Monet Hates Me

Available for a limited time, this artist’s book by renowned visual artist Tacita Dean explores her chance encounters with objects in the archives of the Getty Research Institute. As the Getty Research Institute artist in residence in 2014–15, Tacita Dean was asked to define a subject and identify a path of research. What she proposed instead was a project titled “The Importance of Objective Chance as a Tool of Research.” Her idea was to allow chance to be her guide. Dean researched randomly, picking out boxes from the collections without knowing their contents, meandering through objects and images from sources as varied as medieval alchemy books to twentieth-century artist letters. Monet Hates Me features reproductions of fifty artworks she created from Getty’s archival holdings along with enlightening texts that expand on her method of research and illustrate her encounters with the archives.