Hoffberg, Judith A. (Ed.)
"It is hard to believe that more than twenty years have passed since the first issue of 'Umbrella' was issued as a fledgling newsletter catering to the ever-changing vicissitudes of contemporary visual art, especially that of artist books, mail art, video art, rubber-stamps, audio art, and everything else that was considered not very important in the realm of the nearly new 'market' which came with the eighties and the boom in contemporary and modern art. ...
Many of these articles respond to a conference, symposium, a book art exhibition, all referring to date-sensitive events. But in a strange way, it also marks a trace of a historic moment, one in which there was a vitality and an energy, in which book publishers, resource collectors, multi-faceted artists, and curators did whatever seemed right at the moment. Many of our colleagues are gone, the publishers have quit their businesses, and alternative spaces and foundations which nourished their work are no longer extant. So read these chapters as if you were reading 'you are there' historic moments, traces of memory, and the markers in the history of alternative in the contemporary art world of the past twenty years."
Excerpts of the 20 years of Umbrella-magazine, with texts and by Ken Friedman, Clive Phillpot, Ita Aber, Walter Askin, Anna Banana, Mariona Barkus, Guy Bleus, Sas Colby, Patricia Collins, Jules Engel, J.C. Gagnon, William Harroff, Dick Higgins, E.F. Higgins III, Ruggero Maggi, Janet Pyle, Marilyn Rosenberg, and Miriam Schaer; with texts about Other Books and So, Ulises Carrión, Warja Lavater, Paul Zelevansky, Phil Dadson, Rod Summers, Maurizio Nannucci and Zona, Coach House Press, Coracle Press, Klaus Groh, Bern Porter, Wolf Vostell, Kevin Osborn, Juliao Sarmento, Paula Claire, Angela Pahler, Peter Kustermann, Leavenworth Jackson, Richard Kostelanetz, Elaine Langerman, Lawrence Weiner, George Maciunas, and Jean Brown.
Soft cover, 164 pages, 23 x 18 cm, Santa Monica 1999
ISBN: 0-9635042-2-3
