Wouter Davidts

Triple Bond is not a book about museum architecture.
That is, not only. While the fourteen essays gathered in this
volume focus on the architecture of museums built over
the past five decades, they also concentrate on larger developments
in art within that same timeframe. Likewise Triple
Bond is not exclusively about art and architecture either.
Even though it deals with the dialogue between the disciplines
and practices of art and architecture, it contemplates
just as much the changes within that very institution
where the dialogue has been taking place most intensely:
the museum.
With this collection of essays Wouter Davidts advances
the tenet that art, architecture, and the museum are engaged
in a complex yet inevitably historical relationship with
one another, that is, they are triply bound to each other.
The book is divided into four parts: Platforms, Artists,
Buildings, and Exhibitions, and contains case studies of
the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans
Van Beuningen, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Temporary
Contemporary, p.s. 1, as well as the Antwerp Museum
aan de Stroom (mas). It offers in-depth analyses of the
understanding and use of museum and exhibition space by
such widely acknowledged artists as Marcel Broodthaers,
Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark.
Finally, it critically assesses contemporary responses to the
spaces of the museum by the artist collective superflex at
the Van Abbemuseum and by the assorted artists participating
in the Unilever Series at Tate Modern.

Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space is a comprehensive publication with both visual and written essays on the work and practice of Antwerp-based architect and urban planner Deleu and T.O.P. office. It brings together, for the first time, an international group of artists and scholars in an effort to chart this intri­cate body of work, and to situate this practice within a broader historical and theoretical framework.

The bookproposes a conceptual topography, articulated upon seven lemmas: imitation, architecture, sculpture, mobility, scale, depiction and manifesto. A portrait, a catalogue of the works, exhibitions and writings (1967-2011), as well as an exchange about the future prospects of T.O.P. office complete this unique and groundbreaking volume.

With contributions by Maarten Delbeke (NL/BE), Aglaia Konrad (AUT/BE), Teresa Stoppani (K), Kersten Geers (BE), Felicity D. Scott (US), Luc Deleu (BE), John Macarthur (AU), Marjolijn Dijkman (NL), Guy Châtel (BE), Metahaven (NL), Stefaan Vervoort (BE), Manfred Pernice (DE), Wouter Davidts (BE), Koenraad Dedobbeleer & Kris Kimpe (BE), and Isabelle De Smet & Steven van den Bergh (BE).

The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work is an original collection of essays on the artist’s studio as key trope, institutional construct, and critical theme in art of the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century. This book ambitiously questions the many assumptions that underlie the popular and international discussions of the so-called post-studio era. Instead of upholding the accepted wisdom or narrative that the arist’s studio has fallen, it traces its shifting nature and identity in postwar art production and art criticism, across media and geographies. The essays are devoted to artists at work, or to individual artists and their understanding and use of the place of work (Eva Hesse, Mark Rothko, Olafur Eliasson, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Daniel Buren, Martin Kippenberger, Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades, Jan De Cock).

Editors: Wouter Davidts & Kim Paice

With contributions by Wouter Davidts, Julia Gelshorn, MaryJo Marks, Kim Paice, Kirsten Swenson, Morgan Thomas, Philip Ursprung, Jon Wood.

Designed by Metahaven, Amsterdam

CRACK: Koen van den Broek is published on the occasion of the exhibition Curbs & Cracks by Koen van den Broek at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent in the spring of 2010 (www.smak.be). The publication does not serve as a conventional catalogue but as a proper discursive and visual project alongside the exhibition. It is the first substantial study of the work and practice of van den Broek, opening up different theoretical and conceptual perspectives.

A wide range of contributors has been invited to discuss particular topics within the work of van den Broek, based on their proper backgrounds and expertise as writers, academics and artists: the legacy of abstract painting (Andrew Renton, Goldsmiths, London), the collaboration with John Baldessari (John Welchman, University of California, San Diego), film as a source of inspiration (Merel van Tilburg, Université de Génève), the role and meaning of photography (Dirk Lauwaert, Brussels), exhibition strategies (Liesbeth Bik en Jos Van der Pol, Rotterdam) and the representation of landscape and architecture (Wouter Davidts, VU University Amsterdam).

The book is compiled by Wouter Davidts and designed by Metahaven (Amsterdam).

Publisher: Valiz, Amsterdam (www.valiz.nl) and Lannoo, Tielt (www.lannoo.be)

Out of Print since 2011.

See also:
www.valiz.nl
www.koenvandenbroek.org

This cd-rom publication contains the proceedings of the conference Museum in ¿Motion? that took place on 12 & 13 November 2004 at Museum Het Domein in Sittard and at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The cd-rom is shell to a fully-fledged book. You can either navigate through the papers on a digital level or choose to create a material copy by printing them. The event was jointly organised by the Jan Van Eyck Academie Maastricht, Museum Het Domein, and the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning of Ghent University (UGent).

Although new museums sit amongst the most prestigious and important commissions for the contemporary architectural discipline, there is no substantial discourse within architectural theory on museum architecture. The concepts employed in discussions around museum architecture tend to be reductive and simplistic, such as the provocation that museums need to be built ‘for art’.

Bouwen voor de Kunst? both weakens and nuances this statement. I argue that the common tendency to conceive of museums primarily as buildings immediately reduces the issue of museum architecture to the relation of art to architecture, negates the complexity of the museum’s architectural programme and underestimates the role of the institutional interface between the two disciplines.

The chapters do not offer an architecture-critical discussion of recent museums, but an architecture- and art-theoretical examination of the museum institution. The statement that museums need to be built for art is assessed by an in-depth analysis of a series of artistic practices that have led a critical investigation of art’s place in the museum (Minimal art, Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark and the Alternative Spaces Movement). The resulting research into the spatial and architectural preoccupations of these artists then serves as a theoretical framework for an analysis of the shift in architectural programme between the Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. Davidts reveals that this shift – between the built to the reconverted factory – leads to crucial changes in the translation of the institutional program of the museum of contemporary art – the relentless aspiration to act as a site of artistic production – into the architectural brief.

In Bouwen voor de Kunst? I demonstrate that the museum never delivers a home for art, but a stage on which where artworks are granted the possibiltiy to lead another life than that of their so-called authentic moment of production, to gain meaning elsewhere.

Bouwen voor de kunst? is the book-version of my PhD (GHent University, 2003).

Paperback.