In Conversation: Yve-Alain Bois and Kenneth Goldsmith
On the occasion of the exhibition ‘François Morellet. In-Coherent’ at New York, 69th Street, please join art historian and professor Yve-Alain Bois and poet and critic Kenneth Goldsmith in conversation on the legendary artist François Morellet.
‘Do as little as possible’ was one of François Morellet mottos. The artist allowed chance and aleatory standings to suggest a direction or a practice to create new bodies of works. Bois has worked profusely on and around Morellet and Goldsmith’s poetic iconoclasm will unleash some of the artist’s intricacies and games.
About Yve-Alain Bois
Yve-Alain Bois is Professor of Art History in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. A collection of his essays, Painting as Model, was published in 1990. In 1996, he curated the exhibition ‘L’informe, mode d’emploi’ with Rosalind Krauss at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the catalogue of which was published in English under the title ‘Formless: A User’s Guide.’ With Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss, he co-authored ‘Art Since 1900’ (2004).
He co-organized the 1994 – 1995 retrospective of Piet Mondrian in The Hague, Washington and New York. Other exhibitions that he curated include ‘Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry’ at the Kimbell Museum of Art (1998), for which he also wrote the catalogue (Matisse and Picasso); ‘Ellsworth Kelly: Early Drawings’ at the Fogg Art Museum (1999); and ‘Picasso Harlequin’ (2008) at the Vittoriano in Rome. Among other projects, he is currently working on the catalogue raisonné of Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and sculpture, the first volume of which was published in 2015. He also edited the catalogue raisonné of Matisse’s paintings in the Barnes Foundation, published in 2015. He is one of the editors of the journal ‘October.’
About Kenneth Goldsmith
Kenneth Goldsmith is the author and editor of over thirty books, living and working in New York City and Istria. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania. In May 2011, he was invited to read at President Obama’s ‘A Celebration of American Poetry’ at The White House, where he also held a poetry workshop with First Lady Michelle Obama. In 2013, he was named as the inaugural Poet Laureate of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1996, he founded UbuWeb (https://ubu.com), the largest site for the free distribution of avant-garde materials. His most recent book is ‘Duchamp is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb,’ which was the recipient of the 2020 Prix François Morellet awarded by the Château de Montsoreau – Musée d’art contemporain.
