Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde

Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde PDF

Author: Andrew Benjamin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-07-26

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1134920466

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This book explores the relationship between art and philosophy. Andrew Benjamin argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. It is in relation to this centrality, understood through the differences between modes of being, that art, mimesis and the avant-garde come to be presented. A fundamental part of this book is the original interpretations of important contemporary painters and their paintings: Lucian Freud's self-portraits, Francis Bacon's use of mirrors, R.B. Kitaj and Jewish identity, Anselm Kiefer and iconoclasm. Apart from painting, Benjamin considers architecture, literature and the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin and Descartes in elaborating the various aspects of ontological difference. The theory of the avant-garde which is developed in the book, in which the avant-garde is a philosophical category rather than a historical marker, is a major contribution to art criticism. It brings the worlds of contemporary art criticism and contemporary philosophy closer together.

The Total Art of Stalinism

The Total Art of Stalinism PDF

Author: Boris Groys

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2014-05-27

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1844678091

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From the ruins of communism, Boris Groys emerges to provoke our interest in the aesthetic goals pursued with such catastrophic consequences by its founders. Interpreting totalitarian art and literature in the context of cultural history, this brilliant essay likens totalitarian aims to the modernists’ goal of producing world-transformative art. In this new edition, Groys revisits the debate that the book has stimulated since its first publication.

The Aesthetics of Disturbance

The Aesthetics of Disturbance PDF

Author: David Graver

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9780472105076

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Explores interconnections among early 20th-century visual, literary, and performance art

Futurism: Anticipating Postmodernism

Futurism: Anticipating Postmodernism PDF

Author: Ilaria Riccioni

Publisher: Mimesis

Published: 2019-08-02T00:00:00+02:00

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 8869772500

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The first Manifesto of Futurism was published on Le Figaro on February 20th, 1909. It was to become the first avantgarde movement in art, with the multiple aim of: changing the function of art within society, foster Italian culture beyond its provincial domains, and last, but not least extend language as free expression of a new and forthcoming society of technology. Art in life, was the deep aim of Marinetti’s poetry, which was then to expand well beyond Italian borders and well beyond artistic expression, becoming an attitude for entering the new society. The more society was developing social constraints, the more artistic expression would become free of canons to let imagination fluently overwhelm reality. The main topics proclaimed as crucial by Futurists are the contemporary most influencial topics for social stability: politics, communication and technology as well as the major movers of social change. What can we still grasp from the radical claims of avant-garde art?

After the Avant-Gardes

After the Avant-Gardes PDF

Author: Elizabeth Millán

Publisher: Open Court

Published: 2016-01-12

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0812698975

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A rallying call for all those who have been disquieted or disgusted by the excesses of artistic modernism. This is a collection of ten provocative essays on the arts, by writers of varied orientations who share a skepticism about the exaggerated role of modernism and the successive avant-gardes in shaping what is accepted as valid contemporary art. The essays cover painting and other visual arts, literature, music, and general observations about all the arts. It is not an exercise in hand-wringing about the current state of the arts, but looks for different directions in which the arts may now fruitfully evolve. Despite the diverse philosophies of the contributors, these essays together constitute a formidable case against the unhealthy impact of avant-gardism on our lives and aesthetic culture. The essays include the following, among others: a study of anti-modernist painter Odd Nerdrum, who sees modernist art as totalitarian; a critique of the avant-gardist neglect of mimesis as a key to art; an evaluation of “the end of art”; a critique of modern art in light of “the aesthetic harm principle”; an examination of Popper's objections to progressivism in music; the presentation of a new paradigm for literature.

Mimesis

Mimesis PDF

Author: Valery Podoroga

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2024-07-02

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1804294896

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The politics of literature in the construction of worlds The Russian Revolution was a literary as well as political upheaval. With a focus on the revolutionary works of Andrei Platonov and the futurist collective Oberiu, leading Russian literary thinker Valery Podoroga shows how profoundly the Soviet experiment overturned the traditional expectations of fiction and poetry. The production of this groundbreaking new work was inextricably interwoven with the political and historical debates of the time. This volume expands on Podoroga’s critical exploration of the analytic anthropology of literature. Here he delves into the ways literature can be used in ‘world-building’, both in terms of what happens inside the narrative and how it reflects the external world. He explores the function of the work outside of its time: both as a means to project itself into the future and as a document of a former age. How are we to read the past through these works of the imagination? With an introductory essay from the author’s daughter, Ioulia Podoroga.

Bad New Days

Bad New Days PDF

Author: Hal Foster

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2015-09-29

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1784781460

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One of the world’s leading art theorists dissects a quarter century of artistic practice Bad New Days examines the evolution of art and criticism in Western Europe and North America over the last twenty-five years, exploring their dynamic relation to the general condition of emergency instilled by neoliberalism and the war on terror. Considering the work of artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tacita Dean, and Isa Genzken, and the writing of thinkers like Jacques Rancière, Bruno Latour, and Giorgio Agamben, Hal Foster shows the ways in which art has anticipated this condition, at times resisting the collapse of the social contract or gesturing toward its repair; at other times burlesquing it. Against the claim that art making has become so heterogeneous as to defy historical analysis, Foster argues that the critic must still articulate a clear account of the contemporary in all its complexity. To that end, he offers several paradigms for the art of recent years, which he terms “abject,” “archival,” “mimetic,” and “precarious.”

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