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Viewers of contemporary art are often invited to involve themselves actively in artworks, by entering installations, touching objects, performing instructions, or clicking on interactive websites. Why have artists sought to engage spectators in these new forms of participation? In what ways does active participation affect the viewer's experience and the status of the artwork? Spanning a range of practices, including kinetic art, happenings, environments, performance, installations, relational and new media art from the 1950s to the present, this critical anthology sheds light on the history and specificity of artworks that only come to life when you – the viewer - are invited to "do it yourself." Rather than a specialist topic in the history of twentieth- and twenty-first century art, the "do-it-yourself" artwork raises broader issues concerning the role of the viewer in art, the status of the artwork, and the socio-political relations between art and its contexts.
An illustrated examination of one of Hirschhorn's “precarious” monuments, now dismantled.
Participatory art practices allow members of an audience to actively contribute to the creation of art. Annemarie Kok provides a detailed analysis and explanation of the use of participatory strategies in art in the so-called ›long sixties‹ (starting around 1958 and ending around 1974) in Western Europe. Drawing on extensive archival materials and with the help of the toolbox of the actor-network theory, she maps out the various actors of three case studies of participatory projects by John Dugger and David Medalla, Piotr Kowalski, and telewissen, all of which were part of documenta 5 (Kassel, 1972).
Taking its departure point from the 1933 surrealist photographs of ?involuntary sculptures? by Brassa?nd Dal?Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art offers fresh perspectives on the sculptural object by relating it to both surrealist concerns with chance and the crucial role of photography in framing the everyday. This collection of essays questions the nature of sculptural practice, looking to forms of production and reproduction that blur the boundaries between things that are made and things that are found. One of the book?s central themes is the interplay of presence and absence in sculpture, as it is highlighted, disrupted, or multiplied through photography?s...
Danto argues that recent developments in art--in particular the production of works that cannot be told from ordinary things--make urgent the need for a new theory of art. He demonstrates the relationship between philosophy and art and the connections that hold between art, social institutions, and art history.
A Companion to Contemporary Art is a major survey covering the major works and movements, the most important theoretical developments, and the historical, social, political, and aesthetic issues in contemporary art since 1945, primarily in the Euro-American context. Collects 27 original essays by expert scholars describing the current state of scholarship in art history and visual studies, and pointing to future directions in the field. Contains dual chronological and thematic coverage of the major themes in the art of our time: politics, culture wars, public space, diaspora, the artist, identity politics, the body, and visual culture. Offers synthetic analysis, as well as new approaches to, debates central to the visual arts since 1945 such as those addressing formalism, the avant-garde, the role of the artist, technology and art, and the society of the spectacle.
Viewers of contemporary art are often invited to involve themselves actively in artworks, by entering installations, touching objects, performing instructions or clicking on interactive websites. Why have artists sought to engage spectators in these new forms of participation? In what ways does active participation affect the viewer’s experience and the status of the artwork? Spanning a range of practices including kinetic art, happenings, environments, performance, installations, relational and new media art from the 1950s to the present, this critical anthology sheds light on the history and specificity of artworks that only come to life when you -- the viewer -- are invited to "do it yourself." Rather than a specialist topic in the history of twentieth- and twenty-first century art, the "do-it-yourself" artwork raises broader issues concerning the role of the viewer in art, the status of the artwork, and the socio-political relations between art and its contexts.
The first book to chart Scott Burton’s performance art and sculpture of the 1970s. Scott Burton (1939–89) created performance art and sculpture that drew on queer experience and the sexual cultures that flourished in New York City in the 1970s. David J. Getsy argues that Burton looked to body language and queer behavior in public space—most importantly, street cruising—as foundations for rethinking the audiences and possibilities of art. This first book on the artist examines Burton’s underacknowledged contributions to performance art and how he made queer life central in them. Extending his performances about cruising, sexual signaling, and power dynamics throughout the decade, Bu...
The neo-avant-garde of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, is due for a thoroughgoing reassessment. This collection of essays represents the first full-scale attempt to deal with the concept from an interdisciplinary standpoint. A number of essays in this book concentrate on fine art, particularly painting and sculpture, thereby adding significantly to the growing art historical literature in the field, but a number of the contributions also focus on poetry, performance, theatre, film, architecture and music. Given that there are also major essays here dealing with geographical blindspots in current neo-avant-garde studies, with thematic issues such as art’s entanglement with gender, mass culture and politics, with key neo-avant-garde publications, and with the purely theoretical problems attaching to the theorisation of the topic, this collection offers a multi-dimensional approach to the subject which is noticeably lacking elsewhere. Taken together these essays represent a consolidated attempt at re-thinking the ‘cultural logic’ of the immediate post-World War II period.
Hélio Oiticica (1937-80) was one of the most brilliant Brazilian artist of the 1960s and 1970s. He was a forerunner of participatory art, and his melding of geometric abstraction and bodily engagement has influenced contemporary artists. This book examines Oiticica's impressive works against the backdrop of Brazil's dramatic postwar push for modernization.