Adrian Piper: A Retrospective

Abstract

One of the most influential artists of her generation, Adrien Piper has produced an exceptionally impressive body of work spanning a period of over thirty years. She played a formative role in the emergence of Conceptual art in the 1960-s and 1970s and an even more crucial role in the development of identity-based art in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps her most significant contribution has been to reaffirm the utopian potential of avant-garde art to transform society. Specifically, her reliance on minimalist and conceptualist forms generally thought by critics to be hermetic to effect social change has actually enhanced the ability of art to motivate viewers to examine intransigent attitudes about race, gender, and difference. A prominent philosopher as well as an artist, Piper has produced objects, installations, performances, videos, and soundworks that have established a direct, active relationship between artist and spectator, permitting neither to retreat to the usual defensive rationalizations that distance art from subjects as discomforting as personal bigotry and xenophobia. This catalogue, produced in conjunction with the retrospective exhibition organized by Maurice Berger, is the most comprehensive book ever published on the artist. Prolifically illustrated, it includes essays by Berger, Laura Cottingham, Jean Fisher, Kobena Mercer, Dara Meyers-Kinglsey, and the artist herself that illuminate the complex relationships between form and content in Piper's oeuvre from a variety of perspectives.