Walker Postscript (Walker PS)—the Walker Art Center’s new print-on-demand publishing imprint—presents short and focused texts that delve more deeply, or broadly, into the rich concepts that animate the institution’s diverse artistic programs. From exhibitions, lectures, and educational initiatives to film screenings and performances, Walker PS will offer a range of titles in short, concise formats which expands our publishing repertoire, and that utilize online technologies for production and distribution.
Our first Postscript publication is a series of texts that discuss the ideas surrounding the exhibition Abstract Resistance. On view here at the Walker this spring, it questioned institutional notions of abstraction as an art-making technique as well as explored it as a medium for political expression beyond a formalist exercise. Yasmil Raymond, curator of the show, provides an overview of the thematic material and artwork in the exhibition; art historian Simon Baier traces the origins and development of nonobjective art through the writings of critics such as Charles Baudelaire and Meyer Schapiro; and philosopher Marcus Steinweg draws on the ideas of Theodor Adorno and others to provide a theoretical framework for artistic resistance. Punctuated with artist texts by Gedi Sibony, Cathy Wilkes and Thomas Hirschhorn, Abstract Resistance present responses to these issues from multiple viewpoints: curatorially, historically, philosophically, and from the artists’ vantage point.
Abstract Resistance is $9.99, and available through the Walker Shop and on lulu.com.