20th Century Art

As their way of saying "bah-bye!" to a century of creative musical innovation, Sonic Youth launched a double album in 1999—probably their most ambitious project to date—by teaming up with radical geeks Jim O'Rourke, William Winant, Christian Marclay, and Wharton Tiers (plus Kim and Thurston's daughter, Coco Hayley Gordon Moore) to pay homage to a handful of legendary avant-garde composers such as John Cage, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas, Steve Reich, and on-site helpmates Takehisa Kosugi and Christian Wolff. Even if you're not familiar with Marclay's cut 'n' paste sound art or Reich's repetition theory, these at times wonderful pieces will work their way into your cranium—certainly not your standard Sonic Youth album by any stretch of the imagination. But just as A Thousand Leaves took Sonny Sharrock's Coltrane guitarscapes into pastoral territory, Goodbye 20th Century makes unknowable art, be it Cage's zoning "Six" or Wolff's evil electro-orchestral dry heave "Burdocks", seem atmospheric, natural, and even erotic. The oceanic build to James Tenney's "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion", Gordon Moore's 16-second screech through Yoko Ono's "Voice Piece for Soprano," the Youths pounding and piano plinking hammer at George Maciunas's "Piano Piece #13 (Carpenter's Piece)," or Lee Ranaldo and William Winant's take on Nicolas Slonimsky's short, lovely percussion piece, "Pièce Enfantine," wouldn't sound out of place even to this day.

Images of the century (TASCHEN's) The history of photography began some 150 years ago, but only relatively recently has it been fully recognised as a medium in its own right. Cologne's Museum Ludwig was the first museum of contemporary art to devote a substantial section to international photography. The L. Fritz Gruber collection, from which this book is drawn, is one of the most important in Germany and one of the most representative anywhere in the world, constituting the core of the museum's holdings. This book provides a fascinating insight into the collection's rich diversity; from conceptual art to abstraction to reportage, all of the major movements and genres are represented via a vast selection of the century's most remarkable photographs. From Ansel Adams to Piet Zwart, over 850 works are presented in alphabetical order by photographer, with descriptive texts and photographers' biographical details, providing a comprehensive and indispensable overview of 20th century photography.

A fascinating insight into the photographic collection of the Museum Ludwig, Cologne whic offers 860 works by around 300 photographers.