This collection investigates the methodological problem of how to see, or read, art that references literature through a series of object-focused chapters on post-1960 artworks. Variously eccentric, playful, reverential and procedural, the diverse range of works engage with literary history by testing the limits of artistic form.

IntroductionCases of citation: On literature in art – Michael Green, Matthew Holman, Chloë JuliusCitations after the death of the author – Chloë JuliusPart I: Hauntings and returns1 Gothic: The return of the repressed – Laurie Rojas 2 ‘Was there anything so real as words?’ Allen Ruppersberg’s The Picture of Dorian Gray – Jennie Waldow 3 That monster – Ivan KnappPart II: Collage and influence4 ‘Swarming city, city gorged with dreams’: Sound, sight and text in Paris Blues – Kalvin Schmidt-Rimpler Dinh 5 ‘Criminal, loner, drifter’: metonymic citation in the collages of David Wojnarowicz – Louis Shankar6 A language of recalcitrance: Lis Rhodes, Gertrude Stein, and syntactical play – Hannah KahngPart III: Transformation and substance7 'What, I wonder, does love have to do with an irregular rectangle?' On Words & Drawings by Mario Schifano and Frank O’Hara (1964) – Matthew Holman 8 ‘My Funny Verlainetine’: Queer citations in Ray Johnson’s mail art – Brian Leahy 9 ‘Written honour’: Wagner, Beuys, and Stendhal in Marcel Broodthaers’s Magie: art et politique – Andrew ChesherPart IIII: Between the Needle and the Book 10 Elaine Reichek in conversation with Michael Green and Chloë JuliusIndex

Cases of citation tracks a history of artists who incorporated literature into their work. It investigates why literary citation emerged as a viable and urgent strategy in art made during and after the 1960s, and explores how we can account for such citational practices in contemporary scholarship.Structured as a series of in-depth case studies, the chapters generate their own specific questions about the relationship between art and literature through the analysis of a single artwork. The volume covers a diverse group of artists from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including David Wojnarowicz, Marcel Broodthaers, Lis Rhodes, Romare Bearden and Silvia Kolbowski. Cited authors range from Oscar Wilde to Frank O’Hara, Mary Shelley to Jean Genet. Together, the artworks and texts are approached from various critical angles, with each author questioning and complicating the ways in which we can ‘read’ textual citations in art.The book concludes with a richly illustrated conversation between the editors and the pioneering feminist artist Elaine Reichek, whose lifelong engagement with text serves as a foundational art historical touchstone for the collection as a whole.