Archives and Contemporary Art
A Matter of Individuality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15757101Keywords:
Artists' archive, Contemporary Art Historiography, Archival Art, Photographic Archive, History of ArchivesAbstract
By employing tools of collection, classification, and indexing borrowed from archival theory and practice, artists have been exploring artistic languages capable of transcending the objecthood prevalent in post-World War II art. This exploration led to the development of an expressive form that remains relevant today and is mostly based on conceptual art practices, generally referred to as archival art.
While the archive has being serving as an artistic model, its contemporary incarnation as an institution offers a formidable resource for reconstructing recent art history. Research efforts are expanding to develop criteria for the conservation and administration of contemporary art archives, describe case studies on the acquisition or museamisation of art document collections, and critically reinterpret artistic and artists’ documents sourced from their archives.
In what perspective, and according to what possible definitions or counter-definitions is it possible to historicise or reinterpret archival art today?
How do archives speak about contemporary art? What approaches can be taken to utilise visual and documentary archives as sources for art history?
Downloads
References
ADKINS, Helen (ed.). Künstler Archiv: Neue Werke zu historischen Beständen. Köln: Waletr König, 2005.
ALBERRO, Alexander, and STIMSON, Blake (eds.). Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2011.
VAN ALPHEN, Ernst (ed.). Productive Archiving: Artistic Strategies, Future Memories, and Fluid Identities. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2023.
VAN ALPHEN, Ernst. Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2014.
ASSMANN, Aleida. Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999.
BALDACCI, Cristina. Archivi impossibili: Un’ossessione dell’arte contemporanea. Milan: Johan & Levi, 2016.
BASSANELLO, Monica, TURETTA, Ilaria, and GUERRIERO, Simone (eds.). Per un archivio fotografico dell’arte italiana: Vittorio Cini, la Fondazione Giorgio Cini e la Fratelli Alinari. Venice: Marsilio, 2022.
BERGER, Robert W. (ed.). Public Access to Art in Paris: A Documentary History from the Middle Ages to 1800. State College: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1999.
BISMARCK, Beatrice von, FELDMANN, Hans-Peter, OBRIST, Hans Ulrich, (eds.). Interarchive: Archivarische Praktiken und Handlungsräume im zeitgenössischen Kunstfeld. Köln: König, 2002.
BURNS, Sarah, and DAVIS, John (ed.). American Art to 1900: A Documentary History. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2009.
CALLAHAN Sara. “When the Dust Has Settled: What Was the Archival Turn, and Is It Still Turning?”, Art Journal, no. 83 (2024): 74-88.
CALLAHAN, Sara. Art + Archive: Understanding the Archival Turn in Contemporary Art. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022.
CAMPIONE, Francesco Paolo (ed.). Novecento primitivo: L’arte e lo sguardo sull’altro. Milan: Electa, 2019.
CARAFFA, Costanza (ed.). Photographic Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History. Berlin-München: Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH, 2011.
CARAFFA, Costanza and Tiziana SERENA (Eds.). Photo Archives and the Idea of Nation. Berlin-Munich-Boston: De Gruyter, 2015.
Ciha. Accessed on 13 March 2025. https://www.ciha.org/
CINELLI, Barbara, and FRONGIA, Antonello (eds.). Archivi fotografici e arte contemporanea in Italia: Indagare, interpretare, inventare. Milan: Scalpendi, 2019.
CLARKE, Paul, JONES, Simon, KAYE, Nick, LINSLEY, Johanna (eds.). Artists in the Archive: Creative and Curatorial Engagements with Documents of Art and Performance. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018.
CONNARTY, Jane, and LANYON, Josephine (eds.). Ghosting: The Role of the Archive Within Contemporary Artists’ Film and Video. Bristol: Picture This Moving Image, 2006.
COTTA, Irene, and Rosalia MANNO TOLU (Eds.). Archivi e storia nell’Europa del XIX secolo: Alle radici dell’identità culturale europea. Rome: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, 2006.
D’ALCONZO, Paola. “Suggestioni letterarie per una nuova museologia: Orhan Pamuk e il Museo dell’innocenza”, in Storia dell’arte come impegno civile. Scritti in onore di Marisa Dalai Emiliani, edited by Angela Cipriani, Valter Curzi, and Paola Picardi. Roma: Campisano, 2014.
DAMIANI, Concetta. Gli archivi dell’arte: Gestione e rappresentazione tra analogico e digitale. Milan: Editrice Bibliografica, 2023.
Daniel Spoerri. “Overview of Works”. Accessed on 13 March 2025. https://www.danielspoerri.org/web_daniel/englisch_ds/werk_einzel/32_paletten.htm.
DERRIDA, Jacques. Mal d’archive: Une impression freudienne. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1995.
DERRIDA, Jacques and Eric PRENOWITZ. “Archive fever. A freudian impression”, Diacritics, no. 2 (1995): 9-63.
Documenta. “documenta 11, Platform 5”. Accessed on 11 April 2025. https://www.documenta.de/en/retrospective/documenta11.
DONATI, Alessandra and TIBERTELLI DE PISIS, Filippo (Eds.), L’archivio d’artista: Principi, regole e buone pratiche. Milan: Johan and Levi, 2022.
DOWNEY, Anthony (ed.). Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East. London-New York: I. B. Tauris, 2015.
EBELING, Markus Knut, GÜNZEL Stephan, and ASSMANN, Aleida (eds.). Archivologie: Theorien des Archivs in Wissenschaft, Medien und Künsten. Berlin: Kadmos, 2009.
ENWEZOR, Okwui (ed.). Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art. Gottinga: Steidl/ICP, 2008.
FLAM, Jack (ed.). Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
FOSTER, Hal, “Archival”, in Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency. London: Verso, 2015, 30-60.
FOSTER, Hal, “An Archival Impulse”, October, no. 110 (2004): 3-22.
FOUCAULT Michel. L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1969.
GIANNACHI, Gabriella. Archive Everything: Mapping the Everyday. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016.
GILMORE HOLT, Elizabeth (ed.). A Documentary History of Art. Garden City: Doubleday, 1957-1966.
GUASCH, Anna Maria. Arte y archivo (1920-2010): Genealogías, tipologías y discontinuidades. Madrid: Akal, 2011.
JONES, David Houston. Installation Art and the Practices of Archivalism. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Icom. “Conferenza Generale ICOM – Milano 2016”. Accessed on 13 March 2025. https://www.icom-italia.org/conferenza-internazionale-milano-3-9-luglio-2016/#:~:text=La%2024a%20Conferenza%20Generale,di%20cui%20oltre%20400%20italiani.
LAGANÀ, Annalisa. Lettere d’artista. Invenzione di un patrimonio nell’Italia del nation-building. Naples: FedOA Press, 2024.
LARSEN, Susan C. (ed.), “The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History (1936-1941)”, Archives of American Art journal, no. 14 (1974): 2-6.
LEFAIVRE, Liane, and TZONIS, Alexander (eds.). The Emergence of Modern Architecture: A Documentary History from 1000 to 1810. London: Routledge, 2004.
MAIORINO, Massimo, MANCINI, Maria Giovanna and ZANELLA, Francesca (eds.). Archivi esposti: Teorie e pratiche dell’arte contemporanea. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2022.
MARCILLOUX Patrice. Les ego-archives: Traces documentaires et recherche de soi. Rennes: PU, 2013.
Masumiyet Müzesi. “A Modest Manifesto for Museums”. Accessed on 13 March 2025. https://www.masumiyetmuzesi.org/en/mani-festo
MEREWETHER, Charles (ed.). The Archive: Documents of Contemporary Art. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.
MOKHTARI, Sylvie (ed.). Les artistes contemporains et l’archive: Contemporary artists and archives - Interrogation sur le sens du temps et de la mémoire à l’ère de la numérisation: On the meaning of time and memory in the digital age. Rennes: PU, 2004.
MoMA. “Christian Boltanski’s The Storehouse”. Accessed on 13 March 2025. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80857.
MoMA. “Zoe Leonard: Analogue”. Accessed on 11 April 2025. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1477.
Musée Océanographique de Monaco. “Oceanomania by Mark Dion”. https://musee.oceano.org/en/museum-areas/ocenomania/.
OSTHOFF, Simone. Performing the archive: The transformation of the archive in Contemporary art from repository of documents to art medium. New York-Dresden: Atropos, 2009.
RIO VÁZQUEZ, Antonio S. (ed.). Andrés Fernández-Albalat arquitecto: Materiales de archivo: Obra coruñesa (1959-1999). A Coruña: Fundación Luis Seoane, 2021.
SCHAFFNER Ingrid (ed.). Deep Storage: Collecting, Storing, and Archiving in Art. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1998.
SCHAFFNER Ingrid, “Deep Storage: On the Art of Archiving”, Frieze, no. 23 (1995): 58-61.
SCHULTE STRATHAUS, Stefanie and ZIEMONS, Ulrich. (eds.). Living archive: Archivarbeit als künstlerische und kuratorische Praxis der Gegenwart. Berlin: B-Books, 2013.
SCOTINI, Marco. L’inarchiviabile: L’archivio contro la storia. Milan: Meltemi, 2022.
SEKULA, Allan. “The Body and the Archive”, October, no. 39 (1986): 3-64.
SPIEKER, Sven. The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008.
Tate Gallery. “Christian Boltanski’s The Reserve of Dead Swiss”. Accessed on 13 March 2025. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/boltanski-the-reserve-of-dead-swiss-t06605.
VAKNIN, Judy, STUCKEY, Karyn, and Victoria LANE (eds.). All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist. Faringdon: Libri Publishing, 2013.
VENTURI, Lionello (ed.). Les Archives de l’Impressionnisme: Lettres de Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley et autres: Mémoires de Paul Durand-Ruel: Documents. Paris and New York: Durand-Ruel éditeurs, 1939.
WÜRTENBERGER Loretta. The Artists’ Estate. A Handbook for Artists Executors and Heirs. Berlin: Hatje Canz, 2016.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Annalisa Laganà
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
