Books in the Afterall Books / One Work series

An illustrated examination of one of Hirschhorn's "precarious" monuments, now dismantled.

An examination of the complex and subtle world on display in Rodney Graham's film of an LSD-inflected bicycle ride.

An illustrated study that casts a new light on Oiticica's most important work of "quasi-cinema" on its fortieth anniversary.

The first sustained examination of a canonical and widely exhibited work by a leading artist of the former Yugoslavia.

An examination of a work that captures the spirit of the 1980s—commodification, seduction, and political inactivity.In Jeff Koons's One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1985), a Spalding basketball floats in the center of a glass tank that stands on a four-legged black metal structure. It has been called one of the defining works of the 1980s—but also described (by such critics as Craig Owens, Rosalind Krauss, and Hal Foster) as "an endgame,” "misleading,” and "repulsive.” The work presents what the artist called "the ultimate state of being”—neither death nor life but the absence of change. It captured a spirit of the time, characterized by commodification, seduction, and political inactivity. Its stillness embodied the opposite of social revolution. But the "total equilibrium” of the work is actually temporary. For purely physical reasons, the equilibrium is lost every six months and must be reset. In this extended essay on Koons's famous work, Michael Archer puts One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank in an art historical framework, describing its initial exhibition at International With Monument in New York and related issues of media, commercialism, and class. He discusses the wider context of the 1980s art world, in which a renewed attention to painting practices met the legacy of Pop and appropriation art—setting the stage for the negative critical reception Koons's artwork first received. Archer goes on to consider sport as celebrity-maker and industry; the physical science of equilibrium; and the implications of the fact that the equilibrium of One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank is indeed total—but temporary.

An examination of Pierre Huyghe''s post-apocalyptic Untitled (Human Mask), which asks whether our human future may be one of remnants and mimicry.Pierre Huyghe''s 2014 film Untitled (Human Mask) combines images of a post-apocalyptic world (actual footage of deserted streets close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011) with a haunting scene of a monkey working in an empty restaurant wearing a human mask and a wig. She''s a girl! The flat, emotionless almost automaton state of the mask and the artificial glossy hair topped even with a child''s bow, suggests that she, the monkey, might be a character from Japanese Noh theatre. But there''s no music. Instead Huyghe''s film evinces the terrifying possibility that our own, human, future might just be one of remnants and mimicry; that the deserted streets of Fukushima and the monkey''s recognizable, alienating chimeric performance is all that might survive us. Untitled (Human Mask) presents a pluperfect world with extinction the endgame for a civilization that cared little for the present, dreaming only of a future that inevitably and necessarily could not include it.

An illustrated study of Hanne Darboven's masterwork, the massive Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 (Cultural History 1880-1983).

A critical close-up of Warhol's famous film and its cultural impact

A richly illustrated study of Marc Chaimowicz's groundbreaking 1972 post-Pop installation-performance piece Celebration? Realife.

An extended illustrated account of the Hollis Frampton film that marks critical moment in art history when photography meets filmmaking.

An illustrated study of Mary Heilmann's seductive 1979 abstract painting in hot pink and black, Save the Last Dance for Me.