Déhiérarchiser le Monde de L’Art. Usages du Document au Tournant des Années 1970 par Germano Celant, Carla Lonzi, Lucy R. Lippard, Seth Siegelaub / Dehierarchizacja Świata Sztuki. Wykorzystanie Dokumentu na Przełomie Lat 70. i 80. Dwudziestego Wieku
Dehierarchizing the Art World: Uses of the Document at the Turn of the 1970s by Germano Celant, Carla Lonzi, Lucy R. Lippard, and Seth Siegelaub (Rennes: Éditions Incertain Sens, 2025)

Summary/Abstract: This book was published with the support of the European School of Art of Brittany (EESAB), Quimper campus, the Practices and Theories of Contemporary Art (PTAC) research unit at Rennes 2 University, and the Brittany Region. In the late 1960s, Germano Celant, Lucy R. Lippard, and Carla Lonzi, curators and art critics, along with Seth Siegelaub, an art dealer, were major figures in the art world. They joined forces with artists to question the power of institutions and challenge their authority over artistic creation. This critique was all the more incisive and relevant because it came from within these very institutions in which they played a significant role. Based on her doctoral thesis, Marie Adjedj's study examines the respective approaches of these four figures in contemporary art and their inventive uses of printed materials. To de-hierarchize their relationships with artists, they employ a wide range of tools and professional practices: publications, often self-published and always produced in collaboration with artists, contracts, archives, and so on. The numerous illustrations in the book allow the reader to appreciate the plasticity of these objects and to note their affinity with the linguistic works of conceptual artists or the publications of contemporary artists. While avoiding considering them as potential works, the analyses in the book do justice to the concerns of these art professionals who, through the exhibition and thanks to critical texts, ensure the dissemination of the works. Without dodging the challenges and contradictions that arise from it, the purpose of this work attempts to account for the demanding research carried out by Germano Celant, Carla Lonzi, Lucy R. Lippard and Seth Siegelaub with a view to experimenting with the alternative positions that they could occupy with artists and to explore a new type of critical approaches.

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