Peter Lamarque
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199577460
- eISBN:
- 9780191722998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577460.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Although ‘conceptual art’ covers many different kinds of works, for at least one paradigmatic kind of conceptual artwork the question of what role perception plays in appreciation is crucial. If the ...
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Although ‘conceptual art’ covers many different kinds of works, for at least one paradigmatic kind of conceptual artwork the question of what role perception plays in appreciation is crucial. If the idea is what matters then perhaps there is no need to perceive the works at all in order to understand and appreciate them; their nature and content might be adequately captured, say, in a description. If that is right then it implies they are not really visual works at all, perhaps more like literary works. This chapter shows that comparisons with literature are inadequate in explaining what is distinctive about conceptual art. It also explores the role of the aesthetic in conceptual art. Even if the emphasis is on ideas rather than visual appearance, that is not enough to eliminate the relevance of the aesthetic. Unless experience (broadly construed) plays some role in the appreciation of conceptual art it is hard to see how it could merit the label ‘art’.Less
Although ‘conceptual art’ covers many different kinds of works, for at least one paradigmatic kind of conceptual artwork the question of what role perception plays in appreciation is crucial. If the idea is what matters then perhaps there is no need to perceive the works at all in order to understand and appreciate them; their nature and content might be adequately captured, say, in a description. If that is right then it implies they are not really visual works at all, perhaps more like literary works. This chapter shows that comparisons with literature are inadequate in explaining what is distinctive about conceptual art. It also explores the role of the aesthetic in conceptual art. Even if the emphasis is on ideas rather than visual appearance, that is not enough to eliminate the relevance of the aesthetic. Unless experience (broadly construed) plays some role in the appreciation of conceptual art it is hard to see how it could merit the label ‘art’.
Peter Lamarque
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199577460
- eISBN:
- 9780191722998
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577460.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This book explores certain fundamental metaphysical aspects of works of art, giving focus to a distinction between works and the materials that underlie or constitute them. This constitutive material ...
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This book explores certain fundamental metaphysical aspects of works of art, giving focus to a distinction between works and the materials that underlie or constitute them. This constitutive material might be physical or abstract. For each work there is an ‘object’ (i.e., the materials of its composition) associated with it and a central claim in the book is that the work is never simply identical with the ‘object’ that constitutes it. Issues about the creation of works, their distinct kinds of properties (including aesthetic properties), their amenability to interpretation, their style, the conditions under which they can go out of existence, and their relation to perceptually indistinguishable doubles (including forgeries and parodies) are raised and debated. A core theme is that works like paintings, music, literature, sculpture, architecture, films, photographs, multimedia installations, and many more besides, have fundamental features in common, as cultural artefacts, in spite of enormous surface differences. It is their nature as distinct kinds of things, grounded in distinct ontological categories, that is the subject of this enquiry. Although much of the discussion is abstract, based in analytical metaphysics, there are many specific applications, including a study of Jean-Paul Sartre's novel La Nausée and recent conceptual art. Some surprising conclusions are derived about the identity and survival conditions of works, and about the difference, often, between what a work seems to be and what it really is.Less
This book explores certain fundamental metaphysical aspects of works of art, giving focus to a distinction between works and the materials that underlie or constitute them. This constitutive material might be physical or abstract. For each work there is an ‘object’ (i.e., the materials of its composition) associated with it and a central claim in the book is that the work is never simply identical with the ‘object’ that constitutes it. Issues about the creation of works, their distinct kinds of properties (including aesthetic properties), their amenability to interpretation, their style, the conditions under which they can go out of existence, and their relation to perceptually indistinguishable doubles (including forgeries and parodies) are raised and debated. A core theme is that works like paintings, music, literature, sculpture, architecture, films, photographs, multimedia installations, and many more besides, have fundamental features in common, as cultural artefacts, in spite of enormous surface differences. It is their nature as distinct kinds of things, grounded in distinct ontological categories, that is the subject of this enquiry. Although much of the discussion is abstract, based in analytical metaphysics, there are many specific applications, including a study of Jean-Paul Sartre's novel La Nausée and recent conceptual art. Some surprising conclusions are derived about the identity and survival conditions of works, and about the difference, often, between what a work seems to be and what it really is.
Nizan Shaked
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784992750
- eISBN:
- 9781526128171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992750.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter takes a close look at Adrian Piper’s transition from Conceptual Art to conceptualism, in the context of Conceptual Art’s canonical interpretations. I observe that her contribution was ...
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This chapter takes a close look at Adrian Piper’s transition from Conceptual Art to conceptualism, in the context of Conceptual Art’s canonical interpretations. I observe that her contribution was focused specifically on questions of mediation—the mediation of content by materials, forms, and language—later considering the mediating power of race, gender and other forms of apparent difference. From the application of analytic thinking to the work of art, she extended her enquiries to the dynamic relationship between the various elements of the artwork, such as object, author, body, self, circulation, and audience reception. Piper’s use of the autobiographical tone and the body arrived chronologically after an extended period of preoccupation with the context of the art object, its circulation and reception, and general inquiries into the nature of time and space through a focus on media and mediation. In accordance with this sequence of development, I propose to read her later work in the same way, always first as Conceptual, onto which we can then apply the political question. To enter the work through its analytic base is to read it on the terms of its making, not the subject position of its maker.Less
This chapter takes a close look at Adrian Piper’s transition from Conceptual Art to conceptualism, in the context of Conceptual Art’s canonical interpretations. I observe that her contribution was focused specifically on questions of mediation—the mediation of content by materials, forms, and language—later considering the mediating power of race, gender and other forms of apparent difference. From the application of analytic thinking to the work of art, she extended her enquiries to the dynamic relationship between the various elements of the artwork, such as object, author, body, self, circulation, and audience reception. Piper’s use of the autobiographical tone and the body arrived chronologically after an extended period of preoccupation with the context of the art object, its circulation and reception, and general inquiries into the nature of time and space through a focus on media and mediation. In accordance with this sequence of development, I propose to read her later work in the same way, always first as Conceptual, onto which we can then apply the political question. To enter the work through its analytic base is to read it on the terms of its making, not the subject position of its maker.
Nizan Shaked
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784992750
- eISBN:
- 9781526128171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992750.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter takes a comparative look at several models of interdisciplinary conceptualist practices that responded critically to Conceptual Art’s original claims. Artists responded to a limitation ...
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This chapter takes a comparative look at several models of interdisciplinary conceptualist practices that responded critically to Conceptual Art’s original claims. Artists responded to a limitation they identified in the narrow focus of early Conceptual Art, and turned to the social, the political, and the “life-world,” external to the hermeneutic definition of art. When this second wind of conceptualism integrated external subject matter, it was no longer in the modernist sense of art and politics. Synthetic conceptualism incorporated the basic investigations of Conceptual Art to form a complex method of artmaking that was deconstructive just as it was referential. Artists integrated a meta-critique to reveal frameworks that endowed artistic language and strategies with pre-conceived meaning. Three artists exemplify this shift. Adrian Piper transitioned from an analysis of the art object as a factor of time and space to the role of cultural forms in formulating gendered and racialised social meaning; Mary Kelly from labour and gender issues to the discourse of the subject; and Martha Rosler from the documentary mode to the critique of representation in mass media.Less
This chapter takes a comparative look at several models of interdisciplinary conceptualist practices that responded critically to Conceptual Art’s original claims. Artists responded to a limitation they identified in the narrow focus of early Conceptual Art, and turned to the social, the political, and the “life-world,” external to the hermeneutic definition of art. When this second wind of conceptualism integrated external subject matter, it was no longer in the modernist sense of art and politics. Synthetic conceptualism incorporated the basic investigations of Conceptual Art to form a complex method of artmaking that was deconstructive just as it was referential. Artists integrated a meta-critique to reveal frameworks that endowed artistic language and strategies with pre-conceived meaning. Three artists exemplify this shift. Adrian Piper transitioned from an analysis of the art object as a factor of time and space to the role of cultural forms in formulating gendered and racialised social meaning; Mary Kelly from labour and gender issues to the discourse of the subject; and Martha Rosler from the documentary mode to the critique of representation in mass media.
Nizan Shaked
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784992750
- eISBN:
- 9781526128171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992750.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The introduction addresses two intersecting trajectories in American art between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first-century century. On the one hand, it traces the ways in which disciplinary ...
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The introduction addresses two intersecting trajectories in American art between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first-century century. On the one hand, it traces the ways in which disciplinary Conceptual Art, with a capital “C”, expanded into the diverse set of practices that have been characterised generally as conceptualism. On the other hand, it shows how the expansion of a critical conceptualism has been strongly informed by the turbulent rights-based politics of the 1960s. Initially, first generation Conceptual artists responded to preceding art movements within disciplinary boundaries, examining the definition of art itself and engaging abstract concerns. Artists then applied the basic principles of Conceptual Art to address a range of social and political issues. This development reflects the influence of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student movement, the anti-war movement, second wave feminism, and the gay liberation movement. Central in the American context, the multiple identity-based mobilisations that came to be known as “identity politics” were further articulated in the 1970s. The artists addressed in this book: Adrian Piper, Joseph Kosuth, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Andrea Fraser, Hans Haacke, and Charles Gaines expanded the propositions of Conceptual Art.Less
The introduction addresses two intersecting trajectories in American art between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first-century century. On the one hand, it traces the ways in which disciplinary Conceptual Art, with a capital “C”, expanded into the diverse set of practices that have been characterised generally as conceptualism. On the other hand, it shows how the expansion of a critical conceptualism has been strongly informed by the turbulent rights-based politics of the 1960s. Initially, first generation Conceptual artists responded to preceding art movements within disciplinary boundaries, examining the definition of art itself and engaging abstract concerns. Artists then applied the basic principles of Conceptual Art to address a range of social and political issues. This development reflects the influence of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student movement, the anti-war movement, second wave feminism, and the gay liberation movement. Central in the American context, the multiple identity-based mobilisations that came to be known as “identity politics” were further articulated in the 1970s. The artists addressed in this book: Adrian Piper, Joseph Kosuth, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Andrea Fraser, Hans Haacke, and Charles Gaines expanded the propositions of Conceptual Art.
Anjan Chatterjee
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199811809
- eISBN:
- 9780199369546
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199811809.003.0021
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience, Sensory and Motor Systems
Consider five conceptual artists, such as Serrano, Gonzales-Torres, Antoni, Porte, and Calle, and their art. Each of these artists received attention and notoriety. Their kind of art has been called ...
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Consider five conceptual artists, such as Serrano, Gonzales-Torres, Antoni, Porte, and Calle, and their art. Each of these artists received attention and notoriety. Their kind of art has been called conceptual, postmodern, avant-garde, cutting edge, or emergent. The average person looks at this artwork in bewilderment and asks, why is this art? We can ask, how should scientists think about such art? Such art poses a challenge for scientific aesthetics.Less
Consider five conceptual artists, such as Serrano, Gonzales-Torres, Antoni, Porte, and Calle, and their art. Each of these artists received attention and notoriety. Their kind of art has been called conceptual, postmodern, avant-garde, cutting edge, or emergent. The average person looks at this artwork in bewilderment and asks, why is this art? We can ask, how should scientists think about such art? Such art poses a challenge for scientific aesthetics.
Thierry de Duve
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226546568
- eISBN:
- 9780226546872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226546872.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
The gist of the “Kant after Duchamp” approach to aesthetics is (1) the realization of the quasi-interchangeability of artist and beholder in front of a readymade and (2) the substitution of “this is ...
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The gist of the “Kant after Duchamp” approach to aesthetics is (1) the realization of the quasi-interchangeability of artist and beholder in front of a readymade and (2) the substitution of “this is art” for “this is beautiful” in Kant’s Analytic and Dialectic of the Beautiful. A readymade condenses all the artist’s decisions into one choice, which the beholder is asked to endorse by calling the object “art.” This leads to the hypothesis of a faculty of making/judging art that conflates genius and taste. Accordingly, the antinomy of taste becomes the antinomy of art: thesis, art is not a concept; antithesis, art is a concept. One might think that the movement known as conceptual art, several proponents of which claim the readymade’s legacy, has embraced the antithesis and dismissed the thesis. Although this is true of Joseph Kosuth’s manifesto, “Art after Philosophy,” in practice all conceptual artists produced what Kant called aesthetic ideas, and they did so in the name of their personal version of the idea of reason which this book calls art itself.Less
The gist of the “Kant after Duchamp” approach to aesthetics is (1) the realization of the quasi-interchangeability of artist and beholder in front of a readymade and (2) the substitution of “this is art” for “this is beautiful” in Kant’s Analytic and Dialectic of the Beautiful. A readymade condenses all the artist’s decisions into one choice, which the beholder is asked to endorse by calling the object “art.” This leads to the hypothesis of a faculty of making/judging art that conflates genius and taste. Accordingly, the antinomy of taste becomes the antinomy of art: thesis, art is not a concept; antithesis, art is a concept. One might think that the movement known as conceptual art, several proponents of which claim the readymade’s legacy, has embraced the antithesis and dismissed the thesis. Although this is true of Joseph Kosuth’s manifesto, “Art after Philosophy,” in practice all conceptual artists produced what Kant called aesthetic ideas, and they did so in the name of their personal version of the idea of reason which this book calls art itself.
Kimberly Lamm
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526121264
- eISBN:
- 9781526136176
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526121264.003.0002
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Chapter 1 begins by analysing Adrian Piper’s engagement with the textual dimensions of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s and the ways in which it aligned with her work in Kantian philosophy to develop ...
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Chapter 1 begins by analysing Adrian Piper’s engagement with the textual dimensions of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s and the ways in which it aligned with her work in Kantian philosophy to develop the aesthetic and perceptual conditions that allow for an encounter with what she identifies as the ‘singular reality of the “other.”’ The chapter then turns to the artwork Piper produced after 1970, a year of political upheaval in which she began to work with text and writing to expose the visual pathologies of racism and sexism, which she identifies as ‘defensive rationalizations’. By tracing the transformations of her oeuvre across the 1970s, this chapter demonstrates how Piper’s artwork enacts the ways in which racism and sexism call black women into narrow forms of visibility while also exposing the historically entrenched habits for projecting fears and fantasies on to black women’s bodies. To bring the black feminist stakes of Piper’s artwork into relief, I read it through Hortense Spillers’s (1987) concepts of ‘telegraphing’ – the means by which iconic images of black women have been transmitted across American culture – and ‘ungendering’ – the specific form of abjection inflicted upon black women in the transatlantic slave trade that reverberates into the present..Less
Chapter 1 begins by analysing Adrian Piper’s engagement with the textual dimensions of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s and the ways in which it aligned with her work in Kantian philosophy to develop the aesthetic and perceptual conditions that allow for an encounter with what she identifies as the ‘singular reality of the “other.”’ The chapter then turns to the artwork Piper produced after 1970, a year of political upheaval in which she began to work with text and writing to expose the visual pathologies of racism and sexism, which she identifies as ‘defensive rationalizations’. By tracing the transformations of her oeuvre across the 1970s, this chapter demonstrates how Piper’s artwork enacts the ways in which racism and sexism call black women into narrow forms of visibility while also exposing the historically entrenched habits for projecting fears and fantasies on to black women’s bodies. To bring the black feminist stakes of Piper’s artwork into relief, I read it through Hortense Spillers’s (1987) concepts of ‘telegraphing’ – the means by which iconic images of black women have been transmitted across American culture – and ‘ungendering’ – the specific form of abjection inflicted upon black women in the transatlantic slave trade that reverberates into the present..
Julian Dodd
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198769736
- eISBN:
- 9780191822575
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198769736.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Mind
In their book, Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art?, Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens elaborate and defend what they call ‘the idea idea’: a view most succinctly formulated as the thesis that ...
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In their book, Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art?, Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens elaborate and defend what they call ‘the idea idea’: a view most succinctly formulated as the thesis that conceptual artworks are ideas. In this chapter the idea idea is criticized and, in the end, rejected. The ontological proposal that it represents is argued to be under-motivated, subject to convincing criticism and, in its assumption that all conceptual artworks fall into the same ontological category, methodologically suspect. We should disentangle the many insightful things that Goldie and Schellekens say about our appreciation of conceptual art from the thesis they present as a corollary of these insights.Less
In their book, Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art?, Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens elaborate and defend what they call ‘the idea idea’: a view most succinctly formulated as the thesis that conceptual artworks are ideas. In this chapter the idea idea is criticized and, in the end, rejected. The ontological proposal that it represents is argued to be under-motivated, subject to convincing criticism and, in its assumption that all conceptual artworks fall into the same ontological category, methodologically suspect. We should disentangle the many insightful things that Goldie and Schellekens say about our appreciation of conceptual art from the thesis they present as a corollary of these insights.
Patrick Greaney
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816687343
- eISBN:
- 9781452949116
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816687343.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
This chapter deals with Marcel Broodthaers and his role as the traditional artist in contrast to Debord’s revolutionary perspective. It begins with an account of Broodthaers’ artistic works and ...
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This chapter deals with Marcel Broodthaers and his role as the traditional artist in contrast to Debord’s revolutionary perspective. It begins with an account of Broodthaers’ artistic works and endeavors, and his poetry which is reflective of Charles Baudelaire’s, along with an examination of the sonnet “Beauty” (La Beauté). It also states that Broodthaers’ primary concern is the market; and according to him, the goal of art and critique is commercial, along with the objective of stimulating a critical attitude towards the public presentation of art. The chapter also considers Broodthaers’ examination of the material features of conceptual art, such as handwriting, typewriting, and figures.Less
This chapter deals with Marcel Broodthaers and his role as the traditional artist in contrast to Debord’s revolutionary perspective. It begins with an account of Broodthaers’ artistic works and endeavors, and his poetry which is reflective of Charles Baudelaire’s, along with an examination of the sonnet “Beauty” (La Beauté). It also states that Broodthaers’ primary concern is the market; and according to him, the goal of art and critique is commercial, along with the objective of stimulating a critical attitude towards the public presentation of art. The chapter also considers Broodthaers’ examination of the material features of conceptual art, such as handwriting, typewriting, and figures.
Dominic McIver Lopes
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199591558
- eISBN:
- 9780191771842
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591558.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Philosophers turned to theories of art, which state what makes any item a work of art, principally in order to address puzzle cases — works of avant-garde art that seem to challenge traditional ...
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Philosophers turned to theories of art, which state what makes any item a work of art, principally in order to address puzzle cases — works of avant-garde art that seem to challenge traditional conceptions of what art is. Chapter 5 argued that recent theories of art fail at this task and this chapter argues that the buck passing theory of art performs the task successfully. According to a buck passing theory of art, what makes any item a work of art is that it is a work in a specific art form. The argument is that the puzzle cases are puzzling because we cannot locate them in any established art form, such as painting or music. The reason is that they belong to a new art form, conceptual art. The medium and norm-giving practices of this art form are discussed.Less
Philosophers turned to theories of art, which state what makes any item a work of art, principally in order to address puzzle cases — works of avant-garde art that seem to challenge traditional conceptions of what art is. Chapter 5 argued that recent theories of art fail at this task and this chapter argues that the buck passing theory of art performs the task successfully. According to a buck passing theory of art, what makes any item a work of art is that it is a work in a specific art form. The argument is that the puzzle cases are puzzling because we cannot locate them in any established art form, such as painting or music. The reason is that they belong to a new art form, conceptual art. The medium and norm-giving practices of this art form are discussed.
Sean Keller
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226496498
- eISBN:
- 9780226496528
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226496528.003.0003
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural History
The chapter examines the early work of architect and theorist Peter Eisenman who, though adamantly opposed to the design methods approach of figures such as Alexander, also attempted to develop a ...
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The chapter examines the early work of architect and theorist Peter Eisenman who, though adamantly opposed to the design methods approach of figures such as Alexander, also attempted to develop a rigorous, quasi-autonomous system of architectural form generation during the same years. In contrast to the data-driven approach of the design methods movement, Eisenman posited a neo-Platonic logic of form, with ties to the contemporaneous work of the linguist Noam Chomsky and to Conceptual and Minimal art. This chapter gives a detailed, and non-instrumental, accounting of Eisenman’s early thought within a wider context, in order to more closely articulate the similarities and differences between his work and other, parallel, intellectual projects.Less
The chapter examines the early work of architect and theorist Peter Eisenman who, though adamantly opposed to the design methods approach of figures such as Alexander, also attempted to develop a rigorous, quasi-autonomous system of architectural form generation during the same years. In contrast to the data-driven approach of the design methods movement, Eisenman posited a neo-Platonic logic of form, with ties to the contemporaneous work of the linguist Noam Chomsky and to Conceptual and Minimal art. This chapter gives a detailed, and non-instrumental, accounting of Eisenman’s early thought within a wider context, in order to more closely articulate the similarities and differences between his work and other, parallel, intellectual projects.
Nizan Shaked
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784992750
- eISBN:
- 9781526128171
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992750.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The synthetic proposition: Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and the sexual-liberty movements on ...
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The synthetic proposition: Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and the sexual-liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the present. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with philosophically abstract ideas, and traces key strategies in contemporary art today to the reciprocal influences of conceptualism and identity politics, movements that have so far been historicized as mutually exclusive. It demonstrates that while identity-based strategies were particular, their impact spread far beyond the individuals or communities that originated them. Commencing with the early oeuvre of Adrian Piper, a first generation Conceptual artist, this book offers a study of interlocutors that expanded the practice into a broad notion of conceptualism, including Joseph Kosuth, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, and Charles Gaines. By turning to social issues, these artists analyzed the cultural conventions embedded in modes of reference and representation such as language, writing, photography, moving image, or installation and exhibition display.Less
The synthetic proposition: Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and the sexual-liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the present. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with philosophically abstract ideas, and traces key strategies in contemporary art today to the reciprocal influences of conceptualism and identity politics, movements that have so far been historicized as mutually exclusive. It demonstrates that while identity-based strategies were particular, their impact spread far beyond the individuals or communities that originated them. Commencing with the early oeuvre of Adrian Piper, a first generation Conceptual artist, this book offers a study of interlocutors that expanded the practice into a broad notion of conceptualism, including Joseph Kosuth, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, and Charles Gaines. By turning to social issues, these artists analyzed the cultural conventions embedded in modes of reference and representation such as language, writing, photography, moving image, or installation and exhibition display.
Liam Gillick
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231170208
- eISBN:
- 9780231540964
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170208.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
The history of modern art is often told through aesthetic breakthroughs that sync well with cultural and political change. From Courbet to Picasso, from Malevich to Warhol, it is accepted that art ...
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The history of modern art is often told through aesthetic breakthroughs that sync well with cultural and political change. From Courbet to Picasso, from Malevich to Warhol, it is accepted that art tracks the disruptions of industrialization, fascism, revolution, and war. Yet filtering the history of modern art only through catastrophic events cannot account for the subtle developments that lead to the profound confusion at the heart of contemporary art.
In Industry and Intelligence, the artist Liam Gillick writes a nuanced genealogy to help us appreciate contemporary art’s engagement with history even when it seems apathetic or blind to current events. Taking a broad view of artistic creation from 1820 to today, Gillick follows the response of artists to incremental developments in science, politics, and technology. The great innovations and dislocations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have their place in this timeline, but their traces are alternately amplified and diminished as Gillick moves through artistic reactions to liberalism, mass manufacturing, psychology, nuclear physics, automobiles, and a host of other advances. He intimately ties the origins of contemporary art to the social and technological adjustments of modern life, which artists struggled to incorporate truthfully into their works.Less
The history of modern art is often told through aesthetic breakthroughs that sync well with cultural and political change. From Courbet to Picasso, from Malevich to Warhol, it is accepted that art tracks the disruptions of industrialization, fascism, revolution, and war. Yet filtering the history of modern art only through catastrophic events cannot account for the subtle developments that lead to the profound confusion at the heart of contemporary art.
In Industry and Intelligence, the artist Liam Gillick writes a nuanced genealogy to help us appreciate contemporary art’s engagement with history even when it seems apathetic or blind to current events. Taking a broad view of artistic creation from 1820 to today, Gillick follows the response of artists to incremental developments in science, politics, and technology. The great innovations and dislocations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have their place in this timeline, but their traces are alternately amplified and diminished as Gillick moves through artistic reactions to liberalism, mass manufacturing, psychology, nuclear physics, automobiles, and a host of other advances. He intimately ties the origins of contemporary art to the social and technological adjustments of modern life, which artists struggled to incorporate truthfully into their works.
Jasper Bernes
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780804796415
- eISBN:
- 9781503602601
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804796415.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization provides an original account of the relationship between postindustrial capitalism and postmodern culture. Examining American conceptual art and ...
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The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization provides an original account of the relationship between postindustrial capitalism and postmodern culture. Examining American conceptual art and experimental poetry alongside sociological and historical accounts of postwar labor, this book describes the cultural production of the period as a “counter-laboratory,” a space of speculation and experiment from which new modes of interaction emerged, premised on collaboration, mutability and free association, and utilizing the literary resources of lyric address, free indirect discourse, and the poetic line. As Bernes argues, these artistic models and challenges were eventually absorbed by industry in the long process of capitalist restructuring that followed the crisis of the 1970s, providing the conceptual germ for the eventual corporate grammar of participation, teamwork, flexibility, and creativity. The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization therefore provides a prehistory of the labor-intensive present, examining how the art and writing of the 1960s and 1970s served as a vanishing mediator, a set of challenges to work and the workplace that, unwittingly, assisted in the renewal of work and helped to reverse the trendline of rising wages and falling work hours that had held in most of the industrialized world for the better part of the 20th century. Bringing together an extensive understanding of postwar capitalism and postwar literary and artistic developments, Bernes demonstrates, conclusively, that the work of art and work in general share a common fate.Less
The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization provides an original account of the relationship between postindustrial capitalism and postmodern culture. Examining American conceptual art and experimental poetry alongside sociological and historical accounts of postwar labor, this book describes the cultural production of the period as a “counter-laboratory,” a space of speculation and experiment from which new modes of interaction emerged, premised on collaboration, mutability and free association, and utilizing the literary resources of lyric address, free indirect discourse, and the poetic line. As Bernes argues, these artistic models and challenges were eventually absorbed by industry in the long process of capitalist restructuring that followed the crisis of the 1970s, providing the conceptual germ for the eventual corporate grammar of participation, teamwork, flexibility, and creativity. The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization therefore provides a prehistory of the labor-intensive present, examining how the art and writing of the 1960s and 1970s served as a vanishing mediator, a set of challenges to work and the workplace that, unwittingly, assisted in the renewal of work and helped to reverse the trendline of rising wages and falling work hours that had held in most of the industrialized world for the better part of the 20th century. Bringing together an extensive understanding of postwar capitalism and postwar literary and artistic developments, Bernes demonstrates, conclusively, that the work of art and work in general share a common fate.
Leah Modigliani
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526101198
- eISBN:
- 9781526135957
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The central argument of the book is introduced; that the counter-tradition Jeff Wall helped develop with other artists in Vancouver has included a gendered bifurcation of space since its earliest ...
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The central argument of the book is introduced; that the counter-tradition Jeff Wall helped develop with other artists in Vancouver has included a gendered bifurcation of space since its earliest incarnation in 1970 as the "defeatured landscape." The introduction contains brief descriptions of Wall and his peers’ early work in relation to Wall’s international position as leader of the Vancouver School of Photo-Conceptualism; a brief discussion of existing theory about the development of avant-garde movements; and the necessity of understanding the avant-garde in the context of wider social contests of power, in particular settler colonial control over land and male control over women’s bodies and representations of them. The introduction also summarizes the need to intervene in current histories of avant-garde practice, dominant narratives that continue to frame male artists achievements in formal terms divested of the power dynamics that engender them or result from them.Less
The central argument of the book is introduced; that the counter-tradition Jeff Wall helped develop with other artists in Vancouver has included a gendered bifurcation of space since its earliest incarnation in 1970 as the "defeatured landscape." The introduction contains brief descriptions of Wall and his peers’ early work in relation to Wall’s international position as leader of the Vancouver School of Photo-Conceptualism; a brief discussion of existing theory about the development of avant-garde movements; and the necessity of understanding the avant-garde in the context of wider social contests of power, in particular settler colonial control over land and male control over women’s bodies and representations of them. The introduction also summarizes the need to intervene in current histories of avant-garde practice, dominant narratives that continue to frame male artists achievements in formal terms divested of the power dynamics that engender them or result from them.
Siona Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816685738
- eISBN:
- 9781452950648
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816685738.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
The open-ended collaborative project, Photography Workshop (run by Jo Spence and Terry Dennett), ends the decade and the book with the emergence of photography as a newly critical art form. The ...
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The open-ended collaborative project, Photography Workshop (run by Jo Spence and Terry Dennett), ends the decade and the book with the emergence of photography as a newly critical art form. The frictions between Marxism and feminism, social and psychic issues, labor and sexuality coalesce to reshape our understanding of an embryonic postmodernism.Less
The open-ended collaborative project, Photography Workshop (run by Jo Spence and Terry Dennett), ends the decade and the book with the emergence of photography as a newly critical art form. The frictions between Marxism and feminism, social and psychic issues, labor and sexuality coalesce to reshape our understanding of an embryonic postmodernism.
Karen Mary Davalos
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781479877966
- eISBN:
- 9781479825165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479877966.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter remixes the exhibition record in Los Angeles and documents new information about Chicana/o art exhibitions in mainstream museums. Looking at an exhibition long forgotten, most likely ...
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This chapter remixes the exhibition record in Los Angeles and documents new information about Chicana/o art exhibitions in mainstream museums. Looking at an exhibition long forgotten, most likely because it could not satisfy the current expectations about Chicana/o art and artists, the chapter proposes another index for Chicana/o art. This new index brings to light new understandings of Los Four, a celebrated arts collective and the first group to receive a major exhibition in a mainstream art museum.Less
This chapter remixes the exhibition record in Los Angeles and documents new information about Chicana/o art exhibitions in mainstream museums. Looking at an exhibition long forgotten, most likely because it could not satisfy the current expectations about Chicana/o art and artists, the chapter proposes another index for Chicana/o art. This new index brings to light new understandings of Los Four, a celebrated arts collective and the first group to receive a major exhibition in a mainstream art museum.
Siona Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816685738
- eISBN:
- 9781452950648
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816685738.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
COUM Transmissions’ notorious performance-based installation, Prostitution (1976) was presented one month after Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document at the very same venue. Chapter three finds ...
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COUM Transmissions’ notorious performance-based installation, Prostitution (1976) was presented one month after Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document at the very same venue. Chapter three finds unexpected points of connection between the two installations, and argues that COUM’s riotously queer aesthetic challenges many long-held assumptions about feminist art.Less
COUM Transmissions’ notorious performance-based installation, Prostitution (1976) was presented one month after Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document at the very same venue. Chapter three finds unexpected points of connection between the two installations, and argues that COUM’s riotously queer aesthetic challenges many long-held assumptions about feminist art.
Karen Pinkus
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804760324
- eISBN:
- 9780804772877
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804760324.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
How can we account, in a rigorous way, for alchemy's ubiquity? We think of alchemy as the transformation of a base material (usually lead) into gold, but “alchemy” is a word in wide circulation in ...
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How can we account, in a rigorous way, for alchemy's ubiquity? We think of alchemy as the transformation of a base material (usually lead) into gold, but “alchemy” is a word in wide circulation in everyday life, often called upon to fulfill a metaphoric duty as the magical transformation of materials. Almost every culture and time has had some form of alchemy. This book looks at alchemy, not at any one particular instance along the historical timeline, not as a practice or theory, not as a mode of redemption, but as a theoretical problem, linked to real gold and real production in the world. What emerges as the least common denominator or “intensive property” of alchemy is ambivalence, the impossible and paradoxical coexistence of two incompatible elements. The book moves from antiquity, through the golden age of alchemy in the Dutch seventeenth century, to conceptual art, to alternative fuels, stopping to think with writers such as Dante, Goethe, Hoffmann, the Grimm Brothers, George Eliot, and Marx. Eclectic and wide-ranging, it considers alchemy in relation to literary and visual theory in a comprehensive way.Less
How can we account, in a rigorous way, for alchemy's ubiquity? We think of alchemy as the transformation of a base material (usually lead) into gold, but “alchemy” is a word in wide circulation in everyday life, often called upon to fulfill a metaphoric duty as the magical transformation of materials. Almost every culture and time has had some form of alchemy. This book looks at alchemy, not at any one particular instance along the historical timeline, not as a practice or theory, not as a mode of redemption, but as a theoretical problem, linked to real gold and real production in the world. What emerges as the least common denominator or “intensive property” of alchemy is ambivalence, the impossible and paradoxical coexistence of two incompatible elements. The book moves from antiquity, through the golden age of alchemy in the Dutch seventeenth century, to conceptual art, to alternative fuels, stopping to think with writers such as Dante, Goethe, Hoffmann, the Grimm Brothers, George Eliot, and Marx. Eclectic and wide-ranging, it considers alchemy in relation to literary and visual theory in a comprehensive way.
