An illuminating exploration of the meaning of abstract
art by acclaimed art historian Kirk Varnedoe "What is
abstract art good for? What's the use-for us as individuals, or for
any society-of ...pictures of nothing, of paintings and sculptures or
prints or drawings that do not seem to show anything except
themselves?" In this invigorating account of abstract art since
Jackson Pollock, eminent art historian Kirk Varnedoe, the former
chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern
Art, asks these and other questions as he frankly confronts the
uncertainties we may have about the nonrepresentational art
produced in the past five decades. He makes a compelling argument
for its history and value, much as E. H. Gombrich tackled
representation fifty years ago in Art and Illusion ,
another landmark A. W. Mellon Lectures volume. Realizing that these
lectures might be his final work, Varnedoe conceived of them as a
statement of his faith in modern art and as the culminating example
of his lucidly pragmatic and philosophical approach to art history.
He delivered the lectures, edited and reproduced here with their
illustrations, to overflowing crowds at the National Gallery of Art
in Washington in the spring of 2003, just months before his death.
With brilliance, passion, and humor, Varnedoe addresses the
skeptical attitudes and misunderstandings that we often bring to
our experience of abstract art. Resisting grand generalizations, he
makes a deliberate and scholarly case for abstraction-showing us
that more than just pure looking is necessary to understand the
self-made symbolic language of abstract art. Proceeding decade by
decade, he brings alive the history and biography that inform the
art while also challenging the received wisdom about distinctions
between abstraction and representation, modernism and
postmodernism, and minimalism and pop. The result is a fascinating
and ultimately moving tour through a half century of abstract art,
concluding with an unforgettable description of one of Varnedoe's
favorite works. Please note: All images in this ebook are presented
in black and white and have been reduced in size.
A pathbreaking history of art that uses digital research and economic tools to reveal enduring inequities in the formation of the art historical canon Painting by Numbers presents a groundbreaking ...blend of art historical and social scientific methods to chart, for the first time, the sheer scale of nineteenth-century artistic production. With new quantitative evidence for more than five hundred thousand works of art, Diana Seave Greenwald provides fresh insights into the nineteenth century, and the extent to which art historians have focused on a limited—and potentially biased—sample of artwork from that time. She addresses long-standing questions about the effects of industrialization, gender, and empire on the art world, and she models more expansive approaches for studying art history in the age of the digital humanities.Examining art in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Greenwald features datasets created from indices and exhibition catalogs that—to date—have been used primarily as finding aids. From this body of information, she reveals the importance of access to the countryside for painters showing images of nature at the Paris Salon, the ways in which time- consuming domestic responsibilities pushed women artists in the United States to work in lower-prestige genres, and how images of empire were largely absent from the walls of London's Royal Academy at the height of British imperial power. Ultimately, Greenwald considers how many works may have been excluded from art historical inquiry and shows how data can help reintegrate them into the history of art, even after such pieces have disappeared or faded into obscurity.Upending traditional perspectives on the art historical canon, Painting by Numbers offers an innovative look at the nineteenth-century art world and its legacy.
Bringing together fifteen scholars of art and culture, this collection addresses visual and material cultural histories of settler colonialism, enslavement, and racialized diasporas in the contested ...white settler state of Canada, offering new perspectives for decolonial and anti-racist scholarship on art, archives, and creative practice.
This book brings together thirteen scholars to introduce the newest and most cutting-edge research in the field of Russian and East European art history. Reconsidering canonical figures, re-examining ...prevalent debates, and revisiting aesthetic developments, the book challenges accepted histories and entrenched dichotomies in art and architecture from the nineteenth century to the present. In doing so, it resituates the artistic production of this region within broader socio-cultural currents and analyzes its interconnections with international discourse, competing political and aesthetic ideologies, and continuous discussions over identity.
As a result of the Napoleonic wars, vast numbers of Old Master paintings were released on to the market from public and private collections across continental Europe. The knock-on effect was the ...growth of the market for Old Masters from the 1790s up to the early 1930s, when the Great Depression put an end to its expansion. This book explores the global movement of Old Master paintings and investigates some of the changes in the art market that took place as a result of this new interest. Arguably, the most important phenomenon was the diminishing of the traditional figure of the art agent and the rise of more visible, increasingly professional, dealerships; firms such as Colnaghi and Agnew’s in Britain, Goupil in France and Knoedler in the USA, came into existence. Old Masters Worldwide explores the ways in which the pioneering practices of such businesses contributed to shape a changing market.
Traces two intersecting trajectories in American art. It shows how rights-based 1960s politics and the identity politics of the 1970s influenced the development of Conceptual art (with a capital 'C') ...into the diverse set of practices generally characterised as conceptualist (with a lower-case 'c').
Wayward Feeling asks what contemporary audio-visual
culture and aesthetic activisms might tell us about the affective
afterlives of historical injustice in post-rainbow South
Africa.
From the 1880s to 1940, French colonial officials, businessmen and soldiers, returning from overseas postings, brought home wooden masks and figures from Africa. This imperial and cultural power-play ...is the jumping-off point for a story that travels from sub-Saharan Africa to Parisian art galleries; from the pages of fashion magazines, through the doors of the Louvre, to world fairs and international auction rooms; into the apartments of avant-garde critics and poets; to the streets of Harlem, and then full-circle back to colonial museums and schools in Dakar, Bamako, and Abidjan. John Warne Monroe guides us on this journey, one that goes far beyond the world of Picasso, Matisse, and Braque, to show how the Modernist avant-garde and the European colonial project influenced each other in profound and unexpected ways. Metropolitan Fetish reveals the complex trajectory of African material culture in the West and provides a map of that passage, tracing the interaction of cultural and imperial power. A broad and far-reaching history of the French reception of African art, it brings to life an era in which the aesthetic category of "primitive art" was invented.
What happens when the shock of artistic transgression wears off, when scandal dissipates, when outrage becomes a tired routine? In this original new book, Theo Reeves-Evison argues that transgressive ...art no longer succeeds on its own terms in societies where language, prohibition and morality have become increasingly malleable. This compels us to rethink the relationship between contemporary art and ethics, and focus our attention on the potential of artworks to propose new values rather than simply challenge pre-existing moral codes. Assembling a novel theoretical framework from the writings of Félix Guattari, Jacques Lacan and others, Ethics of Contemporary Art narrates a journey away from transgression towards a new critical paradigm for the relationship between ethics and aesthetics that places questions of subjectivity centre stage. Along the way artworks by Kader Attia, Artur Zmijewski, Dora Garcia and others serve as springboards launching discussions of the varied pathways along which a renewed ethics of contemporary art might develop.
