Art-Rite

Product Information

The periodical has long been celebrated for its underground/overground position and its cutting, humorous, on-the-streets coverage and critique of the art world. Edit DeAk, Walter “Mike” Robinson, and Joshua Cohn first met in 1972 as senior year students at Columbia University during an art criticism seminar taught by critic Brian O’Doherty. The foundation of Art-Rite’s work is intended to help collectors approach diverse segments and genres, as well as introducing new collectors to the art market, thanks to sales at various levels of accessibility and investment. Once finalized, these paste-ups were deemed “camera-ready” and photographed by a large format table-top camera, producing a negative. dated winter 1975, Pat Steir designed a triplet of roses that had to be potato-printed red, yellow, and blue.

This new landscape became the perfect setting for Art-Rite’s innovative approach to criticism and reportage. Art-Rite, as it would soon be known, came into being when the triumvirate applied for the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1973.Robinson meanwhile had gotten a job as a typesetter and designer for a Jewish weekly newspaper, and, he says, “We stole all the type from there until they caught me and I got fired.

In keeping with the times, their stance was a demilitarized opposition to what they saw as the establishment. Printed Matter’s online catalog is one of the largest and most comprehensive databases of artists’ books and related publications. O’Doherty, then the Editor of Art in America, was impressed by the group and approached the three about writing reviews for the magazine, to which Edit later noted “I thought, aestheticism must be in trouble if they want baby blood. We felt none of us knew anything alone, but maybe the three of us together had a better chance of knowing something. Among Art-Rite’s most ambitious projects were four thematic issues that offered roving investigations into ascendant art practices of the mid-1970s.

Attention focused on lateral ‘rhizomatic’ developments, as the art world became interdisciplinary with a vengeance and engulfed other art forms—dance, video, music, film, architecture, books.