Laurie Anderson /anglais

by Laurie Anderson, Roselee Goldberg

A study of this complex, multifaceted artist, whose groundbreaking work continues to engage and entertain while challenging the relationship between art, technology and society.

Genres: Music, Art, Biography, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Laurie Anderson (born Laura Phillips Anderson) is an American experimental performance artist and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance art piece in the late 1960s. Throughout the 1970s, Anderson did a variety of different performance art activities. She became widely known outside the art world in 1981 when her single "O Superman," reached number two on the UK pop charts. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave.

She has also invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a "tape-bow violin" that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she developed a "talking stick", a six-foot long, batonlike MIDI controller that can access and replicate different sounds.

Reviews

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvelous anthology and discussion of Anderson's work. Author Roselee Goldberg situates Anderson in the same postmodern, critical milieu as Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman, artists who took their work out of traditional gallery spaces, questioned its assumptions, and playfully disassembled parts of pop culture, putting them back together in strange new forms. I would have liked some more analysis from the author, but this is partly a showcase for Anderson's work, not an academic book. Besides, too much analysis might detract from the free-associative structure, which throws Anderson's images and words into juxtaposition — much like one of Anderson's albums or live shows. In other words, too much structure might defeat the subject's purpose.

[Ben Houge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this years ago, and it was super disappointing, very poorly written, although it has some nice pictures.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was bailing dome friends out of jail several years ago in Camden, New Jersey. The city had seen fit to put the county jail and the public library right next to each other, and I walked in to look at books and found this one on the "for sale" shelf, brand new, for 50¢.

Camden's loss.

I blogged about this book a little bit on 31 Dreamers, and about how Laurie Anderson was my first celebrity crush. Her records alone don't do her justice. She is a total artist whose whole picture is made up of the many mediums she's worked with. Check it out.

[Clar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely essential for my honours dissertation. It has excellent descriptions of the technical as well as thematic and symbolic aspects of all of Anderson's productions up to the publication of the book.

[stevenallenmay · Rating 4 out of 5]

i would have given this a 5 star rating, except there were 35 typos in the book. No proof readers any more?

[brian thunder · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic overview of one of the most important artists around today.