Hyperframes: A Post-Appropriation Discourse in Art
(“The Yale Lectures”)
by Collins & Milazzo.

With French translations by Giovanna Minelli (Vol. I),
and by Giovanni Minelli, Marion Laval-Leantet and Benôit Mangin (Vol. II).
First edition (Vol. I):  1989.
128 pages, with black and white photographs of the authors
by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders on the gatefolds
and black and white photographs by Allan McCollum on the frontispieces,
8.5 x 5 in., sewn, printed and bound in France.
ISBN-10:  2-908139-00-6.
First edition (Vol. II):  1990.
228 pages, with black and white photographs of the authors
by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders on the gatefolds
and black and white photographs by Allan McCollum on the frontispieces,
8.5 x 5 in., printed and bound in France.
ISBN-10: 2-908139-08-1.
Paris:  Editions Antoine Candau, 1989 and 1990, respectively.

OP IN THE U.S.

Hyperframes:  A Post-Appropriation Discourse in Art, based on six lectures delivered by Collins & Milazzo at Yale University in 1988 and 1989, provides the reader with a history of the new conceptual art of the 1980s.  At issue in the book are the cultural phenomena of reification, critical photography, conceptual abstract painting, and Postmodernism.  In the course of these analyses, Collins & Milazzo provide, in their own inimitable and controversial style, a veritable onslaught of theoretical and ‘post-critical’ frames through which to release (rather than merely describe or judge) art from the habits of language and perception.

Their writings as ‘critics’ and their ‘vision’ as curators fostered both a new critical language and a new active mode of seeing.  This, in turn, allowed them to construct a non-reflexive ‘History’ of new art forms, a ‘critical Spectacle,’ or anti-criticism — a form of working that permitted Collins & Milazzo to function paradoxically, and ultimately, as advocates of a whole new generation of artists, among whom must be counted Ross Bleckner, James Welling, Peter Nadin, Kevin Larmon, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, Peter Nagy, Sarah Charlesworth, Mark Innerst, Gretchen Bender, Allan McCollum, Peter Halley, Jonathan Lasker, Haim Steinbach, Jeff Koons, Philip Taaffe, Robert Gober, Not Vital, Saint Clair Cemin, Annette Lemieux, Sal Scarpitta, Meg Webster, Lawrence Carroll, and Vik Muniz.

Besides the six lectures, the two volumes of Hyperframes, now known infamously as the “Green Books,” include the statements and catalogue essays for the twenty-six exhibitions Collins & Milazzo curated in commercial gallery spaces and museums in the United States and Europe from March 1984 to February 1989, shows such as The New Capital, Paravision, Spiritual America, Modern Sleep, The Antique Future, Extreme Order, The New Poverty, Media Post Media, Art at the End of the Social, Hybrid Neutral, and Pre-Pop Post-Appropriation.  Many of these texts had never been published before.  The third volume of the lectures, in fact, remains unpublished to this day.

Hyperframes:  A Post-Appropriation Discourse in Art is a record of Collins & Milazzo’s contribution to American Art of the 1980s.