Materializing Six Years - 9780262018166

"Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and thematerial form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or'dematerialized.'"--Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years

In 1973 thecritic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a book with possibly the longest subtitle inthe bibliography of art: T he dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: across-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography intowhich are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arrangedchronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of suchvaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in theAmericas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited andannotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as aconceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new type of art-making thatLippard was intent on identifying and cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing andcurating art. Nearly forty years later, the Brooklyn Museum takes Lippard's celebrated experiment incurated concatenation as a template, turning a book that resembled an exhibition into an exhibitionmaterializing the ideas in her book.

The artworks and essays featured in thispublication recall the thrill that was tangible in Lippard's original documentation, reminding usthat during the late sixties and early seventies all possible social and material parameters of art(making) were played with, worked over, inverted, reduced, expanded, and rejected. By tracingLippard's own activities in those years, the book also documents the early blurring of boundariesamong critical, curatorial, and artistic practices.

With more than 200 images ofwork by dozens of artists (printed in color throughout), this book brings Lippard's curatorialexperiment full circle.