LEONARDO REVIEWS Leonardo Digital Reviews has flourished this Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Ballast Quar- Avant-Garde (1986) and The Optical Un- year, covering a wide range of materials and terly Review, 2022 X Avenue, Dysart, IA conscious (1992), Rosalind Krauss has generating high-grade debates on- and off- 52224-9767 U.S.A. E-mail: shown how dadaism and surrealism es- line. The achievements of this section of <[email protected]>. tablished a tradition of the “horizontal Leonardo are due entirely to the efforts of and low,” or of “informe” (Georges the panel and the editorial team. It is, then, This is an illustrated account of the Bataille’s concept, meaning “crude” or always a pleasure to be able to publicly tragic life of Audrey Munson (1891– “unformed”). She opposes this to the thank those involved. First, to the contribut- 1996), who modeled for leading Ameri- formal, vertical grid of Renaissance per- ing panelists who maintain the flow of re- can sculptors (e.g. Daniel Chester spective, which was inherited by gestalt views, sometimes under severe time con- French, A. Sterling Calder and Sherry psychology and incorporated into the straints, and also those occasional Fry) in the so-called “guilded age” of formalist aesthetics of modernism. The contributors who have responded to specific art. She posed for both the “head” and title of Krauss’s new book, Bachelors, sig- requests that often involve reading or review- “tail” of the 1916 U.S. dime (the “mer- nifies a continuation of this discussion. ing in a second language, thank you. Publi- cury dime”); as well as for statues that Here, Krauss deals with the art of nine cation of their work would not, however, be stand at the front of the New York Pub- female artists from the 1920s to the possible without the energy and commitment lic Library and the Brooklyn Museum 1980s, from Claude Cahun to Louise of the editorial team: Kasey Rios Asberry, of Art, on the fountain outside of the Lawler. But the really important “bach- who makes sure the reviews appear on the Plaza Hotel, in the pediments at the en- elors” in this book are, at least implic- world wide web, and Pamela Grant-Ryan, trance to the Frick Collection, and (as itly, the nine forms attached to the who ensures that as much of our work as the figure of Evangeline) at the “bachelor machine” in Marcel possible appears in the journal Leonardo. Longfellow Memorial in Massachusetts. Duchamp’s “La mariée mise à nu par ses We would also like to thank Ron Nachmann When the beaux arts tradition in sculp- célibataires, même” (The Bride Stripped Bare for his contribution in the past and Craig ture was quashed by the rise of modern- by Bachelors, Even [The Large Glass], Harris, who provides links between ism, Munson tried to survive by per- 1915–1923). In her writings, Krauss of- Leonardo Electronic Almanac and Leonardo forming in films about artists’ models, ten links Duchamp’s bachelor machine Digital Reviews. Thank you all—it’s back- resulting in a great scandal due to her to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s stage work, but greatly appreciated. appearing onscreen totally nude. In description of the body as a closed and 1919, when rumored to have been in- yet dispersed system of desiring ma- Michael Punt volved in the murder of her landlord’s chines. In Deleuze and Guattari’s Editor-in-Chief wife (she was not), she collapsed emo- theory, the desiring machines produce Leonardo Digital Reviews tionally (described back then as “men- the desires, and yet they are the desires; tal blight”), was ostracized as “Crazy the machines belong to the body’s or- Audrey,” and, after a failed quest for a gans, and yet they are the organs. The husband, attempted suicide. At age 39, urge for satisfaction of desires is, in the BOOKS she was committed to an asylum, where closed system, exactly the energy that she remained in obscurity until her re- makes the machines produce desire, cent death at age 105. This book is a be- “that makes them run.” lated but sincere attempt to restore her Krauss also discusses the concept of AMERICAN VENUS: dignity. the “body without organs,” a picture of THE EXTRAORDINARY (Reprinted by permission from Bal- the ego or collective that is supposed to LIFE OF AUDREY MUNSON, last Quarterly Review, Vol. 15, No. 2, Win- have organs and desires while still itself MODEL AND MUSE ter 1999–2000.) by Diane Rozas and Anita Bourne Gottehrer. Balcony Press, Los Angeles, BACHELORS Reviews Panel: Fred Allan Andersson, Wilfred CA, U.S.A., 1999. Distributed by Arnold, Kasey Asberry, Roy R. Behrens, Andreas by Rosalind E. Krauss. MIT Press, Cam- Broeckmann, Annick Bureaud, Robert Coburn, Princeton Architectural Press, New bridge, MA, U.S.A., 1999. 222 pp., illus. Nicolas Collins, Sean Cubitt, Bulat M. Galeyev, York, NY. 144 pp. $27.95. ISBN: Cloth, $29.95. ISBN: 0-262-11239-6. George Gessert, Thom Gillespie, Molly Hankwitz, 1-890449-04-0. Istvan Hargittai, Josepha Haveman, Paul Hertz, Richard Kade, Douglas Kahn, Curtis Karnow, Reviewed by Fred Andersson, Ulvsbygatan Rahma Khazam, Mike Leggett, Axel Mulder, LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS 29, 6 tr. 654 64, Karlstad, Sweden. E-mail: Kevin Murray, Frieder Nake, Christiane Paul, Editor-in-Chief: Michael Punt <[email protected]>. Robert Pepperell, Cliff Pickover, Henry See, Edward Shanken, Rhonda Shearer, George K. Shortess, Coordinating Editor: Kasey Rios Asberry Yvonne Spielmann, David Topper, René van Peer, Reviews Coordinator: Bryony Dalefield In previous essays, most of them col- Ron Wakkary, Stephen Wilson. lected in her books The Originality of the © 2000 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 329–339, 2000 329 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2000.33.4.329?mobileUi=0 by guest on 24 September 2021 being situated on a higher level. Krauss us think about the circle as a symbol of Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Ballast Quar- has described the body without organs the self, the universe, the totality that terly Review, 2022 X Avenue, Dysart, IA as analogous to the idea of the picture- Rudolf Arnheim writes about in his Vi- 52224-9767 U.S.A. E-mail: plane as a homogenous totality, a verti- sual Thinking, in which he makes refer- <[email protected]>. cal and abstracted reflection of the ence to Galileo Galilei’s cosmology. spectator’s self. By contrast, the art that Galilei, stuck with traditional thinking, Every day, more and more university Krauss relates to the concept of was not able to accept Kepler’s finding students are choosing some area of de- informe often involves a multitude of that the planets move in ellipses. Ac- sign as a career field. This guidebook is dispersed organs, or “part-objects.” The cording to everyday visual perception, divided into four major information part-objects, explicitly related to sexual “my self” is always the center of a circu- sections: Design Specialties, Design desires, replace the abstract, homog- lar world. Reductionism makes things Businesses, Design Options and Design enous totality. symmetric and easy to grasp, turning Education, followed by a resource In Bachelors, the concepts of part-ob- the ellipse into a circle. In the Large guide, which consists of the names and jects and informe prove to be helpful as Glass, the structural opposition of part- addresses of design-related organiza- means of defining and analyzing the objects (i.e. the bachelors) versus pic- tions and publications. Interwoven with work of artists as dissimilar as Cindy ture-plane (the Large Glass) implies the these sections are portions of interviews Sherman, Agnes Martin, Louise Bour- plastic opposition between organic with about 90 design professionals on geois and Sherrie Levine. But I think roundness (bachelors) and inorganic such subjects as “How I Became a that the problems of Krauss’s structural- angularity (glass). In semiotic terms, Graphic Designer”; “Advice to Design- ist (or poststructuralist) approach be- the general opposition of roundness ers”; “On Personal Style”; “Major Influ- come apparent when she neglects cer- versus angularity is a form, while the ences”; and “The Future of Graphic De- tain topics which, from her point of various variants of roundness (inter- sign.” Other informative features view, may seem irrelevant. I would ar- preted as circles or ellipses) form a sub- include “How Many Graphic Designers gue that her critique of formalism’s re- stance. By making the bachelors circular Are There?”, “What Do They Earn?” ductionism involves a certain blindness or nearly circular, Levine emphasizes and “The Optimum Portfolio.” For the when it comes to the reductionism of the generality of the form. What she re- curious but uninformed, this is very her own textual model. In this context I ally shows is the circular, self-contained likely the best introduction available. would like to discuss her text, in Bach- autism (and eroticism?) of nine part- (Reprinted by permission from Bal- elors, about Sherrie Levine’s three-di- objects that are also bodies without or- last Quarterly Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, Au- mensional version of the bachelors in gans. But when Krauss writes, in her tumn 1999.) Duchamp’s Large Glass. In Levine’s text about Levine, that “to cast the work (from 1989), the nine three-di- bachelors in glass, and then to frost the THE COPYRIGHT BOOK: mensional bachelors are cast in glass glass, is therefore to add nothing, to and displayed in nine showcases. The create nothing” (p. 182), this is obvi- A PRACTICAL GUIDE proportions of the showcases are simi- ously not true. Levine has added and by William S.