Arthouse is a provocative international survey of artists' responses to the form and concept of the house. Beginning with the early twentieth century Merzbau of Kurt Schwitters, Arthouse traces an aesthetic history of the domestic environment through the groundbreaking 1971 feminist collaboration Womanhouse and the gracefully destructive architectural interventions of Gordon Matta- Clark, to the contemporary era of Rachel Whiteread's sculpted interior spaces and the haunting familial houses of Gregor Schneider. Whether reacting to the formal codes of Modernism, the illusory ideals of suburbia, domestic gender roles or the contemporary cult of interior-design-as-personal-identity, these artists are all drawn to intervene in that most political of private spaces, the home. As well as profiling individual artists' practices, Arthouse includes overviews of community projects and creative collaborations with architects, revealing the level of social engagement and technical skill often adopted by artists concerned with the notion of the house.
Works across a broad range of media are represented, including architectural models, sculpture, moving image, photography, installation and full-scale built structures. Arthouse identifies several key themes that reappear within these diverse practices and which form the structure of the book, including: literal ruptures and interventions into physical structures and the urban landscape; investigations into the psychological and unseen spaces within this most familiar of environments; enactments of domestic dynamics and the sexualisation of place; and challenges to established representations of the house in its dual existence as luxury item and basic shelter. Including work by Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Atelier Lieshout, Gabriel Orozco, Thomas Demand, Erwin Wurm and Design 99, Arthouse is both playful and political, and provides a unique perspective into a long-neglected area of practice that will delight those interested in art, design and architecture alike.
- ISBN10 1908966017
- ISBN13 9781908966018
- Publish Date 31 May 2013
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Black Dog Press
- Imprint Black Dog Publishing London UK
- Format Paperback
- Pages 192
- Language English