Four key historians present a comprehensive history of art from the past century, documenting through 100 essays presented in a year-by-year format key events that contributed to the changing of artistic traditions and the invention of new practices and forms, in a volume complemented by more than 600 reproductions of some of the century's most important works.
"From the modern period until the present day, artworks have exhibited a well-known paradox: they promise a rich aesthetic experience and revolutionary qualities of innovation while simultaneously serving as a luxury commodity whose sale is directed toward a global class of oligarchs. Art's Properties proposes a new way of understanding this paradox, relating art's qualities-its properties-to its status as commercial property. In Art's Properties, esteemed art historian and theorist David Joselit argues that art's fundamental ontological property is its capacity to give access to experiences of alterity--the state of being other, or different. These experiences may appear as the image of a god, or the utopian dimensions of a black square on a white ground. Joselit goes on to explore artwork's relation to infinitude. As he explains, every work of art, in its material and visual qualities, can be host to an unlimited number of events and encounters with spectators, which persist through and over time. This infinitude is curtailed as art becomes property and is made to serve as a representation. In the modern period, white artists have been presumed to manifest an unmarked, supposedly neutral national character in Europe and the United States, while artists of color are often made to stand in for the identity attributed to them. In place of this dynamic of representation, Art's Properties will advocate for privileging narration over representation. While representation is finite-one thing is put in the place of another-narration has no end; it can be multiplied to encompass the many stories an artwork might enable. In focusing on the forms of narration that an artwork can contain, this book explores art's infinite aesthetic and material alterity"-- Provided by publisher
Joselit traces and analyzes the diversity and complexity of postwar American art from Abstract Expressionism to the present clearly and succinctly in this groundbreaking survey. 183 illustrations.
The exhibition catalog features a collection of works showcased at the Whitney Museum of American Art, highlighting contemporary American art. It documents the diverse range of artists and their contributions, reflecting the cultural landscape and artistic innovations of the time. The catalog includes essays, artist profiles, and images that provide insight into the themes and concepts explored during the exhibition, offering a comprehensive overview of the event's significance in the art world.
The book explores the paradox of American television as a privately controlled public medium that fosters passive viewership while masking its antidemocratic nature. It discusses how television creates an illusion of community, undermining genuine social connections due to its centralized corporate structure. David Joselit delves into the tactics employed by artists and media activists in the 1960s and 1970s to challenge and disrupt this closed circuit, using insights from art history to advocate for a more participatory public sphere.
How digital networks are transforming art and architecture Art as we know it is dramatically changing, but popular and critical responses lag behind. In this trenchant illustrated essay, David Joselit describes how art and architecture are being transformed in the age of Google. Under the dual pressures of digital technology, which allows images to be reformatted and disseminated effortlessly, and the exponential acceleration of cultural exchange enabled by globalization, artists and architects are emphasizing networks as never before. Some of the most interesting contemporary work in both fields is now based on visualizing patterns of dissemination after objects and structures are produced, and after they enter into, and even establish, diverse networks. Behaving like human search engines, artists and architects sort, capture, and reformat existing content. Works of art crystallize out of populations of images, and buildings emerge out of the dynamics of the circulation patterns they will house. Examining the work of architectural firms such as OMA, Reiser + Umemoto, and Foreign Office, as well as the art of Matthew Barney, Ai Weiwei, Sherrie Levine, and many others, After Art provides a compelling and original theory of art and architecture in the age of global networks.
How global contemporary art reanimates the past as a resource for the present, combating modern art's legacy of Eurocentrism.
"Ambulance Chasers offers a series of photographic diptychs by the artist Abraham Adams: on the left, the faces of personal injury lawyers photographed from roadside billboards; on the right, the landscapes they survey. The gesture is a double rotation: each photograph is imagined as the spectator of the other, and in each pairing, the exorbitant promises of the animated lawyers are deflated by their juxtaposition with an often featureless roadside landscape. Adams's conceptual performance and art historian David Joselit's text tell a story of American precarity."--Publisher's website
Dada ist da! In Zürich schon immer und zum 100. Jubiläum der Bewegung in diesem Jahr erst recht. Einer der gepriesensten Protagonisten der Bewegung steht im Fokus dieser fulminanten Publikation: Francis Picabia (1879–1953), der Appropriation-Künstler, bevor es dieses Wort überhaupt gab, der schneidige Rennfahrer, Salonlöwe und Frauenheld, der den Autoritäten spottete und sich mit Chuzpe der Kunstgeschichte »annahm«. Seine Kunst erscheint wie ein Spiegelbild seiner selbst: Sie bewegt sich zwischen Kitsch und Ambition, ist exzentrisch, ironisch und exzessiv zugleich. Der Katalog umfasst Texte namhafter Autoren, die die Position Picabias in die Dada-Bewegung einordnen und seinen Beitrag zur Kunst der Moderne kritisch hinterfragen. Nicht zuletzt der opulente Abbildungsteil macht das aufwendig ausgestattete Buch zu einem Lesevergnügen mit Langzeitwirkung, weit über den Ausstellungsbesuch hinaus. Ausstellungen: Kunsthaus Zürich 3.5.–25.9.2016 | MoMA, New York 20.11.2016–19.3.2017
Kunst, wie wir sie kennen, verändert sich dramatisch, aber das allgemeine und kritische Urteil bleibt hinter den Veränderungen zuru?ck. In diesem einschneidenden Essay beschreibt David Joselit, wie sich Kunst und Architektur im Zeitalter von Globalisierung und Digitalisierung wandeln. Unter der zunehmenden Vorherrschaft digitaler Technologien, welche die Remedialisierung und Zirkulation von Bildern vorantreiben, und der Beschleunigung der Kommunikation und des kulturellen Austauschs, betonen Ku?nstler und Architekten verstärkt die Bedeutung von Netzwerken. Sie nutzen diese, um visuelle Daten zu sammeln und neue Formate zu generieren. Kunstwerke entstehen aus Bild-Populationen, Bauwerke aus den situativen Dynamiken des Ortes und den Bewegungsmustern ku?nftiger Nutzer.0Anhand zahlreicher Beispiele zeitgenössischer Kunst und Architektur? Werken von Matthew Barney, Ai Weiwei, Sherrie Levine, von Architekturbu?ros wie OMA, Reiser + Umemoto und Foreign Office? skizziert Joselit eine programmatische Theorie von Kunst und Architektur im Zeitalter globaler Netzwerke