Blind Handshake: David Humphrey - Art Writing & Art 1990-2008

David Humphrey

Softcover | 15.2 x 1.7 x 22.8 cm | 239 pp

Periscope | 2009 | 9781934772324

This anthology presents the art criticism of the painter David Humphrey not as archival documents, but as the starting point for a book that acknowledges and extends the connections between Humphrey's studio practice and his criticism. 

Blind Handshake foregrounds the social life surrounding contemporary art - the practices and gestures, the dialogues and monologues that determine its place in the world. Organised thematically, the book considers Coupling Dramas, Unknowable Others, Collective Solitudes, Prosthetic Selves, and Good Liars.

Artists drawn into the action include Richard Prince, Chris Ofili, Lucien Freud, Mamma Anderson, Tony Oursler, John Currin, Mary Heilmann, Catherine Murphy, and Amy Sillman. The book's designer Geoff Kaplan employed aspects of graphic novels, magazine layouts, and art monographs in translating the writing and illustrations into a mutant creature.

Introductions by Chris Kraus and Alexi Worth provide contexts for understanding the book's presentation of the turbulent intersubjectivity that pervades contemporary art.