Artforum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue. Characterized by its 10½ inch square format, with each cover devoted to the work of a single artist, the magazine is widely known as a decisive voice in its field.

Artforum was founded in 1962 in San Francisco. The magazine moved to Los Angeles in 1965 before settling in New York in 1967, where it maintains offices today. The move to New York roughly coincided with a shift in the style of work championed by the magazine, moving away from late Modernism and towards Minimal Art and Conceptual Art and providing a platform for artists such as Robert Smithson, Donald Judd, and Sol Lewitt.

In November, 1974, Artforum published an advertisement by Paula Cooper Gallery that took the shape of a copyrighted “centerfold” of artist Lynda Benglis posing naked and wielding a dildo. The decision to publish the image heightened preexisting tensions within the magazine, and subsequently, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson left to form the journal October.

As well as in-depth articles and reviews of contemporary art, the magazine features book reviews and columns on cinema and popular culture.

A book by Amy Newman chronicling the early history of the magazine, Challenging Art: Artforum 1962-1974, was published by Soho Press in 2000.

[edit] Notable Contributors

[edit] Editors-in-Chief Past and Present

Tim Griffin (September 2003–Present)
Jack Bankowsky (September 1992–Summer 2003)
Ida Panicelli (March 1988–Summer 1992)
Ingrid Sischy (February 1980–February 1988)
Joseph Masheck (March 1977–January 1980)
In February 1977 Nancy Foote operated as the managing editor without a head editor
John Coplans (January 1972–January 1977)
Philip Leider (June 1962–December 1971)

(Philip Leider left the magazine at the end of the Summer 1971 issue, but remained on the masthead until December 1971)