"Super Realism: A Critical Anthology" by Gregory Battcock, published by E.P. Dutton, New York, 1975. First edition, second printing.

Soft cover [bent bottom corner of front cover: see photo]; 5.3/4" x 8.1/4"; 332 pages including Index, c. 150 monochrome and color illustrations on glossy paper, a little soiled outer edge of the pages, very good condition.

Gregory Battcock (1937-1980) was a New York-based artist who gave up his practice as a painter to become an art critic; he wrote on Minimalism, Conceptual art, video art, and performance, and generally championed artists pushing the boundaries and definitions of contemporary art.

Battcock attended Michigan State University, the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, and Hunter College for his undergraduate and graduate studies before receiving his Ph.D. from New York University in 1978. His dissertation was titled "Constructivism and Minimal Art: Some Aesthetic, Theoretical and Critical Correlations."

"Judging from the essays assembled in Gregory Battcock's critical anthology on Super Realism, its practitioners tend to share the sign painters' sense of near obsolescence- not because they are Super Realists, but because they are painters. Super Realism, in fact, is their response to that sense, their struggle to glorify the things which painting alone can still accomplish. As J. Patrice Marandel notes in one of the book's most perceptive essays, they sense that painting "cannot discover reality any longer" - except the reality of the artificial images around them. They depict "a fallen world with a fallen technique." Reality has collapsed into images of images." [a review]

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