Best known for her carved wooden heads wrapped in black leather affixed with zippers, glass eyes, enamel noses, spikes and straps, Nancy Grossman (b.1940) is accomplished in…

This tape examines the meaning, impact, and future of the early-1980s avant-garde through interviews with artists (Scott B., Robert Longo, Walter Robinson, Michael Smith), an art dealer…

Yvonne Jacquette (b.1934)is an American painter and printmaker known in particular for her depictions of aerial landscapes, especially her low-altitude and oblique aerial views of cities…

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential philosophers and cultural historians of the 20th Century, reconceiving power and identities as historically specific social relations and…

Dan Sandin designed the Image Processor that, partly because of his decision to give away the building plans, has effected an energetic and aesthetic…

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) was born in Kleve, Germany. After serving as a volunteer in the German military, Beuys attended the Dusseldorf Academy of Art to study sculpture, where in 1959…

At nineteen, Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) worked as a commercial artist designing for Conde Nast. The risky combination of contemporary art, commercial appeal and social critique runs…

Rackstraw Downes’s “observation” paintings, executed on-site at ponds, intersections, and baseball parks, began as a mischievous response to the dogma of style and modernist criticism.…

Reverend Howard Finster was a preacher-turned-folk artist. He created Paradise Gardens Park & Museum, a product of all his murals, drawings, sculptures, and mosaics—and Summerville,…

Chuck Close (b.1940) has been a leading figure in contemporary art since the early 1970s. As a young artist in the mid-’60s, Close turned away from the model of Abstract Expressionism to…

Pat Steir (b.1938) is an American painter and printmaker, whose work has resisted artworld currents and factions for decades while maintaining enthusiastic critical support. She…

Ingrid Sischy was editor of Artforum in the 1980s and has been editor-in-chief of Interview magazine since the 1990s. In this interview with Robin White, Sischy…

Estelle Jussim (1928-2004) was regarded as one of the most influential voices in photography and media. An art historian and a communications theorist, Jussim wrote extensively about…

Les Levine has had a longstanding involvement with media. His works-video, installations, public posters, and other forms-have often dealt with the effect of images on our lives. "Media…

Confrontation is the element that defines Acconci’s work, from explorations of the body and self to his performances, videos, and installations to the more…