More a book than a magazine, Mousse #83—The Artist’s Artist is a special, collectible issue conceived as a small anthology of seven comprehensive monographs dedicated to influential, yet at times underrepresented, artists who spearheaded the languages that are defining our age—the so-called artists’ artists. Julie Becker, Dara Birnbaum, Andrea Branzi, Vaginal Davis, Lala Rukh, Rosemary Mayer, and Jean-Frédéric Schnyder help us to celebrate the perpetually ambitious objective of providing layers of understanding regarding artists’ practices and their implications in the present.

In a moment when the editorial landscape is witnessing a precipitous turn away from firm engagement with art’s primary matters, we have registered a growing concern among those who inspire us and to whom we want to pay homage, to which we respond by returning to committed writing and engagement, a foundation of contemporary culture’s production and reception.

Published in 2023