Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78) died at only 35 of pancreatic cancer and has since become a cult figure of late 20th-century art. Trained in architecture at Cornell, he went on to question the field's conventions in vivid projects--performance and recycling pieces, space and texture works and word games--some of which excised holes into existing buildings or assembled deeds to New York City alleys and curbs. The artist used a variety of media to document his work, including film, video and photography. His work and words, while sophisticated enough to make him an artist's artist, and colossal and outgoing enough to draw public attention and affection, were always also grounded in social or political convictions. In the early 1970s, Matta-Clark developed the idea of anarchitecture, which encompassed his interest in voids, gaps and left-over spaces. Gordon Matta-Clark: Experience Becomes the Object collects five essays and ten individual interviews with various friends and family members of Matta-Clark's. Together, they outline a biographical profile and offer an analysis of the historical period in which the artist developed his short but successful career. New, never-before-published material and photographs as well as an exclusive link to the documentary Crosswords: Matta-Clark's Friends by Matias Cardone are also included.

An essential reference that provides new understanding of the thought processes of one of the most radical artists of the late twentieth century. Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) has never been an easy artist to categorize or to explain. Although trained as an architect, he has been described as a sculptor, a photographer, an organizer of performances, and a writer of manifestos, but he is best known for un-building abandoned structures. In the brief span of his career, from 1968 to his early death in 1978, he created an oeuvre that has made him an enduring cult figure. In 2002, when Gordon Matta-Clark's widow, Jane Crawford, put his archive on deposit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, it revealed a new voice in the ongoing discussion of artist/architect Matta-Clark's work: his own. Gwendolyn Owens and Philip Ursprung's careful selection and ordering of letters, interviews, statements, and the now-famous art cards from the CCA as well as other sources deepens our understanding of one of the most original thinkers of his generation. Gordon Matta-Clark: An Archival Sourcebook creates a multidimensional portrait that provides an opportunity for readers to explore and enjoy the complexity and contradiction that was Gordon Matta-Clark.

Lawren S. Harris is best known for his iconic landscape paintings that declare a sense of cool Canadian resilience. Yet, in the 1920s, an audacious and more colourful interior world began to emerge in his work, and by 1934, the patriotic landscape painter had taken a seemingly unexpected turn toward a transnational career in abstract painting. The social, intellectual, and aesthetic milieu of American transcendentalism shaped a movement of abstract art across North America, seen in the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Katherine Dreier, Raymond Jonson, and Lawren Harris. Harris, in particular, made an impact on both sides of the border. Inspired by the ideas of Kandinsky and informed by the writings of Emerson and Whitman, Harris and his contemporaries turned to abstraction to express higher states of consciousness, creating work that was the very embodiment of the modern spirit. As Harris's career progressed, as he ascended from mountaintops to inner states of mind, he sought greater and more ethereal spiritual heights. This magnificent volume features reproductions of more than 75 paintings by Harris and his contemporaries. Two major essays by Roald Nasgaard and Gwendolyn Owens investigate Lawren Harris's exploration of modernity and the evolution of his work towards a form of abstraction that enthusiastically embraced the energies of the ambient visual culture. Higher States: Lawren Harris and His American Contemporaries accompanied an exhibition organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

Lawren S. Harris doit sa renommee A ses paysages emblematiques penetres d'un force tranquille resolument canadienne. Dans les annees 1920, un monde interieur audacieux et colore commence A se manifester dans son oeuvre, et en 1934, contre toute attente, il entreprend une carriere de peintre abstrait outre-frontiere.Le milieu social, intellectuel et esthetique du transcendantalisme americain sert de modele A un mouvement d'art abstrait en Amerique du Nord. Inspires par les idees de Kandinsky et les ecrits d'Emerson et Whitman, Harris et ses contemporains americains -- Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Katherine Dreier et Raymond Jonson -- se tournent vers l'abstraction pour exprimer des etats de conscience plus eleves.Aspirant A s'elever au-dessus des choses terrestres, Harris delaisse le paysage au profit du spirituel et de l'interiorite. Ce magnifique ouvrage reproduit plus de 75 peintures realisees par Harris et ses contemporains. Les essais de Roald Nasgaard et Gwendolyn Owens analysent l'exploration de la modernite chez Lawren Harris et l'evolution de son oeuvre vers une abstraction qui se nourrit du dynamisme de la culture visuelle ambiante.Vers de nouveaux sommets : Lawren Harris et ses contemporains americains accompagne une exposition organisee par la Collection McMichael d'art canadien qui prendra l'affiche en fevrier 2017. L'exposition sera presentee egalement au Musee Glenbow, A Calgary, dans le cadre d'une tournee canadienne.