Visual Culture and the Forensic: Culture, Memory, Ethics

Reviewed by Chelsea Wenzhu Xu, George Mason University David Houston Jones. Visual Culture and the Forensic: Culture, Memory, Ethics. London: Routledge, 2022. Questions of evidence and ethics in photography have been taken up by many theorists, as phot…

Life-Destroying Diagrams

Reviewed by Jacob Carter, University of Rochester Eugenie Brinkema. Life-Destroying Diagrams. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. 470 pages. Throughout Eugenie Brinkema’s Life-Destroying Diagrams, form is described as infinite, boundless, and generati…

Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic

Reviewed by Hsin-Yun Cheng, University of Rochester Hentyle Yapp. Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. 288 Pages. At first glance, the title of the book, Minor China, seems to counterintuitively bel…

After Douglas Crimp Questionnaire Response: Ann Reynolds

SHARING TIME IN THE ARCHIVES WITH DOUGLAS Douglas and I spent some time together in the archives, but not nearly enough time, as it turned out. Losing someone brings the constant sharing of things and experiences to an end, or at least, renders it one-…

After Douglas Crimp Questionnaire Response: T’ai Smith

Motherly Lessons I attached a longer, unedited version of the following text to an email I sent to Douglas on December 12, 2018, while he was undergoing radiation treatment. He was not well, and I hoped it would convey the extent of my love and gratitu…

After Douglas Crimp Questionnaire Response: Kelly Long

Answer Louise Lawler’s question in October: “What would Douglas Crimp say?” Or, to follow the title of Lawler’s exhibition: Why Pictures Now? Pictures, for me, always—pictures, and poems (which hold on to ambiguity in the same way that pictures do). Pi…

After Douglas Crimp Questionnaire Response: Janet Wolff

VCS in the 90s It’s now thirty years since I arrived in Rochester, taking over as VCS director from Mieke Bal in the program’s second year.  I think I am right in recalling that Douglas came the following year – 1992.  Michael Holly as Chair …

After Douglas Crimp Questionnaire Response: Rachel Haidu

Mourning and Proximity in a Bad Time The last time I spoke to Douglas it was the week of my birthday. I had a lot to tell him: not only about the birthday party I’d thrown for myself but the trip I was about to take, with a former student of his who’d …

After Douglas Crimp Questionnaire Response: Gaëtan Thomas

Answer Louise Lawler’s question in October: “What would Douglas Crimp say?” “I love Louise!” Imagine an alternative space to museums. Describe what this space might look like. As I translated Douglas’ essays into French, I tried to imagine the alternat…

After Douglas Crimp Questionnaire Response: Marc Siegel

Answer Louise Lawler’s question in October: “What would Douglas Crimp say?” Or, to follow the title of Lawler’s exhibition: Why Pictures Now? We could call it, “Why No Pictures Now.” Louise Lawler’s contribution to the section commemorating Douglas Cri…

Reading Douglas

by Xiao (Amanda) Ju I think of reading as one way to be in dialogue with Douglas, and, for me, he is such an important interlocutor. Reading Douglas has always been a bit difficult for me—part of it has to do with the fact that there is a whole set of …

Manhattan-Hanover Transfer

by Lutz Hieber and Gisela Theising We got to know Douglas Crimp, maven of New York AIDS activist art, in the summer of 1990. He seemed to us to be the living embodiment of an intellectual. Jean Paul Sartre describes intellectuals as being concerned wit…

The Haunting of a Modernism Conceived Differently

by Matthew Bowman Another Modernism Douglas Crimp’s exceptional reputation as an art critic is, of course, in many respects intertwined with his early theorization of postmodernism within the context of fine art. Especially important in this context wa…

Learning from Douglas: A Course Schedule

by Peter Murphy Art and the City: New York in the 1970s (Fall 2015)Monday 2-4:40PM, Morey 524Professor Douglas Crimp When I walked into the seminar room and saw the word “Cruising” projected onto the vinyl screen, I thought, with a budding sense of sat…