Libraries In The News

Yeah, yeah, I know, this means nothing. And Art Forum is a silly magazine. But I like libraries.

“The Colin de Land Library”
BALICE HERTLING
47 Rue Ramponeau
January 30–February 27

View of “The Colin de Land Library,” 2010.

Some lessons from Colin de Land, whose library has been reassembled, on its original shelves, at the Parisian apartment of Daniele Balice and Alexander Hertling. First: Always buy the most colorful copy of the work in question; favor books with hot-pink spines or cobalt-yellow covers (Lukács’ Concept of Dialectic [1972] by István Mészáros, for instance), and leave particularly garish price tags in place as points of pride. Second: Self-help and gossip add intellectual heft. Consider, in addition to art-world staples by Anthony Hayden-Guest, lesser-known gems like David J. Schwarz’s The Magic of Getting What You Want (1987) and Nigel Cawthorne’s Sex Lives of the Presidents (1996). Third: Pornography should be somewhat specialized and a tiny bit wry—a blind porn star in [C-word] Vision, for instance. Last: Stay fluid and open-minded. Treat Napoleon Hill as a member of the Frankfurt School (Think and Grow Rich [1937] pairs well with Negative Dialectics [1966]); allow New York School poets to mingle with contemporaries like Lita Hornick (To Elizabeth and Eleanor: Great Queens Who Loved Poetry [1993]); mix George Foreman’s knock-out-the-fat barbecue tricks with Mao, Chanel, and Lyotard. Which is to say: Be pragmatic; contain multitudes, like Whitman—like de Land.

— David Lewis

From the current issue of Art Forum.

Pretension Aside: Yes I cleaned it up for this post but note how the c-word crept in there as if it's okay to use it in public now -- at least in the "art" world.