The Uncertainty Principle

A collection of essays on contemporary art in which not knowing, rather than mastery, is the working condition of the artist and the viewer.

Taking its title from the physics principle about the limits of measurement and the way seeing alters what is seen, the book considers art practices since the 1970s. Herbert starts from Marcel Duchamp's remark that a work is completed by the viewer, and follows artists whose works treat completion as construction. The essays move through a range of approaches to constructed experiences of not knowing, with subjects running from history and politics to epistemology and mortality. Sam de Groot designed the softcover edition.

Martin Herbert is a writer and critic who lives in Tunbridge Wells and Berlin. He is associate editor of ArtReview and contributes regularly to Artforum, frieze and Art Monthly. His earlier monograph Mark Wallinger, a study of the British artist's career, appeared in 2011.