Cornerstones

Which artists have laid the foundations for contemporary cultural production? Between 2008 and 2009, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art held a monthly lecture series, posing this very question to leading art historians and critics, each of whom was asked to speak on the work of an artist of their choosing.
Engaging distinct methodologies—from personal narrative to the close-reading of a single work, through social interpretation and philosophical analysis, which tends to challenge the underlying premise in question, that of the centrality and nature of the individual artist—this rich collection of essays foregrounds a historical approach to the contemporary, all the while refusing the formation of a new canon.