Sal Randolph The Uses of Art

Foreword by Paul Soulellis; afterword conversation with Adam Moss.

THE USES OF ART is a memoir of transformative encounters with art, asking what it would mean to make use of art in the way we make free and personal use of music and literature. Artist and writer Sal Randolph answers with stories of sitting eye-to-eye with Marina Abramović, making the pilgrimage to Walter de Maria’s The Lightning Field, and returning again and again to a Tiepolo painting at the Met. The Uses of Art invites readers into new methods of looking, engaging with both the classic museum visit and with contemporary art, including the work of Lygia Clark, Ann Hamilton, Eva Hesse, Roni Horn, David Horvitz, Juliana Huxtable, Donald Judd, Ragnar Kjartansson, Agnes Martin, Bernadette Mayer, Aki Sasamoto, and Tino Sehgal. Liberating and emboldening, this book will change the way you experience art.

“Sal Randolph’s The Uses of Art is a dazzlingly original, ferociously intelligent and—I’ll say it—profound examination of the relationships between human beings and art, with the understanding that there’s often no clear boundary between the two. It’s rigorous, wide-ranging, and full of the emotion and humor often missing from books about art. It altered and expanded my own awareness, which is not something I say often, or lightly, about any book of any kind.” — Michael Cunningham

Literary Nonfiction. Hybrid. Essays. Art.