Synopses & Reviews
Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Yves Klein, and Marcel Duchamp form an unlikely quartet, but they each played a singular role in shaping a new avant-garde for the 1960s and beyond. Each of them staged brash, even shocking, events and produced works that challenged the way the mainstream art world operated and thought about itself.and#160;Distinguished philosopher Thierry de Duve binds these artists through another connection: the mapping of the aesthetic field onto political economy. Karl Marx provides the red thread tying together these four beautifully written essays in which de Duve treats each artist as a distinct, characteristic figure in that mapping. He sees in Beuys, who imagined a new economic system where creativity, not money, was the true capital, the incarnation of the last of the proletarians; he carries forward Warholandrsquo;s desire to be a machine of mass production and draws the consequences for aesthetic theory; he calls Klein, who staked a claim on pictorial space as if it were a commodity, andldquo;The dead dealerandrdquo;; and he reads Duchamp as the witty financier who holds the secret of artistic exchange value. Throughout, de Duve expresses his view that the mapping of the aesthetic field onto political economy is a phenomenon that should be seen as central to modernity in art. Even more, de Duve shows that Marxandmdash;though perhaps no longer the andldquo;Marxistandrdquo; Marx of yoreandmdash;can still help us resist the current disenchantment with modernityandrsquo;s many unmet promises.and#160;An intriguing look at these four influential artists, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx is an absorbing investigation into the many intertwined relationships between the economic and artistic realms.
Review
"The Return of the Real is one of the most cogent and theoreticallyself-aware readings of contemprary art I have seen." Howard Singerman, Department of Art History, University of Virginia The MIT Press
Review
and#8220;Thierry de Duveand#8217;s is a crucial and utterly distinct voice in the field of modern art. Delightfully original and engaging, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx combines the authorand#8217;s inimitably bold thinking with an unusual sensitivity to the ways that particular works articulate the convergence of aesthetics and economics. Its gorgeously constructed essays tell this artand#8217;s stories so well, they often read like the best biographical fiction.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;That Beuys, Warhol, Klein, and Duchamp were variously engaged in rewriting the terms of production, circulation, and consumption of art, and did so by creating new work which challenged the received nature of the artwork is an oft-mentioned, oft-theorized fact. No one has gone so far in thinking through the dramatic intentions and achievements of these artists as de Duve, who in this free radical of a book, maps categories of political economy found in the pages of Marx onto their projects. De Duveandrsquo;s recruitment of Marx is of such originality as to return the reader to Marxandrsquo;s own texts, whose astonishing insights into production, mechanization, price, money, exchange value, the creativity of labor, and the innovation of markets have been neglected in recent times but demand reawakening. Written with verve, intricacy, and narrative fluency, this book probes and proves that these are the parameters in which the avant-gardes transact, and through which they must be brought to speech.andrdquo;
Review
and#8220;The book is a success at creating a visual and textual cartography, as following the red thread proves that you can indeed get there (political economy) from here (modern art/aesthetics) and vice versa. Likewise, the author provides fresh new perspective where the four artists and Marx are concerned. While many critics and authors have attempted to view modern and postmodern art through a similar lens, none have achieved such an enthralling and vivid image.and#8221;
Review
The Return of the Real is one of the most cogent and theoretically self-aware readings of contemprary art I have seen. The MIT Press
Synopsis
In
The Return of the Real Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avant-gardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today.
After the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s, Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real -- to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites. If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avant-gard, it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation -- and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.
Synopsis
Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avant-gardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-292) and index.
About the Author
Thierry de Duve is an art historian, critic, and curator. His publications in English include Kant after Duchampand Clement Greenberg Between the Lines. Rosalind E. Krauss is University Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University.
Table of Contents
Preface 2009
Joseph Beuys, or The Last of the Proletarians
Andy Warhol, or The Machine Perfected
Yves Klein, or The Dead Dealer
Marcel Duchamp, or The Phynancier of Modern Life
Postface 2009