Conversation

In the fall of 2013, American conceptual artist Dan Graham and his partner artistMeiko Meguro traveled with writer Donatien Grau to Lucinges, France, to meet withrenowned French writer Michel Butor at his home. Their informal, intimate and attimes humorous conversation, transcribed in this slim pocket-sized book, rangesover the ideas influencing emerging artists and post-abstract expressionists ofthe 1960s. The interview is bookended with a brief introduction by French culturalcritic Donatien Grau and a riff by artist-writer Paul McCarthy. One of the foremostinnovators of postwar literature, writer-thinker Michel Butor redefined the novel withhis book Second Thoughts (1957), and further developed new forms with Mobile(1962). The rigorous symmetries Butor s writing exemplified led Roland Barthes topraise him as an epitome of structuralism, but with a lyrical sensibility more akin toBaudelaire than Robbe-Grillet.