Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957-1963

Newark and New Brunswick, NJ:: Newark Museum; Rutgers University Press, 1999. xviii, 194 pages, illustrations (some colour); 29 cm. Published to accompany the exhibition, shown at the Newark Museum from February 18 through May 16, 1999. Firm binding, clean inside copy. "During the late 50's/early 60's, an amazing group of artists, including George Brecht, Geoffrey Hendricks, Allan Kaprow, Roy Lichtenstein, Lucas Samaras, George Segal, Robert Watts and Robert Whitman, were affiliated with Rutgers University. Off Limits examines a group of Rutgers artists who came together on the Rutgers University, New Brunswick, campus during the 1950s and revolutionized art practices and pedagogy. This groundbreaking book features more than 140 illustrations as well as interviews with Allan Kaprow, Roy Lichtenstein, Lucas Samaras, George Segal, Robert Whitman, and Geoffrey Hendricks. Essays are by Simon Anderson, Joseph Jacobs, Jackson Lears, Joan Marter, and Kristine Stiles. Also included is 'Project in Multiple Dimensions,' a previously unpublished statement by Kaprow, Robert Watts, and George Brecht about their commitment to art and technology, and an uncanny prediction about the future of art. Rutgers was clearly the place to be for experimental artists during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Allan Kaprow's first Happening, Roy Lichtenstein's first Pop paintings, George Segal's earliest figurative tableaux, and proto-Fluxus events and Conceptual Art by Robert Watts and George Brecht all were made or took place on or near the Rutgers campus. Simultaneously, Lucas Samaras was painting with smoke on aluminum foil and embedding razor blades in boards, and Robert Whitman was making installations incorporating film projections, the forerunner of video installation.This innovative group boldly rejected the then-fashionable Abstract Expressionism and created startling new artforms that still prevail at the end of the century. Off Limits accompanies a major exhibition of the same title at The Newark Museum, February 18-May 16, 1999. / Joan Marter is a professor of art history at Rutgers University and the author of several books, including Alexander Calder and Theodore Roszak: The Drawings." - Publisher.. 1st. Paperback. Fine. 4to. Collectible.