Charting the development of the studio practice of New York based artist Anthony McCall (b.1946), this publication features facsimile reproductions of pages from McCall’s extensive archive of notebooks, which are supported by production scores and installation photographs. It was formed out of a series of discussions that took place over the last decade between McCall and the artists Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone.

Anthony McCall is known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with his seminal Line Describing a Cone, in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves in three-dimensional space. Since creating this ground-breaking piece, McCall has had work exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate; Whitney Museum of American Art; Serpentine Gallery; Centre Pompidou; Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.

Examining McCall’s work of the 1970s and the pieces developed since his return to making art in 2003, the conversations explore McCall’s over-riding preoccupations as an artist whose work occupies a space between sculpture, cinema and drawing. In doing so, the book also narrates how McCall has transformed the way he understands his own practice, particularly in relation to notions of performance, the body, projected installation, durational structure and spectatorship.

Emphasising both the continuities and shifts in McCall’s working methods in the studio over the last 40 years, Anthony McCall: Notebooks and Conversations presents unique insights into his extraordinary body of work.