G. Roger Denson brings singular insight to Thomas McEvilley's writings. As an art writer he has explored similar territory, but from the point of view of a nomadic ideologist. His approach matches that of his subject. He addresses the issues of pragmatism, historicism, and cultural relativism. In so doing, he effectively dismantles the need to establish a master narrative. The contrast and agreement between these two writers constitutes a mapping of the terrain of contemporary culture.
What sets Thomas McEvilley apart from other critics in art and culture is his direct knowledge of the newest art and theory, and his comprehensive understanding of classic art and ancient civilizations. It is rare to find a writer equally fluent in the production of modernist aesthetics, the anti-aesthetics of post-modernism, T'ang Dynasty Taoist painting, the doctrines of the Tantra, Platonic mysticism, and Aristotelian logic. This vast knowledge has enabled him to produce some of the best-conceived and eccentric

What sets Thomas McEvilley apart from other critics in art and culture is his direct knowledge of the newest art and theory, and his comprehensive understanding of classic art and ancient civilizations. In McEvilley's view, modernism's present was the future, and post-modernism's present is the past. He distinguishes himself from both of these positions, and - Janus-like - simultaneously scrutinizes past and present in order to facilitate the production of future discourse. G. Roger Denson brings singular insight to Thomas McEvilley's writings. As an art writer he has explored similar theory, but from the point of view of a nomadic ideologist. He addresses the issues of pragmatism, historicism, and cultural relativism. In so doing, he effectively dismantles the need to establish a master narrative.

When these essays first appeared in Artforum in 1976, their impact was immediate. They were discussed, annotated, cited, collected, and translated-the three issues of Artforum in which they appeared have become nearly impossible to obtain. Having Brian O'Doherty's provocative essays available again is a signal event for the art world. This edition also includes "The Gallery as Gesture," a critically important piece published ten years after the others. O'Doherty was the first to explicitly confront a particular crisis in postwar art as he sought to examine the assumptions on which the modern commercial and museum gallery was based. Concerned with the complex and sophisticated relationship between economics, social context, and aesthetics as represented in the contested space of the art gallery, he raises the question of how artists must construe their work in relation to the gallery space and system. These essays are essential reading for anyone interested in the history and issues of postwar art in Europe and the United States. Teeming with ideas, relentless in their pursuit of contradiction and paradox, they exhibit both the understanding of the artist (Patrick Ireland) and the precision of the scholar. With an introduction by Thomas McEvilley and a brilliantly cogent afterword by its author, Brian O'Doherty once again leads us on the perilous journey to center to the art world: Inside the White Cube.

In 1975 Marina Abramovic and Uwe Laysiepen met in Amsterdam, fell in love, and began to collaborate as performance artists. By the time their personal relationship ended twelve years later they had become two of the most famous performance artists in the world. Thomas McEvilley met them in 1983; they became close friends, and ever since he has been able to follow the development of their career together, and their careers apart, over the past twenty-seven years. Art, Love Friendship is divided into three sections. The first documents Marina Abramovic and Ulay together, including their three-month-long Great Wall Walk in 1988. The second section features Ulay's career before meeting Marina -- when, for example, he briefly "stole" Germany's most famous painting in broad daylight -- as well as his later work as a conceptual photographer. The final section features a long interview with Marina and essays about her work of the 1990s and the 2000s. The book includes 65 photographs.