Grégoire Müller

This bk presents work as representative of "revolutionary directions" & I suppose I can sortof agree w/ that. & much of the work interests me if only b/c of its technical aspects. Nonetheless, I generally prefer work that is more revolutionary in a social sense & most, if not all, of these artists are basically gallery & museum types whose social consciousness is dubious. Take Bruce Nauman: in his early days I thought he was somewhat clever - now I just think he's a typical shallow few trick pony. Much of this work emphasizes physical presence: Dan Flavin's neon installations, the earthworks of Heiser & Smithson, Richard Serra's highly industrial sculpture-making processes, etc. I like it for that b/c it does isolate rawness in a highly refined concentrated way. I'm still impressed by the power of some of this work but, at the same time, I have other concerns wch are more important to me that make this work more of a period novelty in the sense of: This is a way that some artists handled material at a certain time. In other words, while the physicality of it is awesome, the types of concepts that I look for are mostly absent.… (mer)