John Miller: The Ruin of Exchange

by John Miller (Artist), Alexander Alberro (Editor), Mike Kelley (Text)

Spanning 1989 to 2009, this anthology collects the influential writings of American artist, musician and critic John Miller (born 1954), which have been lauded by Bruce Hainley in Artforum as -a pungent intervention into the ideologies of beauty, representation and looking.- Ranging from reviews and cultural essays to theory and artist's statements, Miller's writings distinguish themselves from other styles of art criticism insofar as they relate to his larger artistic concerns with the social context of the art object and its sociopolitical ramifications as a commodity (as the title of this volume implies); they are also deeply informed by Miller's vast knowledge of art history and popular culture. More recently, Miller has entered into close dialogue with Dan Graham, Bob Nickas and Nicolas Guagnini. Many of the essays collected here--such as his contributions to the German magazine Texte zur Kunst--appear in English for the first time.

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2012

About the author

John Miller is an artist, writer, and musician, as well as a Professor of Professional Practice in the Art History Department at Barnard College, New York.

Reviews

[J Murnaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

To me, Miller's art writing continues in the tradition of Dan Graham and Robert Smithson. His observations about artists of that generation (Asher, Baldessari, Huebler, among others) are important and spot-on. The more theoretical stuff sometimes gets knotted up rehashing writers on mass culture since Baudelaire. But, like Mike Kelley's writing, it still manages to shed some light on where the art comes from.