Words to Be Looked At
Language in 1960s Art
Liz Kotz

Table of Contents

Language has been a primary element in visual art since the 1960s–whether in the form of printed texts, painted signs, words on the wall, or recorded speech. In Words to Be Looked At, Liz Kotz traces this practice to its beginnings, examining works of visual art, poetry, and experimental music created in and around New York City from 1958 to 1968. In many of these works, language has been reduced to an object nearly emptied of meaning. Robert Smithson described a 1967 exhibition at the Dwan Gallery as consisting of “Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read.” Kotz considers the paradox of artists living in a time of social upheaval who used words but chose not to make statements with them.

Kotz traces the proliferation of text in 1960s art to the use of words in musical notation and short performance scores. She makes two works the “bookends” of her study: the “text score” for John Cage’s legendary 1952 work 4’33”–written instructions directing a performer to remain silent during three arbitrarily determined time brackets– and Andy Warhol’s notorious a: a novel–twenty-four hours of endless talk, taped and transcribed–published by Grove Press in 1968. Examining works by artists and poets including Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, George Brecht, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Jackson Mac Low, and Lawrence Weiner, Kotz argues that the turn to language in 1960s art was a reaction to the development of new recording and transmission media: words took on a new materiality and urgency in the face of magnetic sound, videotape, and other emerging electronic technologies. Words to Be Looked At is generously illustrated, with images of many important and influential but little-known works.

Liz Kotz writes on contemporary art and on interdisciplinary avant-gardes of the postwar era. She teaches in the Art History Department at the University of California, Riverside.

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Endorsements

“In 1959, Brion Gysin famously claimed that poetry was fifty years behind painting. Gysin’s prophecy still holds true: half a century later, contemporary poetry is just beginning to explore ideas forged by language-based artists in the 1960s. As such, this book is a roadmap, bursting at the seams with inspiration and ideas for current literary practices. By embracing an intermedia approach–one where music, photography, visual art, poetry and performance all live in the same room–Liz Kotz elegantly creates a compelling portrait of our digitized networked present. The implications are radical: by gazing backwards, this book predicts the future.”
—Kenneth Goldsmith, University of Pennsylvania

“Words to Be Looked At is a landmark account of the central story of post-war art: the first sustained investigation of the ‘linguistic turn’ that has defined the arts since the 1960s. As Kotz details with unequalled authority and insight, language became a primary media for artists in many movements–from Pop to Fluxus to Minimalism to Conceptualism–at the same time that the recognition of its materiality permitted an unrivaled experimentation in literature. The American art of the 60s, we learn, put French post-structural theory into radical practice. Combining theoretical sophistication with archival discoveries, Kotz’ truly interdisciplinary scholarship allows her to reestablish the dialogue–between experimental music, avant-garde literature, visual art, performance and photography–that made the art of the period so exciting and that continues in the most vital work of our own moment.”
—Craig Dworkin, Department of English, University of Utah

“Of the many strengths of Words to be Looked At Kotz’s synthetic vision stands out. She has a gift for bringing together previously isolated works in ways that illuminate both elements of her comparison. The discussion of John Ashbery and Jackson MacLow offers us a superb example of this within the domain of poetry, while the chapter on George Brecht’s performance piece and Joseph Kosuth’s photographic installation provides a model for the synthesis of different arts.”
—P. Adams Sitney, Director, Program in Visual Arts, Princeton University

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