Art And Liberation

The role of art in Marcuse’s work has often been neglected, misinterpreted or underplayed. His critics accused him of a religion of art and aesthetics that leads to an escape from politics and society. Yet, as this volume demonstrates, Marcuse analyzes culture and art in the context of how it produces forces of domination and resistance in society, and his writings on culture and art generate the possibility of liberation and radical social transformation. The material in this volume is a rich collection of many of Marcuse’s published and unpublished writings, interviews and talks, including ‘Lyric Poetry after Auschwitz’, reflections on Proust, and Letters on Surrealism; a poem by Samuel Beckett for Marcuse’s eightieth birthday with exchange of letters; and many articles that explore the role of art in society and how it provides possibilities for liberation. This volume will be of interest to those new to Marcuse, generally acknowledged as a major figure in the intellectual and social milieus of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to the specialist, giving access to a wealth of material from the Marcuse Archive in Frankfurt and his private collection in San Diego, some of it published here in English for the first time. A comprehensive introduction by Douglas Kellner reflects on the genesis, development, and tensions within Marcuse’s aesthetic, while an afterword by Gerhard Schweppenhäuser summarizes their relevance for the contemporary era.

Take care of yourself. How many times a week do we hear or say these words' If we all took the time to care for ourselves, how much stronger will we be' More importantly how much stronger will our communities be' In Take Care of Your Self, Iraqi artist and curator Sundus Abdul Hadi turns a critical and inventive eye on the notion of self-care, rejecting the idea that self-care means buying stuff and recasting it as a collective practice rooted in the liberation struggles of the oppressed. Throughout, Abdul Hadi explores the role of art in fostering healing for those affected by racism, war, and displacement, weaving in the artwork of twenty-seven artists of color from diverse backgrounds to identify the points where these struggles intersect. In centering the voices of those often relegated to the margins of the art world and emphasizing the imperative to create safe spaces for artists of color to explore their complicated reactions to oppression, Abdul Hadi casts self-care as a political act rooted in the impulse toward self-determination, empowerment, and healing that animates the work of artists of color across the world.

The role of art in Marcuse’s work has often been neglected, misinterpreted or underplayed. His critics accused him of a religion of art and aesthetics that leads to an escape from politics and society. Yet, as this volume demonstrates, Marcuse analyzes culture and art in the context of how it produces forces of domination and resistance in society, and his writings on culture and art generate the possibility of liberation and radical social transformation. The material in this volume is a rich collection of many of Marcuse’s published and unpublished writings, interviews and talks, including ‘Lyric Poetry after Auschwitz’, reflections on Proust, and Letters on Surrealism; a poem by Samuel Beckett for Marcuse’s eightieth birthday with exchange of letters; and many articles that explore the role of art in society and how it provides possibilities for liberation. This volume will be of interest to those new to Marcuse, generally acknowledged as a major figure in the intellectual and social milieus of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to the specialist, giving access to a wealth of material from the Marcuse Archive in Frankfurt and his private collection in San Diego, some of it published here in English for the first time. A comprehensive introduction by Douglas Kellner reflects on the genesis, development, and tensions within Marcuse’s aesthetic, while an afterword by Gerhard Schweppenhäuser summarizes their relevance for the contemporary era.

The years before World War I were a time of social and political ferment in Europe, which profoundly affected the art world. A major center of this creative tumult was Paris, where many avant-garde artists sought to transform modern art through their engagement with radical politics. In this provocative study of art and anarchism in prewar France, Patricia Leighten argues that anarchist aesthetics and a related politics of form played crucial roles in the development of modern art, only to be suppressed by war fever and then forgotten. Leighten examines the circle of artists—Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, František Kupka, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees Van Dongen, and others—for whom anarchist politics drove the idea of avant-garde art, exploring how their aesthetic choices negotiated the myriad artistic languages operating in the decade before World War I. Whether they worked on large-scale salon paintings, political cartoons, or avant-garde abstractions, these artists, she shows, were preoccupied with social criticism. Each sought an appropriate subject, medium, style, and audience based on different conceptions of how art influences society—and their choices constantly shifted as they responded to the dilemmas posed by contradictory anarchist ideas. According to anarchist theorists, art should expose the follies and iniquities of the present to the masses, but it should also be the untrammeled expression of the emancipated individual and open a path to a new social order. Revealing how these ideas generated some of modernism’s most telling contradictions among the prewar Parisian avant-garde, The Liberation of Painting restores revolutionary activism to the broader history of modern art.

Liberation through Hearing, or more fully, The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate States (bar-do thos-grol chen-mo), has become widely known by its descriptive nickname used in the West, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. These secret teachings are attributed to the 8th century Indian Buddhist Master Padma Sambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, and are thought to have then been hidden in Tibet. Such a text is regarded as a "treasure" or terma (gter ma) text to be rediscovered later, as this one was by Karma Lingpa in the 14th century. A number of legends have grown around Padma Sambhava's life and deeds, and he is widely venerated as a 'second Buddha' across Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Himalayan states of India. The Nyingma School considers Padma Sambhava to be a founder of their tradition.

Today, around a million British people are of Caribbean descent, reflecting a history of post-war migration that essentially begins and ends with the Nationality Act of 1948 and the Immigration Act of 1972 - the so-called Windrush Generation. For many, London in particular was where the cultural archipelago of the Caribbean came together for the first time - communication and travel between the islands being difficult. This British-Caribbean connection gave rise to a diverse, complex and exciting wealth of Black cultural forms. At one end of the spectrum, British-Caribbean art is abstract, symbolist and at times cosmological; at the other it is socially realist, with many other positions in between or off that spectrum. Where art is engaged with changes in society, it evokes a community's struggle to forge an identity and livelihood for itself in an environment that often proved hostile. Other works evoke deeper historical experiences, in particular the traumatic after-images of plantation slavery and its legacy in culture and society. This comprehensive volume brings together key writings on the interrelationship of Britain and the English-speaking Caribbean nations, focussing specifically on the art of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain from the 1920s to today. Combining classic writings with some newlycommissioned contributions, it explores intersecting areas of Black-British cultural production and reflects the diversity of the Black-British experience. With contributions from a range of scholars, Liberation through Imagination is an invaluable sourcebook for those interested in the rich and diverse field of postcolonial British-Caribbean art.