Destination & Destiny

The reception of art without the postcard is inconceivable, whether one thinks of the art postcards that museums offer for sale, invitation postcards from galleries, or postcard editions by artists. Less commonly addressed is the fact that artists developed projects dealing with postcards that reveal a considered position on the art context. The present book focuses on artists' postcard projects since the early 1960s, especially those of On Kawara, Lawrence Weiner, Susan Hiller, Marcel Broodthaers, Michael Asher, and Mathilde ter Heijne. In each of these projects, one can observe a self-institutionalization of an artistic practice and at the same time an impetus to reflect on it together with a virtual emblemizing of contemporaneity.

Gregor Stemmrich studied art, philosophy, and art history. After a professorship at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (from 1999), he accepted a professorship at the Free University of Berlin in 2007 and has been Professor of Art and Art History at New York University Abu Dhabi since 2015. He published widely on modern and contemporary art. His book Robert Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) - Modernism, Literalism, Postmodernism was published by Hatje Cantz in 2023.