The Householders
Robert Duncan and Jess
$71.06
- Hardcover
248 pages
- Release Date
24 September 2019
Summary
How the poet Robert Duncan and the artist Jess made the household part of their separate and collaborative creative practice.“I’m a householder,” the poet Robert Duncan once explained. “My whole idea of being able to work was to have a household.” In this book, Tara McDowell examines the household (physical and conceptual) that Duncan established with the artist Jess, beginning in 1951 when the two men exchanged marriage vows, and ending with Duncan’s death in 1988. For Duncan and Jess, the h…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262042710 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262042711 |
| Author: | Tara McDowell |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 248 |
| Release Date: | 24 September 2019 |
| Weight: | 850g |
| Dimensions: | 229mm x 178mm x 21mm |
| Series: | The MIT Press |
You Can Find This Book In
What They're Saying
Critics Review
The Householders shows Duncan and Jess striving to put back together the small corner they occupied. After all, the collage aesthetic that permeated both men’s creative output only holds when it has a solid foundation. McDowell reads their domestic life together-the household-as both this base and the glue.
—BookforumTara McDowell’s “The Householders” allows the reader to peek behind the proverbial curtain of the enigmatic couple’s life, and to gain an understanding of how their sacred domain nurtured their creative endeavors and spirits…The book is a stark reminder that the world’s ever-shapeshifting perils (be it unrestrained greed, surveillance, or rise of autocracies) must contend with the might and resolve of united communities on the margins, chosen families, and the authentic, creative self.
—Flaunt MagazineA rich study of the couple’s life and work. McDowell enters into this household—a term for the creative, domestic space that she also uses as a byword for the couple’s romantic-artistic relationship as they moved from house to house and city to city—to observe how it offered an alternative queer domestic model to the traditional one that dominated American life in the 1950s and how, in turn, it gave the couple a space and model for making their art.
—Brooklyn RailMcDowell’s book is a quartet of essays in which she meditates on the relationship between Duncan and Jess and their art and the spaces they shared, especially the Victorian house at 3267 20th Street in San Francisco, where they moved in the late 1960s and remained until their deaths.
—New York Review of BooksHer study serves as a sturdy initial take about how intertwined their relationship was, regarding both the household they shared and the creative work each pursued. For the couple, it all formed a whole, ‘defined by their driven, passionate belief in the imagination’s role in creativity and companionship, which they pursued over their relationship’s many years of endurance.
—Rain Taxi Review of BooksAbout The Author
Tara McDowell
Tara McDowell is Associate Professor and Director of Curatorial Practice at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She has worked as a curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Returns
This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.