MyWays (Ways Books) Format: Paperback

The fourth and final book in the infamous Ways series of novels as conceptual art—a project by visual artist Rita McBride in collaboration with the Whitney Museum, Printed Matter, Inc., and Arsenal Pulp Press. These books reimagine literary genres by pulling together some of the world’s leading artists, writers, and cultural thinkers to write “chapters” of a novel, all of which are set in the visual art world; by doing so, they create a beguiling “accidental” novel that subverts our traditional ideas of narrative as well as satirizing the sacred institutions of art and industry. MyWays takes on the genre of self-help in this collection of “columns” by Gina Ashcraft, an art magazine “advice columnist”; it’s a funny guide to art and life that pokes fun at our grandest institutions.

Rita is an artist living and working in Cologne and New York. Her projects vary greatly from unorthodox books to very large sculptures. She is currently planning a sixty-meter tall carbon structure entitled Mae West to be erected in 2006 on the Effnerplatz in Munich. David Gray is an artist and designer who lives in New York.