Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In this volume, David Carrier and Joachim Pissarro expand on the exploration begun in their last book, Wild Art, which featured art that stands outside the margins of the art world in the way that wild animals stand apart from domestic cats and dogs. This new collaboration delves further into explaining how "wild art" came to be, the critical and cultural conditions that made its exclusion from the art world possible, and how its recognition radically transforms our understanding of contemporary art.
Harking back to Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment, Carrier and Pissarro look beyond the parameters of the formal art world and consider the vast array of art forms that are democratically available. Eschewing a high/low binary as well as any encyclopedic characterization of these unquantifiable forms of art, they focus on recovering the democratizing potential of Kant's key insight: that all of us make aesthetic judgments and that these diverse judgments merit serious consideration. Most notably, they invoke Heinrich von Kleist's argument that it is fully possible to have an utterly fulfilling aesthetic experience when encountering marionettes, skateboarders, or a graffiti wall, just as one might have while viewing a ballet performance or a minimalist installation in an art museum.
Written by two philosophers of art who are also active critics and members of the art world about which they write, Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics is a provocative and optimistic work. Recognizing there is no inherent distinction between "wild art" and "art world art," this book challenges the art world to become a much larger and accepting place.
Synopsis
"Wild Art" refers to work that exists outside the established, rarified world of art galleries and cultural channels. It encompasses uncatalogued, uncommodified art not often recognized as such, from graffiti to performance, self-adornment, and beyond. Picking up from their breakthrough book on the subject, Wild Art, David Carrier and Joachim Pissarro here delve into the ideas driving these forms of art, inquire how it came to be marginalized, and advocate for a definition of "taste," one in which each expression is acknowledged as being different while deserving equal merit.
Arguing that both the "art world" and "wild art" have the same capacity to produce aesthetic joy, Carrier and Pissarro contend that watching skateboarders perform Christ Air, for example, produces the same sublime experience in one audience that another enjoys while taking in a ballet; therefore, both mediums deserve careful reconsideration. In making their case, the two provide a history of the institutionalization of "taste" in Western thought, point to missed opportunities for its democratization in the past, and demonstrate how the recognition and acceptance of "wild art" in the present will radically transform our understanding of contemporary visual art in the future.
Provocative and optimistic, Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics rejects the concept of "kitsch" and the high/low art binary, ultimately challenging the art world to become a larger and more inclusive place.
Synopsis
Examines art that stands outside the margins of the art world, the critical and cultural conditions that made this exclusion possible, and how recognizing this radically transforms our understanding of contemporary art.