Yesterday’s news – how late is too late to wish someone happy birthday? To memorialize the dead? To recommend a book, an essay, a video on Youtube? Is timeliness the real hobgoblin of little minds? As you know, I didn’t post a Reading List last week, so now I’m stuck confronting such questions. But I do think it’s still worth sharing Mel Bochner’s 1967 foundational essay “The Serial Attitude,” even though I’ve seen it posted and discussed elsewhere by now. (Bochner died earlier this month.) Beyond the essay’s historical significance, I think it remains an instructive text for placing contemporary practice in context, while also expanding the vocabulary surrounding it. “The Serial Attitude” was occasioned by the exhibition Art in Series, curated by Elayne Varian, which included many of the artists mentioned in Bochner’s essay, alongside Bochner himself. Not …
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