[Willoughby Sharp, Liza Béar, eds]
Avalanche [1970-1976 Facsimile Edition]
New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2010
1016 pp., 26.7 x 49.5 x 6.35 cm., boxed
Edition of 1000
Avalanche was a New York City-based arts magazine that published thirteen issues between 1970 and 1976. The periodical was co-founded and co-edited by Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar, with the aim to cover conceptual art, minimal art, land art and performance art, from the perspective of the artist.
Eschewing art criticism as an editorial principle, the magazine featured interviews with artists - sixty-one in total - all but three of which were conducted by either Béar, Sharp, or both together.
The editors' attention to detail became legendary. To prepare for their interview with sculptor Barry Le Va, they asked the artist to identify his ten favourite books, and then proceeded to read them all.
Among the featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, General Idea, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Yvonne Rainer, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Jackie Winsor and many others.
Revealing its precarious financial situation, the final issue of the magazine featured the company’s own financial ledger on the cover [see below]. It declared bankruptcy shortly afterwards.
In 2010, New York publisher Primary Information (whose name suggests an affinity with Avalanche’s editorial stance of privileging artists’ writings over arts criticism) produced a boxed reprint of the complete set of 13 issues, housed in a glossy black hardcover archival box.
"While the stated goal of Avalanche was to empower the artist, its format echoed the cult of celebrity then sweeping American popular culture. Interviews and cover shots were, after all, defining features of Playboy, Rolling Stone, and of course, Andy Warhol's Interview. Looking back, we can also see in the magazine, albeit in nascent form, the contemporary art world's infatuation with the image of the artist as star. Yet Avalanche manifests a different kind of glamour: the unmade-up, unshaven faces, and defiant, brooding expressions and demeanor suggest a collective portrait of the artist as counterculture. Though the figure of the artist was increasingly being cast as a middle-class professional (as witnessed by mainstream representations, such as the fashionable photographs of minimalist artists published in Harper's Bazaar in the mid-196os), Avalanche insisted on an alternative definition of artistic identityan identity that would prove central to the politicization of the art world during this period.3 The magazine emphasized the crossover between the antiestablishment lifestyles and politics of the 196os and 1970S and the radical artistic practices of the period. With its ad hoc feel and relatively modest circulation of around five thousand, Avalanche revealed how the quintessential publicity form of the art magazine might foster a radical counterpublic within the alternative art community centered in SoHo in the early 1970s."
- Gwen Allen
