1st Edition

The Pictures Generation at Hallwalls Traces of the Body, Gender, and History

By Vera Dika Copyright 2023
192 Pages 66 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

192 Pages 66 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

192 Pages 66 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

In this book, Vera Dika rewrites the story of the Pictures Generation from the perspective of the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY. Her work is based on interviews with living artists, archival research, and personal collections, including films, videotapes, and sound recordings. At once aesthetic, cultural, and political, this renewed perspective asks new questions and rewrites... Read more

1. Introduction  2. Critical and Theoretical Perspectives  3. Hallwalls: How a Gallery was Founded  4. Video and the Body  5. The Meeting of Sensibilities That Became an Explosion  6. The Camera and Authorship  7. Body Traces and Memory Places: Michael Zwack and Nancy Dwyer  8. Communities of Influence  9. Conclusion and a Continuation: New York/New Work

Biography

Vera Dika is Associate Professor at New Jersey City University.

"In her path-breaking book, Vera Dika provides us with a comprehensive view of the Hallwalls generation, tracing their influences, origins, and theories, as well as engaging their accomplishments, with an astute critical and contextually sensitive eye, while also enriching her exposition with her own eyewitness testimony as someone who personally observed the exciting evolution of the Pictures Generation."

--Noel Carroll, CUNY Graduate Center

"A tour de force. In The Pictures Generation at Hallwalls, Vera Dika has given us a richly textured, revisionist portrait of the final key art movement of the twentieth century, returning to Hallwalls and Buffalo as the center, not the margin, of the movement. Deeply researched, elegantly written, Dika's work will be an invaluable resource for artists, cultural historians, critics and students."

--J.E. Smyth, University of Warwick