The American Tornado

Active as a critic and historian of contemporary art for over forty years, Germano Celant is internationally recognized as one of the most authoritative figures in this sector by virtue of his numerous publications and the major projects he has developed as a curator.
Starting in the 1960s, constant travels from coast to coast and numerous stays in New York and Los Angeles have enabled him to meet the leading figures in American visual culture, to work with the most important museums, and to document and disseminate the artistic developments born there over the last fifty years.
In addition to a reading of the communicational and commercial upheavals taking place in the American art system and their repercussions on the world as a whole, The American Tornado. Art in Power 1949–2008 presents essays devoted to the major artistic movements—from Pop Art, Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, Land Art, and Body Art all the way to the most recent manifestations of Graffiti Art and the New Artistic Media—and the key figures involved in them. The vast amount of material produced on American art, a selection of which is gathered together here, demonstrates the particular attention with which the Italian art historian documents present-day artistic events and keeps his critical views up to date.
The artists examined are Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Dara Birnbaum, Scott Burton, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Gregory Crewdson, Walter De Maria, Jim Dine, Dan Flavin, Tom Friedman, Dan Graham, Keith Haring, Michael Heizer, Donald Judd, Jeff Koons, Joseph Kosuth, Charles Le Dray, Sol LeWitt, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Agnes Martin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Morris, Vik Muniz, Bruce Nauman, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Ryman, Tom Sachs, Lucas Samaras, Charles Simonds, Haim Steinbach, Robert Therrien, Richard Tuttle, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol.
Since the critical reading developed in these pages by Germano Celant is the fruit of first-hand knowledge and experience of the art in the places and periods in which it was and is produced, the book presents itself not only as an historical compendium of American art since the 1950s but also as an eye-witness report from someone who is still sincerely and wholeheartedly involved.
Germano Celant has been senior curator for contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, since 1989 and artistic director of the Fondazione Prada, Milan, since 1995. Internationally recognized for his theoretical delineation of the Arte Povera movement, he received the Frank Jewett Mather Award, the most important American prize for art criticism, from the College Art Association of America in 1987 as well as an honorary degree in architecture from Genoa University in 2004. He was curator of the 47th Venice Biennial in 1997 and artistic supervisor for Genoa’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2004, in connection with which he organized the exhibition Arti&Architettura, 1900–2000. He has been director of the Fondazione Aldo Rossi, Milan, since 2007 as well as contributing editor of Artforum and Interview (New York) since 1977 and 1991 respectively. He has also written articles for the weekly magazine L’Espresso (Rome) since October 1999.