Andrea Zittel Books

From the "The pieces of artist Andrea Zittel--who has received increasing worldwide attention since her participation in Documenta X--can be read variously as art objects, utopian visions, or consumer goods. Zittel invents living spaces, styling every detail from clothing to architecture. Visitors to these spaces are automatically confronted with questions about their own lifestyle, and the needs and wishes associated with Could our living conditions be improved? Couldn't we do without a lot of the commodities populating both our professional life and our leisure time? What criteria do we use in deciding what kind of environment is right for us? In what ways do our private and public lives differ, and where do we find freedom, where do we find obligation? Andrea Personal Programs deftly illustrates the holistic creative concepts of this rising star with a selection of works from A-Z Living Units to her newest work, the Raugh series."

This volume is the first to compile Andrea Zittel's gouaches and paintings on wood, which she has been creating since 1992. Zittel is best known for A-Z West, her live/work space in the California desert, of which she states, "The A-Z enterprise encompasses all aspects of day to day living. Home furniture, clothing, food all become the sites of investigation in an ongoing endeavor to better understand human nature and the social construction of needs." This collection of illustrative paintings documents the mundane activities and objects that Zittel orchestrates and designs in her ongoing quest to streamline and fuse life and work. Of this fusion, critic Gregory Volk has written, "With her references to TV merchandising, pop-culture trends and self-improvement, Zittel is absolutely of her time. The real point of her oddball, visionary bent, however, is a search for personal freedom, simplicity and exuberant ease."

Like new, official catalog of the exhibition "Dan Graham - The Suburban City / Andrea Zittel - Living Units", 1997