Enrique Martínez Celaya - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This collection, spanning two decades of artistic activity, features selections of writings tracing the intellectual influences and development of one of the more formidable and productive minds in the contemporary art world. The writings of Enrique Martínez Celaya comprise public lectures; essays; interviews; correspondence with artists, critics, and scholars; artist statements; blog posts; and journal entries. This selection of writings includes the six public lectures Martínez Celaya delivered during his three-year appointment as the second Visiting Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska. Marked by an encyclopedic curiosity and considerable knowledge about the world, these lectures explore the nature of photography and painting, the role of the artist as prophet, the relationship of art to the university and the museum, as well as reflections on his own work. Enrique Martínez Celaya: Collected Writings and Interviews, 1990-2010 features seventy-nine photographs from Martínez Celaya's collection; an introduction by Klaus Ottmann, who teaches art history at the School of Visual Arts in New York and is the Robert Lehman Curator for The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York; and a foreword by James B. Milliken, president of the University of Nebraska.

Review Quotes

"Martinez Celaya's writings and interviews need to be closely considered. I've read the book over the last couple of weeks and can't stop thinking about the issues and ideas he raises."--L. Kent Wolgamott, Lincoln Journal Star-- (12/5/2010 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Born in Cuba in 1964, Enrique Martínez Celaya majored in applied physics at Cornell University and pursued a PhD in quantum electronics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was supported by a fellowship from the Brookhaven National Laboratory. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine and received his MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was an associate professor at Pomona College and the Claremont Graduate University (1994-2003) and was Visiting Presidential Professor at the University of Nebraska (2007-10).

His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig and others. His awards include the Anderson Ranch National Artist Award, the California Community Foundation Fellowship, J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art Here and Now Award and the Hirsch Grant. In 1998 he founded Whale and Star, a publishing house whose books are distributed internationally. He is the author of numerous books, including Martínez Celaya: Early Work, Nomad, and The Blog: Bad Time for Poetry.