Felix Gonzalez-Torres Book

Wonderful book even if you are not familiar with the artist. He was among the many artists in the 1980s and 90s whose work protested the right-wing shift in American politics and the lean towards intellectual laziness by Americans at the time. He was openly gay and much of his work addressed the AIDS crisis. He hoped to reach a wide audience, not just academia, by making his work an experience of some kind, whether visual or interactive. The book also includes academic texts that are vital to his work, or, I'd say, are just vital, period. These include authors such as Brecht, Rilke, Barthes, Duras, Sontag.

The book's editor was a friend, and there is a very loving feel to the book, the need (in grief and loss) to get it right. The artist died in 1996 from AIDS and he had already lost his lover, which he processed in his art which attempted to activate empathy for the communities and individuals who were being ravaged by this disease. This book was given to me by a friend a month after I lost my husband to cancer, another disease characterized by wasting, and it helped me conceptualize both the trauma that I needed to overcome, how I wanted to proceed with the memorial/celebration of life, and how I wanted to actually celebrate his life through art and design.