REPORTING FROM DETROIT

Reading List #4

Theo Parrish, “Ugly Edits,” vol. 1-9, 2002-2005. Scan drawn from Blank Forms 09: Sound Signatures, Blank Forms Editions.

• Reporting from Detroit: I’m here for a few weeks, so I thought it would be fun to do a little digging. Time to dredge up some local history!

• The period of art history people here most like to exhume is the one surrounding the Cass Corridor, “Detroit’s version of Greenwich Village in the 40s and 50s,” but twenty years later, per Jay Belloli. Urbanity and industrial grit, AbEx and assemblage – some Cass Corridor artists include Gordon Newton, Brenda Goodman, John Egner, Ann Mikolowski, and Michael Luchs. Mary Ann Aitken, potentially a more familiar name, was younger, but sort of second generation. For an overview, check out the 1980 exhibition catalogue for the Detroit Institute of Art’s regrettably titled Kick Out the Jams: Detroit’s Cass Corridor, 1963–1977, curated by Belloli and Mary Jane Jacob. I haven’t had a chance to look at the catalogue for Subverting Modern…