
Show Notes
The sixth of a series of reading group podcasts on sculpture. In this episode we talk about entropy in relation to sculpture. We look at two texts. One is Robert Smithson’s 1966 essay, ‘Entropy and the New Monuments’, and the other is a 2015 publication on the work of Beverly Buchanan from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, edited by Park McArthur and Jennifer Burris Staton. We talk about entropy, ruins, major and minor approaches to work, and the relationship between wider culture and formal developments in art.
Below are the texts we looked at for this podcast. You can download them from dekersaint.com/badvibesclub
Smithson, Robert. ‘Entropy and the New Monuments’. Artforum, 1966.
McArthur, Park, and Jennifer Staton, eds. Beverly Buchanan: 1978 - 1981. Mexico City: Athénée Press, 2015.
More from The Bad Vibes Club
It’s the final episode of the series! Matt and Andrea discuss painting pedagogy from the UK, to the US, to… Bob Ross? We read Daniel Sturgis’ essay ‘Condensed Knowledge’ from 2017, and sections of Mira Schor’s book 'Wet: Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture from 1997.
In this episode, Matt and Andrea read Pedro Favaron y Chonon Bensho’s paper ‘Metsa Kené’ from 2020 (translated to English by AI) and Giuliana Borea’s ‘Personal cartographies of a Huitoto mythology’ from 2010. As a support text, we also read Florencia Portocarrero and Gabriela Germaná’s ‘The “Indigenous turn” and the rise of Amazonian art’ from 2026.
In this episode, recorded live at City and Guilds Art School in London, Matt and Andrea read Douglas Crimp's essay, 'The End of Painting' from 1981 alongside a number of texts and a video by Helen Molesworth on the painter Noah Davis from 2020.
Matt and Andrea present a live podcast from TACO! in Thamesmead, London. We look at the work of Anselm Kiefer and Gerhardt Richter, two artists who have achieved both critical and commercial success and are considered by many to be geniuses. Who decides which artists get to be geniuses? What happens to the way their work is written about? Is there something about painting as an art form that lends itself to the idea of the painter as genius?
Matt and Andrea present a live podcast from NCAD in Dublin, at the invitation of Fire Station Artists' Studios. We spoke about the dot: a mark that connects a diverse group of painters such as Georges Seurat, Philip Guston, Yayoi Kusama and Emily Kam Kngwarray. We read Linda Nochlin on Seurat, Margo Neale on Kngwarray and Jennifer DeVere Brody on Kusama. Thanks to everyone who came along to the event, to Mark, Niall and everyone at NCAD for hosting and to Sara Greavu for the invitation!