Bringing a poet’s perspective to an artist’s archive, this highly original book examines wordplay in the art and thought of American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978). A pivotal figure in the postminimalist generation who was also the son of a prominent Surrealist, Matta-Clark was a leader in the downtown artists' community in New York in the 1970s, and is widely seen as a pioneer of what has come to be known as social practice art. He is celebrated for his “anarchitectural” environments and performances, and the films, photographs, drawings, and sculptural fragments with which his site-specific work was documented. In studies of his career, the artist’s provocative and vivid language is referenced constantly. Yet the verbal aspect of his practice has not previously been examined in its own right. Blending close readings of Matta-Clark’s visual and verbal creations with reception history and critical biography, this extensively researched study engages with the linguistic and semiotic forms in Matta-Clark’s art, forms that activate what he called the “poetics of psycho-locus” and “total (semiotic) system.” Examining notes, statements, titles, letters, and interviews in light of what they reveal about his work at large, Frances Richard unearths archival, biographical, and historical information, linking Matta-Clark to Conceptualist peers and Surrealist and Dada forebears. Gordon Matta-Clark: Physical Poetics explores the paradoxical durability of Matta-Clark’s language, and its role in an aggressively physical oeuvre whose major works have been destroyed.
Gordon Matta-Clark Physical Poetics
About the Book
Reviews
"Examining the titles of Matta-Clark’s works, as well as private notebooks, aphoristic notecards, letters and loquacious statements he made to various interviewers, Richard—herself a poet—maps with obsessive precision the ways in which the artist’s language use frames and enlarges his artworks, many of which exist now only in the form of documentation. . . . Richard’s nimble exegesis of her subject and his language sets the stage for conjuring a vision of Matta-Clark working in the landscape."—Chicago Review of Books
"Richard conscientiously treats Matta-Clark's written word as another facet of his artistic production, which serves to contextualize and deepen an understanding of his short-lived career. Presenting these musings, complete with words crossed-out, spelling errors, arrows, and marginal notations from books, provides a conduit to Matta-Clark's archive and displays his playful use of language. This book is remarkable in its ability to systematically weave Matta-Clark's thought process with his artwork in a way that remains directly connected to the archives while still reading narratively. It would be an excellent resource for anyone interested in Matta-Clark and his milieu in the 1970s Soho art scene."—ARLIS/NA Reviews
"Richard's compelling and crystalline prose make it quite the page-turner. Reading it under lockdown during a pandemic has been a particularly thought-provoking experience. Physical Poetics exemplifies the kind of rigorous work that is difficult to achieve, so thorough is its analysis of the archival and the material evidence. It reads at once like a biography, an essay and an inventory; it is a Matta-Clark concordance, but much more thrilling than that sounds."—Burlington Magazine
"Richard authors an extensively researched and dense text that examines the archives of the artist, focussing predominantly"In Frances Richard's hands, language is more than just a theme. It is a practice, a way of thinking, and it becomes a critical framework that changes the way we see the artist, his work, his language, and the sociohistorical context in which all are embedded."—Gwen Allen, Professor of Art History, San Francisco State University
on his prosaic texts and irreverent semantic aphorisms recorded on notecards. For any fan or interest in the artist, the book serves as part-analysis of the archive, with a nuanced insight into New York’s emerging contemporary art scene of the late 1960’s and early 70’s. However, the volume also works as semi-biographical, charting Matta-Clark’s tumultuous parentage and maturation, in a parallel to his works, interests, and backdrop of famous connections past, present, and future."—Visual Studies
"Like a well-written novel, what might appear as factual minutia becomes enlivened by Richard into a penetrating character analysis; we become more and more invested in learning about this unusual artist whose career and life were cut short by illness and death. Fortunately, Gordon Matta-Clark: Physical Poetics doesn't stop at mere biography. This close analysis of the life, writings, sculpture, and conceptual artworks of Gordon Matta-Clark is a work of serious research."—Jennifer A. González, Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz
"Energetic and well-informed, Richard keeps the quirkiness of her subject in mind as she demonstrates a broad and deep knowledge of, and sympathy for, Gordon Matta-Clark, capturing the range of his interests and engagements."—Jack Flam, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art and Art History, City University of New York and President, Dedalus Foundation
Table of Contents
Introduction. CONFUSION GUIDED BY A CLEAR SENSE OF PURPOSE; or, a comet, which would have its tail in front
PART ONE. TOTAL (SEMIOTIC) SYSTEM: READING GORDON MATTA-CLARK
“Total (Semiotic) System”
Walking and Reading
WORKING AT SEVERAL DIMENTIONS
“A step taken in the fog”
“Kool Killer, or the Insurrection of Signs”
PART TWO. ANARCHITECTURE AS POETIC DEVICE: GORDON MATTA-CLARK AND THE SOHO CONVERSATION
Anarchitecture as Poetic Device
“The Poetics of Psycho-Locus”
AVAILABLE
“Metaphoric Void”
Arche and the Alpha Privative
"Ambiguity Is All”
Art World Prince
BEST LATED WISHES
Of Trees, Burial, Cooking, and Cannibalism
“Another name more or less the same”
Venn Diagram
To THE MEETING and THE MOB (AGAIN)
MAKING NOT SOLVING PROBLEMS
The Irrational Village and the Non-u-ment
Un-monumentalizing Conversation
Monument, Non-u-ment, and Site/Non-site
Smithson Coda: The Islands
Quadrille, Walls paper, et al.
Fake Estates
LAYERED REALITY, Thin Edge, and Space Between
“Been Gone”: Notes on the Index
Cut/Draw/Write
Immune versus Cancer Cells
PART THREE. A SILENT FORCE: THE LEGACIES OF MATTA AND DUCHAMP
DEMENTIONS
“A Silent Force”
Matta and Pajarito: “Psychological Morphology” and Réalité parallèle
Noguchi
“Jestures”
Étant . . .
Anartist and Anarchitecture
Inframince and Thin Edge
Bullet Holes
Phenomena of Infra-
Readymade and Ready-to-be-unmade
The Alchemical Pun
PART FOUR. SPACISM: GORDON MATTA-CLARK AND THE POLITICAL
“We chose to build a world of our own”
“My understanding of art . . .” and THE JOY OF GETTING AWAY WITH IT SPACISM
“I woundered who it is for . . .”
Chile and the Bienal de São Paulo
Window Blow-Out
Arc de Triomphe for Workers
A Resource Center and Environmental Youth Program for Loisaida
THE VOYEURIST'S SPACE
Violent Space, SECURITY MEASURES, and THE SIGN POST ANARCHIE
The Money Photographs
Cornell ’69
“Gordon Matta-Clark and Individualism”
“A fine-tuned language and logic of the body”
Conclusion. “WITHIN ABSURDITY THERE IS A FANTASTIC FREEDOM”
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes
List of Illustrations
Index
Related Books
The Political Body
Andrea Giunta
Stick to the Skin
Celeste-Marie Bernier
Bruce Nauman
Constance M. Lewallen, Dore Bowen
Come as You Are
Alexandra Schwartz
Is It Ours?
Martha Buskirk
The Geometries of Afro Asia
Joan Kee
Self Help Graphics at Fifty
Tatiana Reinoza, Karen Mary Davalos
The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader
Jordana Moore Saggese