Art For The Workers

From artists to art workers -- Carl Andre's work ethic -- Robert Morris's art strike -- Lucy Lippard's feminist labor -- Hans Haacke's paperwork.

Women Art Workers provides a new social and cultural history of the Arts and Crafts movement which offers unprecedented insight into how women constructed alternative, creative lifestyles and disseminated the ethos of the social importance of the Arts and Crafts across new local, national, and international spheres of influence.

An exploration of the mythology and reality of post-revolutionary proletarian art in Russia as well as its expression in the festive decorations of Petrograd between 1917 and 1920.

Let's be clear about something: it is infuriating that most interesting artists are perfectly capable of functioning in at least two or three professions that are, unlike art, respected by society in terms of compensation and general usefulness. Furthermore, when the flexibility, certainty, and freedom promised by being part of a critical outside are considered as extensions of recent advances in economic exploitation, does the field of art then become the uncritical, complicit inside of something far more compelling? e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle Contributors Franco "Bifo" Berardi, Keti Chukhrov, Diedrich Diederichsen, Antke Engel, Liam Gillick, Tom Holert, Lars Bang Larsen, Marion von Osten, Precarious Workers Brigade, Irit Rogoff, and Hito Steyerl

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the production of America's consumer culture was centralized in midtown Manhattan to an extent unparalleled in the history of the modern United States. Within a few square miles of skyscrapers were the headquarters of networks like NBC and CBS, the editorial offices of book publishers and mass circulation magazines such as Time and Life, numerous influential newspapers, and major advertising agencies on Madison Avenue. Every day tens of thousands of writers, editors, artists, performers, technicians, secretaries, and other white-collar workers made advertisements, produced media content, and enhanced the appearance of goods in order to boost sales. While this center of creativity has often been portrayed as a smoothly running machine, within these offices many white-collar workers challenged the managers and executives who directed their labors. In this definitive history, The Making of the American Creative Class examines these workers and their industries throughout the twentieth century. As manufacturers and retailers competed to attract consumers' attention, their advertising expenditures financed the growth of enterprises engaged in the production of culture, which in turn provided employment for an increasing number of clerical, technical, professional, and creative workers. The book explores employees' efforts to improve their working conditions by forming unions, experimenting with alternative media and cultural endeavors supported by public, labor, or cooperative patronage, and expanding their opportunities for creative autonomy. As blacklisting and attacks on militant unions left them destroyed or weakened, workers in advertising, design, publishing, and broadcasting in the late twentieth century were constrained in their ability to respond to economic dislocations and to combat discrimination in the culture industries. At once a portrait of a city and the national culture of consumer capitalism it has produced, The Making of the American Creative Class is an innovative narrative of modern American history that addresses issues of earnings and status still experienced by today's culture workers.

Feminist Art Workers: A History is the first comprehensive monograph to survey the groundbreaking work of the collaborative performance art group Feminist Art Workers. Founded in 1976 at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles, the group included Nancy Angelo, Candace Compton, Cheri Gaulke, Vanalyne Green and Laurel Klick. This 230-page publication brings together historic images, archival documents, personal recollections, and critical essays that illuminate artwork that addressed a wide range of issues including women's relationships, sexual violence, and economic rights. Often bringing their work directly to a non-art audience, Feminist Art Workers pioneered new artistic strategies such as tours, floats, phone calls and presented their work in unconventional venues such as cafeterias, conferences, buses and planes. Published by Otis College of Art and Design in conjunction with the exhibition Doin' It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building, as part of the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. Those interested in the historical precedents of contemporary art practices such as collaboration, interactive performance and community based art will discover roots in the work of Feminist Art Workers. Contributing writers include January Parkos Arnall, Temma Balducci, Betty Ann Brown, Meiling Cheng, Marlena Doktorczyk-Donohue, Osayi Endolyn, Joanna Gardner-Huggett, Andrew D. Hottle, Jennie Klein, Tirza True Latimer, Carey Lovelace, Marie B. Shurkus, Barbara T. Smith, Anne Swartz, and Terry Wolverton. This publication is a must for contemporary art scholars, university and college libraries.