Les Cahiers du Mnam n°85: Art History in Motion

The autumn 2003 issue of Les Cahiers du Mnam, the journal of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, features a mix of scholarly contributions and book reviews aimed at documenting and advancing the writing of art history. Georges Didi-Huberman contributes a text on Victor Hugo's drawings and writings, examining figural immanence, hypochondria, and morphology. Philippe-Alain Michaud writes on Anthony McCall's geometric cinema, while Cécile Camart analyzes Sophie Calle's early work (1978-1981), linking it to conceptual art and Situationism. The issue opens with Christian Marclay's twenty-page collage of guitar advertisements, exploring the object's cultural history, and Christine Macel's questionnaire to 24 contemporary artists about their relationship to Dada and subversion in art. The responses are described as disconcerting, rich, and symptomatic of a crisis in political consciousness in contemporary art. Christophe Kihm is the author of the review.