Diedrich Diederichsen

Kritik des Auges
Texte zur Kunst
VOLUME 173

A Collection of the Eminent Pop Theorist’s Best Essays

Psychedelica and pop, avant-garde music, drugs and minimal art, politics and anti-politics—Diedrich Diederichsen’s writing exposes continuities and ruptures that an art history fixated on the canon cannot see. Which transformations must an idea of minimalism have undergone that not only extends from La Monte Young across Philip Glass to today’s electronica, but also encompasses the art, say, of Frank Stella? Did not the artists’ group SPUR—active from the late 1950s—already uncover the aporias that today’s debate over “artists’ critique” encircles? And when you’re on LSD, does not every urinal possess the dignity of a work of art?

Diedrich Diederichsen’s essays in Kritik des Auges are not just collected occasional writings; with their rich and wide-ranging references, they coalesce into a fascinating history of contemporary art.

Diedrich Diederichsen (b. Hamburg, 1957) is professor of the theory, practice, and communication of contemporary art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In the 1980s, he was a writer and editor for the music magazines Sounds and SPEX; since the 1990s, he has taught at institutions of higher education in Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Vienna, Pasadena, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.