apricota
Edited by Andrianna Campell
and Joanna Fiduccia
Publisher: Secretary Press
Publication Date: March 2018 & 2019
ISSN: 2576-0920
Perfect-bound paperback
Size: 6” x 9.25”
Pages: 128
Secretary Press is pleased to announce apricota, a new journal of modern and contemporary art history and criticism. apricota offers an antidote to the cool remove of many forums for art historical scholarship. It infuses its seriousness with a lively affection for the decorative, for kitsch, queerness, eccentricity, and otherness, and it seeks, like the color it names, to stand for identities and positions which are no less specific for being intermediary.
Issue 1 is dedicated to the theme of fights, from the verbal spat to the gloves-off
brawl. A fight is an event, a culmination of ill-feeling. It is a convergence that
produces divisions into instigators and injured parties, though those categories
can be upended over time; it is anecdotal and microhistorical, yet may catalyze
broader historical struggles. This issue’s contributors consider visual depictions
of fights as well as historical clashes over critical terms. Matthew Abrams
explores the contesting sexual politics of Rockwell Kent in Greenland; Annie
Godfrey Larmon delves into the complex landscape of criticism and mentorship
among women in the art world; and Edouard Levé’s photographic series prompts
David Richardson to reconsider the rules of a fight. Reviews include Ellen Tani
on Paul Pfeiffer; Lumi Tan on Simone Leigh; Samuel Adams on Lorenza
Büttner at documenta 14, as well as short-form writing by D. Graham Burnett
and David Kennedy Cutler, poems by Connor Crawford and Rachael Wilson,
and artwork by Zoë Buckman and Holly Coulis. The issue also features an
extended artist insert by Shana Lutker.
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Issue 2 focuses on cults, communes, and collectives and it tackles the primary question: Why do individuals choose to seclude themselves into utopian enclaves? From the editors: "Amid the calls for solidarity and engagement that sounded in the public sphere this past year, we sought, instead, to examine the fray, offered alternatives to mainstream governance. In cults, communes, and collectives, we reasoned, were models of living that could offer strategies in the face of our present political crisis." Contributors include Marina Adams, Lita Barrie, Kris Cohen, Norma Cole, Akina Cox, Jeff Dolven, Megan Driscoll, Robert Hult, Cat Kron, Jennifer Nelson, Julia Ramirez Blanco, Gemma Sharpe, Rebecca Solnit, Phil Taylor, Carmen Winant, and Chloe Wyma.
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Andrianna Campbell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History at
the CUNY Graduate Center, where she specializes in American art in the modern
and contemporary period.
Joanna Fiduccia is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History & Humanities at
Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Secretary Press was founded by Michi Jigarjian and Libby Pratt in 2012.
apricota marks their 12th publication.
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