'Numerous international exhibitions since the early 1990s have attested to the range of contemporary art engaged with the everyday. Art has commemorated ordinary dignity, celebrated the accidentally miraculous, explored new forms of ethnography or immersion in mass culture, and meditated on what happens when nothing happens. An engagement with ordinary life also has a political dimension, offering a voice to the silenced and proposing possibilities for change. This anthology surveys the everyday's central significance for art since 1950s.

'Artists surveyed include: Chantal Akerman, Francis Alÿs, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Guy Debord, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Fischli & Weiss, Nan Goldin, Dan Graham, Mary Kelly, Annette Messager, Roman Ondák, Navin Rawanchaikul, Martha Rosler, Jean Rouch, Stephen Shore, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andy Warhol, and Richard Wentworth.

'Writers include: Vladimir Arkhipov, Maurice Blanchot, Stanley Brouwn, Sophie Calle, Marcel Duchamp, Ben Highmore, Susan Hiller, Ilya & Emilia, Kabakov, Joseph Kosuth, Henri Lefebvre, Lettrist International, Lucy R. Lippard, Michel Maffesoli, Aleksandra Mir, Helen Molesworth, Gabriel Orozco, Nikos Papastergiadis, Georges Perec, John Roberts, David A. Ross, Kristin Ross, Allen Ruppersberg, Nicholas Serota, Michael Sheringham, Alison & Peter Smithson, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Daniel Spoerri, Paul Virilio, Jeff Wall, Jonathan Watkins, and Stephen Willats.' (Back cover)

The Everyday is one of the Documents of Contemporary Art series, co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press which document major themes and ideas in contemporary art. Other sourcebooks of the same series are also available in the Archive. For more details, please go to this page.

Suggested keyword: avant-garde