MAX NEUHAUS

The journal Critique d’Art, founded in 1993, launched its website http://critiquedart.revues.org in 2012. The online journal aims to be a permanent, living archive of art publishing, documenting current discourse on contemporary art and enabling readers to see how the literature of criticism is generated.
Each issue of Critique d’Art contains a « Theory and Criticism » section that opens its pages to recipients of grants in art theory and criticism awarded by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques. The most recent of these is Daniele Balit, whose work explores the relationship between art and public space, focusing on sound installations produced or planned by Max Neuhaus for post-industrial urban settings. Neuhaus’s approach is far from a futurist urge to subjugate life to one overarching aesthetic principle; rather, he places the author in the background, focusing strikingly on « listening to listening » and how sounds cohabit in urban spaces rather than how they are systematically arranged.
Article published in Critique d’Art 44, spring/summer 2015, pp. 122-38.

Speakers:

Daniele Balit is an art historian, theorist and curator. He also teaches art history at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts in  Besançon. He specialises in sound studies, with particular research focuses on audiovisual convergences in the post-Cage and post-minimalist period and situational aesthetics in the work of artists such as Michael Asher and Max Neuhaus. His recent curatorships have included Blow-up (Paris: Jeu de Paume, 2012), No Music Was Playing (Montreuil: Instants Chavirés – Brasserie Bouchoule, 2014) and Red Swan Hotel (Rome: Macro, 2015).

Sylvie Mokhtari  is responsible for Critique d’Art at the Archives de la critique d’art, where she is active in research development. She teaches contemporary art history at the Université de Rennes 2 and the Ecole Européenne Supérieure d’Art de Bretagne in Rennes. http://critiquedart.revues.org