Download or read book On Contemporary Art written by Cesar Aira and published by David Zwirner Books. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translated into English for the first time, On Contemporary Art, a speech by the renowned novelist César Aira, was delivered at a 2010 colloquium in Madrid dedicated to bridging the gap between writing and the visual arts. On Aira’s dizzying and dazzling path, everything comes under question—from reproducibility of artworks to the value of the written word itself. In the end, Aira leaves us stranded on the bridge between writing and art that he set out to construct in the first place, flailing as we try to make sense of where we stand. Aira’s On Contemporary Art exemplifies what the ekphrasis series is dedicated to doing—exploring the space in which words give meaning to objects, and objects shape our words. Like the great writers Walter Benjamin and Hermann Broch before him, Aira operates in the space between fiction and essay writing, art and analysis. Pursuing questions about reproducibility, art making, and limits of language, Aira’s unique voice adds new insights to the essential conversations that continue to inform our understanding of art.

Download or read book The Big Picture written by Matthew Israel and published by Prestel Verlag. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the compelling story of the evolution of contemporary art, its state today, and where it’s headed, through a sample of ten artworks created by ten artists over a span of fifteen years. Written in an engaging, straightforward style by prominent art historian Matthew Israel, this book presents ten outstanding examples of contemporary art, each with significant historical or cultural relevance to contemporary art’s big picture. Drawn from the fields of photography, painting, performance, installation, video, film, and public art, the works featured here combine to create a bigger picture of the state of contemporary art today. From Andreas Gurskys large-scale color photograph “Rhine II” to Kara Walkers acclaimed installation in the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, each work is carefully explored within the larger perspective of its social and artistic milieu. Articulate and insightful, this book offers readers the ability to consider each work in-depth, while also providing an easily digestible foundation from which to study the often challenging but continually fascinating world of 21st-century art.

Download or read book What Is Contemporary Art written by Terry E. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who gets to say what counts as contemporary art? Artists, critics, curators, gallerists, auctioneers, collectors, or the public? Revealing how all of these groups have shaped today’s multifaceted definition, Terry Smith brilliantly shows that an historical approach offers the best answer to the question: What is Contemporary Art? Smith argues that the most recognizable kind is characterized by a return to mainstream modernism in the work of such artists as Richard Serra and Gerhard Richter, as well as the retro-sensationalism of figures like Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. At the same time, Smith reveals, postcolonial artists are engaged in a different kind of practice: one that builds on local concerns and tackles questions of identity, history, and globalization. A younger generation embodies yet a third approach to contemporaneity by investigating time, place, mediation, and ethics through small-scale, closely connective art making. Inviting readers into these diverse yet overlapping art worlds, Smith offers a behind-the-scenes introduction to the institutions, the personalities, the biennials, and of course the works that together are defining the contemporary. The resulting map of where art is now illuminates not only where it has been but also where it is going.

Download or read book What was Contemporary Art written by Richard Meyer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Contemporary art in the early twenty-first century is often discussed as though it were a radically new phenomenon unmoored from history. Yet all works of art were once contemporary to the artist and culture that produced them. In What Was Contemporary Art? Richard Meyer reclaims the contemporary from historical amnesia, exploring episodes in the study, exhibition, and reception of early twentieth-century art and visual culture.

Download or read book Anywhere or Not at All written by Peter Osborne and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new reading of the philosophy of contemporary art by the author of The Politics of Time Contemporary art is the object of inflated and widely divergent claims. But what kind of discourse can open it up effectively to critical analysis? Anywhere or Not at All is a major philosophical intervention in art theory that challenges the terms of established positions through a new approach at once philosophical, historical, social and art-critical. Developing the position that “contemporary art is postconceptual art,” the book progresses through a dual series of conceptual constructions and interpretations of particular works to assess the art from a number of perspectives: contemporaneity and its global context; art against aesthetic; the Romantic pre-history of conceptual art; the multiplicity of modernisms; transcategoriality; conceptual abstraction; photographic ontology; digitalization; and the institutional and existential complexities of art-space and art-time. Anywhere or Not at All maps out the conceptual space for an art that is both critical and contemporary in the era of global capitalism. Winner of the 2014 Annual Book Prize of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (USA)

Download or read book 50 Contemporary Artists You Should Know written by Christiane Weidemann and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This survey of great contemporary artists is the perfect introduction to the exciting world of art today. Artists working after the Second World War faced a confounding array of challenges, as stylistic barriers were broken, technology advanced, and issues of sexuality and race came to the forefront. From painters and photographers to sculptors and performance artists, fifty of the most influential contemporary artists are profiled in this colorful and engaging book that traces the various artistic movements and radical changes of the second half of the twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. Presented chronologically, each artist is featured in 2 or 4-page spreads that include brilliant reproductions of their most important works, an illuminating biography, key dates in their career, and informative background on major developments in the art world. Throughout the volume a timeline places each artist within the context of contemporary art. As diverse and inspiring as the artists themselves, this book is a voyage of discovery into art's cutting edge.

Download or read book Playing at Home written by Gill Perry and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art Since the ’80s, a new series from Reaktion Books, seeks to offer compelling surveys of popular themes in contemporary art. In the first book in the series, Gill Perry reveals how the house and the idea of home have inspired a range of imaginative and playful works by artists across the globe. Exploring how artists have engaged with this theme in different contexts—from mobile homes and beach houses to haunted houses and broken homes—Playing at Home shows that our relationship with houses involves complex responses in which gender, race, class, and status overlap, and that through these relationships we turn a house into a home. Perry looks at the works of numerous artists, including Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Michael Landy, Mike Kelley, and Peter Garfield, as well as the work of artists who travel across continents and see home as a shifting notion, such as Do-Ho-Suh and Song Dong. She also engages with the work of philosophers and cultural theorists from Walter Benjamin and Gaston Bachelard to Johan Huizinga and Henri Lefebvre, who inform our understanding of living and dwelling. Ultimately, she argues that irony, parody, and play are equally important in our interpretations of these works on the home. With over one hundred images, Playing at Home covers a wide range of art and media in a fascinating look at why there’s no place like home.

Download or read book The Story of Contemporary Art written by Tony Godfrey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively introduction to the rich and diverse history of contemporary art over the past 60 years—from Modernism and minimalism to artists like Andy Warhol and Marina Abramović. Accessible and with lavish illustrations, this is the perfect gift for art history fans and anyone looking for a new, more inclusive perspective on ‘the old boys’ club.’ Encountering a work of contemporary art, a viewer might ask, "What does it mean?" "Is it really art?" and "Why does it cost so much?" These are not the questions that E. H. Gombrich set out to answer in his magisterial The Story of Art. Contemporary art seems totally unlike what came before it, departing from the road map supplied by Raphael, Dürer, Rembrandt, and other European masters. In The Story of Contemporary Art, Tony Godfrey picks up where Gombrich left off, offering a lively introduction to contemporary art that stretches from Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes to Marina Abramović’s performance art to today’s biennale circuit and million-dollar auctions. Godfrey, a curator and writer on contemporary art, chronicles important developments in pop art, minimalism, conceptualism, installation art, performance art, and beyond.

Download or read book Defining Contemporary Art written by Daniel Birnbaum and published by Phaidon Press. This book was released on 2011-11-07 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1980s the sprouting of new movements that had driven modern art since the nineteenth century finally went dormant, sputtering out with a last few half-hearted lels ('pattern painting', 'neo-geo', 'commodity art'). But this was not the end of art history -- far from it. In the years since, art's creative development has remained more vibrant than ever, resulting in a staggering diversity of new forms. Defining Contemporary Art responds to this unique landscape with an innovative approach to art history. Assembled and written by eight of the most prominent curators working today, all of whom have both witnessed and shaped this period, Defining Contemporary Art tells the story of the two hundred pivotal artworks of the past twenty-five years. These artworks include not only the most talked out pieces but also the quietly influential works, those which may have been overlooked at the time of their making but which went on to change the paradigm of their era. Arranged year by year, these two hundred works provide a true chronological depiction of creativity in our era, forming a mosaic in which readers may find their own patterns..

Download or read book How to Read Contemporary Art written by Michael Wilson and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Today's artists create work that's challenging, complicated, and often perplexing, and this book offers a guide to understanding-and enjoying- the wide range of works on display in museums and galleries worldwide. Organized alphabetically, the book includes more than two hundred works of art made in the last twenty years by living artists from all over the globe, encompassing photography, installation, sculpture, painting, video art, perfomance, and more. Author Michael Wilson explores the impact of a broad selection of the most prominent artists at work around the world, including Francis Alys, Allora & Calzadilla, Luc Tuymans, and Marina Abramovic." - Excerpt from back cover.

Download or read book Duchamp s Last Day written by Donald Shambroom and published by David Zwirner Books. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published on the fiftieth anniversary of Marcel Duchamp’s death, Duchamp’s Last Day offers a radical reading of the artist’s final hours. Just moments after Duchamp died, his closest friend Man Ray took a photograph of him. His face is wan; his eyes are closed; he appears calm. Taking this image as a point of departure, Donald Shambroom begins to examine the surrounding context—the dinner with Man Ray and another friend, Robert Lebel, the night Duchamp died, the conversations about his own death at that dinner and elsewhere, and the larger question of whether this radical artist’s death can be read as an extension of his work. Shambroom’s in-depth research into this final night, and his analysis of the photograph, feeds into larger questions about the very nature of artworks and authorship which Duchamp raised in his lifetime. In the case of this mysterious and once long-lost photograph, who is the author? Man Ray or Duchamp? Is it an artwork or merely a record? Has the artist himself turned into one of his own readymades? A fascinating essay that is both intimate and steeped in art history, Duchamp’s Last Day is filled with intricate details from decades of research into this peculiar encounter between art, life, and death. Shambroom’s book is a wonderful study of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Contemporary Art Gallery written by David Carrier and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-23 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone who looks at contemporary art is familiar with galleries. But visual features of these mysterious temples tend to be taken for granted. The basic purpose of this book is to enliven the reader’s latent knowledge of galleries, including architectural motifs, the intended impression that is conveyed to the visitor, and human interactions within them. The contemporary art world system includes artists’ studios, art galleries, homes of collec-tors and public art museums. To comprehend art, one needs to understand these settings and how it travels through them. The contemporary art gallery is a store where luxury goods are sold. What distinguishes it from stores selling other luxuries – upscale clothing, jewelry, and posh cars – is the nature of the merchandise. While much has been written about the art, this book uncovers the secretive culture of the galleries themselves. The gallery is the public site where art is first seen – anyone can come and look for free. This store, a commercial site, is where aesthetic judgments are made. Art’s value is determined in this marketplace by the consensus formed by public opinion, professional re-viewers and sales. The gallery, then, is the nexus of the enigmatic, billion dollar art world, and it is that space that is dissected here. The first chapter briefly describes the beginnings of the present contemporary art gallery. The second presents the experience of gallery going, presenting summary accounts of vis-its to some contemporary galleries. The third expands and extends that analysis, with de-tailed close up descriptions and comparative evaluations of many diverse contemporary galleries, in order to identify the challenges provided by these marvelous places. Then the fourth chapter indicates why, in the near future, due to the proliferation of myriad art fairs and online platforms extant today, such galleries might disappear altogether.

Download or read book Contemporary Art written by Charlotte Bonham Carter and published by Goodman Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning 40 years, this book covers 200 of the most widely exhibited international artists, organized A-Z.

Download or read book When the Machine Made Art written by Grant D. Taylor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering how culturally indispensable digital technology is today, it is ironic that computer-generated art was attacked when it burst onto the scene in the early 1960s. In fact, no other twentieth-century art form has elicited such a negative and hostile response. When the Machine Made Art examines the cultural and critical response to computer art, or what we refer to today as digital art. Tracing the heated debates between art and science, the societal anxiety over nascent computer technology, and the myths and philosophies surrounding digital computation, Taylor is able to identify the destabilizing forces that shape and eventually fragment the computer art movement.

Download or read book The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art written by Martha Buskirk and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-02-18 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of transformations in the nature of the art object and artistic authorship in the last four decades. In this book, Martha Buskirk addresses the interesting fact that since the early 1960s, almost anything can and has been called art. Among other practices, contemporary artists have employed mass-produced elements, impermanent materials, and appropriated imagery, have incorporated performance and video, and have created works through instructions carried out by others. Furthermore, works of art that lack traditional signs of authenticity or permanence have been embraced by institutions long devoted to the original and the permanent. Buskirk begins with questions of authorship raised by minimalists' use of industrial materials and methods, including competing claims of ownership and artistic authorship evident in conflicts over the right to fabricate artists' works. Examining recent examples of appropriation, she finds precedents in pop art and the early twentieth-century readymade and explores the intersection of contemporary artistic copying and the system of copyrights, trademarks, and brand names characteristic of other forms of commodity production. She also investigates the ways that connections between work and context have transformed art and institutional conventions, the impact of new materials on definitions of medium, the role of the document as both primary and secondary object, and the significance of conceptually oriented performance work for the intersection of photography and the human body in contemporary art. Buskirk explores how artists active in the 1980s and 1990s have recombined strategies of the art of the 1960s and 1970s. She also shows how the mechanisms through which art is presented shape not only readings of the work but the work itself. She uses her discussion of the readymade and conceptual art to explore broader issues of authorship, reproduction, context, and temporality.

Download or read book Contemporary Art written by Terry Smith and published by Laurence King. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Art: World Currents argues that, in recent decades, a worldwide shift from modern to contemporary art has occurred. This has not, however, been a uniform change from one phase or styles in the history of art to another. Rather artists everywhere have embraced the contemporary world's teeming multiplicity, its proliferating differences and its challenging complexities. Alongside more that 370 key works, Terry Smith shows how contemporary art achieved definitive force in the markets and museums of the major art centres during the 1980s and then became a global phenomenon as artworlds everywhere began to connect more closely. New communicative technologies and expanding social media are now shaping the future of art. This book breaks new ground in tracing how modern, traditional and indigenous art became contemporary in each cultural region of the world. Diversity - the contemporaneity of difference - not a convergence towards sameness, Smith argues, is what makes today's art contemporary.

Download or read book Artist author written by Cornelia Lauf and published by Distributed Art Publishers (DAP). This book was released on 1998 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: from fanzines to books of visual poetry, sketchbooks to illustrated books, commercial fashion catalogs to photo albums. Defined loosely as a book done by an artist, which is itself a work of art, an "artist's book" is an idea that goes back to the time of illuminated manuscripts. Departing from that tradition however, which ended with the development in the 19th century of the livre de luxe, artists since the 1960's have attempted radical approaches to the book as autonomous art form. Spurred on in recent times by the advent of desktop publishing, this phenomena has continued to grow. This book features numerous examples, as well as informative text, and is sure to delight both bibliophiles and art lovers alike.