« Art Critics' Reading List
DAVID LISS
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David Liss, Artistic Director and Curator, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. He has organized numerous exhibitions, projects, events and publications, in Toronto, Montreal and internationally. His most recent publication is Future Species, a book featuring contemporary artists and writers on the subject of the future. Current curatorial projects include «Empire of Dreams: phenomenology of the built environment» at MOCCA in June 2010, and co-curating Biennale Montréal in May 2011. |
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Carlos Moore. Fela, Fela: this bitch of a life. Translated from French by Shauna Moore. London: Allison & Busby, 1982. Nearly all of my reading is related to my job so I’m quite excited to be reading this non-work-related book on the late, great Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. This copy, published in cheap paperback in 1982, was recommended by my local used-book and record shop guy. It’s an entertaining read consisting almost entirely of transcribed interviews with Fela, a charismatic figure who in the early 1970s invented Afrobeat by combining West African high-life, jazz and American funk into a highly original “Africanized” fusion that also took ideological inspiration from the Black Panthers. In Lagos he was a fiercely committed freedom fighter – and thus a threat to the authorities. His legendary compound, the Shrine, was raided numerous times and included savage beatings upon Fela, his elderly mother, and his many wives who were also brutally raped. It’s all recounted here in riveting and disturbing detail. As this book makes clear, Fela was not an easy man nor did he live an easy life. But he is one of the truly great revolutionaries of the last century. Although there has since been much more published on Fela, this version comes direct from the man himself in a visceral and vibrant style.
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Laney Salisbury and Ali Sujo. Provenance. How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art. New York: The Penguin Press, 2009. What an incredible caper! Not related to my work, but a book about art nonetheless. Provenance tells the preposterously true story of the infamous con job perpetrated by John Drewe during the 1990s. Through the shrewd and cruel manipulation of down-on-his-luck painter John Myatt, Drewe managed to charm and cheat his way into the upper echelons of the international museum and auction world, flipping forged paintings that he supported with forged and stolen documents taken right from the archives of the Tate and other prestigious institutions. Derived from interviews with numerous participants and players, Salisbury and Sujo convey the story in the highly accessible narrative style characteristic of a good suspense novel with convincing character and story development. I felt transported right into the debacle as if I was there. Even though we know the outcome of the adventure, the juicy details of how the crime was solved are only revealed towards the end of the book. In the meantime, I was hanging on every page, anxiously anticipating how and who would bust the case. Provenance appeals to both art-world intrigue and the fascination of a good detective thriller. Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.
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Jeffrey S. Rosenthal. Struck By Lightning. The Curious World of Probabilities. HarperCollins Publisher, Ltd., 2005. This book has nothing whatsoever to do with art – but it is entirely work-related, as I’m reading it for my research into theories of chance and probability, the general theme of the 2011 Biennale Montreal that I’m co-curating. It seems that the author is some kind of brainiac who received his PhD in mathematics from Harvard at the age of 24! Fortunately, Rosenthal delivers his intricate theories in very accessible language and a likable tone, and often with humour – or at least as humorous as one can possibly be writing about mathematical probability. Although I’ve just started the book, I’m looking forward to reading chapters with intriguing titles like, The Case of the Collapsing Casino, Randomness to the Rescue: When Uncertainty is Your Friend and Spam, Spam, Probability and Spam. It all sounds great, but I’m not entirely sure how much probability theory I can take. At this point I’m not betting on my chances of finishing the book. But by the end of it, I’m fully expecting to derive inspiration for the Biennale.
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