From 1970 to 1978, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) was in the habit of jotting down notes on index cards that he carried with him throughout his travels, from Lower Manhattan to Santiago de Chile, from Ithaca to Paris and New Jersey. This book compiles these "art cards." Combining writing and drawing, Matta-Clark's statements--some only a few words long, others a paragraph--are both manifestos and meditations on his life ("the pockets that carry you through the day"), his craft ("Proposal to a Wall St stock broker: to cut through a tax shelter") and the built environment ("To the nature of materials Anarchitecture adds a notion of events"). Ranging in tone from the melancholic to the cheerful, these art cards are saturated throughout with the excitement of living as an artist in 1970s New York City.