Synopses & Reviews
In this landmark collection, world-renowned theorists, artists, critics, and curators explore new ways of conceiving the present and understanding art and culture in relation to it. They revisit from fresh perspectives key issues regarding modernity and postmodernity, including the relationship between art and broader social and political currents, as well as important questions about temporality and change. They also reflect on whether or not broad categories and terms such as modernity, postmodernity, globalization, and decolonization are still relevant or useful. Including twenty essays and seventy-seven images,
Antinomies of Art and Culture is a wide-ranging yet incisive inquiry into how to understand, describe, and represent what it is to live in the contemporary moment.
In the volumeandrsquo;s introduction the theorist Terry Smith argues that predictions that postmodernity would emerge as a global successor to modernity have not materialized as anticipated. Smith suggests that the various situations of decolonized Africa, post-Soviet Europe, contemporary China, the conflicted Middle East, and an uncertain United States might be better characterized in terms of their andldquo;contemporaneity,andrdquo; a concept which captures the frictions of the present while denying the inevitability of all currently competing universalisms. Essays range from Antonio Negriandrsquo;s analysis of contemporaneity in light of the concept of multitude to Okwui Enwezorandrsquo;s argument that the entire world is now in a postcolonial constellation, and from Rosalind Kraussandrsquo;s defense of artistic modernism to Jonathan Hayandrsquo;s characterization of contemporary developments in terms of doubled and even para-modernities. The volumeandrsquo;s centerpiece is a sequence of photographs from Zoe Leonardandrsquo;s Analogue project. Depicting used clothing, both as it is bundled for shipment in Brooklyn and as it is displayed for sale on the streets of Uganda, the sequence is part of a striking visual record of new cultural forms and economies emerging as others are left behind.
Contributors: Monica Amor, Nancy Condee, Okwui Enwezor, Boris Groys, Jonathan Hay, Wu Hung, Geeta Kapur, Rosalind Krauss, Bruno Latour, Zoe Leonard, Lev Manovich, James Meyer, Gao Minglu, Helen Molesworth, Antonio Negri, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Nikos Papastergiadis, Colin Richards, Suely Rolnik, Terry Smith, McKenzie Wark
Review
andldquo;This remarkable orchestration of voices, visualities, and political visions lays bare the antinomies and contradictions that haunt the sovereign claims of globalization. Each consummate essay is an artful reflection on the complex resistances and revisions that emanate from cultural practices that transform the aesthetic and ethical realities of embedded and embattled localities. I warmly recommend Antinomies of Art and Culture.andrdquo;andmdash;Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
Review
andldquo;Anyone wishing to assess the state of contemporary art and its relation to institutions, politics, social movements, and indeed, the entire project of imagining and naming the world at the present moment will find this brilliant book essential and disturbing reading. It offers no grand synthesis but provides a shattered mosaic of the crucial elements that will have to be assembled by any future historian looking back on the early twenty-first century.andrdquo;andmdash;W. J. T. Mitchell, author of What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images
Review
andldquo;This is a provocative and indeed challenging assessment of the relation between andlsquo;artandrsquo; and andlsquo;cultureandrsquo; (in scare quotes because both concepts are questioned) in the post-post-modernist moment. The essays successfully reposition discussion in a genuinely worldwide perspective, redefine modernism on a global scale, and push avant-garde thinking in new directions.andrdquo;andmdash;Hayden White, University Professor Emeritus, University of California, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Synopsis
Collection of essays by art historians and cultural theorists on what it means for art to be contemporary in the wake of postmodernism.
Synopsis
Art is often said to be timeless, but specific works of art always take place within time and maintain a dynamic balance between their conditions of production and reception.
Art and Contemporaneity features contributions from leading scholars, including Alain Badiou and Alexander García Düttmann, who bring theories of aesthetic philosophy to bear on one of the most crucial questions about contemporary art: how do works of art come to exist within and in relation to time? A specific temporality of an artwork emerges from the material and political conditions of its production. But works of art also forge new relationships to time in their reception, which are continually superimposed upon layers of history. With a broad range of perspectives, Art and Contemporaneity offers a sustained reflection on the relationship between art and time, and it will appeal to those interested in both the theory and practice of contemporary art.
About the Author
“Anyone wishing to assess the state of contemporary art and its relation to institutions, politics, social movements, and indeed, the entire project of imagining and naming the world at the present moment will find this brilliant book essential and disturbing reading. It offers no grand synthesis but provides a shattered mosaic of the crucial elements that will have to be assembled by any future historian looking back on the early twenty-first century.”—W. J. T. Mitchell, author of What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images“This is a provocative and indeed challenging assessment of the relation between ‘art’ and ‘culture’ (in scare quotes because both concepts are questioned) in the post-post-modernist moment. The essays successfully reposition discussion in a genuinely worldwide perspective, redefine modernism on a global scale, and push avant-garde thinking in new directions.”—Hayden White, University Professor Emeritus, University of California, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University“This remarkable orchestration of voices, visualities, and political visions lays bare the antinomies and contradictions that haunt the sovereign claims of globalization. Each consummate essay is an artful reflection on the complex resistances and revisions that emanate from cultural practices that transform the aesthetic and ethical realities of embedded and embattled localities. I warmly recommend Antinomies of Art and Culture.”—Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments svii
Introduction: The Contemporaneity Question / Terry Smith 1
Part I: The Politics of Temporality
1. Contemporaneity between Modernity and Postmodernity / Antonio Negri 23
2. A Cultural Conjuncture in India: Art into Documentary / Geeta Kapur 30
3. Some Rotten Shoots from the Seeds of Time / Rosalind Krauss 60
4. The Topology of Contemporary Art / Boris Groys 71
Part 2: Multiple Modernities
5. On the Contingency of Modernity and the Persistence of Canons / Monica Amor 83
6. Politics of Flexible Subjectivity: The Event Work of Lygia Clark / Suely Rolnik 97
7. Double Modernity, Para-Modernity / Jonathan Hay 113
8. andquot;Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truthandquot;: Total Modernity in Chinese Contemporary Art / Gao Minglu 133
9. The Perils of Unilateral Power: Neomodernist Metaphors and the New Global Order / Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie 165
10. Analogue: 1998-2007 / Zoe Leonard, Introduced by Helen Molesworth 187
Part 3: Afterworlds
11. The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition / Okwui Enwezor 207
12. From Emigration to E-migration: Contemporaneity and the Former Second World / Nancy Condee 235
13. Aftermath: Value and Violence in Contemporary South African Art / Colin Richards 250
14. A Case of Being andquot;Contemporaryandquot;: Conditions, Spheres, and Narratives of Contemporary Chinese Art / Wu Hung 290
Part 4: Cotemporalities
15. Emancipation or Attachments? The Different Futures of Politics / Bruno Latour 309
16. The Return of the Sixties in Contemporary Art and Criticism / James Meyer 324
17. Introduction to Info-Aesthetics / Lev Manovich 333
18. The Giftshop at the End of History / McKenzie Wark 345
19. Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking the Contemporary / Nikos Papastergiadis 363
References 383
Contributors 413
Index 417