Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2020)
The artist interview: an elusive history
Abstract
The history of the artist interview is a tantalizing subject, not least because of the breadth of associations with other histories that it involves and invites, such as with journalism, broadcasting technology, psychoanalysis, performance, and literature. Yet, exactly on account of this constellation of associations, it is a decidedly slippery subject, difficult to grasp. In this paper, I discuss this impediment to the writing of a history of the artist interview—outlining the sheer quantity of material involved—and then offer some thoughts on how to productively move forward. I provide a summary historiography, noting how the topic has been reinvented with each decade beginning in the 1990s. I propose that we envision the writing of the history of the artist interview as a collaborative endeavor and offer suggestions for what form such a collaboration might take.
