Anne Rorimer

James J. Rorimer

Louis Rorimer

A classic now back in print and enriched with new imagery, James J. Rorimer’s riveting first-hand account takes readers on a treasure hunt as he follows the Allied troops across France and Germany to save Nazi-stolen masterpieces of art. James J. Rorimer, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, became a leading figure in the art recovery unit known as the Monuments Men, an elite group imbedded in the US Army, who risked their lives during World War II to save Europe’s greatest artworks from Hitler’s grasp. In the film Monuments Men, Matt Damon’s character is based on Rorimer as he embarks on the world’s most dangerous real-life hunt for stolen artworks with the goal of locating, seizing, and returning the works to their original holders, including museums and private collectors. This new edition of a book first published in 1950 includes the original illustrations from the first edition plus a wealth of new imagery and ephemera uncovered during extensive research, including WWII photo-graphs, many taken by Rorimer himself, that are accompanied by gorgeous reproductions of many of the Old Masters Rorimer helped save by artists such as Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruegel, Vermeer, Goya, Velazquez, and van Eyck. Maps created specially for this volume, and other facts about WWII history and geography, add new dimension to a remarkable story of courage, perseverance, and ultimately, triumph.

The Mission to Save Vermeers, Rembrandts, and Da Vincis from the Nazis' Grasp

Monuments Man

By the end of the 1960s a revolution had taken place in the perception and practice of art in Europe and North America. This book, the first detailed account of developments centered around the conceptual art movement, highlights the main issues underlying visually disparate works dating from the second half of the 1960s to the end of the 1970s. These works questioned the accepted categories of painting and sculpture by embracing a wealth of alternative media and procedures. Traditional two- and three-dimensional representations were supplanted by a variety of linguistic and photographic means, as well as installations that brought into play the importance of presentation and site. Through close examination of individual works and artists, Anne Rorimer demonstrates the pervading desire to redefine the characteristics of what was once accepted as truly visual in order to dispel earlier assumptions and offer other criteria for seeing. Artists whose work is discussed in depth include Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Gilbert & George, Sol LeWitt, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, Marcel Broodthaers, Robert Smithson, Daniel Buren, and Michael Asher. Forerunners of the period such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Piero Manzoni, Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, and Fluxus are also included. 303 illustrations.

Redefining Reality

New Art in the 60s and 70s

"In this detailed examination of Kunsthalle Bern, 1992, Anne Rorimer considers the work in the context of Asher's ongoing desire to fuse art with the material, economic and social conditions of insitutional presentation. Rorimer analyses the work in relation to earlier Minimalist artists like Dan Flavin and Conceptualists such as Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Burren and Maria Nordman. She also considers how Asher's practice has resonated with a younger generation including Fred Wilson, Andrea Fraser and Maria Eichhorn"--Back cover.

Kunsthalle Bern, 1992

Michael Asher

Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.)

Jeff Wall

Ann Goldstein

Lucy R. Lippard

Stephen Melville

Reconsidering the Object of Art examines a generally underexposed (and therefore often misunderstood) period in contemporary art and highlights artists whose practices have inspired much of the most significant art being produced today. It illustrates and discusses many crucial, ground-breaking works that have not been seen within their proper historical context, if they have been individually seen at all. By 1969 such artists as Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and others had begun to create works using a variety of media that sought to reevaluate certain fundamental premises about the formal, material, and contextual definitions of art. This first comprehensive overview of Conceptual art in English documents the work of fifty-five artists, work that marked a significant rupture with traditional forms and concepts of painting, sculpture, photography, and film. Also included are essays that elucidate the significant aesthetic issues that gave rise, in both America and Europe, to the highly individual, but related, modes of Conceptual art. Lucy Lippard (art historian) writes on the broader sociopolitical milieu in which this work was made; Stephen Melville (Professor of Art History, Ohio State University) probes the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of Conceptual art; and Jeff Wall (artist) discusses the relationship between Conceptual art and photography. Anne Rorimer and Ann Goldstein (curators of the exhibition the book accompanies) respectively take up the role of language in this work, and discuss each of the artists. Copublished with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

1965-1975

Reconsidering the Object of Art

Anne Rorimer

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