Welcoming “1984”

Editor Laura Lieberman bade farewell to the magazine with an issue featuring an ironic study by Douglas DeLoach of the art of sports artist Leroy Neiman, alongside more characteristic contributions from activist critic Lucy Lippard, Fluxus legend Dick Higgins, and newly arrived Nexus curator Alan Sondheim. New Editor Xenia Zed arrived with an interview with video artist Dara Birnbaum, and coverage of the First Atlanta Biennale at Nexus, a project of Alan Sondheim which his successors have continued to the present day. A special issue with the Architecture Society of Atlanta included an extract of a work on Berlin by Alan Balfour, who would become a longstanding supporter of the magazine, and a review essay on “Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years” by Atlanta writer and scholar Jerry Cullum, who soon thereafter became a member of the magazine’s editorial staff. Volume eight concluded with a prominent cover story on the visual and conceptual accomplishment of Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot comic books (see photo), a move which was reportedly held against the publication in a National Endowment for the Arts panel meeting a few months later.