Cauleen Smith: Human 3.0 Reading List 2015-2016

Author: Cauleen Smith
Publisher: Corbett vs. Dempsey
Year: 2016
Pages: 70
ISBN: 978-0997499551


Newspapers, magazines, and websites frequently offer lists: the 10 best new restaurants, the 50 top places to see in the world, the 100 best movies of all time. Chicago-based artist Cauleen Smith (American, born 1967) has created another kind of list, a new canon of humanistic literacy presented as a series of drawings. Titled Human_3.0 Reading List, the project represents a new dimension of Smith’s work, one that engages with the idea of a collective consciousness through manually drawn renderings of book covers.

In this series of 57 drawings—each produced on 8½ × 12- inch graph paper in watercolor over graphite, occasionally elaborated with acrylic—the artist proposes a selection of books that is both personal, conveyed by the frequent inclusion of fingers or a thumb shown holding up a given book, and idiosyncratic.