What do you think?
Rate this book
Andrea Zittel: Gouaches and Illustrations
This volume is the first to compile Andrea Zittel's gouaches and paintings on wood, which she has been creating since 1992. Zittel is best known for A-Z West, her live/work space in the California desert, of which she states, "The A-Z enterprise encompasses all aspects of day to day living. Home furniture, clothing, food all become the sites of investigation in an ongoing endeavor to better understand human nature and the social construction of needs." This collection of illustrative paintings documents the mundane activities and objects that Zittel orchestrates and designs in her ongoing quest to streamline and fuse life and work. Of this fusion, critic Gregory Volk has written, "With her references to TV merchandising, pop-culture trends and self-improvement, Zittel is absolutely of her time. The real point of her oddball, visionary bent, however, is a search for personal freedom, simplicity and exuberant ease."
206 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2008
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 10, 2024
p7, Maja Oeri: This universe is held together by a philosophy sketched out and rigorously lived by the artist.
p10: In the uncertainty of their status between autonomous artwork and functional object, all her sculptures and objects move within the border zone between art and reality.
p16: I grew up with a familiarity of painting that was born of an embracement of daily life—I suppose that we were hobby painters, but there was an ordinariness and an interconnectedness to the act of painting that was completely free of the fine art distinctions to which I would later be introduced.
p54: Later the sculpture and formal language evolved and began to reflect a Southern California vernacular as I traveled from Germany to Southern California. It is the later culture that my work constantly refers back to in its exploration of both personal and public boundaries and the construction of individuality.
p80: Because we already understand images to serve a function of persuasion in advertising they are already read as potential "fraud" or "lie" that somehow makes them feel more truthful since their role as propaganda is so transparent. I realized that I could say something that I believed in the form of an advertisement even if it might not possibly be true. The idea is based on one of the theories fundamental to my work that what we "believe" and what we "know" can in fact sometimes be two different things.
p92: [on A-Z Time Trials] This project raised questions ab out the representation of experience, and if having a truly unique and important experience is enough to qualify as a good artwork, or is this experience must be communicable or presentable to a larger audience. Most current lines of thinking would assert that art must be a form of communication; I would argue that this is the point where art as communication tends to become a mediated and "packaged" public presentation compared to a more unknowable first-hand experience.
p108: Some of my most diaristic works began at a time when I started to feel that small observations, events, and realities that emerge through day-to-day living are in many ways more profound than any of the larger promises that substantiate art. I have been looking for a way to record an observation or event that might otherwise be forgotten twenty minutes later. These paintings and my videos have felt like some of the most fluid outcroppings from my life at A-Z West.
p152: These things I know for sure: #9. The creation of rules is more creative than the destruction of them. Creation demands a higher level of reasoning and draws connections between cause and effect. The best rules are never stable or permanent, but evolve naturally according to context or need.
p156: These things I know for sure: #3. Maintenance takes time and energy that can sometimes impeded other forms of progress...
p164: These things I know for sure: Ideas seem to gestate best in a void - when that void is filled, it is more difficult to access them. In our consumption-driven society, almost all voids are filled, blocking moments of greater clarity and creativity. Things that block voids are called "avoids".
p203: [Bio] With A-Z, Zittel creates and experimental space for a parallel reality in which the difference between art and reality has become obsolete.
p10: In the uncertainty of their status between autonomous artwork and functional object, all her sculptures and objects move within the border zone between art and reality.
p16: I grew up with a familiarity of painting that was born of an embracement of daily life—I suppose that we were hobby painters, but there was an ordinariness and an interconnectedness to the act of painting that was completely free of the fine art distinctions to which I would later be introduced.
p54: Later the sculpture and formal language evolved and began to reflect a Southern California vernacular as I traveled from Germany to Southern California. It is the later culture that my work constantly refers back to in its exploration of both personal and public boundaries and the construction of individuality.
p80: Because we already understand images to serve a function of persuasion in advertising they are already read as potential "fraud" or "lie" that somehow makes them feel more truthful since their role as propaganda is so transparent. I realized that I could say something that I believed in the form of an advertisement even if it might not possibly be true. The idea is based on one of the theories fundamental to my work that what we "believe" and what we "know" can in fact sometimes be two different things.
p92: [on A-Z Time Trials] This project raised questions ab out the representation of experience, and if having a truly unique and important experience is enough to qualify as a good artwork, or is this experience must be communicable or presentable to a larger audience. Most current lines of thinking would assert that art must be a form of communication; I would argue that this is the point where art as communication tends to become a mediated and "packaged" public presentation compared to a more unknowable first-hand experience.
p108: Some of my most diaristic works began at a time when I started to feel that small observations, events, and realities that emerge through day-to-day living are in many ways more profound than any of the larger promises that substantiate art. I have been looking for a way to record an observation or event that might otherwise be forgotten twenty minutes later. These paintings and my videos have felt like some of the most fluid outcroppings from my life at A-Z West.
p152: These things I know for sure: #9. The creation of rules is more creative than the destruction of them. Creation demands a higher level of reasoning and draws connections between cause and effect. The best rules are never stable or permanent, but evolve naturally according to context or need.
p156: These things I know for sure: #3. Maintenance takes time and energy that can sometimes impeded other forms of progress...
p164: These things I know for sure: Ideas seem to gestate best in a void - when that void is filled, it is more difficult to access them. In our consumption-driven society, almost all voids are filled, blocking moments of greater clarity and creativity. Things that block voids are called "avoids".
p203: [Bio] With A-Z, Zittel creates and experimental space for a parallel reality in which the difference between art and reality has become obsolete.
Displaying 1 of 1 review