Popularisation And Populism In The Visual Arts

This book investigates the pictorial figurations, aesthetic styles and visual tactics through which visual art and popular culture attempt to appeal to "all of us". One key figure these practices bring into play—the "everybody" (which stands for "all of us" and is sometimes a "new man" or a "new woman")—is discussed in an interdisciplinary way involving scholars from several European countries. A key aspect is how popularisation and communication practices—which can assume populist forms—operate in contemporary democracies and where their genealogies lie. A second focus is on the ambivalences of attraction, i.e. on the ways in which visual creations can evoke desire as well as hatred.

The 2021 Capitol Hill Riot marked a watershed moment when the 'old world' of factbased systems of representation was briefly overwhelmed by the emerging hyper-individual politics of aestheticized emotion. In The Trump Effect in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, Kit Messham-Muir and Uroš Cvoro analyse the aesthetics that have emerged at the core of 21st-century politics, and which erupted at the US Capitol in January 2021. Looking at this event's aesthetic dimensions through such aspects as QAnon, white resentment and strongman authoritarianism, they examine the world-wide historical trends towards ethno-nationalism and populism that emerged following the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the dawning of the current post-ideological age. Building on their ground-breaking research into how trauma, emotion and empathy have become well-worn tropes in contemporary art informed by conflict, Messham-Muir and Cvoro go further by highlighting the ways in which art can actively disrupt an underlying drift in society towards white supremacism and ultranationalism. Utilising their outsiders' perspective on a so-called American phenomenon, and rejecting American exceptionalism, their theorising of the 'Trump Effect' rejects the idea of Trump as a political aberration, but as a symptom of deeper and longer-term philosophical shifts in global politics and society. As theorists of contemporary art and visual culture, Messham-Muir and Cvoro explore the ways in which these features of the Trump Effect operate through aesthetics, in the intersection of politics and contemporary art, and provide valuable insight into the current political context.

This book takes a bold look at public art and its populist appeal, offering a more inclusive guide to America's creative tastes and shared culture. It examines the history of American public art – from FDR's New Deal to Christo's The Gates – and challenges preconceived notions of public art, expanding its definition to include a broader scope of works and concepts. Expands the definition of public art to include sites such as Boston's Big Dig, Las Vegas' Treasure Island, and Disney World Offers a refreshing alternative to the traditional rhetoric and criticism surrounding public art Includes insightful analysis of the museum and its role in relation to public art

In the aftermath of Covid-19, the subject of ‘empty places’ has gained renewed topicality and resonance. Watching, Waiting presents a collection of essays that brings emptiness into interdisciplinary focus as an object of study that extends beyond the present. The contributors approach the specific interrelationships of photography and place through emptiness by considering historical and contemporary material in equal measure. Drawing on architecture, anthropology, sociology, and public health, among other fields, they provide insights into geographically and temporally diverse production models of empty places and their corresponding complex and sensitive global and local relations, while also tackling the ethics of behaviour and protests that unfold within them. The book's chapters, both photographic and scholarly essays, cover areas that range widely both thematically and geographically, spanning static film footage of Nicosia's Buffer Zone, protest photographs in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in Bristol, staged images from the University of Zagreb's ethnological archives, historic landscape and architectural photography, aerial shots of Covid-19 mass graves in Brazil, photos of artificially built field hospitals and quarantine rooms during the pandemic, and images of empty airports at night. Through still and moving images, Watching, Waiting examines the photographic aestheticisation of emptiness, existing stereotypes of ‘empty places’, and transformations of human experiences.

This interdisciplinary collection explores four distinct perspectives about the mask, as object of use for protection, identity, and disguise. In part I, contributors address human identities within collective social performance, with chapters on performativity and the far right and masked identities in political resistance and communication. Part II focuses on the mask as a signifying object with strong representational challenges, exploring representations in festivals, literature, and film. Part III investigates the ambiguous use of the mask as a protective and concealing element, delving into visual culture and digital social media contexts. Finally, Part VI draws on the work of Levinas and Deleuze to investigate a philosophical view of the mask that addresses memory and ethics within intersubjective relationships. Questioning the contemporary world, using communication, sociology, visual culture, and philosophical theory, the volume provides a pedagogical and formative perspective on the mask.

This cross-disciplinary book, situated on the periphery of culture, employs humour to better comprehend the arts, the outsider and exclusion, illuminating the ever-changing social landscape, the vagaries of taste and limits of political correctness. Each chapter deals with specific themes and approaches – from the construct of outsider and complexity of humour, to Outsider Art and spaces – using various theoretical and analytical methods. Paul Clements draws on humour, especially from visual arts and culture (and to a lesser extent literature, film, music and performance), as a tool of ridicule, amongst other discourses, employed by the powerful but also as a weapon to satirize them. These ambiguous representations vary depending on context, often assimilated then reinterpreted in a game of authenticity that is poignant in a world of facsimile and 'fake news'. The humour styles of a range of artists are highlighted to reveal the fluidity and diversity of meaning which challenges expectations and at its best offers resistance and, crucially, a voice for the marginal. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in art history, cultural studies, fine art, humour studies and visual culture.

In this book, theatre historian Jason Price looks at the relationships and exchanges that took place between high and low cultural forms in Britain from 1880 to 1940, focusing on the ways in which figures from popular entertainments, such as music hall serio-comics, clowns, and circus acrobats, came to feature in modern works of art. Readers with an interest in art, theatre, and the history of modern Britain will find Price’s approach, which sees major works of art used to illuminate the histories of once-famous entertainers and the wider social, political, and cultural landscape of this period, accessible and engaging. The book will bring to life for readers some of the most vivid works of modern British art and reveal how individuals historically overlooked due to their gender, sexuality, or race played a significant role in the shaping of British culture during this period of monumental social change.

A Critical Cultural Sociological Exploration of Attitudes toward Migration in Czechia: What Lies Beneath the Fear of the Thirteenth Migrant qualitatively deciphers what lies beneath the fears about the imaginary “thirteenth migrant” and explores how individuals make sense of migration in nontraditional destination countries, utilizing critical, cultural sociological methods to explore the deep meaning-making processes that inform migration attitudes.