Author Description

This long-overdue volume highlights a selection of writings and artists' projects from Real Life magazine, a seminal 1980s periodical edited by the artist, writer and curator Thomas Lawson and writer Susan Morgan. Published in 23 intermittent black-and-white issues from 1979-1994, Real Life was devoted to providing an outlet for a circle of artists who did not feel properly represented in the mainstream art world at the time--many of whom are now grouped with the Pictures and Post-Pictures artists. The anthology features both artists and art historians writing on art, media and popular culture--oftentimes infusing a new kind of humor into their cultural critiques--as well as original pictorial contributions. It includes writings by and about Eric Bogosian, Kim Gordon, Dan Graham, Barbara Kruger, Thomas Lawson, Allan McCollum, John Miller, Matt Mullican, Richard Prince, David Robbins, Michael Smith, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Wall and Lawrence Weiner, to name a few, as well as visual projects by Sherrie Levine, James Welling, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Group Material, among others.