Art-Rite

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This approach allows the public to access different artistic contexts, promoting artistic movements and trends. Anchored by surviving paste-ups (page layouts cut and assembled onto mounting boards), the archive provides a chance to consider early drafts, unrealized directions, and marked-up covers, giving insight into the pre-digital, photo offset process of the time.

dated spring 1975, Art-Rite had begun a phase of opening its issues with a list headed “By, with, and about,” or “By, for, about, and thanks to,” reflecting the braided relationship between the editors and their audience. is pleased to present From the Margins: The Making of Art-Rite, an exhibition coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the legendary underground arts magazine. Artists and Art-Rite contributors Pat Steir and Robin Winters join editor Walter Robinson in a discussion about the founding and early history of Art-Rite magazine, and explore artists in 1970s Soho.CAN OR SHOULD AN INDEPENDENT CRITIC, let alone an independent critical journal, act as the “servant” of artists?

The magazine was famous for its covers, which were always by artists, William Wegman contributing an oh-so-smart and funny drawing for no. Only the rare, independent outlets escape the fetters of profit hungry power brokers by existing on a shoestring, their precarious state allowing them to stand beholden to none. For its collective audience, Art-Rite represents a restless but friendly, constantly evolving entity. Walter joked about the time-intensive experience, “You know, you didn’t really have anything [else] to do anyway. DeAk picked up his thought: “Someone told us, ‘You are the new kind of critics, very humble’”—that word again—“‘just the opposite of the ’60s power trip,’ .A few years later the punk magazines came along, and I realized that’s what I’d wanted—I loved those fanzines. Among them were Walter Robinson, his roommate Joshua Cohn, and Edit DeAk, a Hungarian immigrant living with her husband, artist Peter Grass, in a 3,500 square foot loft on the top floor of 149 Wooster Street in Soho. Vito Acconci, Kathy Acker, Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Gregory Battcock, Lynda Benglis, Mel Bochner, Marcel Broodthaers, Trisha Brown, Chris Burden, Scott Burton, Ulises Carri? The actor and directer spotlights genre-bending shorts from New York filmmakers featuring Illuminati P. Through hundreds of interviews, reviews, statements, and projects for the page—as well as artist-focused and thematic issues on video, painting, performance, and artists’ books— Art-Rite’s sharp editorial vision and commitment to spotlighting the work of artists stands as a meaningful and lasting contribution to the art history of New York City and beyond.

Through its auctions, Art-Rite Auction House hopes to offer a curated variety of works of art, able to add value to the most prestigious and historical collections. Over its five year run, Art-Rite would publish hundreds of interviews, exhibition and performance reviews, statements, and projects “by, with, and about” a generation of artists who felt accessible in these pages, even as many of them were, or would soon become, the defining voices of the era. That may seem like a double-edged compliment, but I don’t think he means it that way: Making something out of nothing, after all, is what artists do themselves. The magazine falls into three sections: an “Idea Poll” in which forty-five artists and other interested parties, from Kathy Acker to Sol LeWitt, Adrian Piper to Richard Tuttle, answer the same general question on the subject; a “Thematic Anthology” in which artists’ books are sorted into genres, for example “British Pastoral,” “Not Photography (photography),” “Luscious Color”; and then a “Features and Reviews” section of signed articles on the medium.Complete run of all issues published of Art-Rite, periodical edited by Edit DeAk and Walter Robinson. The legendary artists’ books issue featured an idea poll gathering statements on the difficulties and ‘best potentials’ of the medium from 50 artists and art professionals—including Kathy Acker, Ulises Carrión, Agnes Denes, Sol LeWitt, and others. The magazine was famous for its covers, made by such artists as Alan Suicide, Carl Andre, Dorothea Rockburne, William Wegman, Christo, Vito Acconci, Pat Steir, Joseph Beuys, Judy Rifka, Robert Ryman, Rosemary Mayer, and Ed Ruscha. The periodical has long been celebrated for its underground/overground position and its cutting, humorous, on-the-streets coverage and critique of the art world. It made its presence known with simple, witty covers designed by established artists including Joseph Beuys, Ed Ruscha, Christo, Alan Suicide, William Wegman, Vito Acconci, Robert Ryman, and Carl Andre.