Synopses & Reviews
“Don’t start an art collective until you read this book.” —Guerrilla Girls
“Ever since Web 2.0 with its wikis, blogs and social networks the art of collaboration is back on the agenda. Collectivism after Modernism convincingly proves that art collectives did not stop after the proclaimed death of the historical avant-gardes. Like never before technology reinvents the social and artists claim the steering wheel!” —Geert Lovink, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam
“This examination of the succession of post-war avant-gardes and collectives is new, important, and engaged.” — Stephen F. Eisenman, author of The Abu Ghraib Effect
“Collectivism after Modernism crucially helps us understand what artists and others can do in mushy, stinky times like ours. What can the seemingly powerless do in the face of mighty forces that seem to have their act really together? Here, Stimson and Sholette put forth many good answers.” —Yes Men
Spanning the globe from Europe, Japan, and the United States to Africa, Cuba, and Mexico, Collectivism after Modernism explores the ways in which collectives function within cultural norms, social conventions, and corporate or state-sanctioned art. Together, these essays demonstrate that collectivism survives as an influential artistic practice despite the art world’s star system of individuality. Collectivism after Modernism provides the historical understanding necessary for thinking through postmodern collective practice, now and into the future.
Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, Jesse Drew, Okwui Enwezor, Rubén Gallo, Chris Gilbert, Brian Holmes, Alan Moore, Jelena Stojanovi´c, Reiko Tomii, Rachel Weiss.
Blake Stimson is associate professor of art history at the University of California Davis, the author of The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation, and coeditor of Visual Worlds and Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology. Gregory Sholette is an artist, writer, and cofounder of collectives Political Art Documentation/Distribution and REPOhistory. He is coeditor of The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life.
“To understand the various forms of postwar collectivism as historically determined phenomena and to articulate the possibilities for contemporary collectivist art production is the aim of Collectivism after Modernism. The essays assembled in this anthology argue that to make truly collective art means to reconsider the relation between art and public; examples from the Situationist International and Group Material to Paper Tiger Television and the Congolese collective Le Groupe Amos make the point. To construct an art of shared experience means to go beyond projecting what Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette call the “imagined community”: a collective has to be more than an ideal, and more than communal craft; it has to be a truly social enterprise. Not only does it use unconventional forms and media to communicate the issues and experiences usually excluded from artistic representation, but it gives voice to a multiplicity of perspectives. At its best it relies on the participation of the audience to actively contribute to the work, carrying forth the dialogue it inspires.” —BOMB
Review
"Don't start an art collective until you read this book." Guerrilla Girls
Review
"Ever since Web 2.0 with its wikis, blogs and social networks the art of collaboration is back on the agenda. Collectivism after Modernism convincingly proves that art collectives did not stop after the proclaimed death of the historical avant-gardes. Like never before technology reinvents the social and artists claim the steering wheel." Geert Lovink, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam
Review
"This examination of the succession of post-war avant-gardes and collectives is new, important, and engaged." Stephen F. Eisenman, author of The Abu Ghraib Effect
Review
"Collectivism after Modernism crucially helps us understand what artists and others can do in mushy, stinky times like ours. What can the seemingly powerless do in the face of mighty forces that seem to have their act really together? Here, Stimson and Sholette put forth many good answers." Yes Men
Review
"Blake Stimson and Gregory Shollete skillfully utilize collectivism's inherent ambiguities and contradictions to open a book that examines collectively produced art across many cultural divides and political contexts." Artforum
Review
"Stimson's project is one to be engaged with, as it wreaks necessary havoc with that dominant reductive perspective that too easily casts consumerism versus idealism, Postmodernism versus Modernism." Art Monthly
Synopsis
"Don't start an art collective until you read this book." --Guerrilla Girls
"Ever since Web 2.0 with its wikis, blogs and social networks the art of collaboration is back on the agenda. Collectivism after Modernism convincingly proves that art collectives did not stop after the proclaimed death of the historical avant-gardes. Like never before technology reinvents the social and artists claim the steering wheel " --Geert Lovink, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam
"This examination of the succession of post-war avant-gardes and collectives is new, important, and engaged." -- Stephen F. Eisenman, author of The Abu Ghraib Effect
"Collectivism after Modernism crucially helps us understand what artists and others can do in mushy, stinky times like ours. What can the seemingly powerless do in the face of mighty forces that seem to have their act really together? Here, Stimson and Sholette put forth many good answers." --Yes Men
Spanning the globe from Europe, Japan, and the United States to Africa, Cuba, and Mexico, Collectivism after Modernism explores the ways in which collectives function within cultural norms, social conventions, and corporate or state-sanctioned art. Together, these essays demonstrate that collectivism survives as an influential artistic practice despite the art world's star system of individuality. Collectivism after Modernism provides the historical understanding necessary for thinking through postmodern collective practice, now and into the future.
Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, Jesse Drew, Okwui Enwezor, Ruben Gallo, Chris Gilbert, Brian Holmes, Alan Moore, Jelena Stojanovic, Reiko Tomii, Rachel Weiss.
Blake Stimson is associate professor of art history at the University of California Davis, the author of The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation, and coeditor of Visual Worlds and Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology. Gregory Sholette is an artist, writer, and cofounder of collectives Political Art Documentation/Distribution and REPOhistory. He is coeditor of The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life.
"To understand the various forms of postwar collectivism as historically determined phenomena and to articulate the possibilities for contemporary collectivist art production is the aim of Collectivism after Modernism. The essays assembled in this anthology argue that to make truly collective art means to reconsider the relation between art and public; examples from the Situationist International and Group Material to Paper Tiger Television and the Congolese collective Le Groupe Amos make the point. To construct an art of shared experience means to go beyond projecting what Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette call the "imagined community" a collective has to be more than an ideal, and more than communal craft; it has to be a truly social enterprise. Not only does it use unconventional forms and media to communicate the issues and experiences usually excluded from artistic representation, but it gives voice to a multiplicity of perspectives. At its best it relies on the participation of the audience to actively contribute to the work, carrying forth the dialogue it inspires." --BOMB
Synopsis
Analyzes collective artistic practice from the Cold War to the global present.
The desire to speak in a collective voice has long fueled social imagination and artistic production. Prior to the Second World War, artists understood collectivization as an expression of the promise or failure of industrial and political modernity envisioned as a mass phenomenon. After the war, artists moved beyond the old ideal of progress by tying the radicalism of their political dreams to the free play of differences.
Organized around a series of case studies spanning the globe from Europe, Japan, and the United States to Africa, Cuba, and Mexico, Collectivism after Modernism covers such renowned collectives as the Guerrilla Girls and the Yes Men, as well as lesser-known groups. Contributors explore the ways in which collectives function within cultural norms, social conventions, and corporate or state-sanctioned art. They examine the impact of new technologies on artistic practice, the emergence of networked group identity, and the common characteristic of collective production to blur the typical separations between artists, activists, service workers, and communities in need.
Together, these essays demonstrate that collectivism survives as an influential and increasingly visible artistic practice despite the art world's star system of individuality. Collectivism after Modernism provides the historical understanding necessary for thinking through postmodern collective practice, now and into the future.
Synopsis
Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, National U of Singapore; Jesse Drew, San Francisco Art Institute; Okwui Enwezor, U of Pittsburgh; Rubén Gallo, Princeton U; Chris Gilbert, Baltimore Museum of Art; Brian Holmes; Alan Moore; Jelena Stojanovi'c; Reiko Tomii; Rachel Weiss, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
About the Author
Blake Stimson is associate professor of art history at the University of California Davis, the author of
The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation, and coeditor of
Visual Worlds and Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology.
Gregory Sholette is an artist, writer, and cofounder of collectives Political Art Documentation/Distribution and REPOhistory. He is coeditor of The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life.