Denise Green

An Artist’s Odyssey

2012
Author:

Denise Green

Reflecting on an internationally recognized Australian American artist and writer

In a career that has spanned four decades and three continents, Denise Green has bridged the tricky distance between artist and critic, an accomplishment captured in this book. Combining her life story with observations of leading figures in the art world, it is at once a window on artistic theory and practice and a virtual how-to for aspiring artists.

An enthralling read and highly instructive for any aspiring artist.

Australian Art Review

In a career that has spanned four decades and three continents, Denise Green has bridged the tricky distance between artist and critic, an accomplishment captured in Denise Green: An Artist’s Odyssey. Combining her life story with observations of leading figures in the art world, the book is at once a window on artistic theory and practice and a virtual how-to for aspiring artists.

Green’s own story begins in Brisbane and moves through her subsequent years of training in Paris during the revolutionary events of 1968. She goes on to describe her apprenticeship as a painter in New York’s Soho, where she became embroiled in the debates dominating the art world.

Complementing Green’s account are the contributions of noted artists, art historians, critics, and curators like Ingrid Periz, Richard Kalina, Frances Lindsay, Anthony Bond, Peter Timms, Roland Mönig, Christof Trepesch, and Lilly Wei, as well as one of the most prominent collectors in Australia, Kerry Stokes. From the interplay of these perspectives, a rare picture emerges of art as it is made, understood, and lived.

Denise Green is an Australian American artist and writer who has had more than 115 solo exhibitions. She is the author of Metonymy in Contemporary Art: A New Paradigm (Minnesota, 2005). Retrospectives of her work have been in major museums from MoMA PS1 (New York) to the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney). In 2007 she was awarded the Order of Australia medal.

An enthralling read and highly instructive for any aspiring artist.

Australian Art Review

This is where An Artist’s Odyssey excels: in providing an account of the career behind the art, in doing so bringing meaning to the work itself. If readers choose to seek out her work they’ll face it armed with knowledge of its history and a plethora of different frames through which to consider it.

The Brooklyn Rail

Contents


Acknowledgements

Introduction: Ingrid Periz

1. The 1970s: Redrawing the Boundaries - Richard Kalina

2. Resonating in Australia - Frances Lindsay

3. Ontology is at the Heart of It - Anthony Bond

4. A Brisbane Beginning - Denise Green

5. A Pause in Paris - Denise Green

6. My Career in New York and Europe - Denise Green

7. The Australian and New York Art World - Denise Green and Kerry Stokes

8. Images and Words: Bridging the Gap - Peter Timms

9. Substances of Transformation: Denise Green and Joseph Roland - Mönig Beuys

10. Metonymic Colour in Denise Green’s Work - Christof Trepesch

11. Fast Forward: 1989 to 2009 - Lilly Wei