The Changing Boundaries And Nature Of The Modern Art World

Concentrating on the shifting boundaries and definition of art, Richard Kalina offers a panoramic view of the contemporary art scene over the last 30 years. His focus is on the ongoing development of concepts, the transformation of art worlds and the social matrices in which they are created. Discussing painting in general and abstract painting in particular, his survey takes in photorealism, sculpture and art forms found outside of the modernist tradition. Kalina's group of artists includes Mel Bochner, Joan Mitchell, Cy Twombly, Franz West, and Alma Thomas who, in their ongoing projects, explicitly or implicitly questioned the aesthetic assumptions of their times. Merging an examination of animating philosophies and context - political, social, and personal - with a sharply focused look at the works of art themselves, Kalina brings us closer to understanding the social matrices in which art is embedded and responds to bigger questions about the object nature of the work of art in today's world.

'Conceptual art in the Western world is in crisis.' That is the view of many people who are disillusioned with what they regard as its attention-seeking antics, where artists themselves have proudly proclaimed 'the death of art'. Why has art been on this road to destruction, and how did it get there? How does one make sense of the bewildering complexity of Conceptual art, and how does one extract meaning from its diverse and sometimes bizarre manifestations? This predicament needs explanation, and an exploration of the theoretical underpinnings of modern and contemporary art, and a means to evaluate it. This book starts with a summarised overview of the major art movements since the beginning of the twentieth century, a tracing of the extraordinary journey that art has followed in modern times.The next part considers contemporary art movements, to explore whether they have value, and how that value can be determined. Are the activities that take place in the name of art actually art? Or, as some would have it, is it a gigantic sham, manipulated by clowns to make a trap for fools? To some, it is an outrage that modern and contemporary artists can splash paint around quickly and freely, with a modicum of skill, or assemble a range of found objects, and regard themselves as gifted and creative artists. Others see this as a new, forward-rolling wave, with art at last released from the suffocation and restrictions of the past. The rules have been cast aside. There are fresh ways of exploring and seeing the world, and expressing it freely. The world is constantly changing, and art must change with it. Modern art has followed a long journey. Traditions have been largely cast aside, and replaced with an unceasing search for the new. Our apparent progress is now being questioned. Where do we go from here? Are we on the right road? The second half of this book discusses how we can make sense of contemporary art and assign value to an artwork.Traditional painting and sculpture have physical limits, Conceptual art does not. This is a new freedom - but is it freedom for art, or freedom from art?

'Conceptual art in the Western world is in crisis.' That is the view of many people who are disillusioned with what they regard as its attention-seeking antics, where artists themselves have proudly proclaimed 'the death of art'. Why has art been on this road to destruction, and how did it get there? How does one make sense of the bewildering complexity of Conceptual art, and how does one extract meaning from its diverse and sometimes bizarre manifestations? This predicament needs explanation, and an exploration of the theoretical underpinnings of modern and contemporary art, and a means to evaluate it. This book starts with a summarised overview of the major art movements since the beginning of the twentieth century, a tracing of the extraordinary journey that art has followed in modern times. The next part considers contemporary art movements, to explore whether they have value, and how that value can be determined. Are the activities that take place in the name of art actually art? Or, as some would have it, is it a gigantic sham, manipulated by clowns to make a trap for fools?To some, it is an outrage that modern and contemporary artists can splash paint around quickly and freely, with a modicum of skill, or assemble a range of found objects, and regard themselves as gifted and creative artists. Others see this as a new, forward-rolling wave, with art at last released from the suffocation and restrictions of the past. The rules have been cast aside. There are fresh ways of exploring and seeing the world, and expressing it freely. The world is constantly changing, and art must change with it. Modern art has followed a long journey. Traditions have been largely cast aside, and replaced with an unceasing search for the new. Our apparent progress is now being questioned. Where do we go from here? Are we on the right road? The second half of this book discusses how we can make sense of contemporary art and assign value to an artwork. Traditional painting and sculpture have physical limits, Conceptual art does not. This is a new freedom - but is it freedom for art, or freedom from art?

Antimodernism is a term used to describe the international reaction to the onslaught of the modern world that swept across industrialized Western Europe, North America, and Japan in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Scholars in art history, anthropology, political science, history, and feminist media studies explore antimodernism as an artistic response to a perceived sense of loss – in particular, the loss of 'authentic' experience. Embracing the 'authentic' as a redemptive antidote to the threat of unheralded economic and social change, antimodernism sought out experience supposedly embodied in pre-industrialized societies – in medieval communities or 'oriental cultures,' in the Primitive, the Traditional, or Folk. In describing the ways in which modern artists used antimodern constructs in formulating their work, the contributors examine the involvement of artists and intellectuals in the reproduction and diffusion of these concepts. In doing so they reveal the interrelation of fine art, decorative art, souvenir or tourist art, and craft, questioning the ways in which these categories of artistic expression reformulate and naturalise social relations in the field of cultural production.

In recent years, many prominent and successful artists have claimed that their primary concern is not the artwork they produce but the artistic process itself. In this volume, Kim Grant analyzes this idea and traces its historical roots, showing how changing concepts of artistic process have played a dominant role in the development of modern and contemporary art. This astute account of the ways in which process has been understood and addressed examines canonical artists such as Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, and De Kooning, as well as philosophers and art theorists such as Henri Focillon, R. G. Collingwood, and John Dewey. Placing “process art” within a larger historical context, Grant looks at the changing relations of the artist’s labor to traditional craftsmanship and industrial production, the status of art as a commodity, the increasing importance of the body and materiality in art making, and the nature and significance of the artist’s role in modern society. In doing so, she shows how process is an intrinsic part of aesthetic theory that connects to important contemporary debates about work, craft, and labor. Comprehensive and insightful, this synthetic study of process in modern and contemporary art reveals how artists’ explicit engagement with the concept fits into a broader narrative of the significance of art in the industrial and postindustrial world.

Early modern views of nature and the earth upended the depiction of land. Landscape emerged as a site of artistic exploration at a time when environments and ecologies were reshaped and transformed. This volume historicizes the contingency of an ever-changing elemental world, reframing and reimagining landscape as a mediating space in the interplay between the natural and the artificial, the real and the imaginary, the internal and the external. The lens of the "unruly" reveals the latent landscapes that undergirded their conception, the elemental resources that resurfaced from the bowels of the earth, the staged topographies that unsettled the boundaries between nature and technology, and the fragile ecologies that undermined the status quo of human environs. Landscape and Earth in Early Modernity: Picturing Unruly Nature argues for an art history attentive to the vicissitudes of circumstance and attributes the regrounding of representation during a transitional age to the unquiet landscape.

Bringing together twenty-nine of Lawrence Alloway’s most influential essays in one volume, this fascinating collection provides valuable perspectives on the art and visual culture of the second half of the twentieth century. Lawrence Alloway ranks among the most important critics of his time, and his contributions to the spirited and contentious dialogue of his era make for fascinating reading. These twenty-nine provocative essays from 1956 to 1980 from the man who invented the term ‘pop art’ bring art, film, iconography, cybernetics and culture together for analysis and investigation, and do indeed examine the context, content and role of the critic in art and visual culture. Featuring a critical commentary by Richard Kalina, and preface by series editor Saul Ostrow, Imagining the Present will be an enthralling read for all art and visual culture students.