Anthony McCall: Notebooks and Conversations
- Submitting institution
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University of the Arts, London
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 218
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Lund Humphries
- ISBN
- 978-1-84822-169-7
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The book developed from Ellard’s interests in the moving image in the gallery context and the overlaps between cinema, sculpture and architecture. The approach taken in the book is informed by his position as an artist, which brings a practitioner’s perspective to research, distinguishing it from other works on McCall. Most significant of these are 1970s Works on Paper by Anne Wagner (2013) and The Solid Light Films and Related Works by Branden W. Joseph and Jonathan Walley (2007). Joseph and Walley write an overview of McCall’s body of work while Wagner concentrates on McCall’s drawings, diagrams and schematics. Through a practitioner lens, research posed the question: By what means does an artist, working in immaterial or time-based forms, engage with the work prior to its realisation in an installation form?
Methodologically, the book concentrates on McCall’s studio practice, in particular the role of his notebooks in the realisation of his large-scale works and performances. The principal method of research was primary and direct engagement with the artist over a 10-year period, through lengthy conversation-style interviews typically in his New York studio, or at major exhibitions of his work. This emphasis on practice is reinforced by the book’s form, which deploys facsimile photographs of McCall’s notebooks produced specifically for this book, in many cases for the first time.
These first-hand accounts of McCall’s studio practice produce research insights that throw light on McCall’s working methods, demonstrating how they have evolved. A key example of this is the emergence of the proposition that, contrary to the logic of materialist film theory, McCall’s use of digital technology brings him closer to a direct engagement with the image than is the case in his earlier 16mm film works.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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