Gordon Graham
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199265961
- eISBN:
- 9780191708756
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265961.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This book takes as its starting point Max Weber's contention that contemporary Western culture is marked by a ‘disenchantment of the world’ — the loss of spiritual value in the wake of religion's ...
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This book takes as its starting point Max Weber's contention that contemporary Western culture is marked by a ‘disenchantment of the world’ — the loss of spiritual value in the wake of religion's decline and the triumph of the physical and biological sciences. Relating themes in Hegel, Nietzsche, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and Gadamer to topics in contemporary philosophy of the arts, it explores the idea that Art, now freed from its previous service to religion, has the potential to re-enchant the world. The book develops an argument that draws on the strengths of both ‘analytical’ and ‘continental’ traditions of philosophical reflection. The opening chapter examines ways in which human lives can be made meaningful, and the second chapter critically assesses debates about secularization and secularism. Subsequent chapters are devoted to painting, literature, music, architecture, and festivals. The book concludes that only religion properly so called can ‘enchant the world’, and that modern art's ambition to do so fails.Less
This book takes as its starting point Max Weber's contention that contemporary Western culture is marked by a ‘disenchantment of the world’ — the loss of spiritual value in the wake of religion's decline and the triumph of the physical and biological sciences. Relating themes in Hegel, Nietzsche, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and Gadamer to topics in contemporary philosophy of the arts, it explores the idea that Art, now freed from its previous service to religion, has the potential to re-enchant the world. The book develops an argument that draws on the strengths of both ‘analytical’ and ‘continental’ traditions of philosophical reflection. The opening chapter examines ways in which human lives can be made meaningful, and the second chapter critically assesses debates about secularization and secularism. Subsequent chapters are devoted to painting, literature, music, architecture, and festivals. The book concludes that only religion properly so called can ‘enchant the world’, and that modern art's ambition to do so fails.
Linda Ekstrom and Richard D. Hecht
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195176452
- eISBN:
- 9780199785308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176452.003.0019
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter reflects upon the chapter's authors' experience in teaching a course on religion and contemporary art, and how they seek to help students understand the ritual dimensions of religion and ...
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This chapter reflects upon the chapter's authors' experience in teaching a course on religion and contemporary art, and how they seek to help students understand the ritual dimensions of religion and contemporary art practice. The chapter considers two rituals, one from the celebration for the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the other a performance by two art students. The chapter attempts to understand these two very different ritual forms through a series of theoretical frames drawn from the study of religion and the interpretation of contemporary art. The ritual practices of three well-known contemporary artists — Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Liza Lou, and Marina Abramovic — are discussed. The works of these artists are strikingly different, but each holds together, in practice and form, the transcendence and immanence of the sacred, and their work expands the range and breadth of the understanding of ritual.Less
This chapter reflects upon the chapter's authors' experience in teaching a course on religion and contemporary art, and how they seek to help students understand the ritual dimensions of religion and contemporary art practice. The chapter considers two rituals, one from the celebration for the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the other a performance by two art students. The chapter attempts to understand these two very different ritual forms through a series of theoretical frames drawn from the study of religion and the interpretation of contemporary art. The ritual practices of three well-known contemporary artists — Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Liza Lou, and Marina Abramovic — are discussed. The works of these artists are strikingly different, but each holds together, in practice and form, the transcendence and immanence of the sacred, and their work expands the range and breadth of the understanding of ritual.
Jenny Lin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526132604
- eISBN:
- 9781526139047
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526132604.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The introduction argues that the global turn in contemporary art has been limited by overly generalized cultural categorizations and inadequate coverage of the local social, economic, political, and ...
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The introduction argues that the global turn in contemporary art has been limited by overly generalized cultural categorizations and inadequate coverage of the local social, economic, political, and historical contexts of non-Western artworks. In response, the author posits an urban-focused, historically grounded, and theoretically rigorous model of disciplinary diversification that foregrounds key examples of art and design created in and about Shanghai. The city is described as an exemplary case study with which to localize global contemporary art, accounting for Shanghai’s longstanding “East-meets-West” mythology and genealogy stemming from its early twentieth century semi-colonial past and radical transformation during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The introduction acknowledges how Republican Shanghai has been recognized by scholars as a modern cultural capital with its own unique Shanghai style, haipai (literally sea style), and proposes that we must also consider the city’s art and design of the 1990s-2000s, the period of Shanghai’s most rapid growth as an international financial and cultural capital.Less
The introduction argues that the global turn in contemporary art has been limited by overly generalized cultural categorizations and inadequate coverage of the local social, economic, political, and historical contexts of non-Western artworks. In response, the author posits an urban-focused, historically grounded, and theoretically rigorous model of disciplinary diversification that foregrounds key examples of art and design created in and about Shanghai. The city is described as an exemplary case study with which to localize global contemporary art, accounting for Shanghai’s longstanding “East-meets-West” mythology and genealogy stemming from its early twentieth century semi-colonial past and radical transformation during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The introduction acknowledges how Republican Shanghai has been recognized by scholars as a modern cultural capital with its own unique Shanghai style, haipai (literally sea style), and proposes that we must also consider the city’s art and design of the 1990s-2000s, the period of Shanghai’s most rapid growth as an international financial and cultural capital.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter turns to the creative work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Brazil’s most famous “outsider artist.” The author addresses what it means to respect the rights of the mad when approaching their ...
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This chapter turns to the creative work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Brazil’s most famous “outsider artist.” The author addresses what it means to respect the rights of the mad when approaching their work through the lens of contemporary art. Unlike the other Brazilian patients considered in this study, Bispo’s work was legitimated as art after his death. The chapter engages Frederico Morais’s publication Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Arte além da loucura (Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Art beyond madness, 2013) as well as this curator’s key role in Bispo’s canonization into contemporary art. The author probes whether an insistence on Bispo’s work as contemporary art in the end abandons one type of epistemic control (psychiatry) to inscribe the work within another: a timeless aesthetic formalism to which the patient never laid claim.Less
This chapter turns to the creative work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Brazil’s most famous “outsider artist.” The author addresses what it means to respect the rights of the mad when approaching their work through the lens of contemporary art. Unlike the other Brazilian patients considered in this study, Bispo’s work was legitimated as art after his death. The chapter engages Frederico Morais’s publication Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Arte além da loucura (Arthur Bispo do Rosário: Art beyond madness, 2013) as well as this curator’s key role in Bispo’s canonization into contemporary art. The author probes whether an insistence on Bispo’s work as contemporary art in the end abandons one type of epistemic control (psychiatry) to inscribe the work within another: a timeless aesthetic formalism to which the patient never laid claim.
Stephen Zepke and Simon O'Sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638376
- eISBN:
- 9780748652662
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638376.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
What is at stake for contemporary art in the take up of Deleuze and Guattari's thought? What are the limits and possibilities of this take up? To address these questions, this book presents a series ...
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What is at stake for contemporary art in the take up of Deleuze and Guattari's thought? What are the limits and possibilities of this take up? To address these questions, this book presents a series of inflections that explore the connection between these two fields. The topics studied range from the political and the expanded ‘aesthetic paradigm’ of art practice today, to specific scenes and encounters and the question of technology in relation to art. These essays have been written by philosophers and artists working at the cutting edge of this new area, including writers from outside the Anglo-American tradition.Less
What is at stake for contemporary art in the take up of Deleuze and Guattari's thought? What are the limits and possibilities of this take up? To address these questions, this book presents a series of inflections that explore the connection between these two fields. The topics studied range from the political and the expanded ‘aesthetic paradigm’ of art practice today, to specific scenes and encounters and the question of technology in relation to art. These essays have been written by philosophers and artists working at the cutting edge of this new area, including writers from outside the Anglo-American tradition.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Throughout the history of European modernism, philosophers and artists have been fascinated by madness. Something different happened in Brazil, however, with the “art of the insane” that flourished ...
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Throughout the history of European modernism, philosophers and artists have been fascinated by madness. Something different happened in Brazil, however, with the “art of the insane” that flourished within the modernist movements there. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the direction and creation of art by the mentally ill was actively encouraged by prominent figures in both medicine and art criticism, which led to a much wider appreciation among the curators of major institutions of modern art in Brazil, where pieces are included in important exhibitions and collections. Kaira M. Cabañas shows that at the center of this advocacy stood such significant proponents as psychiatrists Osório César and Nise da Silveira, who championed treatments that included painting and drawing studios; and the art critic Mário Pedrosa, who penned Gestaltist theses on aesthetic response. Cabañas examines the lasting influence of this unique era of Brazilian modernism, and how the afterlife of this “outsider art” continues to raise important questions. How do we respect the experiences of the mad as their work is viewed through the lens of global art? Why is this art reappearing now that definitions of global contemporary art are being contested? Learning from Madness offers an invigorating series of case studies that track the parallels between psychiatric patients’ work in Western Europe and its reception by influential artists there, to an analogous but altogether distinct situation in Brazil.Less
Throughout the history of European modernism, philosophers and artists have been fascinated by madness. Something different happened in Brazil, however, with the “art of the insane” that flourished within the modernist movements there. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the direction and creation of art by the mentally ill was actively encouraged by prominent figures in both medicine and art criticism, which led to a much wider appreciation among the curators of major institutions of modern art in Brazil, where pieces are included in important exhibitions and collections. Kaira M. Cabañas shows that at the center of this advocacy stood such significant proponents as psychiatrists Osório César and Nise da Silveira, who championed treatments that included painting and drawing studios; and the art critic Mário Pedrosa, who penned Gestaltist theses on aesthetic response. Cabañas examines the lasting influence of this unique era of Brazilian modernism, and how the afterlife of this “outsider art” continues to raise important questions. How do we respect the experiences of the mad as their work is viewed through the lens of global art? Why is this art reappearing now that definitions of global contemporary art are being contested? Learning from Madness offers an invigorating series of case studies that track the parallels between psychiatric patients’ work in Western Europe and its reception by influential artists there, to an analogous but altogether distinct situation in Brazil.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226556284
- eISBN:
- 9780226556314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226556314.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Chapter 5 considers the exhibition of psychiatric patients’ art in the global contemporary art circuit, a contemporary history of which Arthur Bispo do Rosário also forms a part. The chapter examines ...
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Chapter 5 considers the exhibition of psychiatric patients’ art in the global contemporary art circuit, a contemporary history of which Arthur Bispo do Rosário also forms a part. The chapter examines how psychiatric patients’ work has been included in international exhibitions (e.g., 11th Lyon Biennial in 2011, the 30th Bienal de São Paulo in 2012, 55th Venice Biennial in 2013) and considers why the outsider artist reappears at the moment when definitions of global contemporary art are at stake. In their turn to beauty, the poetic, and the encyclopedic as unifying themes, the author asks whether these exhibitions’ curators overlook the divergent histories of the critical and the clinical. As a countermodel to this trend, the chapter analyzes contemporary artists who in their work engage the history of radical psychiatry and the legacy of creative expression within it, among them, Javier Téllez and Alejandra Riera.Less
Chapter 5 considers the exhibition of psychiatric patients’ art in the global contemporary art circuit, a contemporary history of which Arthur Bispo do Rosário also forms a part. The chapter examines how psychiatric patients’ work has been included in international exhibitions (e.g., 11th Lyon Biennial in 2011, the 30th Bienal de São Paulo in 2012, 55th Venice Biennial in 2013) and considers why the outsider artist reappears at the moment when definitions of global contemporary art are at stake. In their turn to beauty, the poetic, and the encyclopedic as unifying themes, the author asks whether these exhibitions’ curators overlook the divergent histories of the critical and the clinical. As a countermodel to this trend, the chapter analyzes contemporary artists who in their work engage the history of radical psychiatry and the legacy of creative expression within it, among them, Javier Téllez and Alejandra Riera.
Jenny Lin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526132604
- eISBN:
- 9781526139047
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526132604.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai ...
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Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai offers the first in-depth examination of turn of the twenty-first century Shanghai-based art and design – from state-sponsored exhibitions to fashionable cultural complexes to cutting edge films and installations. This book offers a counter-touristic view of one of the world’s fastest developing megacities that penetrates the contradictions and buried layers of specific locales and artifacts of visual culture. Informed by years of in-situ research including interviews with artists and designers, the book looks beyond contemporary art’s global hype to reveal persistent socio-political tensions accompanying Shanghai’s explosive transitions from semi-colonial capitalism to Maoist socialism to Communist Party-sponsored capitalism. Analyses of exemplary design projects such as Xintiandi and Shanghai Tang, and artworks by Liu Jianhua, Yang Fudong, Gu Wenda and more reveal how Shanghai’s global aesthetics construct glamorizing artifices that mask historically-rooted cross-cultural conflicts between vying notions of foreign-influenced modernity versus anti-colonialist nationalism, and the city’s repressed socialist past versus consumerist present. The book focuses on Shanghai-based art and design from the 1990s-2000s, the decades of the city’s most rapid post-socialist development, while also attending to pivotal Republican and Mao Era examples. Challenging the “East-meets-West” clichés that characterize discussions of urban Shanghai and contemporary Chinese art, this book illuminates critical issues facing today’s artists, architects, and designers, and provides an essential field guide for students of art, design, art history, urban studies, and Chinese culture.Less
Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai offers the first in-depth examination of turn of the twenty-first century Shanghai-based art and design – from state-sponsored exhibitions to fashionable cultural complexes to cutting edge films and installations. This book offers a counter-touristic view of one of the world’s fastest developing megacities that penetrates the contradictions and buried layers of specific locales and artifacts of visual culture. Informed by years of in-situ research including interviews with artists and designers, the book looks beyond contemporary art’s global hype to reveal persistent socio-political tensions accompanying Shanghai’s explosive transitions from semi-colonial capitalism to Maoist socialism to Communist Party-sponsored capitalism. Analyses of exemplary design projects such as Xintiandi and Shanghai Tang, and artworks by Liu Jianhua, Yang Fudong, Gu Wenda and more reveal how Shanghai’s global aesthetics construct glamorizing artifices that mask historically-rooted cross-cultural conflicts between vying notions of foreign-influenced modernity versus anti-colonialist nationalism, and the city’s repressed socialist past versus consumerist present. The book focuses on Shanghai-based art and design from the 1990s-2000s, the decades of the city’s most rapid post-socialist development, while also attending to pivotal Republican and Mao Era examples. Challenging the “East-meets-West” clichés that characterize discussions of urban Shanghai and contemporary Chinese art, this book illuminates critical issues facing today’s artists, architects, and designers, and provides an essential field guide for students of art, design, art history, urban studies, and Chinese culture.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846316456
- eISBN:
- 9781846316708
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846316456.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Lawrence Alloway's scope as an art critic became international in 1950, but his criticism only changed significantly the following year after a review of a Roberto Matta exhibition at the Institute ...
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Lawrence Alloway's scope as an art critic became international in 1950, but his criticism only changed significantly the following year after a review of a Roberto Matta exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). This review marked Alloway's transition from connoisseurship and simple evaluation to a far more dense and demanding art criticism. This section focuses on Alloway's life as an art critic in the period 1952–1961. It provides an overview of ICA in the early 1950s and its Independent Group, Alloway's attitudes toward abstraction and figurative art, his cultural continuum model, his views on graphics and advertising, art autre, Alloway's first trip to the United States, and the emergence of Pop art.Less
Lawrence Alloway's scope as an art critic became international in 1950, but his criticism only changed significantly the following year after a review of a Roberto Matta exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). This review marked Alloway's transition from connoisseurship and simple evaluation to a far more dense and demanding art criticism. This section focuses on Alloway's life as an art critic in the period 1952–1961. It provides an overview of ICA in the early 1950s and its Independent Group, Alloway's attitudes toward abstraction and figurative art, his cultural continuum model, his views on graphics and advertising, art autre, Alloway's first trip to the United States, and the emergence of Pop art.
Michael Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231152921
- eISBN:
- 9780231526784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231152921.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter examines the nascent collaboration between aesthetics and contemporary art by focusing on the critical reception of the emergence of American Pop art in the early 1960s by four ...
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This chapter examines the nascent collaboration between aesthetics and contemporary art by focusing on the critical reception of the emergence of American Pop art in the early 1960s by four philosophers: Susan Sontag, Stanley Cavell, Arthur C. Danto, and Umberto Eco. In particular, it considers the influence of these philosophers on aesthetics—what it calls the Pop Effect. Sontag, Cavell, Danto, and Eco all realized that Pop was a development within art that aesthetic theory at the time could not understand or explain because most aestheticians had not yet fully appreciated the philosophical significance of the history of modernism and were thus ill-prepared to comprehend 1960s art. To analyze the collaboration between aesthetics and contemporary art in the 1960s, the chapter looks at Thomas Crow's book The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent. It also discusses the ethics and politics of Pop in relation to its aesthetics.Less
This chapter examines the nascent collaboration between aesthetics and contemporary art by focusing on the critical reception of the emergence of American Pop art in the early 1960s by four philosophers: Susan Sontag, Stanley Cavell, Arthur C. Danto, and Umberto Eco. In particular, it considers the influence of these philosophers on aesthetics—what it calls the Pop Effect. Sontag, Cavell, Danto, and Eco all realized that Pop was a development within art that aesthetic theory at the time could not understand or explain because most aestheticians had not yet fully appreciated the philosophical significance of the history of modernism and were thus ill-prepared to comprehend 1960s art. To analyze the collaboration between aesthetics and contemporary art in the 1960s, the chapter looks at Thomas Crow's book The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent. It also discusses the ethics and politics of Pop in relation to its aesthetics.
Gary Alan Fine
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226560182
- eISBN:
- 9780226560359
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226560359.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Here we are introduced to how young artists are trained in the contemporary art world and how creativity has found a place in the modern American university. The focus in MFA programs is not teaching ...
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Here we are introduced to how young artists are trained in the contemporary art world and how creativity has found a place in the modern American university. The focus in MFA programs is not teaching of techniques of arts, but rather the development of a coherent artistic self and justification for one's intentions. The artists read theory, learn to talk about their creations, and describe those creations in artist statements. Central to graduate art education is the critique: a public ceremony held several times a year in which students present their recent artwork to their community. As art education has been embraced by the university, it has increasingly become a professionalized discipline, rather than craft or embodied skill.Less
Here we are introduced to how young artists are trained in the contemporary art world and how creativity has found a place in the modern American university. The focus in MFA programs is not teaching of techniques of arts, but rather the development of a coherent artistic self and justification for one's intentions. The artists read theory, learn to talk about their creations, and describe those creations in artist statements. Central to graduate art education is the critique: a public ceremony held several times a year in which students present their recent artwork to their community. As art education has been embraced by the university, it has increasingly become a professionalized discipline, rather than craft or embodied skill.
Simon O’Sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638376
- eISBN:
- 9780748652662
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638376.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter examines contemporary art practice in relation to the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It describes a certain kind of contemporary art practice utilising what might loosely be ...
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This chapter examines contemporary art practice in relation to the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It describes a certain kind of contemporary art practice utilising what might loosely be called a Deleuzian framework, and discusses concepts from across Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari's corpus of work, bringing these to bear on the field of contemporary art practice in general. The chapter explores Guattari's solo writings and speculates on the future orientation of contemporary art.Less
This chapter examines contemporary art practice in relation to the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It describes a certain kind of contemporary art practice utilising what might loosely be called a Deleuzian framework, and discusses concepts from across Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari's corpus of work, bringing these to bear on the field of contemporary art practice in general. The chapter explores Guattari's solo writings and speculates on the future orientation of contemporary art.
Alena Alexandrova (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823274475
- eISBN:
- 9780823274529
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823274475.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
The Introduction provides an overview of the central questions and the theoretical framework of the book. Since the early 1990s in Europe and the United States many artists critically re-appropriated ...
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The Introduction provides an overview of the central questions and the theoretical framework of the book. Since the early 1990s in Europe and the United States many artists critically re-appropriated religious, motifs, themes and images to produce works that cannot qualify as ‘religious,’ but remains in a dialogue with the visual legacy of mostly the Western, and more specifically the Catholic, version of Christianity. Present-day art does not embed religious images to celebrate them, but in order to pose critical questions concerning central aspects of the rules that regulate the status of images, their public significance, the conditions of their production and authorship, and their connection to an origin or tradition, a context or an author that guarantees their value. The motif of the true image or acheiropoietos (not made by a human hand) is related to central set of features that allow distinguishing between regimes or eras of the image. Its transformations provide a conceptual matrix for understanding of the reconfiguring relationships between art and religion. The introduction provides an overview of the theoretical context, the selection of artworks, bibliography on the subject and the chapters of the book.Less
The Introduction provides an overview of the central questions and the theoretical framework of the book. Since the early 1990s in Europe and the United States many artists critically re-appropriated religious, motifs, themes and images to produce works that cannot qualify as ‘religious,’ but remains in a dialogue with the visual legacy of mostly the Western, and more specifically the Catholic, version of Christianity. Present-day art does not embed religious images to celebrate them, but in order to pose critical questions concerning central aspects of the rules that regulate the status of images, their public significance, the conditions of their production and authorship, and their connection to an origin or tradition, a context or an author that guarantees their value. The motif of the true image or acheiropoietos (not made by a human hand) is related to central set of features that allow distinguishing between regimes or eras of the image. Its transformations provide a conceptual matrix for understanding of the reconfiguring relationships between art and religion. The introduction provides an overview of the theoretical context, the selection of artworks, bibliography on the subject and the chapters of the book.
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.
Alena Alexandrova
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823274475
- eISBN:
- 9780823274529
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823274475.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
During the past two decades curators and artists have shown a distinct interest in religion, its different traditions, manifestations in public life, gestures and images. Since the early 1990s in ...
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During the past two decades curators and artists have shown a distinct interest in religion, its different traditions, manifestations in public life, gestures and images. Since the early 1990s in Europe and the United States many artists critically re-appropriated religious, motifs, themes and images to produce works that cannot qualify as ‘religious,’ but remains in a dialogue with the visual legacy of mostly the Western, and more specifically the Catholic, version of Christianity. The book explores the complex relationship between contemporary art and religion. It focuses on the ways artists re-appropriate religious motifs as a means to reflect critically on our desire to believe in images, on the history of seeing them, and on their double power – iconic and political. When embedded in contemporary artworks, religious motifs become tools to address issues that are central to the infrastructure of, and the distinction between, different eras or regimes of the image: the rules that regulate the status of images and their public significance, their modes of production, circulation and display. The book examines the important motif of the acheiropoietic image (not made by human hands). Its survival and transformation in contemporary image-making practices provides a conceptual matrix for understanding of the reconfiguring relationships between art and religion.
The book discusses a number of exhibitions that take religion as their central theme, and a selection works by Bill Viola, Lawrence Malstaf, Victoria Reynolds and Berlinde de Bruyckere who, in their respective ways and media, recycle religious motifs and iconography, and whose works resonate with, or problematise the motif of the true image.Less
During the past two decades curators and artists have shown a distinct interest in religion, its different traditions, manifestations in public life, gestures and images. Since the early 1990s in Europe and the United States many artists critically re-appropriated religious, motifs, themes and images to produce works that cannot qualify as ‘religious,’ but remains in a dialogue with the visual legacy of mostly the Western, and more specifically the Catholic, version of Christianity. The book explores the complex relationship between contemporary art and religion. It focuses on the ways artists re-appropriate religious motifs as a means to reflect critically on our desire to believe in images, on the history of seeing them, and on their double power – iconic and political. When embedded in contemporary artworks, religious motifs become tools to address issues that are central to the infrastructure of, and the distinction between, different eras or regimes of the image: the rules that regulate the status of images and their public significance, their modes of production, circulation and display. The book examines the important motif of the acheiropoietic image (not made by human hands). Its survival and transformation in contemporary image-making practices provides a conceptual matrix for understanding of the reconfiguring relationships between art and religion.
The book discusses a number of exhibitions that take religion as their central theme, and a selection works by Bill Viola, Lawrence Malstaf, Victoria Reynolds and Berlinde de Bruyckere who, in their respective ways and media, recycle religious motifs and iconography, and whose works resonate with, or problematise the motif of the true image.
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/9781784992750.003.0006
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter looks at a development within institutional critique as bracketed by the work of Haacke and Andrea Fraser, highlighting their interest in art as a site of social interaction, and ...
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This chapter looks at a development within institutional critique as bracketed by the work of Haacke and Andrea Fraser, highlighting their interest in art as a site of social interaction, and focusing on the connection made by Fraser between the personal and the financial transaction. This trajectory nests within two typologies of criticism levelled against institutional critique: one claiming that all criticism is eventually subsumed into the system, and the other arguing that the gesture of exposing contradictions relies on a vulgar notion of political reality. This second position defined aesthetics as the form that makes ineligible what is intelligible on the stage of politics, calling for the analysis of forms of visibility that define the appearance of politics. It is in some ways a formalist argument. In contrast, Fraser’s proposition brought a feminist perspective to institutional critique to show how politics appear in and through the human body. In her synthesis of an identity-based/feminist entry point to the work of institutional critique, Fraser offered a perspective on the making of a political stage and its subjects. Her work compared how gender, the (working) human body, or the artwork appear, exist or mediate transactions, and what form value takes in the process.Less
This chapter looks at a development within institutional critique as bracketed by the work of Haacke and Andrea Fraser, highlighting their interest in art as a site of social interaction, and focusing on the connection made by Fraser between the personal and the financial transaction. This trajectory nests within two typologies of criticism levelled against institutional critique: one claiming that all criticism is eventually subsumed into the system, and the other arguing that the gesture of exposing contradictions relies on a vulgar notion of political reality. This second position defined aesthetics as the form that makes ineligible what is intelligible on the stage of politics, calling for the analysis of forms of visibility that define the appearance of politics. It is in some ways a formalist argument. In contrast, Fraser’s proposition brought a feminist perspective to institutional critique to show how politics appear in and through the human body. In her synthesis of an identity-based/feminist entry point to the work of institutional critique, Fraser offered a perspective on the making of a political stage and its subjects. Her work compared how gender, the (working) human body, or the artwork appear, exist or mediate transactions, and what form value takes in the process.
Angela Harutyunyan
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719089534
- eISBN:
- 9781526124074
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089534.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The book addresses late-Soviet and post-Soviet art in Armenia in the context of turbulent social, political and cultural transformations in the late 1980s, throughout the 1990s and in early 2000s ...
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The book addresses late-Soviet and post-Soviet art in Armenia in the context of turbulent social, political and cultural transformations in the late 1980s, throughout the 1990s and in early 2000s through the aesthetic figure of the ‘painterly real’ and its conceptual transformations. It explores the emergence of ‘contemporary art’ in Armenia from within and in opposition to the practices, aesthetics and institutions of Socialist Realism and National Modernism. The book presents the argument that avant-garde art best captures the historical and social contradictions of the period of the so-called ‘transition,’ especially if one considers ‘transition’ from the perspective of the former Soviet republics that have been consistently marginalized in Russian- and East European-dominated post-Socialist studies. Throughout the two decades that encompass the chronological scope of this work, contemporary art has encapsulated the difficult dilemmas of autonomy and social participation, innovation and tradition, progressive political ethos and national identification, the problematic of communication with the world outside of Armenia’s borders, dreams of subjective freedom and the imperative to find an identity in the new circumstances after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This historical study outlines the politics (liberal democracy), aesthetics (autonomous art secured by the gesture of the individual artist), and ethics (ideals of absolute freedom and radical individualism) of contemporary art in Armenia. Through the historical investigation, a theory of post-Soviet art historiography is developed, one that is based on a dialectic of rupture and continuity in relation to the Soviet past. As the first English-language study on contemporary art in Armenia, the book is of prime interest for artists, scholars, curators and critics interested in post-Soviet art and culture and in global art historiography.Less
The book addresses late-Soviet and post-Soviet art in Armenia in the context of turbulent social, political and cultural transformations in the late 1980s, throughout the 1990s and in early 2000s through the aesthetic figure of the ‘painterly real’ and its conceptual transformations. It explores the emergence of ‘contemporary art’ in Armenia from within and in opposition to the practices, aesthetics and institutions of Socialist Realism and National Modernism. The book presents the argument that avant-garde art best captures the historical and social contradictions of the period of the so-called ‘transition,’ especially if one considers ‘transition’ from the perspective of the former Soviet republics that have been consistently marginalized in Russian- and East European-dominated post-Socialist studies. Throughout the two decades that encompass the chronological scope of this work, contemporary art has encapsulated the difficult dilemmas of autonomy and social participation, innovation and tradition, progressive political ethos and national identification, the problematic of communication with the world outside of Armenia’s borders, dreams of subjective freedom and the imperative to find an identity in the new circumstances after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This historical study outlines the politics (liberal democracy), aesthetics (autonomous art secured by the gesture of the individual artist), and ethics (ideals of absolute freedom and radical individualism) of contemporary art in Armenia. Through the historical investigation, a theory of post-Soviet art historiography is developed, one that is based on a dialectic of rupture and continuity in relation to the Soviet past. As the first English-language study on contemporary art in Armenia, the book is of prime interest for artists, scholars, curators and critics interested in post-Soviet art and culture and in global art historiography.
Michael Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231152921
- eISBN:
- 9780231526784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231152921.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This book examines the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and have often focused on art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art, giving rise to an anti-aesthetic stance ...
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This book examines the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and have often focused on art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art, giving rise to an anti-aesthetic stance that is now prevalent in the contemporary art world. The book considers the aesthetics of Susan Sontag, who argues in On Photography (1977) that a photograph of a person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's pleasure. It also considers Sontag's claim in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. The book sees this change as a reflection of a cultural shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and explores these issues in connection with the art of Gerhard Richter and Doris Salcedo. In this introduction, the so-called Dewey Effect—a combination of moral and political demands involving apprehension, recognition, and satisfaction—is discussed.Less
This book examines the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and have often focused on art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art, giving rise to an anti-aesthetic stance that is now prevalent in the contemporary art world. The book considers the aesthetics of Susan Sontag, who argues in On Photography (1977) that a photograph of a person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's pleasure. It also considers Sontag's claim in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. The book sees this change as a reflection of a cultural shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics, and explores these issues in connection with the art of Gerhard Richter and Doris Salcedo. In this introduction, the so-called Dewey Effect—a combination of moral and political demands involving apprehension, recognition, and satisfaction—is discussed.
Liam Gillick
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231170208
- eISBN:
- 9780231540964
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170208.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
Contemporary art does not account for that which is taking place
Contemporary art is resilient but increasingly stressed by artists who feel it is not a term that can account for what they are doing.
Contemporary art does not account for that which is taking place
Contemporary art is resilient but increasingly stressed by artists who feel it is not a term that can account for what they are doing.
Declan Long
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784991449
- eISBN:
- 9781526132291
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784991449.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 — the formal end-point of the thirty-year modern ‘Troubles’ — contemporary visual artists have offered diverse responses to post-conflict ...
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Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 — the formal end-point of the thirty-year modern ‘Troubles’ — contemporary visual artists have offered diverse responses to post-conflict circumstances in Northern Ireland. In Ghost-Haunted Land — the first book-length examination of post-Troubles contemporary art — Declan Long highlights artists who have reflected on the ongoing anxieties of aftermath. Conscious of the simultaneous optimism and uneasiness of the peace era, each of these artists has produced powerful, distinctive work that reflects on legacies of the Troubles years and represents the strangeness of Northern Ireland’s changing landscapes: places marked by traces of enduring division, haunted by lingering spectres of the unresolved past.This wide-ranging study of post-Troubles art addresses developments in video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and more, offering detailed analyses of key works by artists based in Ireland and beyond — including 2014 Turner Prize winner Duncan Campbell and internationally acclaimed filmmaker and photographer Willie Doherty. The art addressed in Ghost-Haunted Land is acutely attentive to specific regional circumstances in Northern Ireland; but it has also developed in dialogue with international art during this period. ‘Post-Troubles’ contemporary art is thus discussed in the context of both local transformations and global operations — and many of the key points of reference in the book come from broader debates about the predicament of contemporary art today: about its current place and purpose in the world, and about the politics and aesthetics of its dominant forms.Less
Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 — the formal end-point of the thirty-year modern ‘Troubles’ — contemporary visual artists have offered diverse responses to post-conflict circumstances in Northern Ireland. In Ghost-Haunted Land — the first book-length examination of post-Troubles contemporary art — Declan Long highlights artists who have reflected on the ongoing anxieties of aftermath. Conscious of the simultaneous optimism and uneasiness of the peace era, each of these artists has produced powerful, distinctive work that reflects on legacies of the Troubles years and represents the strangeness of Northern Ireland’s changing landscapes: places marked by traces of enduring division, haunted by lingering spectres of the unresolved past.This wide-ranging study of post-Troubles art addresses developments in video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and more, offering detailed analyses of key works by artists based in Ireland and beyond — including 2014 Turner Prize winner Duncan Campbell and internationally acclaimed filmmaker and photographer Willie Doherty. The art addressed in Ghost-Haunted Land is acutely attentive to specific regional circumstances in Northern Ireland; but it has also developed in dialogue with international art during this period. ‘Post-Troubles’ contemporary art is thus discussed in the context of both local transformations and global operations — and many of the key points of reference in the book come from broader debates about the predicament of contemporary art today: about its current place and purpose in the world, and about the politics and aesthetics of its dominant forms.
