Parallel Texts

The visual and written works by acclaimed artist and critic Victor Burgin span four decades. Parallel Texts presents a compilation of essays, interviews and extracts relating to his own production of artworks in galleries and museums, and theoretical essays in books and journals, over the past 40 years. Unusually, Burgin considers his artistic and critical writing to be interconnected. Burgin's ideas are ordered chronologically in the book: in 1969-72 he is first heard explaining the newly emerged 'conceptual art' to interlocutors accustomed to traditional painting and sculpture. In 1976-78 he explores theoretical foundations for a post-conceptualist socialist art practice in such non-Western precedents as Maoism and Russian Formalism. From 1979 issues of gender politics and sexuality come to the fore, together with a psychoanalytic framework for understanding these. Observations upon an 'artworld' turning to fashion and flattering wealth as it discovers its postmodernity are given. From 1987-2000, Burgin taught cultural theory in California, returning to Britain in 2001. The interviews and writings from 1987-2010 reprise some core issues previously addressed, but now from within an environment almost unrecognizably transformed by cultural, political and economic globalization, and unprecedented forms of technology and violence. Parallel Texts will be invaluable to all admirers of Burgin's art and writing and to those readers with an interest in contemporary art and art theory.