SKEWED: Ruminations on the Writings and Works of Peter Halley (a study)
by Richard Milazzo.
First edition deluxe hardback: November 2016.
Designed by Richard Milazzo.
With an Italian translation by Brunella Antomarini and Pietro Traversa.
224 pages, with a 3-colour gatefold jacket, a black and white photograph of the artist on the frontispiece by Andy Warhol, 190 color and black and white illustrations and 12 full-color plate reproductions.
13.5 x 9.75 x 1.7 in. (39.3 x 24.8 x 10.2 cm.), printed, sewn, and bound in Modena, Italy.
Modena, Italy: Galleria Mazzoli Editore, 2016.
RETAIL PRICE: $90.00 (includes postage and handling)
Peter Halley: New Paintings – Associations, Proximities, Conversions, Grids is the artist’s first exhibition at Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, November 12, 2016 - January 2017. For this exhibition of twelve new paintings, curated by Richard Milazzo, the curator has prepared a seminal new book, a unique critical document, entitled Skewed: Ruminations on the Writings and Works of Peter Halley.
The author-curator writes: “I have for the past several years been in the process of writing a monograph on Peter Halley’s work. A natural part of this process has been to examine and sometimes question the ideas and principles behind the work, both the paintings and the writings. This is especially important because Halley’s writings became one of the main lynchpins for understanding the art of the 1980s and early 1990s. Some of the ideas expressed in his essays would even forecast developments in art in the twenty-first century. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, Halley produced not only paradigm-shifting paintings, he theorized many of the concepts that went into the making of the art of his generation and beyond, which contributed specifically to the displacement of New-Expressionism in art and the rise of Neo-Conceptual, in general.
“It should be mentioned that the title of this book was inspired, rather ironically, by the only title of Halley’s paintings, Skewed, not included in the subtitle for the show: Peter Halley: New Paintings – Associations, Proximities, Conversions, Grids. In its reference to the title of the painting, it is purely descriptive, given that the paintings themselves are all skewed toward the more Minimal end of Halley’s aesthetic, both in terms of the limited number of colors and the limited number of conduits and cells used in the paintings. However, there is at least one other irony embedded here: instead of writing a catalogue essay about a specific group of paintings, I have chosen to write about writing, Halley’s writings, and, of course, about his art, oddly ‘encouraging’ his essays to proactively skew my text(s), in an attempt to balance somewhat the terms of the ‘exchange’, making whatever is simply discursive here more dialectical.
“Halley’s writings, like his paintings, shined brightly in the 1980s precisely because of their radical and experimental nature, and this cursory (hopefully not too microscopic) re-examination, conducted nearly thirty years later (in the case of certain of these essays), remains in the best spirit of observation and experimentation, a spirit that should animate not only science in general but the arts. If my texts are skewed, they are skewed only by Halley’s writings and paintings, that is, only insofar as they are the content of my observations and ruminations about them. For better and for worse, we are operating here in the dark, in a forest of free-range ideas, where mistakes and missteps (I am sure I am making my share of them) are not encouraged, but nor do they become the reason to suppress speculation, contradiction, unhampered dialogue.”
In addition to the intensive analysis of Peter Halley’s writings (abundantly excerpted in the author’s dialogical text), the book contains 190 color and black and white illustrations, 12 full-color plate reproductions of the artist’s paintings in the show, a comprehensive history of his exhibitions, and a complete bibliography.