SCHWABSKY, Barry
The Observer Effect. On Contemporary Painting

In The Observer Effect, poet and critic Barry Schwabsky looks at the different directions that painting has taken since the turn of the millennium. He deflates the twentieth-century belief that abstraction and figuration in painting are dichotomous. Instead, Schwabsky argues, they are methods of asking or answering the questions: What is painting? What can painting become in an observer's encounter with it? This wide-ranging selection of texts emphasizes the coextensive work the viewer brings to painting alongside the artist—the construction of form and meaning. [publisher’s note]

The book comprises essays on painting, texts dealing with the work of specific artists—such as Alex Katz, Ha Chong Hyun, Lisa Yuskavage, Nicole Eisenman, Bernard Frize, amongst others—as well as a conversation between Schwabsky and Andrew Hunt.

Published by Sternberg Press, 2019
Design by Chad Kloepfer
Essays / Art Theory / Painting