book stands well as Costa du signe. I imagine Eduardo Costa like Pierre Menard, authoring time and again Conceptualism, and Duchamp, as Fictions."—Luis Pérez- Oramas, Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Modern Art

"A valuable anthology that makes clear the historical importance of Eduardo Costa's art."—Alexander Alberro, author of Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity

"Eduardo Costa, a member of the first generation of Latin American conceptualists, gives us first hand insights into the artistic and political moment in Latin America that preceded hegemonic conceptual art. He offers us an invaluable personal document about a time that only recently has become the subject of academic study."—Luis Camnitzer, author of Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation

"Eduardo Costa has long been interested, as Patrick Greaney writes in his introduction, in "rethinking materials and concepts of materiality." This is where Costa joins in with the extraordinary vitality of the intellectual scene in Buenos Aires in the 1960s, its marriage of the questioning of received ideas and the liberty of experimentation. It was a scene in which friendships and collaborations were an essential element of thought, as Costa's many co-authorships with other artists attest. Costa's curiosity and thoughtfulness have been a feature of his writing right up to today, which makes this generous compilation so delightful."—Guy Brett, author of Carnival of Perception: Selected Writings on Art

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781934254639
Publisher:	Les Figues Press
Publication date:	05/31/2016
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

The artist Eduardo Costa was born in Buenos Aires in 1940. He studied painting and literature and was an active participant in the multimedia experiments in the arts that centered on the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. From 1981 to 2003, he lived in New York, where he exhibited his work and wrote for Art in America, Flash Art, and other magazines. Since 2003, he has lived in Buenos Aires. His work is in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, Museu de Arte Moderna do Río de Janeiro, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires), Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, and the Fundación Jumex, among others.

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction: A Creator of Genres i

Note on the Texts xi

Mental Relations (1965) 1

First Listening Session of Works Created Using Oral Language (1966) 6

Oral Literature (1966) 7

Eduardo Costa: An Interview about Oral Literature (1966) 9

Recovery from Chance (1966) 13

A Mass Media Art (Manifesto) (1966) 15

Mass Media Art: Creation of the First Work (1966) 17

On Happenings, Happening: Reflections and an Account (1966) 21

Steps Towards Tomorrow: Eduardo Costa Interviewed by Ángel Núñez (1967) 27

Six Absences (1968) 30

For an Oral Language Arc (1969?) 35

The Fashion Show Poetry Event Essay (1969) 37

The Fashion Show Poetry Event Poems (1969) 41

Letter from New York (1969) 46

Useful Art Manifesto (1969) 53

Announcement of Tape Poems (1969) 54

An Introduction to Tape Poems (1969) 56

Four Works: First Tale, Second Tale, and Third Tale (1969) 58

Four Works: Property Poem (1969) 61

Proposal for a Street Work (1969) 62

Street Works (1969) 63

A Fashion (A Tale) (1970) 65

Letter to Athena Tacha about the Art in the Mind exhibition (1970) 67

A piece that is essentially the same as a piece made by any of the first conceptual artists, dated two years earlier than the original and signed by somebody else (1970) 69

You See a Dress (1970) 70

Evolution of the Wheel and Spiral Motifs in the Work of Marcel Duchamp (1977/2009) 72

Duchamp: The Bathtub or an Assisted Mural "Ready-Made" (1977) 75

History of a Work of Fiction (1980s?) 81

Fashion Fiction: A New Genre (1980s?) 82

The Shower Curtain, Even (1987) 83

Letter to Ann Gussow about Marcel Duchamp's Bathtub (1988) 85

Memories of Ana Mendieta (1988) 87

Hélio Oiticica: The Street in a Bottle (1994) 91

Talking Paintings (1994) 96

Mestre Didí at Prova do Artista in Salvador, Brazil (1997) 100

John Perreault Interviews Eduardo Costa about Volumetric Painting (1999) 102

Hélio Oiticica's Cocaine Works and Some Thoughts on Drugs, Sex, Career, and Death (2000) 107

Scott Burton: The Social Function of Art at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century (2004) 113

Scott Burton and Photography (2004) 119

The Biology of Painting #2: The Anatomy Lesson: Performance (2004/2006) 124

The Monochrome in Art and Nature (2011) 128

Statement on Fluids and Art (2015) 131

Definitions of Pop Art (2015) 133

Editor's Acknowledgments 134

Biographical Note 135