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The Casual Downplaying of Art Since California Conceptualism
by Jacob Stewart-Halevy
Published by The University of Chicago Press in 2026
344 pages, ISBN: 9780226843940
Rather than celebrating objects, this book lingers on a moment when artists began to treat making, explaining, and exhibiting art with a certain studied nonchalance. Rooted in California Conceptualism, it follows practices that preferred staging over producing, attitudes over outcomes, and distance over commitment. Artists such as Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, David Lamelas, Tony Ramos, Ilene Segalove, and William Wegman did not just question authorship or meaning, they often appeared uninterested in them altogether.
Stewart-Halevy suggests that this casualness was not accidental but structural. It quietly rewired how artists, critics, and audiences relate to one another, proposing stance as something that could stand in for aesthetic judgment, and sometimes even replace it.
Kunst – Ort – Zugehörigkeit – Philippe Thomas und sein Umfeld
by Hanna Magauer Published by transcript Verlag in 2025
ISBN: 978-3-8376-7691-4, 326 pages The book’s German title, Art – Place – Belonging – Philippe Thomas and His Milieu (the publication is currently available in German only), already hints at its core concern. Rather than treating the “inside” of the art field as an abstract idea, the book asks what happens when this interior is understood as something spatial, social, and negotiated.
Hanna Magauer traces the work of Philippe Thomas, active from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, whose practice moved between institutional critique, appropriation, and queer poetics. Long under-recognized beyond a narrow circle, Thomas’ work offers a precise lens through which questions of authorship, belonging, and position can be reread today. For PROVENCE, Thomas, IFP, and figures such as Ghislain Mollet-Viéville have repeatedly served as key reference points, making this publication feel both timely and overdue.
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