Of the Diagram: the Work of Marjorie Welish Edited by Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabaté
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Of the Diagram: The work of Marjorie Welish Edited by Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabaté Contributions by Kenneth Baker, Norma Cole, Carla Harryman, Gans & Jelacic Architecture and Design, Olivier Gourvil, Ron Janssen, Joseph Masheck, Bob Perelman, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Frances Richard, Osvaldo Romberg, Keith Tuma, Chris Tysh, and Thomas Zummer. Work by Marjorie Welish. Slought Books, Philadelphia Contemporary Artists Series, No. 2 Copyright © 2003 by Aaron Levy All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any form, without written permission from Slought Books, a division of Slought Foundation. No part may be stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the following: Pratt Faculty Development Fund, University of Pennsylvania, Chain Arts, Keith Tuma, Joseph Masheck, Jack and Bea Morton, and Larry and Toby Levy. We also acknowledge the editorial support of Jen Kollar, Linda Petock, and Louis Cabri. These interviews, articles, and poems, or slightly modified versions of them, have appeared in the following publications acknowledged here: 1. “The Art of Being Sparse, Porous, Scattered: Roland Barthes on Cy Twombly.” Signifying Art: Essays on Art after 1960, Cambridge University Press, 1999. 2. “Lawrence Weiner.” Bomb: Speak Art!, G+B Arts International, 1997. ix. Contributors 3. “Cities of the Table,” and “Clans, Moieties and Other,” Word Group, Coffee House Press, forthcoming, Spring 2004. xvii. Introduction: “Axiom, carry out atmosphere!” Aaron Levy Printed by Coach House Books, Ltd. on acid-free paper. Set in 9pt Arial Narrow. Design by Sinder Design & Consulting, Philadelphia I. PAINTING AND POETRY For further information, http://slought.org/books/ SLOUGHT FOUNDATION 3. Yellow and... 4017 Walnut Street Norma Cole Philadelphia PA, 19104 19. Syntax: A Situation (on the work of MW) Table of Contents Frances Richard Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 31. Interview Bob Perelman and Marjorie Welish Of the diagram : the work of Marjorie Welish / edited by Aaron Levy and Jean-Michel Rabaté; contributions by Kenneth Baker ... [et al.] ; work by Marjorie Welish. II. PAINTING p. cm. — (Contemporary artists series ; no. 2) Includes bibliographical references. 51. The Without ISBN 0-9714848-2-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) Gans & Jelacic, Architecture and Design 1. Welish, Marjorie, 1944---Criticism and interpretation. I. Levy, Aaron, 1977- II. Rabaté, Jean-Michel, 1949- III. Welish, Marjorie, 65. Vexing the diptych with asymmetry 1944- IV. Series: Contemporary artists series (Philadelphia, Pa.) ; no. Joseph Masheck 2. NX512.Z9W456 2003 89. MIND: THE GAP 709'.2--dc21 Kenneth Baker 2002155944 95. Correspondences (Beyond the Structure) Olivier Gourvil 105. The Dark Opacity of Making Thomas Zummer 123. Stupid like a painter Osvaldo Romberg III. POETRY 131. a creative text that performs appreciation Carla Harryman 135. Of, and/or Through: A Conversation Carla Harryman and Marjorie Welish 151. Landscapes for Reading Ron Janssen 157. Lyric’s due: The Performative Poetics of Begetting Textile Chris Tysh 171. The Poetics of the Eyelash Keith Tuma 187. An annotated alphabet for MW Jean-Michel Rabaté IV. WORK BY MARJORIE WELISH Color Plates, after page 211 221. The Art of Being Sparse, Porous, Scattered: Roland Barthes on Cy Twombly 239. Lawrence Weiner Interview 257. Cities of the Table 269. Clans, Moieties and Other 271. Curriculum Vitae for Marjorie Welish REFERENCE MATTER Kenneth Baker, a native New Englander, has been art critic for The San Francisco Chronicle since 1985, and was a contributing editor for Artforum from 1985 to 1992. He continues to write occasionally for other publications, including The Art Newspaper, Smithsonian Magazine and Art News. Baker is the author of Minimalism: Art of Circumstance (Abbeville, 1989/1997) and Contributors has just completed a monograph on Walter De Maria's "The Lightning Field" for the University of California Press. He has taught and lectured at colleges around the country including Brown, Stanford and Ohio State Universities. Norma Cole is a poet, painter and translator. Her most recent poetry publications are a little a & a (Seeing Eye Books) and Spinoza in Her Youth (Omnidawn Press). SCOUT, a text/image work, is forthcoming from Krupskaya Editions in CD-ROM format. Among her poetry books are MARS, MOIRA and Contrafact. Current translation work includes Danielle Collobert's Journals, Anne Portugal's Nude and Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France. Her translation of Fouad Gabriel Naffah's Mind-God and the Properties of Nitrogen is forthcoming from Post-Apollo Press. Cole has been the recipient of a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award, Gertrude Stein Awards, as well as awards from The Fund for Poetry. "Poetics of Vertigo," Cole's George Oppen Memorial Lecture, won the Robert D. ix Richardson Non-Fiction Award. She teaches in the Bay area and is on the on women experimental writers include "Rules and Restraints in faculty of the MFA program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Experimental Women's Writing," (She Who Loves to Be Astonished, Canadian by birth, Cole migrated via France to San Francisco where she has University of Alabama Press), "The Nadja and Nanette of Gail Scott's Main lived since 1977. Brides" (The Writings of Gail Scott, Guernica Press) and "Residues and Revolutions of the Language of Acker and Artaud" (Devouring Institutions, Deborah Gans and Matthew Jelacic are partners in the office Gans & Jelacic, SDSU Press). A native Californian, she is currently Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Design. Their work in the fields of industrial design and Creative Writing, Women's Studies, and Literature at Wayne State University architecture has been exhibited at RIBA, London, IFA, Paris and the Van Alen in Detroit. Institute in New York City. Their recent investigation into disaster relief housing has won international awards and a grant for development from the Ron Janssen has just returned from three years in China, two of them as Johnny Walker Fund. Both Gans and Jelacic are Professors in architecture Fulbright lecturer in American literature at Beijing University. He is on the at Pratt Institute in New York. Deborah Gans is the author of The Le editorial board of Critical Asian Studies, co-translator of three volumes of Corbusier Guide (Princeton Architectural Press) and the editor of The short stories by the Chinese avant-garde woman writer Can Xue, and author Organic Approach (Architecture/ John Wiley-London, 2003). of articles on contemporary Chinese and American art, poetry, and culture. He guest-edited a special Denise Levertov issue of Twentieth-Century Olivier Gourvil is a painter, working and living in Paris. He has Literature. Currently he is Associate Chair of the English Department at edited publications including Une Fois Une, 1993-96, review (ed. ERBA Hofstra University on Long Island, where he teaches courses in modern Valence), Tableau: Territoires Actuels (ed. ERBA Valence/ Le Quartier literature and directs the Hofstra Summer Writers Conference. He is working Centre d’Art), and the online web site Juste Une Image (ed. Icono.org). He on a translation of Zhang Cheng Zhi’s History of the Soul, a memoir-history recently contributed to a special issue of Abstractions (Ligeia, sept, 2001). of Chinese Islam, and writing a monograph on the Chinese poet Bei Dao. He currently teaches at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Valence in France. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include the ISP Center, New York (1999), Aaron Levy is Curator and Executive Director of Slought Foundation, an arts the Ecole des Beaux-Arts du Havre (2000), Le Quartier, Centre d'art de organization and archival resource, also available online (http://slought.org). Quimper (2003), and Espace Culture, Université de Lille (2003). He is He recently edited Searching for Romberg, essays on artist Osvaldo represented by Galerie Corinne Caminade in Paris. Romberg, and Untitled (After Cinema), essays on photography and cinema (Slought Books, 2001 & 2002). He curated "Cities without Citizens" at the Carla Harryman's eleventh book, Gardener of Stars, is an experimental novel Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia, and co-edited a companion that explores the paradise and wastelands of utopian desire. Other works by publication, as their 2003 artist-in-residence. Harryman include two volumes of selected writings, There Never Was a Rose Without a Thorn and Animal Instincts: poetry, prose, and plays. Her Joseph Masheck studied art history under Meyer Schapiro at Columbia and most recent play, Performing Objects Stationed in the Sub World, has been proceeded to the doctorate under Rudolf Wittkower and Dorothea Nyberg. performed in Oxford, England, San Francisco, and Detroit. Recent essays A former editor-in-chief of Artforum (1977-80), he has taught at Columbia, x xi where he was also a member of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Osvaldo Romberg, an internationally renowned artist, was born in Buenos and at Harvard and Hofstra. Masheck recently completed an M.Litt. in Aires in 1938. He is currently a professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of aesthetics at Trinity College Dublin, and is working on a cluster of essays on Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Select exhibition