Books on Exhibitions and History of Contemporary Art

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Date
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Charles Green and Anthony Gardner, "Introduction, Part 1, and Part 3" in Biennials, Triennials, and Documenta: The Exhibitions that Created Contemporary Art
Green and Gardner's book may not appear exceptional at first glance. However, when one starts interacting with its content, one begins to appreciate how the authors classified issues in the book. Unlike most other history materials addressing the topic of exhibitions, whose primary focus is usually to form a canon of survey exhibitions, Green and Gardner's primary focus was to delineate the standard denominations for the exhibitions and organize some important events into large groups (Green and Gardner 3). By doing this, the book thus becomes the first reference point for readers interested in gaining more knowledge about the exhibition. The introduction section of the book helps to lay the foundation of the main points that the authors will address in the book. However, Green and Gardner's style of writing the book may make it less attractive to non-specialist exhibition survey readers, who may find it very complex. As such, the book is more appropriate for experienced exhibition readers with the skills to analyze the critically narrated history of the exhibitions.
In the book, Charles and Anthony tried to examine the extent to which the enhanced popularity of large-scale international survey exhibitions has contributed to global contemporary art since the 1950s. The authors used the book to look into the history of exhibitions that many people in modern society might not know about. For example, the authors examined the 1972 Documenta 5, among others (Green and Gardner 9). Through the analysis of these exhibitions, Green and Gardner created a coherent and persuasive narration about the history of biennialisation. To better deliver the message and make it more understandable to the readers, the authors divided the book into three main sections with other sub-section within the main sections. The first main section is the Second Wave. In this section, the authors focus on exhibitions such as the Documernta5 and Bienal de La Habana (Green and Gardner 5). The authors initially relied on the exhibitions between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s. The choice of these exhibitions was because they were meant to act as a counterweight to the exclusive division of artwork between New York and Paris. The authors used these exhibitions as they had become an alternative cultural strategy whose main plan was to replace the patterns of global cultural exchange that were broken after World War 2.
Green and Gardner focus on the exhibitions introduced due to socio-political changes after the Cold War era. The authors compare exhibitions from different parts of the world. For instance, in the first chapter, the authors relied on exhibitions such as the Fukuoka Asian Art Show and Gwangju Biennale, all of which are Asian exhibitions. While the first part mainly depends on Asian exhibitions, the second part of the chapter is based on European exhibitions, for example, the Manifesta. The authors also question the position of recent exhibitions concerning the canon of a survey established during the second half of the twentieth century. In their analysis, the au...