Researching and Writing on Contemporary Art and Artists

Researching and writing about contemporary art and artists present unique challenges for scholars, students, professional critics and creative practitioners alike. This collection of essays from across the arts disciplines—music, literature, dance, theatre and the visual arts—explores the challenges and complexities raised by engaging in researching and writing on living or recently deceased subjects and their output. Different sections explore critical perspectives and case studies in relation to innovative, distinctive or otherwise leading work, as well as offering innovative modes of discourse such as a visual essay and a music composition. Subjects addressed include recent scandals of Canadian literary celebrity, late-career output, the written element of music composition PhDs, and the boundaries between ethnography and hagiography, with case studies ranging from Howard Barker to Adrian Piper to Sylvie Guillem and Misty Copeland.

Christopher Wiley is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Surrey, UK. He is the author of many journal articles and book chapters, and the co-editor of forthcoming volumes including Writing About Contemporary Musicians (2020), Transnational Perspectives on Artists’ Lives (2020), Women’s Suffrage in Word, Image, Music and Drama (2021), and The Routledge Companion to Autoethnography and Self-Reflexivity in Music Studies (2021). Ian Pace is Senior Lecturer in Music at City, University of London, UK, and an internationally renowned pianist specialising in new music. He published a monograph on Michael Finnissy’s The History of Photography in Sound (2013) alongside a recording of the work, and he is co-editor of the volumes Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy (1988), Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy (2019), Writing about Contemporary Musicians (2020), and Rethinking Contemporary Musicology (2020). He has also published articles in many journals, recorded 40 CDs, and given over 250 world premieres.