Art and Words - ArtSpeak - Robert Atkins, Pablo Helguera, Raphael Rubinstein, Mireia Sentís - An Art Book Series Event

FREE - Berger Forum doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Collaborative Art - Gilbert and George (b. 1943 and 1942); Life, from Death Hope Life Fear, 1984. Black-and-white photographs colored and mounted on panels, 166 x 98 in. (422 x 250 cm); Tate, London. Credit: Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Translation? Interpretation? Mediation? What do we mean when we talk about art? Join art historians Robert Atkins and Raphael Rubinstein and artists Pablo Helguera and Mireia Sentís for a wide-ranging discussion of the relationship between art and language today, and the thorny task of choosing the words to encapsulate the last quarter-century of contemporary art. This event celebrates the publication of the revised and updated twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Atkins's best-selling ArtSpeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1945 to the Present.

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of its original publication, the best-selling ArtSpeak (Abbeville Press 2013)returns in a fully redesigned third edition, featuring nearly 150 alphabetical entries—30 of them entirely new, and others updated—that explain the who, when, where, and what of postwar and contemporary art, from Abstract Expressionism to zeitgeist. These concise essays on key artistic terms are written with wit and common sense by veteran art historian and critic Robert Atkins, who also provides a year-by-year timeline of world and art-world events from 1945 to the present. Some 80 images, most in full color, illustrate iconic works of the movements discussed, making ArtSpeak a visual as well as a textual reference.

Fashion Aesthetic - Lillian Bassman (1917–2012), Carmen, early 1950s. Estate of Lillian Bassman.

Copies of the book are available for purchase and signing at the event after the audience Q&A.

Robert Atkins is an art historian, writer and curator. He is a frequent contributor to Art in America and a former staff columnist for the Village Voice. In addition to ArtSpeak, he is the author of ArtSpoke: A Guide to Modern Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords 1848-1944 and Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression. A Research Associate (Fellow) at Carnegie Mellon’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, he is a pioneering digital media producer who has created online resources including  Artery: The AIDS-Arts Forum, and, in 2011, ArtSpeak China.org, the first bilingual wiki devoted to contemporary Chinese art. He has organized exhibitions at far flung venues ranging from the Sao Paulo Bienal to the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. A founding member of Visual AIDS, creators of Day With(out) Art and the Red Ribbon, he is currently producing AIDS Over Time/Time Over AIDS, a forum to be held throughout New York in 2014.

Unmanned. 2012 © Jordan CrandallRaphael Rubinstein is a New York-based poet and art critic whose books include Polychrome Profusion: Selected Art Criticism 1990-2002 (Hard Press Editions) and The Afterglow of Minor Pop Masterpieces (Make Now). In 2006, he edited the anthology Critical Mess: Art Critics on the State of their Practice (Hard Press Editions). His book of micro-narratives In Search of the Miraculous: 50 Episodes from the Annals of Contemporary Art has been translated into French (Editions Grèges). From 1997 to 2007 he was a senior editor at Art in America, where he continues to be a contributing editor. He is currently professor of Critical Studies at the University of Houston School of Art. In 2002, the French government presented him with the award of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters. In 2010, his blog The Silo won a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation arts writer grant.

Libreria Donceles, on view at Kent Fine Art in Chelsea through November 8, 2013. © Pablo HelgueraPablo Helguera (Mexico City, 1971) creates work that focuses on history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics and anthropology in formats such as lectures, museum displays, performance and written fiction. His project The School of Panamerican Unrest (2003-2011), an early example of pedagogically-focused social practice, consisted in a nomadic think-tank, physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego. He has exhibited widely internationally and has been recipient of the Guggenheim and Franklin Furnace Fellowships and the Creative Capital and Art Matters grant. He was the first recipient of the International Award of Participatory Art of the Emilia Romagna Region in Italy. He is also author of several books including The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style (2005), written as a social etiquette manual for the art world. He is also author of Education for Socially Engaged Art, and Art Scenes: The Social Scripts of the Art World. He is currently Director of Adult and Academic Programs at the Department of Education of the Museum of Modern Art.

From the series 'Castles in Spain,' 19.7 x 23.6 inches, on barite paper. 2004 © Mireia SentísMireia Sentís is a writer, photographer and curator. Born in Barcelona, she grew up in Paris and studied at Oxford and in Florence. She has directed and anchored cultural radio and TV programs in Spain and the UK, and has written for El País, the Spanish newspaper. She started working at United Nations headquarter in 1972 and since then has been living and working in New York, Barcelona and Madrid. In 1983, she began exhibiting her photographic work throughout Europe, South America and New York, and was the recipient of a retrospective exhibition at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid, 2008) and at Arts Santa Mònica (Barcelona, 2010). She is the author of Al límite del juego (To the Limit of the Game, 1994), a portrait of SoHo in the 1960’s and 70’s, and En el pico del águila: una introducción a la cultura afroamericana (In the Eagle's Beak: An introduction to African American Culture, 1998). She is the founder/director of BAAM (Biblioteca Afro Americana in Madrid), which publishes previously untranslated writings in Spanish.

In its fifth year the program series An Art Book, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a celebration of the essential importance and beauty of art books. The events showcase book presentations and discussions by world renowned artists, critics, curators, gallerists, historians and writers.

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