As Celebration, As Critique, As Play: Ron Hunt, Selected Writings (1957–2020)
Selected writings by British art historian Ron Hunt across his varied career as a writer, librarian, curator, critic and self described "lapsed anarchist."
Structured as a "biographic bibliography"—supplemented with annotations and contextual notes—As Celebration, As Critique, As Play combines commissioned writing and previously unpublished texts that range from exhibition catalogue essays and détourned Q&As, to A–Z indexes and cherry-picked readers.
Writings reproduced in full include:
Francis Picabia: Introduction (1964); Yves Klein: A Mythopoeic of the Plurisignative (1967); The Arts in Our Time (1968); We Are Revealing New Pages of Art in Anarchy’s New Dawns (1968); Interview with Brigitte Bardot (1969); Poetry must be made by all! / Transform the world! (1969); An Interview with Pontus Hultén, Stockholm 1981 (1971); For Factography! (1976); Andreas Gursky (1999); Kalf: A Late Perspective (2000); Dreams of / Fears of …… Flying (2009); Fourier / Breton / Cherries (2017); Hélène Cixous or Waiting for Tears (2018); Some Books of Barbara Bloom (2019); A Very Brief Dictionary in the Vicinity of Situationism (2019); "Recovery" / Is Recovery Possible (2020)
During his varied career, Hunt served as a library assistant at the Victoria & Albert Museum, librarian in the Department of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle, visiting assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, instructor at Vancouver School of Art, and senior lecturer at Stourbridge College of Art. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972, and has lectured at institutions including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, AICA in Stockholm, and the Luma Foundation in Zurich. He curated a series of exhibitions including Poetry must be made by all / Transform the world! (1969) at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm; Descent into the Street (1966) at the University of Newcastle; and Francis Picabia (1963) presented at both the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle and Institute of Contemporary Art in London. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Studio International, Art Monthly, and Modern Painters, and in previous titles published by Bricks from the Kiln.
With photographs by Tom McCaughan
Edited by Matthew Stuart & Andrew Walsh-Lister
Published by Bricks from the Kiln, 2020
Printed in a limited edition of 400 copies
Softcover with duskjacket, 228 pages + insert, b&w, 5.875 × 8.25 inches
ISBN: 978-0-99-568353-2