Lecture
The Death and Rebirth of the Author: Brian O’Doherty and Roland Barthes
In conjunction with the exhibition Beyond the White Cube: A Retrospective of Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland
The Death and Rebirth of the Author: Brian O’Doherty and Roland Barthes
Monday, April 30, 6:30 pm
Silver Center, Room 300 (enter at 32 Waverly Place)
Pepe Karmel, Associate Professor of Art History, NYU, will discuss Brian O’Doherty’s famous Minimalism issue of Aspen, and the place in it of Roland Barthes’s essay “The Death of the Author,” which was commissioned by O’Doherty. An open-ended arrangement of texts and objects—by writers including Barthes, Susan Sontag, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, and by artists including Tony Smith, Mel Bochner, and O’Doherty himself—this issue of Aspen is a pioneering work of conceptual art, and an example of the kind of “readerly” text that Barthes calls for in “The Death of the Author”—one that finds its meaning in the mind of the reader, not in the intention of the author.
Co-sponsored by NYU’s Department of Art History and Grey Art Gallery. Information: 212/998-6780.