2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II

CONNER, Bruce, ROTHFUSS, Joan, HALBREICH, Kathy, JENKINS, Bruce, BOSWELL, Peter

ISBN 10: 0935640614 / ISBN 13: 9780935640618

Published by Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1999

About this Item

First edition, first printing. Hardcover. Green and beige cloth-covered boards with tipped-in title and black-and-white plate on cover, and title stamped in black and white on spine; no dust jacket as issued. Photographs, films, prints, paintings and mixed-media works by Bruce Conner. Text by Kathy Halbreich, Peter Boswell, Joan Rothfuss and Bruce Jenkins. Includes an exhibition checklist, selected exhibition history, selected bibliography, filmography, selected film bibliography and an index. Designed by Andrew Blauvelt with Erin Mulcahy. 280 pp., profusely illustrated with 75 four-color and 175 black-and-white plates, including numerous reference illustrations, finely printed in Germany by Cantz. 13-1/4 x 10 inches. Published on the occasion of a major 1999-2001 exhibition opening at the Walter Art Center, Minneapolis, and traveling to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Fine. From the Walker Art Center: "For the past four decades, Bruce Conner's work has defied easy categorization. Last seen at the Walker as part of the exhibition Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965, he is perhaps best known for his landmark assemblages and kinetic, short films of the 1950s and 1960s. But Conner has also done extraordinary work in painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, printmaking, and photography. Today Conner is recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. 2000 BC: THE BRUCE CONNER STORY PART II presents some 150 works in a broad range of media to provide a much-needed introduction to the variety of work by this prolific artist. However, it is not a retrospective. As the exhibition title suggests, there are many other parts to the Bruce Conner story, as yet untold. This one places special emphasis on his filmmaking and his exploration of the physical, metaphorical, and metaphysical properties of light and dark." This catalogue received the second-place prize in the 1999-2000 International Association of Art Critics /USA Awards.

Seller Inventory # 105099

Bibliographic Details

• Title: 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II
• Publisher: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0935640614
• ISBN 13: 9780935640618
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No dust jacket as issued

About this title

Synopsis

Bruce Conner (1933-2008) first came to prominence in the late 1950s as a leader of the assemblage movement in California. Conner had close ties with poets of the San Francisco Renaissance (particularly Michael McClure) as well as with artists such as Wallace Berman, George Herms, Jess and Jay DeFeo. Conner's use of nylon stockings in his assemblages quickly won him notoriety, and saw his work included in Peter Selz's classic 1961 Art of Assemblage show at MoMA. Around this time, Conner also turned to film-making, and produced in swift succession a number of short films that helped to pioneer the rapid edit and the use of pop music among independent film-makers. Conner's innovative editing techniques and decidedly dark vision of American culture laid the foundation for later Hollywood directors such as Dennis Hopper (a friend and collaborator of Conner's, who frequently acknowledged his influence) and David Lynch. A long overdue and significant addition to the understanding of twentieth-century American art and cinema, 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II represents the most comprehensive book to date on Conner's work from the 1950s to the present. The authors elucidate Conner's work in film, assemblage, drawing, printmaking, collage,and photograms, as well as his more ephemeral gestures, actions, protests and "escapes" from the art world. This beautifully designed clothbound monograph is a landmark publication for anyone interested in contemporary art, film, culture and the Beat era.