Author Description

A hybrid of archive and oral history, Deste 33 Years: 1983-2015 tells the colorful and nontraditional story of Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art and its founder, Dakis Joannou, whose deeply personal approach has informed the foundation's ability to embody a given cultural moment--all while defying convention. "Deste was always really about ideas," Joannou says. "And the first idea was to create a museum of contemporary culture. Looking back, I'm not sure I was really collecting art. I think I was collecting relationships." Retracing more than three decades of one of the world's most important contemporary art foundations through archival photographs, press clippings, critical reviews, correspondence and unabashed conversations with many main protagonists--Maurizio Cattelan, Jeffrey Deitch, Urs Fischer, Massimiliano Gioni and Jeff Koons, among others--this more than 850-page book walks the reader through not only the extraordinary, artist-centric work, but also through the recent and entertaining history of contemporary art itself.