Amelia Groom - Beverly Buchanan: Marsh Ruins (Afterall Books / One Work)

First published in 2020
by Afterall Books

Afterall

Central Saint Martins

University of the Arts London

Granary Building

1 Granary Square

London N1C 4AA

www.afterall.org

Afterall is a Research Centre of
University of the Arts London

Editors

Amber Husain

Mark Lewis

Project Coordinator

Beth Bramich

Project Manager

Lauren Houlton

Editorial Directors

Charles Esche, Mark Lewis

Design

Andrew Brash

Original series design

A2/SW/HK

Typefaces

A2/SW/HK + A2-Type

The One Work series is printed
on FSC-certified papers

ISBN 978-1-84638-218-5

Distribution by The MIT Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts and London

www.mitpress.mit.edu

2020 Afterall, Central Saint Martins,
University of the Arts London,
the artists and the authors

An Afterall Book

Distributed by The MIT Press

d_r0

Each book in the One Work series presents a single work of art considered in detail by a single author. The focus of the series is on contemporary art and its aim is to provoke debate about significant moments in art's recent development.

Over the course of more than one hundred books, important works will be presented in a meticulous and generous manner by writers who believe passionately in the originality and significance of the works about which they have chosen to write. Each book contains a comprehensive and detailed formal description of the work, followed by a critical mapping of the aesthetic and cultural context in which it was made and that it has gone on to shape. The changing presentation and reception of the work throughout its existence is also discussed, and each writer stakes a claim on the influence their work has on the making and understanding of other works of art.

The books insist that a single contemporary work of art (in all of its dierent manifestations), through a unique and radical aesthetic articulation or invention, can aect our understanding of art in general. More than that, these books suggest that a single work of art can literally transform, however modestly, the way we look at and understand the world. In this sense the One Work series, while by no means exhaustive, will eventually become a veritable library of works of art that have made a dierence.

Other titles in theOne Workseries:

Ilya Kabakov: The ManWho Flew into Spacefrom his Apartment

by Boris Groys

Richard Prince:Untitled (couple)

by Michael Newman

Joan Jonas: I Want toLive in the Country(And Other Romances)

by Susan Morgan

Mary Heilmann:Save the Last Dance for Me

by Terry R. Myers

Marc Camille Chaimowicz: Celebration? Realife

by Tom Holert

Yvonne Rainer:The Mind is a Muscle

by Catherine Wood

Fischli and Weiss:The Way Things Go

by Jeremy Millar

Andy Warhol: Blow Job

by Peter Gidal

Alighiero e Boetti: Mappa

by Luca Cerizza

Chris Marker: La Jete

by Janet Harbord

Hanne Darboven:Cultural History18801983

by Dan Adler

Michael Snow: Wavelength

by Elizabeth Legge

Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel

by Amna Malik

Richard Long: A Line Made by Walking

by Dieter Roelstraete

Marcel Duchamp:tant donns

by Julian Jason Haladyn

Rodney Graham:Phonokinetoscope

by Shepherd Steiner

Dara Birnbaum:Technology/ Transformation:Wonder Woman

by T.J. Demos

Gordon Matta-Clark:Conical Intersect

by Bruce Jenkins

Jeff Wall:Picture for Women

by David Campany

Jeff Koons:One Ball TotalEquilibriumTank

by Michael Archer

Richard Hamilton: Swingeing London 67 (f)

by Andrew Wilson

Martha Rosler:The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems

by Steve Edwards

Dan Graham:Rock My Religion

by Kodwo Eshun

Yayoi Kusama:Infinity Mirror Room Phalli's Field

by Jo Applin

Michael Asher:Kunsthalle Bern, 1992

by Anne Rorimer

Sanja Ivekovi: Triangleby Ruth NoackHlio Oiticica andNeville DAlmeida:Block-Experimentsin Cosmococaprogram in progress

by Sabeth Buchmann and Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz

General Idea: Imagevirus

by Gregg Bordowitz

Philip Guston: The Studio

by Craig Burnett

Lee Lozano:Dropout Piece

by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer

Thomas Hirschhorn:Deleuze Monument

by Anna Dezeuze

Mike Kelley:Educational Complex

by John Miller

Lee Friedlander:The Little Screens

by Saul Anton

Agnes Martin:Night Sea

by Suzanne Hudson

Sigmar Polke:Girlfriends

by Stefan Gronert

David Hammons:Bliz-aard Ball Sale

by Elena Filipovic

Walker Evans: Kitchen Corner

by Olivier Richon

Sharon Lockhart: Pine Flat

by Howard Singerman

Mark Leckey: Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore

by Mitch Speed

Thank you to Park McArthur and Jennifer Burris, whose 2014 book Beverly Buchanan 19781981 first introduced me to Buchanan's stone pieces. McArthur and Burris have been exceedingly generous in providing guidance for my research, and this book would not have been possible without them.

My deepest thanks also go to Jane Bridges, Arden Scott, Susan Schwalb and Csar Trasobares, for speaking with me about Beverly Buchanan and to Lucy Lippard for making her personal archives available for this research. Thank you to Howardena Pindell for speaking with me so generously about her memories of the 1980 exhibition Dialectics of Isolation, and its broader context. Annelise Jarvis Hansen and Maureen Burns-Bowie also helped me piece together various details about Buchanan's 1980 trip to Denmark, and Andy Campbell was kind enough to speak with me about his research on Buchanan, and his visit to the Marsh Ruins in 2014.

Thank you to my friends Emma Wolf-Haugh and Suza Husse, for being so engaged and encouraging when the research was in a very early stage. My deepest thanks also go to Nic de Jong, Becket MWN, and Alison Sperling, for their generous input at various stages of the research and to M. Ty, for the shared appreciation of Buchanan's work, and for being such an insightful reader of an early draft of the manuscript.

I am grateful to the staff at The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, Washington DC, who facilitated my visits to consult the Beverly Buchanan papers in 2019 and 2020. I also want to express my gratitude to the librarians and research staff who assisted me at the following places: Fales Library & Special Collections, New York; The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, Galerie Lelong & Co, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art Archives, New York; Romare Bearden Foundation, New York; Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Miami; Vasari Project, Special Collection & Archives, Miami-Dade Public Library System, Miami; The Archives of Women Artists at The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; and The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon. Thank you to Amy Roberts for speaking with me at the African American Heritage Coalition on St. Simons Island. Thanks also to Julie Dash; Sondra Perry; Megan Cope and Milani Gallery; Howardena Pindell and Garth Greenan Gallery; The Peter Hujar Archive; The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon; The Archives of American Art; and Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, for contributing images to the book.