| This dissertation is about the art magazine and its meaning as public document in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. In particular, it traces a historical shift that took place in the relationship between the art magazine and the work of art---a shift alluded to in the dissertation's title phrase, "From Specific Medium to Mass Media." This phrase is meant to suggest how the art magazine---the vehicle, or form, of artistic discourse---became inseparable from its content, from the matter of art itself. The case studies that make up the three main chapters of the dissertation---Artforum (1962-- ), Aspen (1965--74), and Avalanche (1970--76)---instantiate this transformation in various ways. All three magazines explicitly conceived of themselves as a kind of medium or primary site for the reception of art, a means for it to reach its public, rather than something that occurred after the fact or outside of the work of art. Taken together, they suggest a redefinition of the art magazine in the 1960s and 1970s, and an expansion of its aesthetic and social potential. And they attest to the ways in which artists, critics, and viewers have responded---with resourcefulness and imagination---to the vast transformations of the media age. |
