The latest volume of writing by influential New York–based critic and curator Bob Nickas collects his 2012–14 column for Vice magazine’s Komp-laint Dept. This column unleashed the full omnivorous range of the author’s interests. There are essays on musicians such as Neil Young, Sun Ra, Royal Trux and Lydia Lunch, which look at their biographies and the history of Nickas’ personal relationship with their music; there are lengthy and often very funny “complaints” about, among other things, two different presidents, Jeff Koons, New York architecture, the meeting of fashion and punk, religion in general, nostalgia and the problem with contemporary graffiti. Additionally, there are meditations on filmmakers such as David Cronenberg and Nicolas Refin. The book is rounded out by perhaps the definitive (two-part) examination of how and why Richard Prince uses appropriation.

Author: Bob Nickas

Publisher: Karma

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Catalog of the Exhibition 1984-2011. Bob Nickas. 2nd Cannons Publications.

This book brings together new texts written to accompany 79 exhibitions organized by Bob Nickas between 1984 and 2011. Nickas chose one work to represent the memory of each exhibition, and through this visual “lens” he reflects on his activity as a curator, offering many behind-the-scenes views to the art world of the 1980s and 90s, as well as intimate recollections of the artists he worked with, and the art works he encountered over the years. The book, then, can be seen as a sort of memoir. Always placing the artists and their works within a social milieu, while also aware of how art travels across time, he reminds us that both lead multiple lives, as an exhibition can reanimate a work from the past, and occasion the discovery of forgotten and marginalized figures among those who are very well-known. This retrospective catalog is also in many ways an ideal exhibition — or collection — 27 years in the making.

With 90 color and black-and-white reproductions, the book features works by:

Vito Acconci . Richard Aldrich . John M Armleder . Barry X Ball . Lisa Beck . Alan Belcher . Ben Berlow . Walead Beshty . Huma Bhabha . Doug Biggert . Marcel Broodthaers . Henri Cartier Bresson . Graham Caldwell . Vija Celmins . Art Chantry . Larry Clark . Verne Dawson . Jules de Balincourt . Jessica Diamond . Trisha Donnelly . Moira Dryer . Gardar Eide Einarsson . William Gedney . Robert Gober . Daan van Golden . Wayne Gonzales . Felix Gonzalez-Torres . Peter Halley . Richard Hawkins . Adam Helms . Eva Hesse . Peter Hujar . Jacob Kassay . On Kawara . Yves Klein . Louise Lawler . Mark Leckey . Sherrie Levine . Judy Linn . Lee Lozano . Chris Martin . Allan McCollum . McDermott & McGough . Adam McEwen . Ryan McGinley . John Miller . Olivier Mosset . Dave Muller . Chuck Nanney . Bruce Nauman . Cady Noland . Amy O’Neill . Steven Parrino . Laurie Parsons . Raymond Pettibon . Jean Prouvé . David Ratcliff . Alex Rose . Sally Ross . Allen Ruppersberg . Sam Samore . Tom Sandberg . Joan Semmel . Stephen Shore . Harry Smith . Jack Smith . Robert Smithson . Mark Stahl. Haim Steinbach. Rudolf Stingel . Lily van der Stokker . Aaron Suggs . Philip Taaffe . Paul Thek . Wolfgang Tillmans . Betty Tompkins . Josh Tonsfeldt . John Tremblay . Alan Uglow . Kelley Walker . Jeff Wall . Joan Wallace . Wallace & Donohue . Dan Walsh . Andy Warhol . Christopher Wool

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