In 1962 the magazine Artforum was founded on a shoestring in San Francisco to challenge the East Coast art establishment. Soon thereafter, it moved to Los Angeles, and then to New York City. Suddenly it was "the establishment", setting the terms according to which art was to be judged.Amy Newman has spent nine years interviewing the participants in this amazing critical venture -- Philip Leider, John Coplans, Rosalind E. Krauss, Michael Fried, Barbara Rose, Max Kozloff, Annette Michelson, Sidney Tillim, Robert Pincus-Witten, Peter Plagens, and Charles Cowles, as well as Lucy Lippard and John Baldessari, among others -- about their backgrounds, their views on art, and their disagreements with one another. In their own words, they tell us what motivated them as arbiters of our culture and how they view their accomplishment in retrospect.
This inside look at an astonishing cultural phenomenon is an intriguing read for a lay audience and an essential source of information for artists, students, and critics.
