‘This isn’t Charlie Rose’: The Making of On Art and Artists and the Politics of Information Distribution

This essay argues for a different approach to On Art and Artists, one that delves into the social and political mechanics of the “artist interview” — as an object and form integral to the history of art — and the historically specific stakes of Blumenthal and Horsfield's distribution of the tapes to universities, museum libraries, and art festivals in the 1970s and 1980s. In what follows, I argue that the videotaping of artist interviews during this early period of the VDB’s development was itself a unique and important act, contributing to the understanding of artistic labor as a vehicle for ethical engagement.